This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Chapter 732: Chapter 732: Kain Vs Nikolai (End)

Kain felt as though he was being dipped into lava, then dragged back out again as Aegis pounced on the Blood Flame Hound to distract it away from using his ability on Kain.

The pain in his shoulder was raw and burning, but worse was the sensation creeping into his soul—a soul-burn, subtle and corrosive.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Something shifted in the air. A low hum built up like static in his bones. Kain turned, and his breath caught. The Slagbeast was no longer just twitching. Its bloody body had begun to vibrate. Thin threads of blood were rising from the ground, and his shirt—no, not from the arena. From him.

His blood.

The droplets from his wounded shoulder, barely congealed on the fabric of his uniform and ground, were being pulled toward the Slagbeast’s open ribcage. They floated unnaturally, drawn like needles to a magnet, condensing into slender red needles in mid-air. They trembled for a moment, then began accelerating toward the beast’s mouth.

“Oh, hell no,” Kain breathed, staggering back from the blood loss, while breaking out into a cold sweat. He was sweating not due to the pain, because as it siphoned blood directly from the wound it certainly felt like being stabbed by millions of needles repeatedly in his shoulder. But he was moreso panicked by what the Slagbeast would gain by eating his blood.

And Kain had no idea what it might learn from his blood. His blood carried traces of Source energy. Hints of the Earth’s inheritance. Signatures from Pangea. The System. Ideally, no knowledge, memories, or abilities would be contained in his blood—but he really couldn’t guarantee it.

Thankfully, a blur of color launched from his side.

Chewy.

The spore jiggled violently mid-air, stretching unnaturally to the size of a golf ball—the biggest its ever gotten—then slapped itself directly into the incoming needle cluster. With a strange, gloppy slirp, the condensed blood vanished into his fungal body like water into a sponge. A deep gurgle followed. Chewy belched, releasing a puff of faint golden spores resembling pollen, and blinked once—proudly.

“Thanks,” Kain muttered, exhaling.

The Slagbeast flinched, then let out a guttural snarl. It was still processing what had happened. And while it did—

“Aegis!” Kain barked. “Ignore the hound. Break the Slagbeast.”

Even if Kain had to feel as though he was being burned from the soul for the remainder of the match, its still not worth the secrets in his blood being discovered.

————————

Inside the Slagbeast’s mind, everything was unraveling.

Bea clung to the remnants of her consciousness as she tried to keep her focus in the twisted, corrupted mental terrain. Strange animal shapes—mostly mice, but occasionally other small beasts—scurried along the mental pathways, like ghostly echoes. They reminded her of her own splits, but distorted. She guessed they were projections of creatures the Slagbeast had consumed, now warped into its own version of mental scouts.

Earlier, brushing too close to one had almost completely caused her to lose her sense of self due to mental corruption, making her wander around aimlessly for a full minute due to a brief touch. Now, though, when she let one graze her side, nothing happened.

The connection was failing. The Slagbeast’s mimicry was falling apart.

She hovered in front of the breaking network. Threads of mental logic snapped around her, folding inward like crumbling scaffolding. It was trying to copy her mental structure—her split coordination system—but the whole thing was collapsing under the weight of its own errors and those she fed it.

She decided to speed the process up even further.

Bea injected a stream of mental noise—snippets from one of the most unpredictable, irrational minds she knew: Chewy. His chaotic thoughts flooded the system like a virus. Imaginary bouncing fruit. Philosophical arguments with mushrooms. A memory of trying to eat lightning…and failing.

It worked.

The mimic hub shuddered violently. No sound—just pressure and instability. Conflicting signals crashed into each other. The Slagbeast’s fake instincts couldn’t cope with Chewy’s nonsense or the impaired logic fragments Bea had planted earlier.

She dove into a fissure forming in the center of the structure, reaching the unstable core—a twisted replica of her own control logic. It pulsed erratically, folding in on itself, still trying to protect the one spark of identity it had formed from mimicking her.

Too slow.

Bea plunged a final mental spike into it right through the core.

The entire hub convulsed. The logic paths are reversed. The node connections spiralled into static.

Bea turned to flee, but a final trap activated. A net of mental threads—woven from mimicking memories absorbed from her of when she used mental threads to move her splits—lashed out. It wrapped around her and began trying to absorb her to try and repair the collapsing mental hub..

Bursting out with everything she had, she tore herself free, but at a cost. Pain erupted through her form. Feedback burned across her consciousness like acid.

Still, she made it out.

Outside, the Slagbeast shuddered. Its ribs cracked. Blood mist poured upward in chaotic spirals. And at the very center of its open chest, something small and invisible shot outward in a streak of spiritual light.

Bea.

She landed on Kain’s shoulder—microscopic, twitching. A thought brushed his mind, weak but intact: “Withdrawing.”

He nodded without hesitation. “Do it.”

And then she was gone. The Pale Thought Field dimmed, but unlike usual, didn’t completely disappear. At only maybe 1% of its original strength, it still hovered over the field, independently.

Kain smiled faintly. She was hurt. Badly. But he could feel it through their bond.

She had learned something.

————————

The Blood Flame Hound had sensed weakness. Its bindings were already half-melted from its own fiery aura, and with Aegis redirected, it focused on Kain..

Kain saw the movement and clenched his jaw, steadying his stance despite the pain still flaring throughout his body as it felt like he was being flayed alive as the Blood Flame Hound’s skill activated.

“Aegis, flank!”

The golem burst forward, dirt and stone rising to armour his legs. He collided with the hound mid-pounce, catching it with a shoulder block and flipping it mid-air. As it landed, snapping and snarling, Aegis trapped it with a crescent wall of stone and launched a spike straight through its ribcage.

It howled in agony. Kain could tell, it only needed a little push to completely collapse.

Chewy, now puffed up like a water balloon ready to burst, flung himself into the air and detonated directly over the hound’s head. The resulting explosion tossed the beast backward, slamming it into the far barrier.

A hush fell over the crowd. The Blood Flame Hound didn’t rise.

Only the Slagbeast remained.

It was twitching, limbs jerking spasmodically. Its ribcage had collapsed inward, and black blood frothed from its mouth.

“Aegis,” Kain said quietly. “End it.”

Aegis didn’t hesitate.

The golem formed a massive hammer from the ground. For a second, Kain blinked. The shape—it looked almost identical to the one he’d seen in Exalted Grandmaster Halreth’s workshop and even had a couple of simple sigils. Kain briefly made a mental note of this and wondered if Aegis could temporarily form even more powerful weapons with enough experience, or if he could eventually even learn blacksmithing.

With a deafening crash, he brought the massive hammer down on the Slagbeast’s spine.

The creature convulsed once. Then stilled.

Kain waited two seconds. Three.

No movement.

Then the referee raised his hand. “Victory—Dark Moon College!”

————————

Cheers erupted from the stands, but Kain barely heard them.

Aegis was still standing, barely chipped, his stone shoulders rising and falling, giving the illusion that he was breathing heavy from exertion—but based on the flickering light of the thin energy conduit lines throughout his body, Kain knew it was more likely a side effect of his body having barely enough energy to remain standing.

Chewy had returned to his usual size and was wobbling proudly in place, but Kain could also sense that it was on the verge of collapse.

Kain glanced at the still faint Pale Thought Field. Nothing visible remained, but he could feel her lingering presence in the atmosphere—so faint that only he, as her contractor, could probably sense it. This almost semi-permanent activation of the Pale Thought Field will need to be explored for its possible applications later.

He sent a thought to Bea: “You okay?”

A beat. Then a pulse of acknowledgement. Weak, but there.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Nikolai being lifted onto a stretcher by medical staff. The other student’s eyes were unfocused, his coat soaked with blood—self-inflicted in desperation. At some point in the latter half of the match, perhaps seeing that Kain was going to win, he’d begun to frantically stab himself in the hopes that at least one would get through the accessory provided by Dark Moon College and affect Kain. Unfortunately for him, his Wraith was no longer around to help nullify the effect of the borrowed necklace.

“Guess that trick has a cost after all,” Kain muttered.

He looked down at his own bloodstained shoulder. It still ached, but the pain felt distant now. Manageable with the Blood Hound no longer amplifying the pain. Queen could probably heal it in seconds.

Aegis approached silently and stood beside him.

Chewy flopped tiredly onto his shoulder.

Kain patted them both as applause continued to rain down on them from the crowd, “You both did great.”

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!