Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 552: Chapter 552 - Taming the Fourth Year: Connections - Good Guidance - Time to Apply

The new technique Ren was developing required him to maintain multiple streams of mana flowing simultaneously through different pathways in his body... It was exhausting to maintain.

Each practice session brought incremental improvements, but also reminded him how effortless such complex mana manipulation had been when his fungus handled the underlying coordination. Now every adjustment required conscious decision-making, every element switch demanded deliberate effort.

Still, the hope that this training might eventually help him understand his fungus’s condition gave him motivation to push through the discomfort and frustration of learning to do manually what had once been automatic.

Obviously Ren not only practiced alone.

The battles with Lin continued to be ’brutally educational’. Zhao and Wei had also participated, and Ren felt it was overkill now.

Lin was more than enough, he thought.

Even Wei, who was objectively the worst fighter among his four teacher pairing opponents, proved too much when supporting Lin.

Wei had chosen, like Finch, to have a spore as his second beast ”for science”, so he basically wasn’t a ”real double” in boosts yet, but he was still too effective supporting Lin with his wind control and ranged wind attacks. Ren had tried once to focus his attacks on taking down Wei first, thinking Lin would give him some leeway to face the less skilled professor.

Ren knew that Wei wasn’t Lin’s favorite person, so he thought she might give him perhaps a slight opening.

He had been completely wrong. Lin didn’t give him even a centimeter of leeway in battles, regardless of circumstances...

That harsh training was part of Ren’s routine now. His ”cool, bad guy” shenanigans had ”won” that for him.

’Guess I deserve it huh?’

After controlling energy in his personal training for several hours, he decided to take a break and bathe to be ready for his meeting with Liora. She had set today as the date for her mysterious ”extra apologies” plan... Ren still had no clear idea what to expect.

The communal baths were mostly empty at that hour of the day, which Ren now preferred since being there at normal hours resulted in the other guys always crowding him to ask a lot about cultivation and exercise...

He could take advantage thanks to his classes now being more flexible than most people’s. He liked having space sometimes to process his thoughts without the distraction of casual conversations.

During the bath he couldn’t help thinking long and hard about his fungus and Larissa, the two friends that his different decisions had taken from him and whom he couldn’t help missing.

The solitude gave him space to confront emotions he usually pushed aside during training or social interactions. Tears weren’t visible when water was running through all his body anyway.

The loss of his fungus felt like losing an important ’main limb’ he’d never appreciated until it was gone, while thoughts of Larissa still carried the weight of unresolved guilt and longing.

But time for sorrow was over, he had to keep pushing forward.

♢♢♢♢

As he was leaving the shower refreshed, he found Klein leaving an adjacent one.

Ren was still a bit soppy (sentimental/emotional) and couldn’t help feeling a bit bad for him.

Klein always seemed to be alone now. Astor, Feng, and any of those who commonly surrounded him had been transferred to other schools by their parents years ago, and he was always training alone, striving to the maximum to try to keep up with his peers’ progress.

But without being a dual tamer and with a beast still stuck at Silver 1, Klein had little chance of competing effectively against someone at as high a level as Ren’s. In fact, everyone around seemed to be progressively leaving him behind.

The isolation was visible in Klein’s posture, the way he carried himself with the defeated air of someone who had stopped expecting social interaction to go well.

Ren thought about his own recent performances and the apologies he had had to make to keep his friends. He felt empathetic toward Klein’s situation.

”Klein,” he finally called.

Klein turned, and Ren immediately noticed how his eyes moved, involuntarily comparing their physiques. Ren had developed very marked musculature thanks to these years of intensive training, perhaps too dense for his age, the result of his beasts’ boosts and constant exercise.