An hour passed...
The four hundred disciples of Cohort Seven stood rigidly on the ash-swept Blood Plains, desperately trying to mentally command their contracted fiends to retrieve a Wraith-Bone from the bubbling Abyssal Sludge.
Only a handful had succeeded with the terrifying ease Sunny had displayed.
Most were locked in a sweaty, desperate mental battle, forcing their trembling, whining beasts toward the acid pit.
The most pathetic display came from a short, sweating boy from the Beast Taming Pavilion.
He had somehow managed to contract a Blood-Maned Hyena, a notoriously stubborn and treacherous variant of the common corpse-hound.
It was even an Elite grade.
But its higher grade only made it harder to control. While other disciples were slowly inching their terrified beasts toward the pit, the Hyena had completely ignored the boy's mental commands.
Instead, it was running wild across the rocky plains, its jagged jaws snapping at the floating bone-ash in the air while letting out a horrific, mocking laugh that sounded like a dying man's gasp.
"I command you to heel, you cursed mutt!" the short boy screamed.
The Blood-Maned Hyena paused its manic running, glanced back at its master's terrified face, and seemed to find the display utterly hilarious.
It let out another shrieking laugh and sprinted further away.
The surrounding disciples didn't dare offer sympathy; showing pity was a sign of weakness. But they did silently judge him.
Fool, Disciple Zhao thought, still kneeling behind Sunny. To choose a hyena is to invite a knife to your own back. They only respect the scent of fresh kills.
Suddenly, the Hyena's laughter cut off with a choked yelp. It skidded to a halt, its fur standing on end. Standing directly in its path, blocking its escape, was Vanguard Captain Kael's personal beast.
The massive Blood-Marrow Hound did not growl. It did not posture. It simply stared down the Hyena with hollow, skeletal eye sockets.
The Hyena whimpered, instantly dropping to its belly in a posture of absolute submission. The Blood-Marrow Hound slowly raised one massive, exposed-muscle paw and brought it down heavily onto the Hyena's neck, pinning it to the jagged obsidian ground with bone-crushing force.
The Hyena offered zero resistance, whining pitifully as the larger beast asserted absolute dominance.
Captain Kael watched this without a hint of emotion.
"Those who cannot control their beasts will step forward," he commanded.
Three disciples, including the weeping owner of the Hyena, were roughly dragged out of the formation by the Enforcers. Their fates in the Vanguard were effectively sealed.
The remaining three hundred and ninety-seven disciples, breathing heavy sighs of relief, prepared for the next phase of the brutal initiation.
Captain Kael walked over to a nearby stone stele, an ancient marker carved with defensive runes designed to withstand artillery fire.
He didn't give a verbal command. He merely flicked his gaze toward the Blood-Marrow Hound.
The skeletal hound immediately backed away, its exposed muscles bunching tightly. Without warning, it launched itself forward, a blur of crimson and bone.
Right before it collided with the rune-carved stele, it didn't bite or claw.
It twisted its massive frame mid-air, utilizing the momentum of its charge to swing its skeletal tail like a heavy siege weapon.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap. The heavy stone stele, reinforced with demonic arrays, shattered instantly.
Huge chunks of jagged rock flew through the air, crashing into the plains ten yards away.
The Hound landed smoothly, its claws digging deep trenches into the obsidian floor, entirely unharmed.
"A feral beast relying solely on its innate instincts is predictable, and a predictable beast is easily slaughtered by the Orthodox sword-formations," Captain Kael lectured,
"When I first ripped this hound from the breeding pits, it only knew how to bite. Its tail was merely an appendage."
Kael walked over and casually ran a gauntleted hand over the hound's exposed spine. "But through months of sensory deprivation and bone-shattering impacts against ironwood, its tail mutated. The bone density increased tenfold. It developed a secondary strike. A diversified arsenal is the key to surviving a protracted siege."
He turned and pointed toward another Enforcer standing nearby.
"Lieutenant, demonstrate the alternative."
The Lieutenant, a scarred woman missing half her jaw, simply nodded. She threw a thick slab of refined black-iron high into the air.
Her own beast, a mutated variant of the Blood-Marrow Hound with an oversized, jutting jaw, sprang upward with terrifying speed.
It snapped its jaws shut around the falling iron slab. The sound of metal screeching against bone echoed across the plains.
When the hound landed, it opened its mouth, letting a shower of mangled, twisted black-iron shards clatter onto the ground.
Sunny's crimson eyes widened a fraction. It just chewed through solid iron like it was a stale cracker. That bite force would snap a human in half instantly.
"That is focused refinement," Kael announced. "Instead of diversifying, the Lieutenant concentrated entirely on her beast's innate weapon. You must choose a path for your summons. If you attempt to train them in everything, they will master nothing. However, you will not start by having your beasts break iron. You will begin by hardening their flesh against pain."
He gestured toward a massive, spiked iron carriage being dragged onto the plains by a team of enslaved, hulking flesh-golems.
"Within this carriage are blocks of condensed pain-resin," Kael explained.
"You will command your beasts to repeatedly strike these blocks. The resin absorbs the impact and returns the force as pure, agonizing nerve-fire. The goal is to deaden their pain receptors while increasing their striking power."
A few disciples practically pushed each other aside to volunteer to unload the carriage, desperate to curry favor with the Captain.
Sunny, however, ignored the commotion. He was staring down at his Phantom Ash Scorpion, completely lost in thought.
What exactly am I supposed to train? Sunny wondered, feeling the familiar grip of panic returning.
Should he focus on speed? The scorpion was already incredibly fast, darting like a shadow. But in a massive battlefield filled with area-of-effect spells, speed was easily countered by a wide-range freezing array.
Should he focus on physical offense? The scorpion's pincers were sharp, and its carapace was dense. But the System had explicitly categorized it as a Poison/Shadow attribute.
Its physical strikes were secondary to its elemental lethality. When it reached Tier 4 Commander grade, it would unlock external aura attacks. Its true weapon was its venom.
But how on earth was Sunny supposed to train venom potency? He couldn't just tell the scorpion to 'be more poisonous.'
The demonic texts likely had hundreds of horrific methods involving feeding the beast live, screaming sacrifices, which Sunny absolutely refused to do.
He glanced at the System interface floating unobtrusively in the corner of his vision. The System didn't offer a 'training' module. It only offered fusion.
Wait a minute, Sunny thought, a sudden, brilliant realization cutting through his exhaustion. I don't need to train it. I don't need to make it punch blocks of pain-resin for six months.
If he wanted the scorpion's venom to be deadlier, he just needed to find a deadlier, highly toxic beast on this battlefield and fuse its venom glands directly into the scorpion.
If he wanted it to be tougher, he just needed to fuse it with something that had a thicker shell.
He didn't need to be a grandmaster beast tamer. He just needed to be a scavenger.
Sunny's lips twitched upward into a microscopic, relieved smile. He had finally figured out how to survive this nightmare without actually doing any hard work...