WSA2024
NO.2
2026 · 03
#R18#BEAST TAMING#SYSTEM#MAGIC#CULTIVATION#ACTION#EVOLUTION#ADVENTURE#COMEDY
Born into a dirt poor mining family, Karl only had one chance to get ahead in life, the annual elite recruitment day. On their final day of middle school, every student in the Golden Dragon Nation was given an experimental injection to awaken their affinity with magic. Those few who succeeded would become the Elite, the leaders and idols of the nation, blessed with incredible magical powers and respected by all. Those who did not would return to their normal lives of hard work and low wages, just doing the best they could. But with the nation surrounded by enemies, both humans and monsters, how long would these peaceful days of magical idols last? Follow the story of Karl as he awakens a unique power and strives to become the world's first Legendary Beast Master. Want to join the community for updates and upcoming news? Check out the discord.
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1696 Chapters Updated
Latest update 13h ago (14 new chs / week)
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Binx_E
Binx_E
2 years ago
Finished another title by this author and have absolute faith that it's gonna be a good one!!! already stoked to see where this goes
314
40
Aoki_Aku
Aoki_Aku
2 years ago
Reveal spoiler
97
62
VermilionD201
VermilionD201
2 years ago
Probably my most favorite beast tamer novel. I just hope it won't do the all generic overused "oh church actually evil," "this kind organization is actually super evil," then the MC will automaticall
Chapter 1
No Second Chances
Today was the day of the tenth annual elite recruitment drive, and every graduating student at Lithium Mine Middle School was gathered in the gymnasium, waiting for the elites to arrive with the medicine that would decide their fate.
The elites were the idols of the Golden Dragon nation, super humans with magical abilities that were born from the Divine Injection that the students were going to receive today.
None of the children of the miners had ever seen one before, unless you counted the Mayor, who gave speeches a few times a year, and the excitement of having them right here in their school had been all that the students could talk about for months.
So, one could imagine the disappointment they felt when it was not some famous idol, but a group of elites from the military that showed up to perform the injections.
But although these weren't the singers or movie stars that they all knew, it was no secret that these military elites were saviours that protected their nation against hostile armies and the ever present threat of magical beasts. The television in the café and the teachers at the school both told them so.
While they had never seen an elite in person, they had seen magical beasts, and quite often. There were earth mice hiding all over the mining town, and the farmers nearby had been raising monstrous boars for generations.
But until very recently, it was only the power of technology and the holy magic of the church's High Priests and Priestesses that could keep the wild beasts at bay.
However, when the more powerful monsters came, you hid, or you died.
That was the way of life for the humans of the Golden Dragon nation, and indeed, most of the humans of the world.
Karl fidgeted in his seat as he waited for the nurse to come and administer the serum shot.
Today was the biggest day of a young student's life, the day that they would be administered the Mana Awakening Serum, better known as the Divine Serum, and find out if they would gain the sort of abilities that could change their lives, or if they would be stuck as common workers in a lithium mining town for the rest of their lives.
This was also Karl's last day at the government run school before he either started working full-time, or with any luck, left this decrepit mining town. If he was compatible with the Serum, he would be off to the Golden Divine Academy tonight, and ready to train his new skills as a defender of the Golden Dragon Nation.
They had already sat through an hour of speeches by the Principal, reminding them of their duty to the nation, the glory of the Elites, and the importance of this chance that they were given. After all, they were just the children of common mine workers, dirt floor poor and unlikely to ever be anything else.
Karl closed his eyes as the nurse rolled the cart with an open briefcase on it next to him, and then a violent pain shot up his arm and the world briefly went blank. Agony spread to every cell in his body, like he was being torn apart from the inside, and blood clogged his lungs, leaving him drowning while sitting in the metal folding chair of his school's auditorium.
This was wrong, the shot was only supposed to hurt as the needle poked you, not like this.
As his consciousness faded, Karl realized that he was likely to be the one in a hundred, the rare fatal reaction to the shot which sorted out the defenders of the nation from the common people.
But after a few seconds, his breathing cleared, the pain began to fade and his eyes fluttered open. A few seconds after that, Karl regained consciousness, with pain still coursing through every cell of his body. The nurse's deep crimson eyes, a side effect of her own Serum injection, were staring directly back at him, and a slight smile was on her face.
"There you are. I thought that we lost you there for a minute. It's a good sign, zero casualties at this stop always means there is a powerful one in the bunch."
The woman moved back, and Karl took in the smartly pressed green military uniform, pencil skirt and heels. It was all familiar, but all wrong. Did he lose some of his memories after the injection? Or was there something wrong with his eyes? On second thought, there was definitely something wrong with his eyes, the world was still a little blurry when he didn't have someone to focus on.
He flinched as his head began to pound again and a new wave of pain wracked his body, but the military woman with the strange red eyes seemed unconcerned as she stepped to a chubby young girl near him and took a large needle full of a glowing golden liquid out of the briefcase on her cart. Without a word of warning, she jabbed it into the girl's arm, and the young girl directly fainted, then slowly recovered her composure.
A quick glance down at his hands showed Karl a familiar bronze tan, but the scars and peeling skin from a childhood spent working in the mines after class were mostly gone, replaced with a deep red mark that looked like three long claw marks running the length of his forearm.
As he silently stared at the marks on his arm, they became more pronounced, and more realistic, as if the flesh had just been torn open, but the skin was smooth and undamaged under his fingers.
After a few minutes, the sound of frightened children fell silent, and Karl looked up at the front of the room, where an officer in the formal military uniform was standing behind a podium, waiting patiently for the process to end.
The red-eyed woman joined him, along with the six men in doctor's coats, before he began to speak.
"Thank you all for your cooperation. This year's choosing trial has completed, and those of you without the mark may return to your classes as usual.
But for the rest of you, congratulations. You have been chosen as the prodigies of the Golden Dragon Nation's new generation. The Blessed ones who will lead us to victory over our enemies, with the benefit of supernatural powers bestowed by the Divine Serum."
Soldiers poured into the room, twice as many as there were children, and Karl began to panic. His mind still hadn't quite grasped the fact that he was one of the fortunate ones yet, the children who were compatible with the artificially induced superpowers, the ones who would become mages, mighty warriors who could split a mountain apart, or even legendary healers that could even raise the dead.
At first, the children resisted the idea that they would be grabbed and taken away by soldiers, especially the ones that had failed the choosing. The problem was that they actually needed the help to walk after the injections. The situation was only making Karl more confused, but he didn't dare ask what was going on with his body, in case they determined that something had gone wrong with whatever the Serum did to the newly awakened elites and disposed of him.
Or worse, sent him back to work in the mines.
According to the lessons that they had been taught in class, he should be a mighty hero by now, not a below average sized teen boy wracked with pain and so weak that he couldn't get out of his chair.
"You look a little disoriented, kid. Just let us carry you, and you'll be right as rain after a few days sleep. Just don't forget to do the homework before we arrive." One of the soldiers who stepped up beside Karl instructed.
That was how he found himself carried into a luxurious train car and placed in a private room complete with its own desk and a call button on the wall that was marked with "Room Service".
Unfortunately for his plan to understand why this process was so painful, the moment that his head hit the pillow, Karl was asleep.
How long he was out, he had no idea, but when he finally awoke, there was a stack of papers on the desk, along with a small textbook waiting for him to read it.
[So, you've awakened your powers] was the title of the book, and the cartoonish cover made it clear that it was aimed at children.
Not that he was old, he would only be fourteen this year, but being the last in his class to hit puberty, his body was much younger looking than average. All he had going for him was a handsome face, and even that had gotten him beaten up a time or two.
But now that he had the Divine Serum on his side, everything would change.
Slowly, he opened the textbook to see what was inside.
[So, you've awakened your powers. Congratulations, and welcome to the upper echelon of society, the elite five percent that have been found compatible with the awakening serum that will soon activate the latent magical powers in your bloodline, passed down from the time of our Nation's founding by the Immortal Golden Dragon itself.
Though you have all learned about it in class, there are a few things that you don't yet know. First, your powers won't fully awaken until you use the first skill related to your specialty. Just follow the guidelines in this text, and you will discover the primary awakening method for your abilities.
Once you have finished that most basic task, you can begin the homework assignment.]
Karl read the first page three times before he flipped the page. Next up was a listing of different marks that the awakened classes should have, and most of them seemed self-explanatory. Ice shards, fire, blades, shields, paws, bows, and even an ornate fan were all detailed with page numbers that would lead the students to their awakening methods.
But there was nothing that resembled claw marks.
So, instead he turned to the homework assignment, hoping for answers. But that was even more useless, it was all about the student's abilities. How strong they were, the description, activation times, speed, energy usage, side effects. In short, he couldn't fill it in at all.
All the marks seemed so obvious as to what sort of abilities they represented. Even the red aura around a pair of axes was clearly a berserker in Karl's mind, but the claw marks didn't make much sense.
There was a similar one with an animal paw that was some sort of druid shaman, but nothing that was as simple, but confusing as his. Was he supposed to be a punching bag for monsters? That didn't sound right at all, the book said that these marks represented superpowers.
But after a few hours, there still wasn't any clear answer as to what he was supposed to do. It was time to call for one of the soldiers and get some answers before the train reached its destination.
Chapter 2
Into The Unknown
While Karl was trying to find a way to awaken his powers, the guards were making the rounds, checking which new students were already awake. Those with the most powerful bodies always woke up first, but it had only been half a day of travel, and they weren't expecting anything yet.
"Sir, there is one active room already. Room 12a, a boy named Karl, no family name recorded." The patrol guard reported back to his commander in the front of the train.
"What is his class? Have we seen him activate any skills yet?" The General asked.
"Nothing yet. He appears to have a nonstandard Class marking, three claw marks." The guard replied.
The General gestured for his assistants to go look for the details on this class, but even after a few minutes had passed, there was still no news.
Other markings in their records were close, but nothing exactly like that one was found.
"Well, then he will have to awaken on his own. I hope that the boy has good luck or thick skin, he's going to need it if he turns in a blank sheet for his assignment when he gets to the Academy."
It wasn't unheard of for a student to get the mark but fail to awaken their powers immediately, even if they followed the instructions. Some would have gotten a nonstandard starting skill, and some were just worthless at using the power that had been given to them.
The General even recalled a case where a child had awakened the Mage class, but didn't have enough mana to cast any spells until nearly the end of the first semester. In the end, that student had proven to be a dismal failure, and had run away during a school outing to live the life of a commoner without ever getting past the beginning of the first level of his training.
That was the fate of many of the students who never learned to awaken their skills. Either because they were completely unsuited to the abilities that they had received, or because they had a marking that no guidance could be issued for, like the three claw marks boy in room 12a.
The Divine Serum was a modern invention, created after extensive research of an astonishing archaeological find at a holy site under an ancient World Dragon Cathedral had detailed the inner workings of an ancient Divine Device known as the System Stones.
The device itself was broken, but an initially unidentifiable power within it remained. Using the stones as a guide, and after decades of study, the Serum had been created to attune humans to that power and give the Golden Dragon Nation a chance to overtake the military might of their neighbours and change the fate of their citizens.
What did it matter if the Ocean People had water Magic to guard their ships against the rockets and guns of the Golden Dragon fleet? Now, they had mages of their own. Even if the untamed monsters of the Beast Lands attacked, they had warriors and guardians with powerful skills that could cut down the most ferocious magical creatures with ease.
That was the strategic value of the Divine Serum, and the reason that every student who was found to be compatible was taken in by the military and intensively trained in the duties and responsibilities that came with being a protector of the nation.
Life wasn't all military training and duty, though. If it were, there was an absolute certainty that the serum compatible and freshly empowered future guardians of the nation would rebel against authority and either turn traitor or stage a coup. So, they were treated as the legendary resources that they were, able to live in luxury all their lives on the condition that their power was enough to justify their salary.
Once they could pass all the tests that the Golden Divine Academy placed before them, they would even receive official titles from the church, and a collection of legal and social benefits to match. Society had always belonged to the rich and powerful, but now the phrase had taken on an entirely different meaning.
Karl was blissfully unaware of the topic of the observers' conversations, and while they were discussing the likelihood that he might not be able to awaken his powers in time to keep up with his classmates, Karl was preparing to ask the passing guards for advice.
"Sir? Pardon me, but my skill marking doesn't seem to be in the book. Could I be missing a page?" He asked as the uniformed guard passed by again.
"Not in the book, eh? Tough luck there, son. The book only covers the common markings, the ones that ninety percent of the new students get, but there are others possible. The injections are a mysterious divine force, and sometimes they give out results that nobody understands.
The best I can tell you is to try everything, and whatever feels right probably is. If you're lucky, you'll awaken some powers before your classes start.
Between me and you, you want to awaken those powers before you get to the Academy, the elite students are particular about the power rankings, and if you don't, you'll be starting school from the very bottom."
"Thanks. But have you ever seen a marking like this?" Karl asked curiously.
The Guard rolled up his sleeve and showed off the picture of a bear paw, the mark of a Druid, and according to the guide, a nature magic user with an affinity for animals.
"Since it's a little like mine, and seems to involve animals, perhaps try things related to either animals, or unarmed combat. There isn't much you can do to attune with nature on a busy train, but the windows open a little if you need some fresh air.
That's what I had to do, I couldn't awaken my powers without some attachment to nature. In fact, I didn't awaken them on the train at all, they woke up as soon as I touched the trees on the way to the Academy Gates." The guard explained.
"Thanks for the help." Karl called as the guard walked away. He didn't seem to be big on talking, or perhaps he just didn't want to get Karl's hopes up. But the advice gave him something to go on.
Chapter 3
The Early Bird
Karl flopped on his bed and looked out the window, to see if there was any sort of hint as to what his powers were supposed to be. The guard had a point, and the claw marks definitely had to refer to some sort of animal. Humans didn't leave marks like that.
So, the first thing that he tried was focusing on adding claws to his hands.
"Claw!"
"Nope, yelling out skill names isn't going to do it. How do the other classes activate their skills?" Karl complained, unaware that the bored supervisors in the main car were watching through hidden cameras and laughing at his antics.
[Page 2, Magic Classes
Open the box of casting assistants under your bed using the thumb of your left hand, and extract the appropriate casting medium to begin attempting to activate your first spell.]
"This doesn't look like the sort of marking that a spell caster should have, next page."
[Page 3, Combat classes
Open the box of practice weapons under your bed with the index finger of your right hand and choose the most appropriate weapon for your desired skills.]
That sounded more likely, so Karl knelt on the ground in front of the bed and unlocked the upper drawer, where he found a collection of simple weapons, and even some more obscure ones, like throwing knives, single-handed crossbows, and some sort of axe on a chain that looked like it would be more dangerous to the user than anyone else.
He was, unfortunately, not yet among the physically gifted, so Karl picked a short sword from among the weapons while he cursed being the last in his class to enjoy the full benefits of puberty.
He had never actually held a sword before, but this one felt right, and Karl gave it a few tentative swings before trying for a more meaningful strike toward the door.