The two girls exploded.
"That was incredible!"
"How did you know it would work?"
"Can you teach us to..."
Their voices overlapped, excitement making them forget proper decorum. Words tumbling over each other in their rush to understand, to learn, to somehow capture a piece of what they’d just witnessed.
♢♢♢♢
After obtaining help from 4 beasts of different elements and having eliminated 2 that were ’difficult to reason with’... the group was ready to collect from the deactivated zones.
The gathering was systematic and efficient.
With the help of the wolverines and their mana traces dancing in spirals through the most abundant vine zones, in large sections the vines became docile. Their defensive mechanisms shut down by the beasts they’d evolved to coexist with.
A massive area. More resources than five students could possibly collect in three days even working non-stop.
But Ren intended to try.
Two trips. Maximum efficiency. The complete domination of the gathering exam.
And judging by the look on Zhao’s face, the professor was already calculating what kind of scores this performance would earn.
Ren showed them how to cut without damaging. Where to make the incision, what angle to use, how much pressure to apply. How to identify the highest quality segments, the ones with the densest mana concentration, the brightest veins, the most potentially useful for cultivation. How to preserve the materials properly so they wouldn’t degrade during transport.
And so, for the next several hours, they worked.
Ren directed, explained, and corrected while working on his own collection. Moving between team members, offering guidance, demonstrating techniques, ensuring everyone maximized their efficiency.
The two fans followed him like enthusiastic puppies, absorbing every word. Their notebooks filled with observations, their minds recording every detail for later study.
The Hater maintained his distance but no longer complained. Too occupied observing how each of Ren’s predictions turned out to be correct. How every strategy worked exactly as described. How reality kept confirming what he’d dismissed as impossible.
His worldview was cracking. Rebuilding itself around all this new information.
Zhao simply watched, occasionally intervening with comments that showed his years of experience. But mostly he wore a smile that showed his enjoyment of watching Ren work.
♢♢♢♢
When it seemed they’d collected everything they could carry, Ren moved forward to review the mountain of materials.
Zhao thought this was going to be interesting.
And very, very lucrative.
Because not only was this an incredible quantity... Ren hadn’t lied about the efficiency of collecting with "help", but he also hadn’t mentioned to the three "lucky" kids his true advantage’s total capacity.
"It’s time to fill my beast’s internal space."
The spatial pocket in his Jade Wolverine’s stomach.
Ren transferred loads of materials into his beast’s spatial pocket. Quantities that would have been impossible to carry physically.
While other teams would have to limit their collection to what they could physically carry in enormous backpacks, struggling under weight and bulk...
Ren could store quantities that would make any other student cry.
The enormous backpacks everyone carried would be filled up too, of course. Physical weight distributed across the team, carried by both students and their beasts.
But the majority of their true haul was hidden where no one could see it.
"This is," the girl murmured while observing the materials accumulating, vanishing into nothing as Ren fed them to his beast, "we’re going to win this exam very easily..."
Her voice carried awe. Disbelief at their fortune in being assigned to this team.
It wasn’t cheating.
It was optimization.
And if others had lower quality Wolverines on their teams...
Or didn’t even have access to similar methods...
Well.
That was their problem.
VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABEL
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons