Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1169 - Taming the Old World - Safeguarding Home - 4

Min quickly requisitioned two junior Tamers with flying mounts. In a matter of minutes, they glided across the border separating the defensive sectors and touched down in Taro's zone.

♢♢♢♢

Taro's situation was remarkably similar to Min's. He held a high-ranking post, managed a large company of soldiers, and oversaw a sector that was currently enjoying an unprecedented era of peace.

But Taro had never struggled with the humor problem. He didn't make cynical jokes.

Taro was simply warm. He possessed a gentle, slightly innocent disposition, the kind of rare, genuine person who effortlessly made everyone around him feel comfortable.

Naturally, the hardened soldiers initially assumed they could walk all over him.

A commander this polite, this willing to listen to complaints, and this reluctant to shout orders looked like an incredibly easy mark.

That assumption survived exactly until the first time the alarm bells rang. The moment Taro fused, summoning his massive beasts to the frontline, the sheer density of his aura smothered the entire sector. Seeing a man that polite casually command that much destruction permanently rewired the garrison's perspective.

Nobody ever mistook his kindness for weakness again...

His calm nature actually produced a highly effective side effect. The soldiers serving under him were incredibly relaxed, naturally catching the quiet confidence that Taro radiated without even trying.

♢♢♢♢

Taro spotted them landing and his face lit up.

"Li! Min! What are you two doing here?"

He rushed forward and wrapped them both in a massive, crushing hug, nearly lifting them off the cobblestone with his broad Earth Bear like frame. "Did you come to visit me? Both of you? Together?"

"No, we only came to eat your food," Min corrected him, adjusting his uniform after being set down. "Ok, Li came to see you... I am strictly here for the pantry, let's be honest with ourselves."

Taro laughed, not offended in the slightest.

"Then we are going to eat well!" He was already waving over a quartermaster, issuing rapid instructions to prepare a special meal. "I'm sending a fast one for Liu right now. He needs to come down here and talk with everyone too. We're having a banquet! All four of us, exactly like those times back at Ren's mansion."

♢♢♢♢

Liu arrived a few hours later, right as the sun began to dip.

With the group finally complete, they sat down around a long wooden table loaded with food.

Liu was, without question, the quietest of the commanders. He was also the only one the soldiers had never underestimated for a single second.

He carried an aura that the troops universally described as a vampire's presence. There was something distinctly cold and unsettling about him. It was an invisible pressure that made rookies lower their voices to a whisper whenever he walked into a room, though none of them could explain exactly why.

The garrison was genuinely afraid of him.

The great irony was that Liu was just incredibly shy since he could hear their whispers perfectly.

Yet he barely even noticed the chilling effect he had on people, thinking it was all about the uniform. On the rare occasions he did notice someone was scared of him, he secretly rejoiced, simply because it meant fewer people tried to force him into small talk. For someone as deeply introverted as Liu, possessing a terrifying vampire aura was most of the time a convenient blessing.

"Liu, tell Li about what happened last month," Taro urged, piling a generous helping of roasted meat onto Liu's plate.

Liu paused, his fork hovering in the air. He didn't look up from his meal.

"...No."

"Oh, come on that was a good one!" Min prodded.

"Nothing happened."

"A fresh recruit literally passed out when Liu looked at him," Min finally spilled the details for Li, looking absolutely delighted. "He just looked at him. Didn't say a single word and didn't even merged with his beast. The poor kid thought his soul was being harvested and just hit the floor."

Min laughed so hard he had to steady his cup to keep it from spilling.

"And the best part? Liu had no idea why it happened. He genuinely thought the kid had caught a fever or something. He sent a bowl of hot soup to the infirmary for him!"

Liu kept his eyes glued to his plate, chewing slowly.

"He was pale," Liu muttered in his own defense. "He looked sick."

The table erupted. Min and Taro laughed until their ribs hurt, and Li joined in, the sound echoing off the stone walls of the barracks. When Min fell in his back even Liu offered a faint, fleeting half-smile, the absolute most emotion they were ever going to drag out of him.

♢♢♢♢

The conversation inevitably circled back to Ren. It always did.

"The Glorious General," Taro repeated, leaning forward to savor every single syllable of the title. He looked at Li with wide, delighted eyes. "Is that really what they are calling him down there? Please tell me you aren't making this up."

"Garret started the trend," Li admitted, taking a sip from his cup. "Now his entire Vanguard section shouts it just to watch him turn red. They treat it like a sport..."

Min slammed a hand against the heavy stone table. The wooden bowls rattled, and a burst of unrestrained laughter echoed through the barracks.

"Perfect! It is absolutely perfect."

Min wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, wheezing slightly.

"Think about it. Our Ren… The poor kid who bonded the cheapest, most pathetic spore beast in existence. The lunatic who used to walk around the academy with glowing mushrooms strapped to his head while everyone laughed at him. Now he is the Glorious General of the South, and he literally wants to die of embarrassment every time someone salutes."

Min shook his head in sheer awe.

"It is the closest thing to cosmic justice this world has ever seen. Especially after all the insane theories he dragged us through back in school."

"Those insane theories are the exact reason we are sitting at this table today," Taro pointed out.

He didn't say it to ruin the joke. Taro simply had a habit of stating earnest, polite truths, entirely unaware that he was correcting someone's punchline.

But it was the absolute truth. The laughter at the table dialed back, replaced by a quiet, heavy gratitude that washed over all four of them.

They sat in silence for a moment, looking around the room. Four kids who had started from the absolute bottom of the barrel. One of them even had grown up starving in the dirt of the outer slums. Now, they were wearing the polished armor of commanders. They were elite dual-contract Tamers, entrusted with holding the fortified borders of humanity's last stronghold.

Every single one of them could trace the exact trajectory of their success back to a singular, defining point in their lives.

They had met Ren.

Taro reached for his cup and raised it into the warm light of the room. He looked at his friends, his expression as open and sincere as always.

"To knowing Ren," Taro said softly.

"To knowing Ren," Li and Min echoed, raising their own drinks.

A beat passed. Then, from the corner of the table, Liu lifted his glass. He didn't mumble. He didn't hide behind his collar. His voice rang out clear and steady in the quiet room.

"To knowing Ren!"

♢♢♢♢

Min flatly refused to let a sentimental moment linger for more than ten seconds. It went against everything he stood for.

"Hey, Li," Min said, setting his cup down and shifting seamlessly into his next complaint. "When you get back to the South, do me a favor. Tell the Glorious General to hurry up and invent some Platinum-tier towers. Specifically, ones that can operate on the garbage ambient mana we have out there in the plains. If he does that, we can finally retire and let these semi-artifacts do the heavy lifting."

Min leaned his chair back on two legs and laced his fingers behind his head, a picture of profound laziness. "I have done my time. I've defended the city. Let these polyhedron-trees bleed for a living."

Taro dropped his fork. He stared at his friend with a look of genuine indignation.

"Retire?" Taro asked, his brow furrowing. "Min, you aren't even twenty years old."

"So?"

"You aren't even twenty, and you are already plotting your retirement!" Taro looked thoroughly scandalized.

His sheer disbelief only made Min's grin stretch wider across his face.

"You are a frontline commander!" Taro argued, gesturing at Min's uniform. "This is more than everything you ever wanted! You have a prestigious rank... The people genuinely admire you, just like you wanted!"

"People admire me because Ren's plants do my job," Min said. "It's fake admiration, it doesn't feel great... Especially when all I do is shout 'bon appétit!'"

Li laughed, Liu gave a half-smile, and Taro continued to chide Min for his newfound, contradictory lack of ambition while Min passionately defended his right to early retirement.

And that afternoon, on the Yino wall, four friends ate and joked and toasted the boy who had taken them all so far.

Little did they know that the following afternoon, that very same wall they defended would begin to crumble.