This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Chapter 896: Chapter 896: Breakthrough

While preparations back home were underway—while the seeds Kain had sown were slowly taking root—Kain himself was making his own preparations to better prepare for the Abyss’ arrival.

The cave was silent except for the quiet trickle of a spring that pooled at its center. The air shimmered faintly, touched by traces of spiritual power that radiated from the water. At the middle of that spring floated a familiar lotus.

Its petals glowed with a soft, ethereal light, pale gold fading to silver at the edges. It looked too bright and delicate to be found in this dark and rough cave, its presence commanding reverence with every faint pulse of spiritual power. Indeed, this was the Lotus of Silent Law.

Kain sat cross-legged on a rock near the spring, his eyes closed. His breathing was slow, deliberate, each exhale causing ripples across the faint blue haze surrounding him. Around the lotus, his spiritual contracts stood or sat in quiet meditation, each absorbing the energy emanating from it. Even Chewy, the small green-grade spore, was drifting placidly atop a leaf, emitting soft burbling sounds as if pretending to meditate with the rest.

Serena’s beasts were there too. Her elemental guardian, now in its earth elemental form, was an imposing figure of living stone wreathed in faint yellow-brown earthen light. It had its hands buried in the soil, the ground trembling faintly around it. Subtle cracks spread outward as faint streams of energy coursed through the stone—clear signs it had grasped something from the lotus’s presence.

Serena, however, paid it no attention.

Her gaze was fixed on Kain.

His hair, darker than usual under the low light, clung faintly to his forehead with sweat. The spiritual power around him was rising, and with it came an invisible pressure that made the air hum. His aura was restrained, perfectly contained, but the sheer density of it was enough to make her pulse quicken. He was advancing again.

When Kain had first said he was going to break through to six stars, Serena had thought she’d misheard. It had only been a few months since he’d reached five stars—a speed of progress that would have been impossible for almost anyone else.

Even the Crown Prince Cassian Lysander, with all his talent and resources, had required over a year between 5 and 6 stars.

For Kain to attempt another breakthrough so soon might have seemed reckless to anyone else—but it wasn’t a matter of choice. His star space had reached full saturation, the energy inside straining against its limits. If he didn’t break through now, he risked stagnation—something he couldn’t tolerate with the Abyss breathing down his neck.

As for how he was able to advance so fast…

The answer had surprised even Kain.

The source energy he’d absorbed—much of it purified from abyssal essence during the recent fights and the ambush by Abe—accounted for much of it. Even the residual fragments of Source energy that remained after purification were staggering in volume. The kind of accumulation that could take a normal beast tamer years, he’d achieved in months.

But even still, that amount of energy should still not have been enough to push him to the peak of 5 stars so quickly.

That was when Kain made a surprising discovery. Pangea—or more specifically, those he’d helped to awaken using Pangea and their contracts—was influencing him in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

Kain realized that since Pangea maintained a faint spiritual connection with every contracted creature that had once been born in it—the same bond that allowed the world to purify abyssal energy.

That same network also carried subtle ripples of feedback whenever one of those contracts grew stronger or broke through a realm. At first, the effect had been so minuscule he hadn’t noticed, but now, with thousands of newly awakened beast tamers made using Pangea resonating at once, the feedback had become a constant stream—a subtle acceleration of his cultivation that even he couldn’t fully control.

Serena didn’t know all of these full details, but she could tell one thing: Kain’s spiritual foundation had grown terrifyingly dense.

It should have been a good thing. Should have been.

But the higher one climbed, the steeper the fall.

Advancing to six stars was different from every level before it. The danger wasn’t theoretical—it was real.

At this stage, the spiritual core of a five-star beast tamer reached its first true threshold. A body and star space saturated to the brink could no longer support further growth without being reforged.

For beast tamers, this meant more than simply strengthening their foundation—it meant reshaping it entirely to prepare for the domains their contracts would soon form.

Once a spiritual creature reached blue-grade, it began to form a fledgling domain, and even that embryonic power was too heavy for the average five-star to endure.

Even Kain’s own body, far stronger than most, had been restraining their progress just by existing. If he didn’t advance, his contracts would stagnate—or worse, break free of him. The process to reach six stars demanded a complete restructuring: tearing apart one’s spiritual pathways and rebuilding them under the immense stress of reattuning flesh and soul to withstand the weight of higher domains. Failure didn’t mean injury—it meant death.

One in every five failed. Not failed to break through, but failed to survive.

Typically, most would spend just as long, if not longer, at the 5-star stage just to further prepare and temper their minds so that their chances of succeeding could be even 1% greater. Unfortunately, Kain didn’t —or couldn’t —do that.

Serena clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. “You idiot…” she whispered. “You’d better not die.”

The lotus pulsed faintly, responding to the increase in energy. Its petals swayed despite the still air. A low hum filled the cavern, deep and resonant. Even the spring’s surface rippled outward as spiritual waves expanded from Kain’s location.

A faint crackling sound echoed through the cave. The air seemed to distort, bending faintly around him as the spiritual pressure grew heavier. Serena’s hair began to lift slightly, caught in the unseen current.

Kain’s contracts were distracted from continuing to study the lotus, and watched silently, instinctively keeping their distance. Aegis had formed a small barrier of earthen energy in front of them, his stoic expression betraying the faintest glimmer of concern.

Chewy let out a hungry blorp at the immense, uncontrolled energy that was like a tempting buffet to it, but stayed still, puffing up but absorbing the nearby energy in the water instead to satiate itself.

Serena’s elemental guardian slowly sank deeper into the earth as though offering its strength to the trembling ground. Even her other contracts instinctively retreated, pressed flat against the stone.

———————

Days passed. The cave’s eternal twilight made time feel meaningless, but by Serena’s count, this should have been the third day of his breakthrough.

However, to Kain, locked in the mental strain of the breakthrough, there was no concept of time passing at all.

Normally, a process like this would take weeks to complete, yet the Source energy that composed much of his body seemed to accelerate the reconstruction. His skin gleamed faintly as his spiritual veins twisted and mended themselves, reforming into channels strong enough to carry the weight of the next realm. Still, he wasn’t through yet.

From the outside, the scene was deceptively calm. The lotus pulsed with light, the air thick with rippling pressure and what felt like violent winds but was really Kain’s spiritual power, began to fill the space.

Serena kept vigil by the spring, her expression tense. Gradually, she could sense that something was wrong—the flow of energy around Kain had become uneven, unstable. His brow furrowed, his hands trembling faintly.

Inside his consciousness, Kain was struggling. The energy he’d gathered had already been consumed, yet the breakthrough within his star space remained incomplete. He could see the web of power stretching before him, a constellation of lines just shy of connecting. Sweat poured down his neck as he forced more spiritual power into it—but there simply wasn’t enough. The amount he’d already used was several times greater than what most tamers needed to advance, and still it wasn’t enough.

“Impossible,” he thought, jaw tight. “Even after everything I absorbed…?” He felt his body convulse as the star space shuddered under the strain. A terrifying thought crossed his mind—draining Pangea itself to finish this. If he didn’t, he could possibly die, and if he lived, he’d be practically crippled. But draining Pangea would also likely have devastating consequences. It would destroy too much.

Outside, Serena bit her lip, seeing the agony twisting his face. Then, after a moment of hesitation, she reached into her space ring and withdrew a piece of intricate jewelry—an ornate brooch that glimmered faintly with indigo light. The energy within it pulsed, deep and refined, unmistakably indigo-grade.

Without another thought, she pressed it into his open hand.

Kain’s mind barely registered the new source of power. Instinct took over. The moment the jewel touched his skin, he drew from it greedily, absorbing its contents like a dying man finding water in the desert.

When the last trace of power was drawn in, and the brooch began to crack, a flash of blinding blue light erupted from Kain’s body, flooding the cavern. The pressure burst outward and then settled.

Serena shielded her eyes. When she looked again, Kain sat unmoving, his aura calm but immeasurably vast. His eyes opened—a flash of blue light flickering faintly within them. He had done it.

Serena’s chest lifted with relief and pride, though her eyes grew damp as she glanced at the shattered brooch. Lifting it up, the inscription on the underside was revealed: Evangeline Lumos-Storm.