Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 890 – Taming the Fifth Year – Attrition – Explosive Digestion – 2

Huge surprise, Min shouldn’t be able to control ice yet, unless…

‘A situational amplification? But he’d need…’

Ren’s smile faded as he recalculated rapidly and realized his error.

He’d accounted for the Amphibian’s reserves. Had calculated the attrition rate.

But he’d assumed that digestion would give small amounts of mana and take much longer to finish. Had failed to account for Min’s ability to metabolize absorbed biomass faster than baseline because of his exceptional double water control allowing him to optimize the internal chemical processes.

An oversight… Small. But critical.

Even if it wasn’t ice in the sense that Ren manifested it… the perfect crystallization that achieved a structure rivaling diamond in hardness.

It was a good approximation using similar principles. Even if falling short of the perfection that complete mastery of the element achieved. It was still maybe 60-70% as effective as genuine ice manipulation at comparable mana cost. Less durable crystalline structures. Less precise control over freezing patterns.

But “almost” was absolutely sufficient for the purpose Min needed.

All the water under his control that he’d released in the Rain Dance began cooling toward the freezing point, with temperature falling degree by degree until the liquid began solidifying into frost that covered the close arena surface roots and plants simultaneously.

Not elegant… But functional. Devastatingly functional.

Ren couldn’t believe it. The audience couldn’t believe it either, with an explosion of excited conversations filling the stands as they processed the implication of what they were witnessing.

Not just one tamer with the capacity to manifest ice element but two? In the same generation? When the element was so rare that it appeared perhaps once every 100 years at best?

Ice was so rare because it required simultaneous mastery of water and wind to precise degrees that almost no cultivator ever achieved naturally.

The odds of two ice tamers existing in the same academy year were insane. But the evidence was incontrovertible, with intense cold intensifying to the point where the combatants’ breathing became visible as fog and where moisture in the air began crystallizing in delicate patterns. The amphibian served as the central point of the effect, with its massive body operating as a living freezer radiating sub-zero temperatures in all directions.

And then Ren understood completely what he was seeing.

It wasn’t truly ice control in the strict sense. It was rather an application of exotic biology that some amphibians possessed, the ability to survive complete freezing through producing antifreeze substances in their tissues that prevented formation of crystals that would destroy cells.

(Certain amphibians can have their body temperature below freezing and survive. Their blood contained compounds that behaved like biological antifreeze, preventing ice crystal formation in critical tissues while allowing external surfaces to freeze solid. They could remain iced for months and then thaw and resume normal function.)

Min’s Amphibian had this capability, enhanced and developed far beyond the baseline biological function through mana and cultivation.

The beast was compressing air to cool it and then expelling it already imbued with its mana to combine elemental control with the dispersed water. Its special body allowed it to do this without suffering the effects of freezing itself. Cold blood allowed operation at temperatures that would kill warm-blooded creatures, with metabolism adjusting to conditions that would be lethal for most.

Min had taken that natural biological capability and amplified it through mana to the point where it not only permitted survival in extreme cold but allowed active control over temperature across a considerable area.

Ren and Selphira hadn’t caught it the first time they’d observed this Amphibian’s capabilities. Even Selphira, who had answered questions and given Min hints by explaining how genuine ice control worked, hadn’t expected this because it was fundamentally different from what she and Ren did in principle, even though the underlying dynamic was ultimately the same: controlling wind and water imbued with mana in specific patterns to combine them in a crystallization explosion.

Min had been brilliant in his creativity. He’d exploited a biological characteristic that most would have dismissed as a curiosity without practical combat application beyond resisting Ren’s 8th element as a surprise factor. But Min had understood his beast, seen the potential and had invested considerable time developing it to the point where it could compete with genuine elemental manipulation even if it didn’t match the technique to perfection.

The gap between “almost ice” and “real ice” was big in effectiveness under equal conditions. But under these conditions, with enormous water saturation available, with the Mantis at only 10-20% reserves, with the Amphibian powered through digestion, that gap was irrelevant to the outcome.

The effect on the plants was devastating and immediate.

Wood was strong against water but received enormous damage from exposure to extreme cold. The plant cells, inflated to capacity with liquid water, fractured as their contents expanded during freezing.

Not instantaneous destruction but an assault that no plant could resist for an extended period, especially when they were saturated with moisture that now converted into a weapon against them.

Temperature continued dropping as the Amphibian intensified the effect to the point where the sand began gleaming with frost covering every surface. And the plants that Ren had accumulated so carefully, the parasitic network that had been draining the Amphibian and that had promised eventual victory, began withering and dying under the assault of the element that cancelled the advantage that wood normally had over water.

The arena lost almost all the plants that Ren had invested massive resources in establishing. Only dead vegetation frozen in positions where they had been growing moments before.

A complete clearing that negated all the work the Mantis had done during the intense exchange.

Min had reversed the situation with something absolutely incredible, a technique that nobody had anticipated and that converted what had appeared to be Ren’s inevitable victory into a position where momentum favored Min completely again.

The arena was clean. The Amphibian had used the completed digestion providing a boost that had opened its capacity to control a technique it couldn’t have repeated under normal circumstances.

That was the key insight that Ren had missed. This wasn’t a sustainable technique. The cold generation capability required the energy surge from digestion to function at this intensity. Without that temporary boost pushing the Amphibian’s available mana to levels approaching the upper limits of Gold 1 potential, it couldn’t have maintained the temperature low enough for this long.

Which meant Min had planned this against his wood element from the beginning.