Significance Tough soft materials usually show strain softening. Avoiding strain softening, although important for practical application, had not been a focus of research. Recently, a series of tough hydrogels made from hyperconnective physical networks and linear polymers as molecular glue show extraordinarily large nonsoftening, quasi-linear but inelastic deformation. Here, we studied the molecular mechanism of this behavior and clarified that it is a direct consequence of the interplay between hyperconnectivity of the skeleton network and the stress transfer through molecular glues. We believe that this work gives important insight on the design and development of tough soft materials without strain softening.