Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1161 - Taming the Old World - Guardians - 3

This wasn't a battlefield, it wasn't a migratory resting point… It was a farm.

It was a sprawling, corruption engineered hatchery where strong mutants, concealed by the invisible runes carved into the volcanic rock, executed its gruesome cannibalistic cycle in a perfectly controlled environment. The swarm was deliberately concentrating its biomass, forcefully churning out Platinum-tier horrors.

They were manufacturing the exact siege weapons required to assault the Fire Guardian.

Ren briefly considered diving into the crater and exterminating them right now to buy humanity some extra time and...

'Time for what?'

He paused, letting the adrenaline recede, and studied the writhing mass below with a colder, more analytical eye.

The vanguard didn't add up yet. To successfully butcher an elemental guardian in its own domain, Selthia needed a bit more firepower than what was currently squirming in this volcano. The little Witch lending her brain to the crystal of corruption knew that better than anyone. That was precisely why the swarm was still anchored here, gorging itself hiding and growing, rather than marching on the dragon's nest.

She was still fattening the front lines... So she needed more time.

Ren's thoughts drifted to the Light Guardian now. Since it was the only guardian dragon he hadn't checked on, on this side.

He hovered motionless in the rising thermals, eyes staring empty at the ash clouds.

'No…'

The Light Guardian possessed the innate ability to rapidly heal itself. Ren had run the battle simulations for that specific one in his head countless times, and the conclusion was always identical. Assaulting the Light Guardian was a logistical nightmare. Even if Selthia threw her 8 stolen artifacts at it, even with these newly scaled Platinum mutants acting as vanguard, the fight would devolve into a grueling, stagnant war of attrition lasting months.

The Light Guardian was not going to fall tomorrow. It wouldn't fall next week. It probably wouldn't fall this month, even if the corrupted swarm had been bashing against its defenses since that day Selthia acquired this new trick.

The Light Guardian was not the immediate threat to the board.

The true, existential danger lay with the foundational elemental rings of Yano.

The base elements.

Fire.

Water.

Earth.

Wind.

Wood.

These guardians did regenerate but had lacked the more absurd regenerative capabilities of Light or the suffocating, impenetrable defenses of Shadow.

They could be overwhelmed much easier. They could fall quickly under a concentrated assault. And every single guardian that fell would likely grant Selthia a surge in power, snowballing her army until the remaining dragons were crushed.

♢♢♢♢

Ren looked toward the west.

The untamed Fire zone stretched out before him, rippling with heat. Down in the hollow volcano, the incubating mutants were preparing to eat it.

He slowly turned his head to look east.

Miles away, small and obscured by the horizon, was the city. A city that had absolutely no idea how drastically the rules of the war had shifted in such little time again. The Vanguard was currently celebrating his autonomous wooden towers, genuinely believing they had finally dominated the mutant threat. The citizens were sleeping soundly, entirely oblivious to the fact that the mindless creatures crashing against their walls yesterday were now devouring Platinum apex predators today.

His prized towers were not going to be enough if Selthia suddenly changed her target…

That was the bigger problem.

The Wall would shatter if all these hyper-evolved beasts marched on it and no double tamer was there to fuse and stop them. Ren had meticulously calibrated those wooden sentinels to slaughter common Silvers and Golds.

They were built for yesterday's enemy.

Against a swarm of mutants that had successfully cannibalized Platinum beasts to inflate their own mass, against an army that fundamentally ignored the biological damage and rank ceilings everyone took for granted for much longer, those defensive monoliths would be nothing more than a temporary speed bump.

'Is the city even safe right now?'

Ren forced himself to execute the coldest, most ruthless calculation he had allowed himself in months. If Selthia had already finished conquering her own elemental dragons over in Yino, she could pivot at any moment. She could hurl a wave of unparalleled devastation directly at Yano.

And yet he would not go back right now…

Selphira, Julius, and the Vanguard elites possessed the sheer firepower to halt a Platinum-tier siege.

But against how many? How much time?

How many elite warriors could the Vanguard realistically afford to send out here to help him secure the Fire Dragon without fatally compromising the Wall?

Pulling Lin, Zhao, Selphira, or Victor off the parapets to fight a guardian in the diamond ring meant punching a massive hole for any of their missing zones in humanity's only shield, right at the exact moment that shield might face its greatest test.

Selthia could be waiting for that exact moment, that exact mistake. She might be banking on humanity dividing its strongest pieces.

No…

That wasn't the right question. Ren forced himself to strip away the hypotheticals and face the reality of his own capabilities.

'How confident am I that I can kill the Fire Dragon alone right now?'

He hung suspended in the blistering air, floating high above the Platinum ring. The searing heat radiated from the earth, and the hollow volcano continued to churn with rotting meat directly below his boots.

He reached out and brushed his fingers against the invisible fabric of his shadow space.

He didn't just check his inventory. He felt the sheer, crushing density of the power he had hoarded. He felt the latent, apocalyptic power of his sleeping beasts waiting in his chest.

He closed his eyes and thought for a long moment.

'I can.'

It wouldn't be too easy. The margin for error would be somewhat small if he didn't want to end close to a draw like Dragarion…

But he had the output to do it cleanly, letting Selthia's preparations eat his dust.

And if he could do it alone, then he didn't need to weaken the city's defenses by a single extra soldier. There was no need to drag anyone off the Wall. He wouldn't give Selthia a single open window to exploit while the Vanguard was distracted fighting a dragon.

He was enough.