Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 886 - Taming the Fifth Year - Attrition - Explosive Healing 3

The seeds were designed for rapid growth…

Normal plant seeds took days or weeks to germinate. These took seconds. They had been enhanced through elemental manipulation until they could exploit any available moisture to fuel explosive growth.

And the Amphibian was covered in moisture. Its entire skin wellness consisted of maintaining high surface hydration.

Perfect conditions for aggressive germination.

The seeds sprouted on contact. Tiny roots penetrating into the outer layers of skin. Tiny shoots reaching upward toward sunlight. Small, but growing. And multiplying as the Mantis launched more seeds in a continuous barrage.

Min noticed the development instantly with narrowed eyes. ”Damn,” he muttered loudly enough that Ren could hear even at a distance. ”I knew youʼd eventually force me to deal with this properly.”

It was an admission that while Min had worked on mitigating the weakness to wood, he still hadnʼt reached the point where he felt confident against that element completely.

The Amphibian attempted using a water layer to drown the seeds before they could establish themselves, a technique that would work against ordinary plants requiring air as much as moisture.

Yet wood mana drained water… That was the fundamental relationship. The logic was sound, create a film of water over the surface that was thick enough to prevent oxygen from reaching the germinating seeds. Suffocate them before they could take root.

But these seeds had been activated with wood mana, and water imbued with mana no longer functioned the same way. Now it was liquid energy for them rather than a drowning hazard.

The water that should have killed the seeds instead nourished them. Accelerated their growth beyond what ambient moisture alone would have provided.

It was a feedback loop working against the Amphibian in ways that Min clearly hadnʼt fully anticipated. And its small wounds made the situation worse, the more light it used to heal the damage the small wood attacks, the more energy it provided to the plants parasitizing it, with their growth accelerating in response to abundant resources.

Stop healing and accumulate damage. Continue healing and feed the parasites. Neither option was good.

And the more the plants grew, the more moisture they absorbed. The more moisture they absorbed, the weaker the Amphibianʼs water-based abilities became.

Not only healing efficiency would drop… Explosion potency would decrease. Minʼs expression shifted from confident to concerned as he watched the plants spreading across his beastʼs body. Heʼd prepared for wood, yes… Had developed the explosive defense specifically to counter, but likely not for this much.

Or so many may have thought…

But the Amphibian wasnʼt defeated. Far from it. Min hadnʼt practiced only defensive explosions during his months of preparation.

The first localized explosion had been only the preamble, a proof of concept demonstrating the effectiveness of the technique Min had refined during months of experimentation. But Min wasnʼt a person who contented himself with small victories when he could execute something considerably more dramatic. Finch and Theodore knew this about him from only looking in his eyes.

The Amphibian inflated in a sudden action, with its transparent skin changing color from within as secretions redistributed throughout the massive body. Not localized concentration at an impact point but complete saturation, with every centimeter of surface preparing simultaneously for a reaction that would make the previous explosion seem like a firecracker compared to a real bomb.

The transformation was visible even to spectators in the distant stands. The Amphibianʼs body, which normally had a translucent quality showing hints of internal organs and fluid circulation, became opaque. Ren recognized what was coming in a fraction of a second before it occurred, but fortunately it was enough time to order the Mantis to retreat somewhat farther to avoid collateral damage.

The Amphibian detonated its hidden card, a full-body explosion that converted the 50-ton creature into the epicenter of an exothermic reaction releasing energy equivalent to dozens of fireballs and wind blasts concentrated and performing simultaneously.

The shockwave swept across the sand, with heat and pressure combining to create an absolute denial zone extending several meters in all directions.

The Mantis was thrown backward despite the distance, with its exoskeleton creaking under the strain of absorbing the impact when it wasnʼt fully healed. But luckily the damage had been minimal… Renʼs order to retreat had placed it just outside the zone where the shockwave was truly dangerous. Maybe 18-20 meters from the epicenter when the detonation occurred. Far enough that the force had dissipated significantly but close enough that the impact was still considerable.

All the seeds and young plants within 8-10 meters of the Amphibian were instantly boiled. Destroyed…

The battlefield had been reset. The wood invasion had been cleared. The Amphibian stood at the center of a slightly sunken circle, steam rising from its body as the heat dissipated into cooler air.

But Ren didnʼt freeze before the demonstration of power. Instead of retreating and regrouping conservatively, he made the decision to double down on the wood attack despite that meaning spending the Mantisʼs mana much more aggressively and riskily.

Surely that explosion had cost Min considerably as well. The chemical reserves needed for full-body detonation couldnʼt be infinite. The water needed to produce and distribute those chemicals throughout 50 tons of body mass had to come from somewhere. And the energy cost of coordinating that level of simultaneous reaction across the entire surface had to be enormous.

Around half his mantis full mana reserves.

If Min was going to reveal grandiose hidden cards, then it was time to demonstrate that Renʼs Mantis also had the capacity to escalate responses without unnecessary reserves being held back. The entire field would become a lush forest if necessary…

The Mantisʼs core began rotating visibly, with the spin accelerating to the point where it became a blur even to eyes that could normally track rapid mana movement. It was the technique Ren had developed to extract mana as quickly as possible, forcing flow that exceeded safe rates in favor of immediate power without concern for efficiency or long-term wear.

The mana got brighter to the point the rotation was literally visible through the Mantisʼs semi-transparent exoskeleton. The core spun at what had to be several hundred rotations per minute. The centrifugal effect pushed mana to structures throughout the body and concentrated it for immediate use.

Unsustainable for more than a few minutes. But effective for short-term power spikes.

The mantis had much less mana than the amphibian… But it was much more efficient with considerably greater elemental control, and its speed would also keep it safe if it didnʼt attack physically.

A war of attrition against a beast with 100 times more mana than a Bronze 1 would be a terrible idea. But the Mantis was Bronze 2 so double mana than Bronze 1... And with 4 times more mana than its base thanks to its various shared enhancements, the difference in mana wasnʼt so enormous if it played its cards well and leveraged elemental advantages.

Bronze 1 baseline: aprox 100 mana points. The Mantis: 700-800 mana points. Enhancement factor: approximately 4×. Still much less than the Amphibianʼs Gold 1 pool of 10,000 but enough to sustain prolonged engagement if the insane 5x efficiency was maintained.

Seeds exploded under the Mantisʼs control in volume eclipsing the initial attempt, with dozens becoming hundreds as they dispersed through the sand that was still somewhat hot from the recent explosion. But not hot enough to prevent them from absorbing the dispersed moisture that the Amphibianʼs body had released during the detonation.

And these seeds didnʼt simply fall passively waiting to germinate. They actively sought moisture, with roots extending before even landing in search of the resources they needed for explosive growth.

The cost was immediate and notable for Ren. The Mantis had already spent almost a quarter of its total reserves, with its core draining at a rate that would make most tamers scream warnings about the danger of premature full exhaustion.

But Ren had calculated the risk and decided it was worth it. Because while the Mantis was spending energy aggressively, the Amphibian had just used a considerable amount of water mana as well to execute the full-body explosion.

A portion of that energy would return to Renʼs beast as soon as the wood plants absorbed the moisture and eventually connected to his beast, cycling the energy back through the ecosystem that his ”lush forest” created.

And now the plants establishing themselves throughout the arena would begin extracting moisture that the creature needed to maintain homeostasis, a parasitic cycle preventing it from accumulating sufficient liquid to repeat that explosive technique quickly.

Min noticed this development around his beast with an expression that changed from satisfaction at his successful first explosion to concern as he recognized how Ren had converted his hidden card into an exploitable opening.

But he wasnʼt a person who surrendered before adversity, and certainly not when he still had a ton of mana and ”tricks” that he could deploy creatively.

”Alright!” Min shouted with enthusiasm that was half genuine and half performance for the audience, ”if youʼre going to get serious then Iʼm also going to bring out all the ʼskillsʼ Iʼve been saving!”

ʼO no..ʼ Ren thought slightly ashamed, ”Not those dumb ”skills”...ʼ

A 1500 one since two 1000 ones was hard... a bit short in time.