Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 634

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Chapter 634: Chapter 634 - Taming the Fifth Year - First Exams - 6

Lin continued. "When I teach you combat techniques, your body automatically overcorrects and finds ways to make them slightly more efficient. You improve the speed, the power, the economy of movement in almost imperceptible ways... but they’re there, small corrections accumulating more and more every day."

"And that’s bad?"

"For combat, no... On the contrary. But for noble protocol, I suppose yes," Lin had smiled with something like sympathy. "Those positions they’re trying to teach you aren’t efficient. They’re not natural. They’re ceremonial. I think your body rejects them because they go against almost everything it considers balance and efficiency."

And she was right. Ren could copy Lin’s combat techniques without problem, simplifying and improving them in the process without even realizing it. His body was a learning machine when it came to fighting, absorbing and optimizing with frightening speed.

But here, where he needed to replicate exact movements without improvements, without optimizations, without his instinct to make things better...

His body simply refused to cooperate.

Additionally, his memory and cerebellum for specific details like these wasn’t the best. His head in those sections was full of information about beast cultivation, mana patterns, combat positions.

The neural pathways had been carved deep for things that mattered to survival.

And without access to the enormous neural network of ’Mooshito’, who had been encysted this entire time, he didn’t have that additional support to process and retain information with the speed he’d previously taken for granted.

Now his brain had harder limits. Now he was just... human.

At one point he even practiced desperately in front of Aldric during their classes, carefully analyzing his tutor’s reaction. But each time he executed the protocols, Aldric maintained the same neutral expression.

His mana showed no particular concern, no surprise, no satisfaction.

Ren could read that clearly: he wasn’t improving enough for Aldric to worry.

The assessment was damning in its implications.

The second month passed like this, with Ren stuck at a level that was technically correct but completely lacked the ’perfection’ that the evaluators with the help of high Perception beasts would demand in the exams.

Larissa’s sessions became longer, more intense. She stayed up late drilling him on minute adjustments. Her dedication was absolute, her belief in his potential unwavering even as the evidence suggested he might not be capable of what she demanded.

Min watched him struggle with growing concern. "Maybe you should just focus on looking decent, not on perfection," he suggested one night.

But Ren knew better. With his rewards, with the targets on his back, that wasn’t enough at all.

Mediocrity would be weaponized against him. Only perfection would be safe.

♢♢♢♢

Two weeks before the exams, everything changed.

That day, Aldric had said something that made every alarm in Ren’s mind go off.

"Keep it up, Ren," Aldric had said with an almost paternal tone, the kind of voice adults used when praising children for trying their best even when they knew it wasn’t enough.

"It seems you’ve reached your first wall. Improving beyond this point will be... difficult. But what little you manage to learn will serve you. Though you know, don’t pressure yourself too much."

The words had been carefully constructed. Setting expectations low while pretending to be supportive.

Ren had left that class with that familiar knot in his stomach tighter than ever.

That night, he met with the girls in one of the private study rooms.