This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The moment Soren’s attack was launched, the entire aura of the arena shifted.

Like flipping a switch. The crowd didn’t just see two prodigies. They saw a clash of ideals—talent versus legacy.

It wasn’t just the sheer speed of the opening strike that was intimidating—it was the pressure. Four dragons moved as one, each boosted beyond belief. Their bodies glowed faintly with power that wasn’t fully their own, muscles rippling with synchronized might, their auras stacked and sharpened like four swords honed on the same whetstone.

Kain ducked just in time as a metallic gold lightning dragon streaked through the sky, its claws flashing as it launched a compressed arc of current toward his side of the arena. A second dragon, light green and glass-winged, followed close behind, twisting the airflow into cutting streamers that sliced across the field, aiming at everyone and everything indiscriminately.

Then came the others.

A deep blue aquatic dragon spun from the side, its breath freezing the vapor in the air into needle-sharp shards.

And the fourth—another lightning attribute dragon, Soren’s latest contract, was amethyst-scaled and horned, pulsing with deep violet energy—let out a resonant growl that turned the air heavy with static.

One of them launched itself closer to Kain side—overzealous. The wind dragon nearly clipped Kain’s shoulder with a whip-fast tail strike.

The referee’s voice boomed over the crowd.

“First warning to Team Lysander! No attacks on the tamer before they engage. Contracts must hold until combat is initiated.”

Thankfully for Kain, it was against the rules to attack the tamer unless they themselves used their gift or spiritual skills to involve themselves in the battle other than by giving directions. Considering, Soren had used a spiritual skill, Kain could theoretically focus on targeting him, but Soren could not do the same.

Soren raised a hand calmly. His dragons immediately froze mid-motion, returning to formation.

The warning of the ref seems to have calmed their blazing momentum somewhat.

Kain exhaled, slow and measured.

He needed an edge. Fast.

But Soren didn’t give him much time to think.

The gold lightning dragon struck again. Aegis the sole target this time. A radiant flash—then impact.

Aegis blocked, but his feet skidded.

The wind dragon circled around, cutting low.

The water dragon came in from the side with a spear of highly condensed ice-cold water.

And through it all, Aegis held.

But it wasn’t enough.

The amethyst dragon followed with a strike that collapsed part of the arena floor beneath Aegis. Unlike the golden dragon who seemed to be of pure lightning-attribute, the amethyst one’s lightning seemed to faintly distort the gravitational field in the surrounding area around its lightning strikes. Even the collapsed area of the stage near Aegis, appeared to have a heavier gravity where its lightning had struck.

The passive barrier around Aegis began to show some cracks. Kain’s heart jumped.

If that barrier shattered entirely, it would trigger Aegis’ backlash detonation protocol—a last-resort defense that would release a spiritual energy blast of energy contained in his core at the opponent. A blast containing Abyssal energy…

Most of the explosion would lash outward, damaging all nearby enemies, but it would also slightly injure Aegis in the process. Not to mention, Kain really didn’t want to explain to the school why the spiritual power stored in Aegis’ core was ‘contaminated’ with Abyssal energy.

Aegis staggered.

Overloaded.

And Kain knew—without a boost, he would fall. Due to the strength gap on both side after Soren used his skill, Vauleth and the Vespid guards were restricted to harassing the opponents from afar, and most of their attacks did minimal damage to Soren’s dragons.

They couldn’t come close to attack without immediately getting badly injured or torn apart completely.

Even the feedback from Bea let him know that the Pale Thought Field that had long covered the arena wasn’t showing much of an effect in having a split form in any of the dragons. Their boosted 2.5x greater strength meant that Bea would likely need to completely exhaust herself to even control 1, much less all of them…unless she dared to use her original body to infiltrate. A risk Kain would never dare make in a mere student match.

So, Kain did what he hadn’t done since the tournament started.

He activated his own spiritual skill.

His own spiritual energy quickly depleted, surged forward and siphoned into Queen in an instant.

The effect was immediate—Aegis’ crystalline shell thickened, refracting ambient light like a prism. The etchings on his arms pulsed with layered glyphs, and his aura received a large boost. Whereas, previously the boost to Soren’s contracts made their auras all stronger than Aegis, who was one rank above them, they now felt more even in strength. If anything, Aegis’ aura was faintly stronger than theirs again.

Moreover, with the boost from Kain, his fracturing shield was restored.

And for a moment, Kain felt proud. Even depleted, he knew this was the best play he could make.

The Aegis’ form shimmered as layered circuits lit up down his arms and across his core. The metallic-rock material composing his body split apart—not into pieces, but into plates. They hovered in the air behind him, rotating with deliberate precision, before locking back together into a jagged, spear-like formation along his forearm. One of Aegis’ greatest strengths was his ability to terraform his own body.

And with a surge of black tinged energy, before any of Soren’s dragon’s could finish blinking, Aegis was before them.

One second he was standing. The next, he was inside the kill zone, mere feet from the wind dragon. This was something Kain and Aegis had been practicing during training. They had discovered that selectively using the Abyssal energy stored in small quantities to enhance the body provided massive all-round boosts to speed and strength—a boost even more exacerbated by Kain’s spiritual skill.

The wind dragon barely reacted in time. It tried to twist away, using its usual burst of wind to dodge and escape, but Aegis was already there. His boosted form was faster—denser—and more lethal.

He slammed his reforged arm directly into the dragon’s wing joint. A sharp crack echoed through the arena. The impact launched the dragon sideways, spiraling through the air uncontrollably as a flash of blue-white light burst from the point of contact. One wing bent at an unnatural angle, spasming as blood misted from the joint.

It crashed into the ground hard, digging a furrow through the stone like a javelin thrown from the heavens.

The crowd gasped.

Kain didn’t celebrate.

He couldn’t afford to.

This was what he was best at. Not strength. Not lineage.

Pressure. Seizing opportunities. Adaptation.

If Soren was royalty, then Kain would be the revolution.

And this fight wasn’t over.

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