Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 140

Taro looked at the materials one last time. A hundred days of hope, of trust in theories that defied everything established, converged in this moment.

"Here we go," he whispered, and began to absorb them.

The effect was instantaneous.

The crystal’s brown glow spread through his veins like rivers of liquid earth, yellow earth. His beetle’s markings intensified, expanding across his skin in patterns none of them had seen before, each line seeming to pulse with newfound power.

"It’s beginning," Ren watched attentively. "Let it flow..."

Taro gasped as the first wave of power hit him. It was different from the previous ones, deeper, more fundamental. He could feel his beast changing, transforming at its very core.

Min leaned forward, completely still for the first time that morning. Liu held his breath, his night bat manifesting slightly in response to his tension.

The markings continued to expand, but instead of hardening into the shell plates, they seemed to merge with the earth itself, bright and yellow. The air around Taro vibrated with raw energy.

"Ren..." Taro’s voice sounded strange, distorted, as if coming from underground. "I feel... I feel..."

"I know," Ren smiled. "It’s happening exactly as it should."

The transformation reached its climax. For a moment, Taro seemed to glow from within, his silhouette blurring as if made of shifting earth.

And then...

♢♢♢♢

Wei flipped another page of the "Advanced Compendium of Insect Evolutions," his eyes irritated from another night of intensive reading. His manticore manifested intermittently in his eyebrows like a nervous tic, responding to his growing frustration.

Five hundred and forty thousand crystals in his account.

The number kept resonating in his mind since he’d returned remembering to deposit his money and heard Finch’s squeals ten days ago.

It was an absurd amount for any first-year student, but for someone with history’s weakest beast...

’There must be an explanation,’ he thought while reaching for another book. ’Accumulating that amount through luck alone isn’t logical.’

It was the kind of wealth a veteran Silver 3 rank slightly stronger than him would obtain after about 6 months of work. Not something a child with a mushroom could achieve in 4 months.

His fingers traced the new tome’s index, searching for any mention of variations with incompletely documented methodologies in digger beetles.

There had to be something he was missing.

"What if...?" Wei paused, an uncomfortable idea forming in his mind. "What if someone in the outer lands...?"

He shook his head immediately.

It was ridiculous.

The odds of someone discovering a new evolution without the academy’s knowledge were astronomically low.

The million-crystal reward for a new methodology was too difficult for those people to ignore...

It could be that someone working in the mines wanted to sell it themselves to their close associates... But that made it more improbable, that same person sharing such a secret with a random child...

But the doubt persisted.

Wei rose from his desk and began pacing his study. The walls were covered with shelves full of books, each one carefully selected and studied over years.

"Five hundred and forty thousand," he muttered. "In four months."

Wei stopped in front of a specific section: "Documented Evolutions in the Last 100 Years."

Not a single mention of variations in the digger beetle’s evolutionary pattern.