Read Novel Full Chapter 1151 - Taming the Old World - Part 2
Chapter 1151 - Taming the Old World - Part 2
These aristocratic raised guards were a great asset. Normally, the high-house girls were required to be flanked by two elite guards at all times by their families. But in practical, frontline reality, if Ren requested them for his own sector, the girls didn't actually need them.
The defensive zones held by Luna, Larissa, and Liora already boasted an incredibly high saturation of Gold Tamers possessing redundant elemental abilities, more than covering the essential roles their Maids normally provided.
The aerial superiority provided by Mayo, the dense structural reinforcement of wood and rock, and the defensive coverage executed by Matilda and Maria... all of those tactical gaps could now be comfortably filled by other new frontline Gold Tamers.
The royal guards, operating as a synchronized, lethal unit, were undeniably special and terrifyingly strong. But honestly speaking, they remained a replaceable asset for the girls. The Maids' secondary beasts still lacked the overwhelming power required to completely alter a battlefield, and they were far from their fusions yet. Therefore, standard Gold Tamers remained a perfectly viable logistical substitution.
Even if they were theoretically replaceable in the North and West, the Maids were fiercely strong. They possessed a terrifying, flawless combat coordination born from years of elite experience that vastly outclassed standard military squads at their same rank.
Loaning them to Ren didn't genuinely weaken any of the three girls' sectors in a meaningful way, but it drastically reinforced a Southern zone that desperately required raw, trustworthy strength.
So, with his territory finally secured by people he trusted with his life, Ren was finally free to aggressively accelerate the objective he had been chasing for months.
The absolute, complete sweep of the Gold 3 ring.
♢♢♢♢
Only the Northern quadrant remained. The elemental Shadow zone belonging to Luna and Sirius.
He had started his sweep in the absolute South, his own native zone of elemental Light, and systematically scoured five subsequent massive territories: Earth, Wind, Fire, Wood, and Water. Because the vast, concentric rings surrounding the city, much like absolutely everything else in this world, were strictly organized by the primordial elements. Even if that ancient organization wasn't immediately obvious to the naked eye in the first rings.
In the inner, weaker rings, the elemental divergence wasn't truly visible. At the lower biological tiers, much like a newborn Wolverine, the ambient creatures simply didn't possess a high enough internal mana density to physically express a dominant elemental nature. They were not much more than merely biological animals shaped by the physical constraints of their ecosystem, boasting flat, almost non-mana abilities without a very defined elemental tint for most.
But when you pushed deep into the crushing mana density of the Gold 3 zone, the primordial alignment became glaringly obvious. And once you crossed the threshold into the Platinum-tier rings, the true zones of dragonization, the ambient's element physically branded the ecosystem with a force that no explorer could ever mistake.
The Gold 3 ring was already hovering so dangerously close to the Platinum threshold that the ambient elements were very obvious.
The southernmost zone had been the first he cleared: the elemental zone of Light. But that didn't mean absolutely every single creature roaming the plains was a Light-attribute beast; nature was never that pristine or clean. But the localized terrain granted them such a massive advantage that they formed the dominant majority.
And yet, even while operating at a severe environmental disadvantage, beasts possessing the exact opposite elemental affinity often developed highly specialized predatory adaptations based on elemental weaknesses. They functioned exactly like the opportunistic predators in the lower rings carving out a brutal existence by preying on the dominant species.
And paradoxically, that inherent clash of affinities occasionally cracked the ecosystem wide open, allowing entirely unrelated elemental beasts to slip into the elemental imbalance and thrive too.
So the ancient terrain heavily tilted the evolutionary scale toward one specific element, but it absolutely never decided the war of life entirely.
But returning to the map...
Ren had already meticulously explored practically every single inch of these newly defined, elementally heavy zones.
He had swept the Plains of Light. The soil in that specific Gold 3 sector was so heavily saturated with radiant light mana that it had become fiercely, blindingly reflective. The sunlight bounced off the earth, turning the very ambient environment into a searing weapon aggressively trying to blind any creature without specialized ocular adaptations.
He had also mapped the Mineral Hills. It was a jagged labyrinth of rock formations that the ambient Earth mana had hardened into a state of near-indestructibility. It was a terrifying place where getting lost was lethally easy, where flying high above only revealed a fraction of the deeply complex, layered surface, and where the unforgiving stone walls had a nasty habit of never yielding an inch to half-assed control.
He had navigated the Whispering Clouds. A massive, low-visibility dead zone generated by a violently swirling mix of Wind mana and the heavy, ambient moisture produced by the local beasts. The zone didn't just physically blind an explorer with its turbulent fog; it violently warped and tangled the ambient sound waves, ensuring a Tamer couldn't even trust their own ears. It was a lethal environment that seemed perfectly engineered by nature to completely disorient two primary human senses simultaneously.
He had also mapped the Explosive Forest. A blazing, volatile ecosystem choked with spiritual beasts and flora deeply addicted to searing heat and violent surprises. The dense Fire mana caused the very vegetation to physically react in explosive, terrifying ways that an unwary explorer learned to fear very, very quickly, provided they survived the first brutal lesson.
He had navigated the Giant Forest. Zhao had already mapped that colossal, Wood-heavy territory in meticulous detail again not long ago, so Ren had only needed to conduct a rapid, high-altitude sweep to ensure no structural gaps remained in their intelligence.
He had finally crossed the Heavy Lake. The sprawling, Water-elemental zone had actually proven vastly less problematic than he had originally anticipated, purely thanks to his flawless mastery over ice. The ambient Water mana was violently compressed into a crushing, crystalline mass, but it became surprisingly manageable the second Ren realized he could simply freeze a solid see-through highway straight across the surface.
Only the Black Swamp remained.
The Black Swamp was the absolute domain of Shadows.
The oppressive, suffocating Dark mana saturated the air so heavily that it actively absorbed the sunlight before it could ever reach the earth to green the vegetation or evaporate the stagnant moisture. It created an ecosystem that was perpetually cold, yet paradoxically, suffocatingly humid and strangely warm. It was a bleak, rotting place where the sun possessed virtually no physical influence over the world. The deep gloom wasn't merely the passive absence of light; it was a hungry, active presence that actively devoured clarity, reflecting a muted, decaying world strictly painted in dead, muted tones.
It was the final, missing piece of the massive Gold 3 puzzle. It was Luna and Sirius's elemental zone. If the Wood ruin wasn't buried here, he would have to completely rewrite his entire search depth parameter.
Ren stood on the edge of the dead, rotting tree line, staring out into the vast, suffocating darkness of the swamp. He felt the familiar, cold blend of caution and burning, insatiable curiosity that always preceded the exploration of a zone he didn't fully know.
It was time to push a little deeper into the dark.