Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 885 - Taming the Fifth Year - Attrition - Explosive Healing 2

Minʼs improvement was a huge surprise…

It was another technique Ren hadnʼt expected to see until much later in his development.

Skin secretions from the amphibian. Substances that Ren had noticed before losing access to his fungusʼs complete knowledge and hadnʼt analyzed fully because he hadnʼt expected to encounter them so soon.

The mechanism was elegant in its brutality. The Amphibʼs skin constantly produced various compounds, oils, mucus, enzymes, as part of its natural biology. Most amphibians did this to maintain skin moisture and provide basic defense against parasites and minor injuries.

But Minʼs control over water had apparently reached a level where he could manipulate exactly how those secretions were constituted and behaved upon contact. It was something like specific chemicals being released in concentrations that caused a massive exothermic reaction when exposed to oxygen or when mixed with foreign substances or pressure.

The energy from the Mantisʼs strike had apparently acted as a catalyst. The moment it hit, it triggered a cascade that reacted... Violently.

The result was an explosion that turned defensive hide into an offensive weapon. Every attack became a risk now, every strike carried the possibility of detonating in that specific area of the amphibianʼs body.

Min had even waited until Ren calculated the speed with his preemptive strike and committed to a bigger, slower one.

It was brilliant... Frustrating, but brilliant.

It seemed, making jokes was not the job of an ”unintelligent clown” as Jin had once called him.

The Amphibian lunged forward suddenly, faster than its previous movements.

More surprises…

Min had apparently been feinting slowness, keeping the beastʼs full velocity in reserve for a trap.

It even attempted to follow up with a bite while the mantis was still recovering from being thrown backward, its massive jaws opening and snapping forward with surprising speed for something so large.

But the Mantis had already activated her own incredible agility, using her superior speed to twist in midair and avoid the incoming attack by maybe 0.2-0.3 seconds. Close enough that it could feel the displaced air from the jaws snapping shut, but far enough that teeth didnʼt connect with the exoskeleton.

Too close still... Much too close.

Renʼs jaw tightened. Min snapped his fingers in disappointment at the biteʼs failure, but he smiled with satisfaction at seeing the explosive techniqueʼs effectiveness. ”Do you like it?” he called across the arena with pride he didnʼt try to hide. ”I spent weeks perfecting the exact mixtures of secretions and the concentration necessary to make the ʼexplosive defenseʼ work consistently. Turns out water isnʼt just for healing or cutting or making ice. If you understand it well enough, you can convert it into a weapon that explodes like a good hysteric laughter when you want it to explode.”

It was a revelation demonstrating a level of sophistication in Minʼs approach that Ren hadnʼt fully appreciated until this moment…

The amphibian was already healing from the minor damage that the wood element had caused before the explosion interrupted the process. The blast hadnʼt allowed the wood energy to take hold and use the Amphibʼs own light and water healing to accelerate its growth the way wood techniques normally exploited water-aligned creatures.

It was a ʼdefensive tank with spikesʼ strategy carried to perfect execution against the Mantisʼs charged scythes: receive attacks deliberately, convert each impact into a counterattack through explosions, and prevent any damage from its elemental weakness.

The approach favored a creature with massive bulk and resistance that could absorb punishment during an extended period. And with the capability to convert passive defenses into active offensives through explosive ʼmagic chemistryʼ, it transformed every enemy attack into a risk that had to be carefully evaluated.

Attack too hard and youʼd trigger bigger explosions. Attack too soft and you didnʼt penetrate enough to matter. Ren observed the dynamic developing and acknowledged that the standard approach of simply hitting harder wouldnʼt work here.

He needed to adapt his method of attack, to find a weakness he could exploit in a way that negated the advantages Min had built so carefully.

He allowed the Mantis to maintain distance using its superior speed while using its own water and light elements to heal the damage sheʼd sustained. The restoring wasnʼt as efficient as the amphibianʼs… the Mantisʼs water affinity was secondary rather than primary, but it was sufficient to close the cracks in its exoskeleton and reduce the burns from first-degree to superficial redness.

And then Ren grinned as the idea formed, with his recognition of an attack vector that Min had probably anticipated but hoped to have mitigated sufficiently through training.

This was going to be very difficult indeed.

But difficult wasnʼt impossible.

Not yet, anyway.

The Mantis changed her approach completely, abandoning direct physical attacks in favor of elemental manipulation that didnʼt require contact.

It was much less efficient than charging the scythes with wood energy for close-range strikes. Direct contact allowed for maximum energy transfer. Ranged manipulation meant significant power loss through distance and required much more mana to achieve similar effects.

But efficiency didnʼt matter when contact meant taking those explosions point blank. Better to spend 5x to 10× the mana on a safe attack than spend 1× the mana on an attack that would injure you much more than it injured the opponent.

The Mantis could also control wood over a much larger area so it began exerting control over the element to which amphibians like the Royal Invisible Amphibianʼs species had fundamental vulnerability.

It wasnʼt simply making plants grow from the ground, although that was part of the technique. It was more subtle control over what Matilda called ”seeds of life”... the capability to manipulate living growth across a large area in ways that would bombard the enormous beast from multiple directions simultaneously.

Could the Amphibʼs explosions counter attacks if its entire body was invaded rather than just struck at specific points? That was the question Renʼs tactic was designed to answer.

Roots began growing from the sand around and beneath the Amphibian, not attacking directly but preparing a massive bombardment. And then the Mantis launched seeds that adhered to the Amphibianʼs skin, small structures that began germinating aggressively using the moisture that the creature naturally exuded.