Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Chapter 6 - Taming the First Journey

Ren landed softly in the back garden, where his parents' mature Iron-rank plants maintained an herb and food garden.

Though it wasn't theirs anymore, they could still use it to pay part of the house rent and cover some basic food for the family.

Beyond the garden's wooden fence, just a few meters away, the terrain began to descend. The view of enormous plains lay almost completely hidden by darkness...

There were no walls to climb, no guards to evade, their house was one of the last structures before the "civilized" world dissolved into no man's land.

Only some plantations dared exceed the common cultivation zone, those with enough for guards.

But with this house so close to the external zone of the abyss, nobody wanted to invest in lands that could be invaded by hordes of cursed monsters if the army ever faltered.

Being in the front line was frightening.

But Ren didn't understand why they were so cowardly, in his 10 years of life, and according to his parents in another 30, the hordes had never overcome the army.

These empty plains were perfect for cultivation in his opinion. Not that it affected him anymore...

He pulled out his father's worn map, tracing with his fingers the lines and annotations he knew by heart.

How many times had he heard the story: his father, desperate to find medicine for mana poisoning, unable to get it in the market due to that year's shortage.

He had been forced to venture into monster domain like many others. Many didn't return that year, and his father almost suffered the same sad fate.

The mandatory mission that had nearly cost him his life.

"And just when I thought it was my end," his father always said at this part, "I found it. A hidden entrance, as if the earth itself had cracked open to save me.

I thought I had fallen into a night excavator's hole...

But it was an ancient tunnel, probably from the era before mana's expansion."

The map showed the path with obsessive detail, every mark, every turn, every landmark carefully noted.

His father never knew why he'd been so meticulous in documenting a route he swore never to take again, but Ren suspected part of him always knew it would be needed someday.

An hour later, Ren finally stood at the forest's edge.

He'd been lucky not to encounter any exiled and hungry creatures.

It seemed the day's bad luck had finally run out... Ren glanced at his spore.

The spore floated beside him while its faint glow contrasted with the dark forest. Here, at the boundary, it was strangely peaceful.

Healthy monsters never ventured so close to the mana-void zone, only the hordes did that, and on specific dates, following underground routes that humans had learned to predict and attack to contain and keep them from leaving the abyss.

Here there weren't those kinds of problems.

"In theory," whispered Ren, more to give himself courage than to inform his silent companion, "we should be safe until we reach the deep iron forest. Monsters, even Iron-rank ones, hate this zone almost as much as dragons do."

Ren repeated to convince himself.

He unfolded the map one last time, memorizing the first stage. If his father had found that underground tunnel, if it really existed... it would be his best chance.

The monsters wouldn't detect him there, and he could advance much deeper into dangerous territory before having to face the real dangers.

He turned to look back toward his faraway house one last time.

They were probably still awake, worried about him, planning how to make his life more bearable in the coming years.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "But I can't accept that future. Not without trying to change it at least once."

And with that, he took his first step toward the forest. The spore floated behind him, its weak gray glow barely visible under the light of the twelve moons.