Bond Master

The Crucible of Defense

The intense wave of energy from Grim’s sudden breakthrough had barely settled when the obsidian hound, completely ignoring the warnings of the instructor, reached out his heavy snout and clamped his teeth around a second violet Kinetic Stone.

Ren Barrett lunged forward to pull him back, but the young monster had already swallowed the gemstone with a clean, satisfying gulp.

This time, however, the room did not erupt into a violent storm of crushing pressure.

The initial breakthrough had already changed Grim’s body, allowing him to handle the excess power at a much slower and steadier rate. Instead of a sudden rush of energy, a smooth, continuous flow of Wind Magic began to seep from the swallowed stone, filtering into the hound's body over time.

"Does it only work that well the first time?" Sergeant Corvina asked, flipping her short black hair out of her eyes as she leaned over the table to inspect the resting beast. She adjusted the collar of her green military uniform, her sharp eyes studying the subtle humming power radiating from Grim’s dense, metallic-grey spine ridges.

"That was a pretty high-level resource compared to your hound’s starting strength. Feeding him such a powerful object in such an abrupt manner could easily damage his body if you're not careful. It needs to be handled with proper rationing."

"That makes sense, Sergeant," Ren agreed, placing a hand against Grim’s smooth, obsidian coat. Through the thought link in his mind, he could feel the hound's consciousness rapidly growing heavy, entirely overwhelmed by the massive amount of energy he was trying to digest.

"Grim doesn't understand the danger yet; he just wants the stones because they taste like pure power. I will ration them out for him from now on. He won't get a new stone until the old one is completely absorbed."

That absorption was clearly going to take a while. Within seconds of eating the second gem, Grim began to whine pitifully through their mental link, his thoughts dragging toward the deepest corner of Ren's mind.

"Food coma," Ren explained with a faint, wry smirk as the massive hound disappeared into a flash of dark light, returning safely to the Containment Vault to sleep off his overindulgence.

Sergeant Corvina sighed and shook her head, buckling her leather satchel closed. "A chaotic feeding habit like that is definitely not part of a proper training regimen. But today we can forgive it, since he had such a massive breakthrough.

I approve of your diet plan, and the logistics department will bring the infused blood to your room regularly, along with a new strength stone in a few weeks. Hopefully, this current batch lasts you, because that's as fast as the first-year student allocation can get another one. It looks like your abilities are very fast-growing, but equally resource-intensive."

She turned toward the balcony railing, looking out over the sprawling stone grounds of the academy. "If your personal strength grew naturally at the exact same rate as your contracted beast, ordinary cafeteria food might have been enough. But from what we know of wild magical beasts, they also need to eat rare objects or absorb strange energies to reach the higher ranks naturally."

Ren leaned against the timber pillars of the gazebo, turning Corvina's words over in his mind with his usual commoner pragmatism.

What he really needed wasn't just a way to make Grim bigger or push his rank higher; he needed a way to improve the hound's combat skills so they could actually beat other monsters at their level. In the real world, they wouldn't be fighting clean, one-on-one matches.

They were likely to face beast packs, territorial alphas, and dangerous border invasions in the future. Having one monster on their side against ten on the other would mean very little to their chances of winning if they didn't know how to work together perfectly.

Being able to share senses was a great start, but it wasn't enough to make him a truly powerful existence on his own.

Deep within the Containment Vault, a low snort of amusement echoed from the sleeping hound.

[What other monster of my level is so good with its magic or so majestic when anchoring a fight? These common creatures are nothing compared to us.]

I know you're the best, Grim, Ren countered in his thoughts, sending a wave of discipline down the mental link. But I'm trying to think of ways to make us even better.

If your raw power is stuck digesting that stone, we need to find new ways to use our skills.

The obsidian hound went quiet, thinking it over.

To a wild Shackle-Hound, hunting was simple: run in, bind the prey, and kill it. But as he felt Ren's thoughts, he supposed that having more ways to destroy his targets wasn't a bad thing. Maybe if he watched how other creatures fought, he could find ways to use [Rend] in entirely new ways.

"Sergeant," Ren said, breaking his silence as he turned back to Corvina. "Since Grim is going to be sleeping in his mental space for a while, can we go down to the training areas? I think the more we see actual combat while we're training, the easier it will be to come up with ways to make ourselves better."

If his hound was going to be sidelined for the afternoon, Ren had no intention of sitting around his room doing nothing. He wanted to train himself while he had the chance.

Sergeant Rita Corvina nodded in approval, her serious face softening slightly at his work ethic. She led him out of the dorms and out into the grand field on the opposite side from his balcony.

The eastern training area was massive, featuring large stone squares raised in the open field. A large group of students were actively training unarmed combat techniques there.

They were all second-year students and superb at what they were doing, but just watching them gave Ren immediate ideas about how he and Grim could work together to overcome human opponents.