This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange - Chapter 599

Chapter 599: Chapter 599: Teamwork
Amid the chaos, the scrawny first-year boy stood perfectly still, his doppelgänger mirroring him motion for motion.

Then—

The double flickered.

Its form glitched, like a corrupted hologram, its edges dissolving into static. The boy’s nose bled harder, his veins darkening further, but his voice was steady as he whispered:

“You don’t exist.”

The double vanished.

Unfortunately, before the boy could relax, with another rumble from the floor, another clone identical to himself appeared.

The first-year boy suddenly fell to one knee, coughing violently. More blood splattered from his mouth, and the boy could only watch helplessly while the threat approached him.

The boy’s vision blurred as he collapsed forward—only to be caught by a pair of slender, pale arms. Serena hauled him upright with surprising strength, her Prismarin already forming a protective dome of crystal around them.

“Stay conscious,” she ordered, her voice clipped. “It’s unknown if you automatically fail once you lose consciousness.”

The boy groaned, his veins pulsing black beneath his skin. “I’m…useless…. Leave me…I…can’t…use my…gift again—”

“You won’t have to.” Serena’s gaze flicked to the others. “We’ll handle the rest.”

A chubby rabbit with an iridescent coat came bounding toward the boy’s doppelganger—and disappeared. Then another one appeared soon after in its place—which also disappeared after the doppelgänger used its gift.

Continuing to test, the Prismarin began to surround the boy with one, two, ten, then dozens of illusions—and the clone was only able to erase one at a time.

It anxiously focused on erasing Prismarin’s illusions one by one—but too slowly. Each vanished mirage was replaced by two more and soon he was overwhelmed and was destroyed. This time, the doppelganger did not regenerate.

“The boy has high potential. But at the end of the day, potential is just potential. It’s not yet realized. And he, or his doppelganger, was far too weak and too young to resist Serena yet,” Kain murmured aloud.

————–

Serena didn’t only support the first year. As Kain’s greatest rival, she was probably more familiar with how to combat Bea than Kain was due to their frequent matches.

Therefore, while she went to support the first-year and used her Elemental guardian to combat her own doppelganger with the reciprocal help of some of Kain’s Vespid guards, she also sent her Starweaver and Balens to support Kain.

The Starweaver formed a dome of made up of starlight that seemed to interfere with the doppelganger Bea’s Pale Thought Field to a certain extent. However, there was a gap in level between the two sides. Serena hadn’t yet broken through, so all of her contracts were at green-grade, while Bea’s clone was blue-grade like the original. However, a wish from Balens was able to temporarily close that gap.

Kain, although grateful for the help, couldn’t help uneasily noting down this new ability that he’d never seen from the Starweaver before. After all, he was still conscious of her as his biggest competitor in the re-ranking ceremony in a few weeks.

Seeing that Aegis, the Starweaver, Balens, and some of the Vespid guards were helping to restrain the doppelganger Kain and its contracts, he focused on some of his other allies.

Kain watched as Jade’s doppelgänger regenerated from a brutal strike, its laughter identical to Jade’s, echoing unnervingly.

‘Did they even have to copy the annoying aspects of her?’ Kain thought in irritation.

“Mental attacks,” he muttered, recalling the National Tournament from last year and the one time Jade had lost on the National stage. Jade’s one weakness—her mind couldn’t heal like her body.

“Bea,” he commanded.

The amoeba immediately responded, her mental field expanding around to encompass Jade’s clone. The doppelgänger’s grin faltered as the psychic assault hit—its regeneration useless against the storm in its skull. It staggered, clutching its head.

Jade, spotting the opening, didn’t hesitate. “Oh, now you’re vulnerable?” She lunged and her contracts, all big-cats, flanked the dazed double. “Let’s see you regrow a brain.”

One of her strongest contracts—the Windstrike Cheetah—that looked like a cheetah with six muscular legs, slapped its massive paw on the Jade clone’s head at his owner’s words, causing the clone’s skull to smash inward.

But eerily, the smile on the clone’s face never faded, and instead, the destroyed top half of its head began to regenerate.

“Whaddaya know?! I can regrow a brain.” Jade exclaimed happily at the unexpected news—naturally, she’d never tested this on herself, so she was pleasantly surprised by the discovery…but her happy tone did not match their current circumstances.

Calling Jade off to go and assist the others, Kain decided to have Bea solely responsible for taking down the Jade clone and the clones of her contracts.

Seeing this, for the first time since entering this trial, Jade’s smile dropped. Although both of them now had blue-grade contracts—Kain as a 5-star beast-tamer and Jade as a 6-star east-tamer— as his senior and the new Captain for the College’s representative team, she was not happy to see her junior being able to capitalize on her weakness and restrain her.

‘I absolutely need to figure out a way to protect myself against mental-attribute attacks…’ She’d had the idea after last year’s loss, and did have some countermeasures in place—but clearly they were useless against Bea. She needed to improve the mental defences for herself and her contracts as much as possible.

——————–

Meanwhile, Kyria’s double had fused all five of its contracts into a grotesque, multi-limbed abomination.

“That’s not even possible for me yet!” Kyria snarled, dodging a swipe from a claw-tipped wing.

Jade’s Viperfang Lioness darted over, its mouth practically oozing with paralytic venom. Not far behind it was Jade’s Thunderfang Tiger, and Earthshatter Lion.

Jade had (unhappily) followed Kain’s suggestion to go and help the others while he dealt with her doppelganger.

The Viperfang Lioness bit the fused creature’s joints, slowing it just enough for Kyria to land a crushing blow—her fist encased in stone, slamming straight into the creature’s face and knocking it to the ground.

Once on the floor, it soon found itself under the attacks of three pouncing big cats and being torn apart until the 5 creatures composing its fusion were separated and hammered to death.