Ryuunosuke Ryu should have been someone extraordinary. Ever since middle school, his hands possessed a magical touch—not in a mystical sense, but in an almost supernatural ability to train and guide others.
Wild, aggressive cats could be tamed within a week under his guidance. Dogs traumatized by abuse could learn to trust humans again through his patience and unique techniques alone.
Teachers at school were amazed watching Ryu transform the basketball team—which usually suffered crushing defeats—into regional champions seemingly overnight.
It wasn't just sports either. He could train his shy classmates to speak confidently in front of the class, or turn troublemakers into diligent students.
"Ryu has this third eye for seeing people's hidden potential," his guidance counselor once said.
"This kid is going to make it big someday."
Unfortunately, that prediction would never come to pass.
The problems began when Ryu graduated high school with perfect grades and was accepted into a prestigious university for sports psychology—his dream field.
But three days before registration, his father, who worked as a contractor, went bankrupt after being cheated by his business partner. The family's savings vanished, and even their house was seized by the bank.
"Forgive me, Ryu," his father whispered while clutching the university acceptance certificate that now meant nothing.
"I've destroyed your future."
Ryu was forced to take odd jobs to support his family. He tried applying as a trainer at various sports clubs, but without a college degree, no one would hire him.
"Talent alone isn't enough," they said.
"We need credentials."
Years passed. Ryu moved from one job to another—working as a personal trainer for arrogant wealthy clients, coaching children at orphanages for meager wages, even training police dogs for a time.
Every time he began to achieve success, bad luck would strike him down.
When he was about to be appointed as a permanent coach for a junior soccer club, a bribery scandal involving the director led to the club's dissolution.
When he finally got an offer to train a talented young athlete for the Olympics, a car accident left him bedridden in the hospital for six months—long enough to lose that golden opportunity.
"Why am I always so unlucky?" he muttered while staring at the cracked hospital ceiling.
"Am I cursed?"
"The only fortune I have... is just this talent that will never amount to anything without validation."
"How pathetic..."
At age 32, Ryu finally accepted the bitter reality. The man once praised as a "miraculous trainer" now worked at a cheap traveling circus called "Wonderland Circus"—a place where dreams came to die.
This wasn't the glamorous circus you see on television. It was a shabby show that traveled from small town to small town, with sick elderly elephants, toothless lions, and clowns who got drunk every night.
Ryu's job was to train these miserable animals to perform simple tricks that barely qualified as entertainment.
He felt empathy for all the circus animals who were treated so cruelly and miserably, but he couldn't do anything about it because it would affect his own livelihood.
"Look at our genius trainer," mocked Mario, the circus owner with his pot belly and breath that always reeked of alcohol.
"I heard he wanted to be an Olympic coach, and now he's ended up training that old elephant to stand on two legs!"
"A young man like him should have had more realistic dreams from the start instead of wanting to be a trainer." Mario drained his alcohol and laughed with his cronies.
They all laughed at Ryu endlessly until his mental state was truly affected, made worse when they mocked him directly while he was cleaning up all the animal waste.
Every night, Ryu returned to his cramped trailer that leaked when it rained. He would stare at his old photos—trophies he'd once won, certificates of achievement, even pictures with athletes who had become world-famous thanks to his past guidance.
"What good is all this talent," he whispered while wiping the dusty photos,
"if I end up in a place like this?"
"Damn it!" Ryu destroyed all those photos with an expression of complete disgust.
He was trapped in his circus job forever, and would never be able to turn back time no matter what.
...
...
That night, heavy rain poured down. The circus show was canceled because the tent was leaking everywhere, and only three spectators showed up—a grandmother and her two grandchildren who felt sorry seeing the circus's shabby banner.
Ryu was cleaning the elephant pen when he heard a commotion. Clara, the female lion he had patiently trained for three years, suddenly went berserk from stress caused by the thunder. Her cage broke, and Clara ran in panic toward the main road.
"Clara!" Ryu shouted, immediately chasing after her without thinking of his own safety.
He almost succeeded in calming Clara at the roadside when truck headlights blinded his eyes.
The circus animal transport truck driven by Mario—who was heavily drunk—was speeding and couldn't stop.
In the last second, Ryu threw Clara far from the road.
Though it sounded impossible given their weight difference, Ryu was a man with strong physical capabilities and managed to do it.
The lion was safe.
But...
CRASH!
Ryu's body was thrown several meters. Blood flowed from his head, and his vision slowly blurred.
The last thing he saw was Clara howling sadly at the roadside, as if realizing that the person who cared about her most had just left.
"Ah... So this is it..."
"Again and again... this bad luck never ends..."
"I... I don't want to die like this," he whispered with labored breathing.
"But... will the afterlife give me the luck I need in every aspect...?"
Ryu reached out his arm, "No... I still want to live..."
"I... still have so many things I want to prove..."
As his consciousness began to fade, memories of the past spun rapidly through his mind.
All the people he had trained with sincerity, all the potential he had unlocked, all the moments of happiness when seeing his students succeed—everything felt so distant.
"If only... if only I had another chance," he murmured while gazing at the stars barely visible behind the storm clouds.
"I want to prove that this talent isn't worthless. I want... I want to become the greatest trainer who ever lived..."
His breathing stopped.
Ryuunosuke Ryu, the genius trainer whose life was destroyed by cruel fate, died on the muddy street with only an old lion as his final witness.
But death, it turned out, was only the beginning of the real adventure.
And somewhere far away, in a different dimension, a mysterious system began to blink...
[SEARCHING FOR COMPATIBLE HOST...]
[FOUND: RYUUNOSUKE RYU]
[TALENT: TRAINER]
[REGRET: MAXIMUM]
[DESIRE FOR SECOND CHANCE: DETECTED]
[INITIALIZING BEAST MAIDEN TRAINING SYSTEM...]
[SOUL TRANSFER... COMMENCING.]
...
...
Darkness. Absolute silence.
Ryuunosuke Ryu floated in a void that had no form, time, or space.
His consciousness drifted at the boundary between existence and nothingness—too alive to truly die, yet too dead to truly live.
There was no pain. No cold or heat. Just... emptiness.
But in the midst of that emptiness, something began to move.
[SYSTEM ACTIVE]
That voice—if it could be called a voice—echoed within Ryu's soul without passing through ears.
Not a whisper, not a shout, but something that embedded itself directly into his consciousness like thoughts that weren't his own.
[SCANNING TARGET SOUL...]
[NAME: RYUUNOSUKE RYU]
[AGE AT DEATH: 32 YEARS]
[LAST PROFESSION: CIRCUS TRAINER]
"Who..." Ryu mumbled in his thoughts, his voice sounding distant and echoing.
"Who's speaking?"
[CALM YOURSELF, CANDIDATE HOST. YOU ARE CURRENTLY UNDERGOING DIMENSIONAL TRANSFER.]
[I AM THE BEAST MAIDEN TRAINING SYSTEM—A SYSTEM THAT WILL GIVE YOU A SECOND CHANCE.]
Ryu's consciousness began to gather slowly, like mist condensing into water.
He could "see" without eyes—a series of glowing blue-green holographic panels floating before him, displaying data about himself.
"A second chance?" he whispered. His final memories began to return—the rain, Clara going berserk, the blinding truck lights, the pain that tore through his body.
"I... I really died?"
[CORRECT. YOU DEPARTED THIS WORLD AT 23:47 EARTH TIME, AFTER BEING STRUCK BY AN ANIMAL TRANSPORT TRUCK.]
[HOWEVER, YOUR DEATH IS NOT THE END. THE SYSTEM HAS CHOSEN YOU AS HOST BASED ON SPECIFIC CRITERIA.]
A new panel appeared, displaying graphs and blinking numbers:
[HOST SELECTION CRITERIA:]
TRAINER TALENT: SSS RANK
REGRET LEVEL: MAXIMUM
DESIRE TO LIVE AGAIN: 99.8%
BEAST MAIDEN COMPATIBILITY: PERFECT
GROWTH POTENTIAL: UNLIMITED
"Beast... Maiden?" Ryu tried to understand the foreign term.
"What do you mean by—"
[BEAST MAIDENS ARE HYBRID ENTITIES BETWEEN HUMANS AND BEASTS, RARE CREATURES WITH EXTRAORDINARY POWER WHO REQUIRE THE RIGHT TRAINER TO UNLOCK THEIR POTENTIAL.]
[YOU, RYUUNOSUKE RYU, POSSESS THE NATURAL TALENT THAT WILL ENABLE YOU TO BECOME THE STRONGEST MASTER TRAINER IN THE NEW WORLD.]
Images began appearing around Ryu—visions of a world filled with magic, fantastical creatures, and stunning female figures with animal characteristics.
Some had wolf ears and tails, others had dragon wings, some had sharp eyes like eagles.
"This... this is like a dream," Ryu murmured, fascinated yet confused.
[NOT A DREAM, CANDIDATE HOST. THIS IS YOUR NEW REALITY.]
[THIS SYSTEM WILL EQUIP YOU WITH THE ABILITY TO TRAIN, DEVELOP, AND LEAD BEAST MAIDENS. THE MORE YOU TRAIN, THE STRONGER YOU BECOME.]
[BUT REMEMBER—THIS POWER DOES NOT COME WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES.]
The "voice" of the system changed tone, becoming more serious and profound.
[THE WORLD YOU WILL ENTER IS FILLED WITH DANGER. BEAST MAIDENS ARE HUNTED, ENSLAVED, EVEN WORSHIPPED AS GODS. CONFLICTS BETWEEN RACES, KINGDOMS, AND DARK FORCES CONSTANTLY THREATEN.]
[YOU WILL FACE COUNTLESS ENEMIES, SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGES, AND DIFFICULT CHOICES THAT WILL TEST WHO YOU TRULY ARE.]
Ryu fell silent, trying to absorb all this information. Part of him still didn't believe it, considering this all a hallucination before death.
But another part—the deepest part of his soul—felt this was real. More real than anything he had ever experienced.
"Why me?" he finally asked.
"Of all the people in the world, why was I chosen?"
[BECAUSE YOU POSSESS SOMETHING RARE, RYUUNOSUKE RYU. NOT JUST TALENT, BUT ALSO HEART.]
[THE SYSTEM HAS OBSERVED YOU FOR YEARS. THE WAY YOU TREATED EVERY CREATURE YOU TRAINED—NOT AS TOOLS, BUT AS PARTNERS.]
[THE WAY YOU WILLINGLY SACRIFICED YOUR LIFE TO SAVE AN OLD LION THAT WASN'T EVEN YOURS.]
[THAT IS WHAT'S NEEDED TO BECOME A TRUE BEAST MAIDEN MASTER.]
A vision of Clara—the female lion he saved—appeared before him. Those old yellow eyes full of trust and affection. For a moment, Ryu felt his chest tighten with emotion.
[BUT BEFORE THE TRANSFER IS COMPLETE, YOU MUST MAKE A CHOICE.]
[YOU CAN REFUSE THIS OFFER. THE SYSTEM WILL LET YOUR SOUL PASS PEACEFULLY TO THE AFTERLIFE.]
[NO SUFFERING, NO STRUGGLE—JUST ETERNAL PEACE.]
[OR...]
[YOU CAN ACCEPT THIS SYSTEM AND BEGIN A NEW LIFE. A LIFE FULL OF CHALLENGES, DANGERS, BUT ALSO UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES TO PROVE YOURSELF.]
Silence enveloped the space between dimensions. Ryu felt the weight of this choice—not just for himself, but for all the Beast Maidens who would depend on him.
"If I accept this," he said softly.
"What guarantee is there that I won't fail again? What guarantee that I won't disappoint them like I disappointed myself?"
[THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES, RYUUNOSUKE RYU. THE SYSTEM ONLY PROVIDES TOOLS—HOW YOU USE THEM DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON YOU.]
[BUT REMEMBER THIS: YOUR PAST FAILURES WEREN'T DUE TO LACK OF TALENT OR DEDICATION.]
[THEY WERE BECAUSE THE WORLD DIDN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT STAGE TO SHINE.]
[THIS TIME, THAT STAGE WILL BE YOURS.]
Ryu closed his eyes—or at least performed the mental equivalent.
He remembered all the people he had ever trained, all the smiles of satisfaction when his students succeeded, all the nights he spent thinking of the best ways to help others reach their potential.
"Alright," he whispered finally.
"I accept."
[CONFIRMATION RECEIVED. BEGINNING REINCARNATION PROCESS...]
[NEW HOST REGISTERED: RYUUNOSUKE RYU]
[BEAST MAIDEN TRAINING SYSTEM... ONLINE]
[WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD, MASTER.]
Blue-green light began to envelop Ryu's consciousness, and he felt a strange sensation—like being pulled through an extremely long tunnel at incredible speed.
The system's voice began to fade, becoming an increasingly distant echo.
[TRANSFER PROGRESS: 15%... 34%... 67%...]
[PREPARING IDENTICAL PHYSICAL BODY...]
[INSTALLING BASIC ABILITIES WITH FULL POTENTIAL...]
[PROVIDING STRONGEST WHIP WEAPON...]
[ADJUSTING TO NEW WORLD LAWS...]
[89%... 95%... 99%...]
[TRANSFER COMPLETE.]
[WELCOME BACK TO LIFE, RYUUNOSUKE RYU.]
And then... darkness swallowed everything once again.
But this time, the darkness was warm. Like the warmth of a womb promising new birth.
Ryu didn't know that somewhere in a vastly different world, the body of a man the same age with a similar face was lying beneath a large tree, his breathing becoming regular again after nearly dying from a monster attack.
And in the corner of his closed eyes, a small panel blinked slowly:
[SYSTEM READY TO ACTIVATE AT ANY TIME.]
[WAITING FOR HOST TO AWAKEN...]