Beast Taming: My Beasts Grind, Die, and Respawn

The second run felt different within forty seconds, and Jin knew why.

Same jackal pack. Same broken lane. A completely different fight, because he had stopped letting Flicker hunt.

She was the finisher now, and that single change reorganized everything. Glitch held the middle and displaced — a shoulder into a flank, a tail across the legs, the same repertoire he had been using in the real world for two months — and every time something came off balance, Flicker was the thing that arrived at it.

Nothing touched either of them.

[Wave 1 cleared — 0 damage taken]

Jin looked at the zero, and the part of his brain that had once spent nine hours mapping a spawn table sat up properly.

The first boon offer came after Wave Three and this time he read all three twice.

Kindling was still the strongest option for any individual wave and he knew it, and he took Bulwark.

Every point I keep is a point I carry to Wave Ten.

[Selected: Bulwark]

Most of the clean waves passed quickly. The ones that tested the build demanded more attention.

Wave Five was a jackal pack twice the size of the first, broken against a ruined wall by putting Glitch in the only gap and letting them come to him. Two minutes, one hit taken, Bulwark absorbing most of it.

The next selection offered Tithe, and Jin took the shared stamina return over another damage option.

[Selected: Tithe]

Wave Six was a Ridgeback pair. Displaced, seamed, finished, ninety seconds.

Wave Seven hurt.

It was mixed and built to pull them apart — a surface pack that went straight for Flicker while a burrower kept Glitch committed at the center — and the moment she went past eight meters the Bulwark indicator dropped and she was a fragile bird alone in an open lane.

Jin had about two seconds.

Pull her back and the burrower gets loose. Leave her out and she has no defensive boon at all.

He left her out for eleven seconds and got her back, and it cost fourteen points of stamina and a wing strike she would carry to Wave Ten.

That’s the trade. The boon isn’t free. It’s a leash.

He preferred knowing it to not knowing it.

The selection after Wave Seven gave him Follow-Through: when Flicker struck a target Glitch had displaced within the last three seconds, her damage increased for the duration of that window.

[Selected: Follow-Through]

None of the three effects made either avatar invulnerable. Bulwark worked only inside its range, Tithe returned stamina once per wave, and Follow-Through required Glitch to create an opening Flicker could reach within three seconds.

All three effects fired together for the first time in Wave Eight. Glitch caught a Ridgeback’s commitment and turned it hard enough for the displacement flag to appear. Flicker hit the exposed seam inside the three-second window and killed it, and Tithe returned stamina to both avatars at once.

[Glitch — stamina 80% (+4)]

[Flicker — stamina 76% (+4)]

It’s feeding itself.

Jin missed the interaction on the next target because Glitch’s displacement was too slight to flag, then got it right on the one after. By the end of Wave Eight he was landing it four times out of five, writing notes on his own knee with a stylus while a shelter fought a Tide outside.

Between waves the interface showed him things he did not have time for.

[Achievements — 2 revealed, 17 hidden]

[Next checkpoint: Wave 10]

[Run history — comparison available]

He read the achievement list for eleven seconds. Seventeen entries were locked and blank; the two visible ones looked like conditions a specific run produced rather than a good one.

Later. Wave Ten first.

He glanced at Flicker’s ward monitor once, in the Wave Eight transition, out of a compulsion he had stopped fighting. Green.

Two floors up, a bird who could walk six meters was asleep against his shirt. In here, her avatar had cleared eight waves with enough stamina left to remain dangerous and had better footwork than anything Jin had ever commanded.

Two different animals. Don’t forget that at four in the morning.

He started refusing fast clears around Wave Eight.

Wave Nine offered him an ending in about forty seconds if he sent Flicker straight through the middle at an exposed target, and he did not take it, because straight through the middle meant twelve meters of separation and an unshielded return.

He took the long version. Two minutes and ten seconds, Glitch walking the pack into a corner, Flicker finishing them one at a time inside the envelope.

[Wave 9 cleared]

[Glitch — stamina 74% | bruising, right shoulder]

[Flicker — stamina 69% | wing strain, left]

Not fresh. Sixty-nine and seventy-four with a checkpoint to go.

Glitch still planted all four feet cleanly at the next marker. Flicker shook out the injured wing once, folded it, and waited beside him.

In the first run he had entered Wave Eight at forty-four and thirty-eight.

The final boon selection came in the pre-checkpoint interval and it was the first one that felt like a real decision.

[Tether: Bulwark linked range extended to 14m]

[Executioner: increased damage against displaced targets, no range condition]

[Second Wind: one-time recovery, 25% stamina, both avatars, manually triggered]

Jin looked at all three for a long time.

Tether protected the range his build depended on. Executioner worked after that range had already broken, while Second Wind ignored geometry entirely.

He thought about a run that had ended at thirty-eight percent.

[Selected: Second Wind]

The interval was ninety seconds, not enough to do anything with. Then the warning came up.

[Checkpoint — Wave 10]

[First Checkpoint Boss]

The arena was a broken defensive approach with connected ground down the center and a surface perimeter running around it, and Jin understood the design before either boss appeared, because the shape of it was extremely familiar.

The ground moved first — something heavy displacing beneath the center, a signature Glitch reported before anything was visible.

[Ridgeback Broodguard]

Then something came over the perimeter wall at speed, larger than any jackal in either run, and began to circle.

[Ashfang Alpha]

The broodguard went under and vanished from the surface entirely. The alpha ran a wide arc around Flicker and did not close.

Two indicators. One underground, one fast, on a map with a center and a perimeter.

One of them is his problem and one of them is hers, and they’ve built it so neither of us can solve ours alone.

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