Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

In another section of the stands, two figures watched with very disdainful expressions.

The Starweaver night faction brothers, Dorian and Magnus, leaned toward each other with the smugness of people who thought they understood what others didn't.

"Look at his Hydra," Dorian whispered, pointing toward where Ren's beast waited for the next battle to start. "Still a single head. Despite all his supposed genius and having a double potion plus the new spore that adds an extra one, he has such a waste of a creature... Everyone knows that cultivation of a beast as rare as the Hydra hasn't reached Gold in hundreds of years. Having so many beasts but getting stuck at silver is so Yino like..."

"The only goodish thing he has is that sickly-colored Wolverine, though it is yet to be seen if it can go Gold like the normal ones," Magnus agreed, his tone dismissive with the confidence of someone who'd never been proven wrong. "The rest... the Hydra has no known method to reach Gold like the wild ones indeed. And that insect our spy told us about shouldn't go very far either, no one uses it in the first place since no random egg gives it… What a weird kid."

They conveniently ignored Taro's Living Tunnel, a beast that also hadn't had a known method to reach Gold until Ren made it public, their selective blindness protecting their comfortable assumptions.

But for them, everything was still just plans and experiments by the adults behind the scenes. Nothing to do with Ren.

Nearby, Julius sighed, not jumping at them to slap some sense thanks to the patience of someone who'd heard this kind of nonsense too many times.

His Wolverine ears had caught every word, and he had to resist the impulse to turn around, bring Selphira and 'tell' them together exactly how delusional they were being.

To explain in 'precise detail' how wrong their assumptions were.

But he didn't have to wait long for reality to do it for him.

♢♢♢♢

The second day of the battles arrived.

The tenth day after mid-year.

And Ren finally evolved his Hydra.

The Hydra's neck began to thicken, skin rippling as if something moved beneath it. Then, right beside the original head...

The skin divided.

Not with blood or pain, but with light. Light that pulsed with primordial life, with mana.

A second head emerged, smaller at first but growing rapidly until it equaled the first in size and presence. Ren had waited until today's battle to reveal it, summoned it alone in the arena and when both heads opened their jaws to roar in unison...

The sound echoed throughout the entire arena, making the ground itself tremble.

Gold 1.

Ren's Hydra had finally reached the rank that gave its species its famous name, the threshold that separated legend from reality.

Now it had two heads.

And the potential unlocked for many more in the eyes of those who understood what they were witnessing.

Julius smiled openly upon seeing the Starweaver brothers' expressions, satisfaction evident in every line of his face.

Dorian looked like he'd swallowed something bitter and toxic. Magnus simply stared with his mouth open, all his words of contempt dying in his throat before they could form.

"What were you saying yesterday about wastes?" Julius murmured, just loud enough for them to hear.

♢♢♢♢

In the stands, Ren's mother let out a choked cry.

"What...?" she began, grabbing her husband's arm with a huge force born of shock. "Is that normal? Is it supposed to have two?"

Her father didn't respond immediately, too occupied observing with wide eyes the enormous new size of his son's Gold beast and watching the Hydra's second head.

"It's an unexpected evolution," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper, trying to process what his eyes were telling him.

"That's... good, right?" his mother asked, though the answer seemed obvious from the expressions of shock and wonder on the nearby noble stands. The awe written across aristocratic faces that rarely showed such open emotion.

"It's extraordinary," her father responded, also seeing and guiding himself by the other spectators' expressions to understand the magnitude of what they were witnessing.

"Perfect," his mother completed, watching how the Hydra's two heads moved in perfect synchrony, as if they'd always been destined to exist this way. As if this was how it was always meant to be.

They looked at each other, and in that moment shared a thought that neither vocalized but both understood completely.

♢♢♢♢

The following days were a massacre.

There was no other word to describe it, no euphemism that captured that fast and systematic destruction of opposition.

Ren and his team crushed each opposition with ease that bordered on cruelty. Strategies that other teams would consider complex were executed with almost bored naturalness. Beasts working in perfect synchrony, each complementing the others' strengths while covering their weaknesses with symmetric formations that maximized both offense and defense.

With four Gold-rank beasts it wasn't even necessary to try so hard, but Ren enjoyed the theorycrafting, the intellectual exercise of optimal positioning and timing.

And not satisfied with having all elements and superior quantity, they had Min's healing capabilities, Larissa and Liora's teleportation, and Liu's special attacks creating tactical flexibility no other team could match. The support beasts maintained everyone in optimal conditions.

It was art.

Brutal and efficient art that made warfare look like a fun lights game.

Opposing teams didn't last more than a minute before surrendering, recognizing the futility of their weak resistance.

Luna had the great fortune of not encountering Ren's team before the finals. Her own team was impressive in its own right, the best she'd been able to gather with her connections and reputation.

Four Gold beasts from the remaining Guards weren't anything to underestimate, and her own Wolf now at Gold 1 was already evolving into something never seen before, though not as obvious to spectators since it remained hidden in shadows most of the time.

But she was the only double tamer in her group.

And in the finals, that disadvantage became painfully obvious.

Five Gold beasts against four from Ren's team initially seemed close.

But although Ren didn't use his Mantis in any encounter, they still had a numerical advantage of sixteen to eleven…

Five extra very powerful Silver 3 beasts that made Luna's team's single extra Gold beast insufficient compensation, especially when the Wolverine's elemental control at Silver 3 was of the same Tier as Luna's Wolf but augmented by many more bonuses from Ren's other beasts, putting them at comparable levels.

The Jade Wolverine was basically Gold rank in power, Silver in name only at this point…

Sixteen beasts coordinating perfectly against a team of eleven that could barely take advantage of its strengths and focused on using only its five strongest...

It was an obvious battle from the strategic perspective.

Ren directed everything with that unsettling calm that made it seem like he'd already seen the result before it began, his commands precise and his gaze fixed directly on Luna across the battlefield.

Still, Luna fought with everything she had. Looking back at Ren directly.

May the gods witness that she fought with every ounce of strength and skill she possessed. Her Lesser Wolf of 14 Moons was magnificent, its shadows consuming the battlefield while trying to isolate and eliminate enemies one by one with its huge speed and control.

But it wasn't enough.

It was never going to be enough against this level of coordination and power.

The Jade Wolverine could already almost stop it on its own, power meeting power in direct confrontation. With help from Liora's Bashe and Larissa's Fairy, they completely shut down its attempts at divide-and-conquer tactics.

The combat ended in ten minutes, a fairly long battle for what the dominant team had experienced before, but in the end the outcome was never in doubt.

Ren had won again.

First place in war.

Adding it to first place in gathering and first place in nobility.

Complete domination across every category that mattered.

A sweep so thorough it would be remembered for years, the semester when one student and his team had rewritten what was considered possible for their age group.

In the stands, nobles whispered with awe and fear.

Ren's parents simply held each other's hands and cried with pride they couldn't contain.

And Luna, standing on the defeated side of the battlefield, looked at Ren with an expression he couldn't quite read.

Not anger… Nor resentment.

Something else.

But before he could process it, before he could try to understand what that look meant...

She left, and the moment passed.

The crowds erupted in celebration.

And Ren was pulled into congratulations from his team, from professors, from nobles who suddenly wanted to acknowledge what they'd denied before.