Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 548

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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.