Rebirth Of The First Tamer

CH-6

The laughter in the room seemed to stretch for hours, the crowd soaking themselves in the amusement of Patrick's failure.

"I've seen kids do better with pet rabbits!"

"It's the guts to even try and compete with an A ranked tamer, what were we really expecting!" Another member of the crowd commented, shaking their heads.

"At least, he had the audacity. Maybe if he could put more effort into his life, he would not be so pathetic!" Cold words after cold words rolled off from their lips and it didn't seem like they were going to be stopping any time soon. 

Their voices crashed over each other, downgrading Patrick and calling him useless with every breath. They pointed and laughed like he was performing the worst circus act they'd ever seen.

Even Vera seemed disappointed.

She barely showed it, keeping her face composed like someone from the top five families should.

 But Patrick could read humans pretty well after living a hundred years, and he could easily tell what she was thinking.

She thought control was actually a pretty impressive skill to have alongside your beast. It was rare, valuable, something that could turn battles when used right. However, that was the most pathetic control of it she'd ever witnessed.

Even for someone with a lower class or rank, it was supposed to be that pathetic. 

One mouse. One jerking, squeaking rodent.

Jarden turned to him, he had been laughing so hard his face was red now.

"I really thought you could defend your big mouth," he said, wiping fake tears from his eyes. "But you're just as pathetic as your beast control skill!"

His armored bear snorted behind him, already breathing heavily as the artificial supplements burned out of its system. 

"A mouse! You brought a mouse trick to challenge me. Maybe you thought that I was going to pee my pants after seeing your skills I presume, must be pretty disappointed aren't you?"

For the first time since walking into this place, Patrick furrowed his brows.

They expected him to be shivering already, his knees crashing to the earth and begging for his life for even attempting to take this challenge. 

Instead, his attitude and the grim looks on his life seemed to have even become bolder.

Even Vera could not help the frown that instantly laced her face. She had never seen someone that was this weak and also this arrogant at the same time.

It was either one or the other.

But Patrick didn't seem like someone who was the least bit arrogant. He just looked like someone with overflowing confidence in what they were doing, like they had all the time in the world to practice. 

This was confusing for Vera.

"How did I lose?" he asked, his voice cutting through their laughter. "If I must say, the display of my skill is really better than yours."

The crowd went on rampage even further.

They howled like he'd just told the biggest joke in history. Some doubled over, clutching their stomachs, tears streaming down their faces.

"Something must be wrong with his head!"

"Better than destroying a tree? He's completely lost it!"

"The trash has finally gone insane!"

Even Vera frowned slightly, thinking that Patrick was being arrogant even after it was pretty obvious that he lost this one. She hated people who couldn't accept defeat gracefully.

Patrick's face churned with irritation.

He'd forgotten how blind this era was. They were so obsessed with loud, flashy destruction that they couldn't recognize real power when it sat right in front of them.

"Are you all really blind?" he said.

His voice dropped, carrying a weight that made the air suddenly thick and hard to breathe. He didn't point or gesture. 

Then Vera's face widened with shock. She was the first to see it.

Her breath caught as her enhanced senses picked up the massive disturbance rippling through the surrounding area. Her perfect composure shattered as she looked past Patrick, past the destroyed trunk, past the obvious.

Then others did and Jarden was the last to notice.

It wasn't just one mouse.

All along the walls, dozens of mice were jerking in the same rigid pattern. Spiders dropped from the ceiling, legs twitching in unison. Beetles scattered across the floor in perfect synchronization.

But it didn't stop there.

Through the windows, they watched smaller birds dropping from the sky at a really far radius. Pigeons, sparrows, ravens—all falling like unnatural rain, their wings locked, bodies seized by something invisible and overwhelming.

Stray cats in the courtyard. Dogs near the academy gates. Every creature below a certain size within a massive radius, all moving to the same silent command.

All the little animals, all of them were jerking.

Hundreds of them.

The gray cat hadn't moved from its spot. It sat exactly where Patrick had left it, its tail wrapped around its paws, looking bored while controlling more creatures simultaneously than most tamers could handle in their entire careers.

The laughter died instantly and was replaced with a dead look of astonishment at what laid before their eyes.

Silence crashed over the room like a physical weight. Their eyes went wide, faces pale, as the true scope finally registered in their brains.

Vera's hand moved to her chest, calculating the radius, and counting the animals, measuring the level of control being exerted without any visible effort from either tamer or beast.

Jarden's confident smile was gone completely.

His face cycled through confusion, disbelief, and something he hadn't felt in years—genuine fear.

The crowd outside had gone dead silent, unable to express the sight that was before their eyes.

Students who had been laughing moments before now stared through the windows at the hundreds of creatures moving in perfect, terrifying synchronization. Birds continued falling from the sky in the distance, all of them jerking to the same rhythm as the mouse that had started it all.

Patrick stood in the center of it with his hands at his sides, expression returning to that unreadable calm.

The small gray cat yawned.

"Now," Patrick said quietly, "do you still think that was pathetic control?" Nobody answered, nobody could or even dared.