This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

The tunnel here was different.

If the previous path had pulsing, vein-like walls, then this one was wrong in an entirely different way.

The stone here was dark—darker than natural rock, as though it had been drenched in black liquid tar.

The walls exuded an eerie sheen, almost like they were sweating, releasing thick droplets that oozed down their surface.

The air was damp, humid, and carried an unsettling scent—one that was both cloyingly sweet and rancid at the same time, like honey left to rot in the sun.

Aura scampered forward as quietly as possible, her tiny frame barely making a sound.

Then, the tunnel widened—into another chamber.

And inside was something they couldn't immediately comprehend.

A pit.

A massive one.

Almost the entire chamber was taken up by it.
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The surface of it was black, its shifting mass undulating like the surface of a slow, oily tide. It twisted and rippled, forming patterns that seemed to dissolve before they could truly take shape.

Kain's gut immediately told him something was wrong.

His eyes narrowed. The surface of the pit wasn't water.

It wasn't liquid at all.

No—

It was moving. Squirming. Wriggling. Pulsating.

And then Kain saw the true identity of this moving 'liquid'.

Not waves. Not liquid.

Worms.

Microscopic. Squirming, writhing, wriggling over one another in numbers so vast that they blurred together into an endless sea of shifting black.

Billions. Possibly even trillions.

Kain's breath caught in his throat.

"What… what is this?" Claudia murmured, voice unsettled.

Benji frowned. "It looks like… some kind of dark fluid."

Kain's eyes flickered. His stomach churned. "You don't see them?"

The others turned toward him.

Clara frowned. "See what? It's just black water. Right?"

Kain swallowed hard. To them, it still appeared as a liquid. But possibly due to his affinity, he could tell that this 'water' was very much alive.

He could see them. Their tiny, wriggling bodies. Their gelatinous, black-translucent forms, each a hundredth the size of a grain of sand. Their jaws, were filled with hundreds of needle-like teeth arranged in concentric rows like leeches.

And they were eating each other. Slowly. Deliberately.

The smallest ones devoured their similarly-sized neighbours whenever they saw an. opportunity.

Tiny maws latched onto their kin, tearing them apart and absorbing them. Their flesh twisted, hardened, and grew thicker as they consumed more and more. The process was slow, almost imperceptible at first, but as Kain continued watching, the black mass thickened.

Over the course of ten minutes, the others finally began to see it.

What was once indistinct black sludge became a seething mass of millions of barely visible things.

They were growing.

And as they continued to consume one another, they were transforming.

The creatures started to take form.

Their bodies convulsed, bulging as they expanded in grotesque bursts. Limbs sprouted—uneven, misshapen as if trying to decide what shape they wanted to be. Their skin was thin and translucent at first, before darkening into a solid black.

And what emerged was the lowest tier of Abyssal creatures that Kain or the others had ever seen so far—small, hunched, feral-looking things. Their limbs twitched erratically, some dragging themselves forward on malformed arms, others scrambling with multi-jointed legs that bent the wrong way.

Their bodies were grotesque, their flesh stretched unevenly across their twisted, newly-formed skeletal frames. Some had no eyes. Others had too many. Their mouths gnashed—slits filled with jagged, overlapping rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Based on the energy they emitted, sensed by Aura, Kain and the others placed them at around red-grade in strength.

There were thousands of them.

Then—

They attacked each other.

The feral Abyssal creatures lunged, tearing into one another with a savagery that defied reason. Their screeches filled the chamber.

Some ripped chunks of flesh from their rivals, gnawing on sinew and muscle as they grew larger with each bite. Others were torn apart in seconds, devoured by their stronger kin before they could even fight back.

Claws sliced through bone like butter. Fangs pierced through skulls with sickening crunches.

One by one, the weak were consumed by the stronger of their kind.

Over the course of hours, the cycle repeated.

Thousands of red-grade Abyssal creatures evolved into hundreds of orange-grade ones—the victors of their respective battles, having consumed nearly a dozen of their peers around them.

Their bodies began to stabilize, becoming more defined. Their limbs solidified, no longer twitching erratically. Their skeletal frames thickened, their muscles coiling with clear strength.

The hundreds of orange-grade Abyssal creatures fought and fed until only a little over a hundred yellow-grade ones remained.

Their appearances became more refined—sleeker, deadlier. Their once-emaciated bodies filled out, their movements fluid and calculated rather than wild and erratic.

The process continued from yellow-grade to green-grade.

And at the very end—

A single, monstrous being stood in the now empty arena—all other Abyssal creatures having been made into food.

Its form was towering, refined, a perfect amalgamation of its predecessors. It stood on two powerful legs, its four arms ending in deadly talons. Its face was devoid of any features except for a gaping maw filled with writhing, barbed tongues that flickered in and out like serpents. Its body was plated in hardened bone-like armour that grew from its flesh.

Blue-grade.

Clara inhaled sharply. "This is—"

"A breeding pit," Nadia finished, her expression unreadable. "They're cultivating their warriors here."

Kain's jaw tightened. A sharp pang of horror settled in his chest.

Blue-grade spiritual creatures were considered the peak of power in many cities. Brightstar City didn't even have anyone close to that level of strength. Even many first and second-tier cities, aside from the 5 capital cities of each region, typically only had a couple dozen of such elite fighters.

And yet this pit was being used to mass-produce them.

Kain and the others watched as the victor let out a guttural snarl, stretching its new limbs as it surveyed its surroundings—then exited the pit through the only exit in the chamber.

The pit, now empty, stilled.

Then, without warning—

The surface writhed again.

More black 'water' surged upward, filling the pit with another generation of microscopic Abyssal worms, ready to start the cycle anew.

Before they knew it, they had watched the previous round for around six hours.

That meant that an Abyssal creature equivalent in strength to a blue-grade spiritual creature could be created around four times each day.

In one week, that was nearly thirty. In a year… thousands.

Considering the many years it took for most individuals to raise a blue-grade spiritual creature—

The sheer number of creatures that must have already been produced here was beyond terrifying.