This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Chapter 907: Chapter 907:

The moment Kain stepped through the gate, he felt the world pull tight around him—like a sheet snapping into place. A soft pressure pressed against his ears, and for a heartbeat he wondered if they’d stepped into a vacuum.

Then the pressure eased.

Light bloomed.

Silent. Even. Too even.

Kain blinked as his vision adjusted.

“…What in the world—”

The realm they entered resembled a forest—if a forest had been designed by someone who had only heard descriptions of nature from a narrator with only half their senses intact..

The air was unnaturally still, filtered to perfection, carrying no scent of earth, moss, decay, or even moisture. It smelled like nothing, which itself was unsettling. Soft illumination radiated from everywhere yet nowhere, a cool bluish-white glow that made Queen’s chitin gleam.

Kain stepped forward, boots crunching on a bed of moss-like substance that compressed like foam. He crouched and brushed two fingers across it.

It wasn’t moss.

It wasn’t even plant.

It was a dense mat of fused microbes—like a living carpet.

“Bea?” Kain murmured. “Can you… check what this actually is?”” he murmured.

Bea extended a wave of spiritual power downward—her awareness rippling through the microbes like dye spreading through water. For a moment, nothing seemed unusual.

Then her tone sharpened.

“This isn’t a surface organism at all. It’s a linked array.”

Kain’s brow creased. “Array?”

“Every cell is tied into a collective response system. I tried to nudge one cluster—just a simple behavioral push to make it shift—and something inside it forced the behavior back to its default.”

Kain blinked. “So it resisted you?”

“Not because of will. Because of biology.” Bea’s focus tightened. “Their minds are too simple for me to meaningfully manipulate, so I can normally overwrite them easily. But these? They’re running on hard‑coded genetic directives. No matter what behavior I try to implant, their bodies override it immediately.”

Kain stiffened. “Genetic directives? As in—designed?”

“Engineered,” Bea agreed. “Someone modified these microbes so thoroughly that their instinctive behaviors take priority over anything external. I can make a dog think it’s a cat, but I can’t rewrite its genes into being a cat. And these things? Their genes are doing all the thinking for them.”

A faint pulse rippled through the moss‑like mat beneath their feet—synchronized, uniform.

Bea continued, quieter now.

“And there’s something else. These microbes were conditioned for specific tasks. Detection. Suppression. Reporting. These behaviours keep repeatting like an endless loop—reacting to threats that aren’t here anymore. Like organisms trained to flee from a predator even after it’s long dead.”

Kain straightened slowly.

Whatever this place was, it wasn’t natural.

It wasn’t a habitat.

It was a security system—built to monitor, regulate, and neutralize whatever threats were detected.

Carefully tended, perfectly controlled.

Queen moved ahead, antennae swaying. “The air is sterile. No pathogens detected. No toxins. The environment is artificial, but stable.”

“Artificial,” Kain echoed quietly. “But someone went a long way to make it look natural.”

He scanned the surroundings.

A forest of luminous stalks rose from the microbial floor, their surfaces faintly pulsing with internal light. They resembled crystalline reeds, each one spaced at the exact same distance from its neighbors. No branches. No variation.

He frowned. “Whoever built this had some… obsessive tendencies.”

Bea hummed in agreement. “That doesn’t sound like Amos. Perhaps this relic was made by someone else?”

Indeed. They’d already entered a relic before that they knew Amos had created. In fact, it was the very relic that Kain had met Aegis in, guarding that fragment of an abyssal demigod.

This relic didn’t at all resemble the architecture of the one back at Dark Moon College.

But before he could think about this discrepancy further, something distracted him.

Thud

The boy stiffened, his chocolate bar slipped from his hand.

“The voices… louder,” he whispered, trembling. “They’re… they’re closer now.”

Kain immediately rested a hand on his head, steadying him as Queen transferred a wave of calming life energy.

“Direction?” Kain asked gently.

The boy shakily raised a finger.

Forward.

Toward the heart of this false forest.

Kain exhaled and motioned his contracts onward.

They hadn’t walked five minutes before the first creatures appeared.

They drifted in from between the luminous stalks like floating soap bubbles—translucent spheres shimmering faintly with blue light. They moved soundlessly, bobbing in the air.

The boy gasped and hid behind Kain.

Bea scanned these ones as well. ’They are composed of billions of cells. A microbial colony. I can sense that, like the ones before, they have a genetically dictated and unified behaviour. But since certain actions haven’t yet been triggered, I can’t know for certain what they’d do. Their minds are also far too simple to read, with barely any memories remaining for long enough to read. Caution advised.’

The spheres circled once. Then again.

Kain instinctively tensed, preparing to shield the kid—

—but the spheres did not attack.

They only scanned. A sweeping ripple of light passed across Kain’s body like a soft wave.

“What are they doing?” Kain whispered.

Bea sensed it. “Analyzing. Searching for abyssal markers.”

Kain felt his shoulders loosen.

So these were security organisms—biological watchdogs built to detect abyssals.

But Kain wasn’t sure if they were trying to keep abyssals out…or if they were trying to keep something inside?

When the spheres drifted away, Kain let out a slow breath.

“Alright. Not hostile. Good.”

The boy, still trembling, asked, “Are there… bad ones?”

Kain hesitated. Then gave a truthful nod.

“…possibly.”

As they walked deeper, the artificial nature of the habitat became painfully obvious.

It wasn’t a world—it was a simulation of one.

And yet… small creatures scuttled across the edges of Kain’s vision.

Microbe-clusters forming tiny insectoids.

Glowing spores drifting upward.

A ribbon-like creature swimming through gelatinous pools.

All engineered. All purposeful. All designed to suppress or neutralize abyssal presence.

’I wonder what happens when they do sense abyssal energy…’

Kain has a dangerous and reckless thought.

In theory, he wasn’t completely incapable of showing abyssal energy. Aegis, who he’d recalled—leaving only Queen and Bea active—also possessed an abyssal attribute. Only Aegis’s abyssal core was buried so deep within layers of stone, that it rarely leaked even a flicker.

Which made him the perfect test.

Kain exhaled slowly. “Bea. Queen. I’m bringing Aegis out.”

Both immediately knew what he wanted to do.

Queen’s antennae twitched in wary acknowledgment.

Bea’s voice sharpened. “You’re thinking of provoking the system to see how it reacts.”

“Not provoke,” Kain whispered. “Just…poke the bear a little bit.”

He summoned Aegis.

The ground swelled, then split as the stone colossus emerged—towering, silent, presence heavy as a mountain. Aegis glanced around, then lowered himself protectively behind Kain and the boy.

Kain placed a hand against Aegis’s leg. “Aegis… show off a little. Very

little.”

Aegis’s stone chest shifted—plates folding back like petals opening.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then a single pulse escaped.

A dim throb of abyssal energy leaked through the opening—no more than the amount Chewy might occasionally fart out.

It was tiny.

Utterly harmless.

But the world reacted as if a warhorn had been blown.

The living carpet beneath them stiffened.

Every microbe froze.

Then—

FWSSSSSH—

A shockwave rippled across the ground, a synchronized chemical signal traveling through billions of cells at once.

The luminous stalks surrounding them brightened—every one of them—flaring with internal light like alarm beacons.

From deeper in the forest, spheres began drifting in.

Not just a few this time.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

A cloud of glowing orbs swarmed toward their position, scanning frantically, pulses flickering.

The boy trembled violently. “K‑Kain… the voices…! It’s louder—so loud—”

Kain grabbed his shoulder. “It’s okay! Stay with me!”

But Kain’s own heart hammered.

The reaction to just that little bit of energy was far more intense than he’d expected.

He’d expected maybe a local reaction with a couple of those floating orbs from before activating…not for what felt like the entire relic going into overdrive.

Aegis immediately shut his plates, sealing the abyssal core.

The shockwaves slowly weakened. The lights in the stalks dimmed back to their normal pulse.

The swarm of spheres halted mid‑air, scanning rapidly for where that small amount of energy had originated from.

Then, after a long minute… one by one… they drifted away.

Kain let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, continuing on their journey.

——————————

After nearly an hour of walking—and more scanning spheres—they reached an area that looked violently out of place.

The luminous stalks ended abruptly.

The ground dipped.

And a massive crack split across the landscape as though someone had punched through the world.

Kain halted.

“…Now that wasn’t designed.”

Aegis leaned forward, examining the jagged tear in the ground. As a former ’guard’ in a relic like this, he was uniquely suited to determine the cause. “Dimensional instability. Something… broke containment. Similar to when the abyssal demigod fragment I guarded was able to send some of its minions outside of the relic.”

Kain exhaled and stared into the crack, and noticed that the boy’s reaction was quite unnatural… almost like he was trying to suppress his innate reactions so as not to have Kain notice anything.

“So that’s where we go next, huh?”

The boy whimpered.

Although he tried to hide it, it was confirmation enough.