Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1153 - Taming the Old World - Myths - 2

These massive, bizarre formations, sprawling across the swamp in countless terrifying shapes, were merely the preliminary, incubatory step in the development of the beast that would eventually become the true guardian. And exactly as Ren had suspected, they had absolutely nothing to do with his Spore-Fungus or the imaginary dragon from his storybook.

Although...

After forcibly downloading the apocalyptic history of the ruins directly from the crystal supercomputer, Ren couldn't help but wonder if these specific, bizarre ecosystems had served as inspiration for his beast's architectural design.

Shadows conceptually seemed like the absolute, polarizing opposite of Light. But in reality, one fundamentally could not exist without the other. Just as any, be it the small or the towering plants could not survive without the hidden, decomposing network of fungi breaking down the soil beneath them and helping their roots.

Ren thought about the standard roster of the cheap, gray eggs. The plant types were always the primary, overwhelming option to take the sun. But nestled right alongside them were the spores, and the dark, shadowy frog that slowly, painstakingly mutated into half brilliant white. He had a profound, sinking sensation that this specific trio of "garbage" beasts was deeply, architecturally connected to the cosmic engine.

Perhaps all three biological paths were entirely viable mediums designed to inherit the localized administrative bypass he had accidentally hijacked in that cave, just executing the hijack in different ways.

But it was all just heavy, abstract theory for now. There was absolutely zero tactical value in chewing on a puzzle he couldn't currently solve.

♢♢♢♢

For Ren and Zhao, the Black Swamp posed absolutely zero physical threat as long as they maintained a high altitude.

The gargantuan, grazing slugs couldn't possibly snare them with their net-like maws if they never touched the viscous, rotting canopy. And the suffocating, gravity-multiplying aura that naturally saturated the deep swamp natural shadow dissipated completely before it reached too high.

From their cruising altitude, the horrifying ecosystem below was someone else's problem. It wasn't theirs.

Riding on the back of his Mantis, Ren kept his eyes focused down, aggressively expanding his mana perception there. He was meticulously pinging until the bedrock deep beneath the mud, desperately hunting for the buried stone door of the final Wood ruin, while Zhao acted as his eyes in the sky.

Because the sky had its own terrifying apex predators.

The natural predators of the massive, black spheres were gargantuan, flying Light beasts. They were basically living, aggressive clouds, a highly specialized Light-element variant whose evolutionary potential had already completely capped out. They belonged to the exact same evolutionary family tree as Mayo's avian beast, but they had ultimately traded their future growth potential for raw, overwhelming size and immediate firepower at Gold.

Mayo's beast, which Ren had personally guided down the correct evolutionary path, could comfortably breach the Platinum rank without shattering its potential like this end of the line option. These massive bird-clouds were stronger now but absolutely could not enter the next ring.

They were highly irritating, but they didn't pose a genuine, lethal threat to Ren and Zhao as they were top Gold 3 power but in the end still Gold.

Aside from occasionally eclipsing the sun with their massive, bloated bodies, they were little more than flying nuisances. Whenever Zhao casually called out that one of the aggressive clouds was banking toward them, trying to catch his Mist Owl or the smaller Gold 1 Mantis of the distracted Ren off guard, Ren simply executed a fast, temporal dual-fusion with his Hydra and his Wolverine for some seconds while still looking down from the back of his Mantis.

The resulting, explosive spike of Platinum level aura of power was always more than enough to instantly terrify the giant bird-clouds away. Absolutely no wild beast possessed the suicidal courage to approach something that radiated the suffocating scent of a predator operating on a vastly superior tier, regardless of how physically small Ren looked from a distance.

Ren was deeply submerged in his subterranean scanning, operating on pure, mechanical routine. Zhao was flying alongside him, casually chatting about how incredibly lucky he had been to get rotated out of his usual grueling shifts to fly and explore with Ren thanks to Victor's elite aerial squad for a few days.

Then, a sudden, massive shadow swallowed them entirely.

Zhao instantly stopped talking. The silence was abrupt and heavy.

Ren sighed internally, assuming another one of those massive, irritating oversized cloud chickens was making a dive for them.

He seamlessly primed his mana, fully prepared to forcefully fuse the exact millisecond Zhao gave the verbal cue. He waited with the bored, practiced routine of a man who had already terrified dozens of these stupid clouds away today, seeing absolutely no reason why this encounter would be any different.

But the verbal cue from Zhao never came.

Instead, a violently cold shiver ripped down Ren's spine when he probed his mana senses to the sky. He felt something entirely alien, something deeply wrong, bleeding into the ambient ether.

The shadow currently being cast over them was fundamentally different than any of these clouds ones. It wasn't the soft, diffuse, wide-spread darkness of a fluffy bird-cloud momentarily blocking the sun.

This shadow was terrifyingly sharp. And it was far, far too massive.

♢♢♢♢

"Hide your mana," Zhao ordered. "Do not fuse."

Zhao's voice was completely stripped of its usual, conversational ease. It was replaced by a rigid, razor-sharp urgency that instantly spiked Ren's heart rate.

For a brief, agonizing microsecond, genuine alarm flared in Ren's chest.

Zhao's command violently contradicted every single instinct Ren had rigorously built over the last few days of deep-zone exploration. Fusing with his beast had become absolute muscle memory. It was his automatic, flawless response to the massive bird-clouds. Spiking his aura to project the suffocating presence of an apex predator was exactly how he reliably terrified away anything foolish enough to approach their airspace.

For Zhao to suddenly demand the exact opposite, to explicitly ask him to cower and smother his presence rather than violently assert dominance, surely carried a terrifying implication.