Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 548: Chapter 548 - Taming the Fourth Year: Connections - Good Guidance

Ren worked meticulously on his gifts during the following hours, carefully engraving runes on the high-quality skins he had purchased. It was a process that required absolute concentration, but his mind kept wandering toward territories that made him uncomfortable.

He hadn’t been able to work on the Gold 3 level proboscis he had obtained in the depths, nor process any of the other valuable materials he had acquired during his nearly fatal expedition.

His analysis of crystallization had also stalled, without his fungus friend to provide the subtle perceptions he had taken for granted for years.

The stress of all this still crushed him. The loss of his fungus wasn’t just less power; it was also more worries, more responsibilities he had to handle without help, more decisions he had to make without constant advice.

The simple act of rune inscription, which had once been almost meditative, now felt laborious without his enhanced perception. Each stroke had to be calculated manually, each energy flow pattern worked out through conscious effort rather than intuitive understanding.

But puberty seemed to have strange powers...

It was able to overcome everything else and make him think about things that had never caught his attention that way before. While engraving a particularly complex rune, he found himself wondering how he would manage to give the gifts to the girls without making a complete fool of himself in front of them.

Apologizing was going to be difficult, especially when his mind kept conjuring images he definitely shouldn’t be considering right now.

He was worried about finishing writing a durability rune when Lin appeared at the door... accompanied by Yang.

”Ren,” Lin announced with her typical directness, ”Zhao and Wei weren’t available this time, but it seems they’ll be able to rotate with Yang later to give you more intense battles.”

Ren looked up from his work, immediately feeling a knot in his stomach.

”It’s not necessary,” he said quickly. ”Although I haven’t told almost anyone, my power is at half now and...”

Lin looked at him with an expression that clearly said that excuse wasn’t going to work.

”It doesn’t matter,” she declared. ”If that’s true... It’s even better that way. You must remember much of what you could achieve with double the power anyway, and this way you can ’give it your all’ without depending on additional advantages.”

Ren swallowed nervously and desperately searched for more excuses.

”But, I really think I should focus on...”

Yang discretely made a negative signal with his head, accompanied by a grimace of relative pity that clearly said ’come on boy, there’s no escape’.

Before he could protest more, Lin literally dragged him toward the training arena.

The reality of his situation became evident immediately. Now he only had the boosts from his beasts: his Silver 2 hydra and his Silver 1 wolverine. They were still powerful, but compared to what he had had before, he felt significantly limited.

Yang and Lin were both dual tamers, at a similar level of overall power. Only Lin’s crane was slightly lower in potential than the other five beasts in use, but her advancement in the thousand-day cultivation method had helped her compensate a bit for that difference.

As they prepared for combat, Ren couldn’t help but notice things he had never paid conscious attention to before. Lin’s muscular legs, her body toned by years of intensive training, the way she moved with feline grace even outside of combat...

The thoughts immediately reminded him of the conversation with the three idiots, and he blushed involuntarily.

’Concentrate,’ he ordered himself firmly. ’This is going to hurt enough without distractions.’

His thirteen-year-old brain seemed determined to sabotage him at the worst possible moments, fixating on details that had never registered before his recent hormonal awakening.

He knew that getting distracted would cause him pain...

But he had no idea how much.

The battle began with Yang immediately creating a controlled combat field using the roots of his new giant Treant, while his Behemoth modified the terrain to eliminate any positional advantage Ren might try to create with his own control.

Lin, partially fused with her panther, moved in such an unconventional way that Ren immediately realized how much he had depended on his enhanced perception.

Everything he had taken for granted about combat felt clumsy and uncoordinated. The mana network his fungus had always kept active provided him not only power bonuses, but also perceptual aspects on many levels he had never consciously considered.

Lin wasn’t just fast; she was deceptive.

Integrated with her panther, she moved in ways that defied expectations. Her footwork was so good and agile that she literally seemed to disappear at moments, only to reappear at angles that should have been impossible.

The integration was seamless in ways that made Ren painfully aware of how crude his own techniques had become.

Ren tried to use his multi-elemental control, launching combinations of earth and light that had been effective in the past. But without the precision that everything connected to his fungus had provided, his attacks felt crude and predictable.

Lin dodged them as if it were a rehearsed dance.

”You’re depending too much on brute force!” she shouted while sliding around a stone barrier he had created. ”Think of a more subtle technique!”

Easy to say when she moved as if she weighed less than a feather and hit like an elephant bull charge.

Yang didn’t give him any respite either. The earth and root control from his combination of Behemoth and giant Treant didn’t allow him to stay still for even a second. Every time he tried to establish a defensive position, roots sprouted from the ground to disrupt his stance, while earth waves forced him to move constantly.

The coordination between the two teachers was perfect.

A desperate defense was all Ren managed even while trying to abuse his multi-elemental control and tricks that already felt old and predictable to Lin, though Yang seemed less familiar with some of his techniques.

But it wasn’t enough.

In the end, Yang enclosed him in a sphere of compacted earth and roots, eliminating his mobility and forcing him into close combat against Lin.

What followed was less a battle than a lesson in humility.

Lin showed him how, with just her legs, she could dominate him completely. She struck dozens of points in a matter of seconds, each strike perfectly placed to cause maximum discomfort without permanent damage. She dodged any attempt at counterattack with movements that seemed to anticipate his actions before he had fully decided on them himself.

His perceptions, now reduced to normal levels, simply couldn’t follow the pace she established.

Every weakness in his stance, every gap in his defense, every predictable pattern in his movements was exploited. It was like being dissected by someone who understood combat at a fundamental level he had never truly bothered to learn to call himself better.

When he finally ended up on the ground, breathing heavily and feeling as if a Leviathan Worm had run him over, Ren realized how much work he was going to need if he wanted to feel competent again, much less superior, in combat against his teacher.

Lin approached and extended a hand to help him up.

”Now you understand,” she said, but her voice wasn’t cruel. ”You’ve been depending on advantages that made you lazy. Without them, you have to relearn fundamentals you never properly mastered.”

Ren accepted her help to stand, feeling every muscle in his body protesting.

At least, he realized, the exhausting exercise had helped completely clear his mind of any impure thoughts.

Large thighs, he had discovered, were significantly less attractive when they were causing him extreme pain.

’Silver lining,’ he thought wryly.

Though honestly, given how badly he had performed, he was probably going to need all the mental distractions he could get to motivate himself to continue with this level of training.

The reality of being a normal teenager, he was discovering, was significantly more complicated than being a prodigy had ever been.

And that was saying something.

Or perhaps there was something to be said for being beaten into submission as a form of mental clarity for current or ex bullies.