This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange - Chapter 646

Chapter 646: Chapter 646: The Final Winners Revealed
“Yes,” Kain muttered. Bai Lian looked at him puzzledly, but he wasn’t talking to her.

Thankfully, the target he was speaking to, the System, understood it right away.

[Confirming permanent resident transfer to Pangea’s World Tree Stewardship Protocol… confirmed.]

The confirmation tone felt softer than usual. No cheerful jingle. No satisfying click. Just a quiet blink in his mental space, followed by a ripple of pressure through the air that made his skin prickle.

Bai Lian’s expression was unreadable.

She stood a few paces away, hands loose at her sides. She didn’t speak, but he could see the tension in her shoulders, the subtle shift in her stance, like someone trying to brace for impact without knowing from which direction the attack would come from.

Kain understood. He was nervous too. More than a little, actually.

Not because he doubted choosing her. But because, this would be the first time someone else would be entering Pangea in full.

Not just a fragment of someone’s consciousness sent in to form a contract and wouldn’t even retain any memories of the experience, but an entire person.

It was different.

Bai Lian looked at him one last time.

“…Guess this is it,” she said. Her voice was steady. Barely.

Kain gave her a small nod. “You’ll be safe,” he said. “I think.”

She laughed. It was a quiet, brittle sound. “Reassuring. You—”

And then—without flash, without sound—she vanished.

She simply was there one second and then gone the next.

And at the same time, a subtle change appeared in Pangea.

Kain closed his eyes to look into his star space instinctively.

His consciousness appeared on Pangea next to the World Tree. High above him, in the endless golden canopy of the newly awakened World Tree, a single fruit began to form.

It emerged not from a branch, but from the very trunk—thick and radiant, its skin glowing faintly with green and gold veins. The size of a small person.

His heart stuttered.

He could sense Bai Lian was inside. Not asleep. But not fully conscious either. Somewhere in between.

After communicating with the burgeoning consciousness of the tree mentally, it understood its purpose. The tree wasn’t just binding with her—it was rebuilding her. Making her into something else not wholly human that could better assist it form the side.

“What does that even mean?” he muttered under his breath. “Rebuilding how?”

The World Tree didn’t answer. But its presence buzzed faintly in the back of his mind, like static. Not a fully fledged, coherent thought. Just… intent.

The fruit pulsed gently. Alive.

From the surrounding forests, creatures began to gather.

Within the grand landscape of Pangea, these creatures were undeniably at the bottom of the totem pole. Not a single one being higher than orange-grade, and most only being white or red-grade.

However, the peacefulness of the regions near the World Tree and abundance of resources, meant that many of these creatures flocked to its vicinity.

First, a few small and curious herbivores appeared. Then a flock of birds. A pair of luminous deer. A snub-nosed tree bear padded over on all fours, sniffed the glowing fruit once, and tried to lick it.

Its tongue sizzled faintly on contact. The bear recoiled, eyes watering, then sulked away into the dense foliage surrounding the tree like a child denied candy.

Others tried too. A scaled fox. A weasel. A juvenile bird flew through the air and gently booped the fruit with its beak before giving a squawk of disappointment and gliding off.

None succeeded.

The fruit remained untouched.

Kain stared at it for another minute, then closed his eyes. His senses pulled back from Pangea, from the World Tree, from the stirrings of its changing wildlife.

A shimmer appeared in the air in front of him, before it expanded to the size of a doorway.

The relic was done with him.

“Guess I’m going back,” he muttered. He hesitated, just a second, before stepping through.

———————-

Meanwhile, in the Verdara Trial…

Soreia didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She just knelt in the cracked earth, she glared at Cassian with eyes full of hatred, surrounded by the corpses of her spiritual contracts.

All of them. Every single one.

Dead.

Or on the verge of dying, at least.

The air stank of blood and burnt flesh. Scorch marks striped the shattered stones of the relic floor. Cracks ran in all directions like the aftermath of a siege. Even the sky overhead looked wrong—like something had burned through it.

The dragons had done this.

Cassian’s dragons.

Of the six he entered with—4 adults and 2 juveniles—the light attribute juvenile—the smallest of the bunch—lay dying a few feet away. Its side had been ripped open, barely clinging to life, breath rattling in its throat.

Cassian knelt beside it.

His armour was scorched. But despite the shaking of his pupils, his hands were steady as they touched his contract.

He didn’t say anything. Just placed his hand on the dragon’s flank and let it feel his presence.

It tried to lift its head. Failed.

Cassian’s jaw clenched. His other hand curled into a fist. And somewhere behind him, his remaining dragons roared—low and savage—and tore the last of Soreia’s contracts apart in a single sweep of flames, teeth and claws..

Soreia didn’t react. Not even when the vines began to creep toward her. She simply continued her murderous glare.

They looped around her ankles. Her wrists. Her waist. Their sharp thorns digging into her skin.

She didn’t resist.

She unequivocally had lost.

And so the Verdara relic was dragging her away.

All the while, her gaze never left Cassian. As hatred filled her heart, she comforted herself with the knowledge that he would definitely not meet a good end either—she’d made sure of that.

Although he may not know it, ever since she decided to use that, she’d sentenced him to a mutual death. His death would just take a little more time to catch up with him…

Cassian didn’t watch as she was dragged away.

He was looking only at his dying contract, hoping that him successfully obtaining the inheritance would mean that it could be saved.

‘Speaking of the inheritance…’ He turned to look at the flower only a few feet away.

It was massive. Ancient. Nestled in the heart of the battle-scarred field. Its petals folded tight like a clenched fist.

Cassian stepped forward.

The flower opened.

And swallowed him whole.

As the petals closed around him, he only had a single thought:

“This had better be worth it.”