Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1168 - Taming the Old World - Safeguarding Home - 3

Finally, the carriage slowed as it approached the bridge.

Looming directly ahead was a colossal gate. It was essentially a massive tunnel carved straight through the Great Wall, which now extended deep into the central city, effectively closing off the first half of the defensive circle.

Before passing through the shadow of the gate, Li looked out the windows one last time.

To his left, the royal castle pierced the clouds. It was the absolute seat of power, the beating heart that had violently reordered the world he grew up in. To his right, fading into the hazy distance, lay the Southern perimeter. His home... The exact spot on the Wall he would return to in two days.

He was only going to be gone for a little over one day.

Yet, a strange, hollow sensation settled in his stomach. This was the very first time he was actually leaving his city. It was the first time he was crossing the threshold into Yino, rather than just staring at its distant silhouette from the parapets.

The carriage rolled forward into the tunnel.

He sat with that weird vertigo for a moment looking at the insanely deep rift. It was also the feeling of crossing a border that had always just been an imaginary line drawn on a map, only to realize it was a very real place.

Li crossed the massive, multi-kilometer bridge spanning the divide, officially entering Yino.

His initial impression upon exiting the mirrored gate was surprisingly positive.

The immediate border zone, which historically had been a tense, heavily armed military checkpoint where two rival powers stared each other down with open suspicion, had completely transformed. It was now an explosive, chaotic bazaar specifically dedicated to trading local Yino materials.

Families that had been absolutely decimated during the horrific crystallization era, bloodlines that had lost every single Silver and Gold Tamer they possessed to the tragedy, were finally healing.

They walked the market proudly flanked by a brand-new generation of Gold Tamers. These were young kids who had received the exact same lifeline Ren had tossed to Yano. They even used the same Spore method, received the same financial backing, and climbed the same grueling ladder up to the Gold tier.

They didn't boast even a third of the total military numbers Yano commanded. But it was enough…

It was more than enough for the vast majority of Yino's surviving families to finally live comfortably. A reality that would have sounded like a naive fairy tale just some years ago.

However, as the carriage pushed past the bustling market and ventured deeper into the territory, the illusion of prosperity shattered. The contrast between the two cities became suffocating.

The further Li traveled from the bridge, the emptier the world became.

The second half of Yino was a ghost town. It was practically abandoned.

It looked infinitely worse than the Goldcrest slums of the old days. It looked worse than the dirt-poor outskirts where Li himself had starved as a child.

Row after row of hollow houses stared back at him with empty windows. Entire avenues lay untouched, buried under thick layers of unbroken dust. It was the absolute silence of a place that used to hold thousands of beating hearts, now reduced to nothing.

Logically, Li knew it was to be expected. Yino had lost a staggering percentage of its population to the crystallization. The survivors had naturally retreated inward, fleeing toward the bridge, clustering near Yano for the illusion of safety. They had permanently abandoned the remote districts that simply lacked the manpower to defend or populate.

Even knowing the history, witnessing it firsthand was a heavy blow.

It was one thing to read a report stating Yino was half-empty. It was an entirely different experience to ride a carriage through miles of dead streets, feeling the crushing weight of all that abandoned space.

Half of a massive city, permanently reduced to a rotting memory of itself.

♢♢♢♢

Li finally reached the defensive perimeter.

The stone of the Wall on Yino's side had a different texture to it, weathered by the ocean winds and patched with unfamiliar materials. Walking along the wide parapets, the first mission he ran into was Min.

Min was already commanding a highly respectable fraction of the garrison stationed on this side of the divide. He wasn't a General like Ren. He didn't have the entire territory resting on his shoulders, but he held a solid, high-ranking post earned entirely on his own merit. He was one of the few true strongest dual-contract Tamers in the city. And unlike Ren, Min hadn't bothered to hide his real name or his power when he first enlisted.

His irrepressible, joking nature had actually worked against him in the beginning.

The grizzled frontline soldiers simply didn't know how to respect a commander who laughed at practically everything and seemed fundamentally incapable of taking military protocol seriously.

But that lack of discipline lasted exactly up until the day they watched him fight.

The moment Min engaged his fusion, unleashing the raw, unfiltered aura of a dual-contract prodigy across the courtyard, the whispering stopped. After seeing him casually dismantle a high-numbers threat while barely breaking a sweat, not a single grunt ever dared to question his orders again.

Lately, the troops had even grown deeply thankful for his laid-back attitude. They realized that a man wielding that kind of terrifying power combined with a strict, unforgiving temperament would have been an absolute nightmare to serve under. Min's constant humor was a bizarre, much-needed relief valve for the entire ghost-town-protecting sector.

Min spotted Li approaching and greeted him with a wide, genuine grin.

They immediately fell into an easy rhythm, leaning against the stone crenellations and swapping jokes about Ren. It was the comfortable banter of two old friends teaming up to mock a third. Min absolutely lost his breath laughing when Li told him about the "Glorious General" nickname circulating in Yano. He kept repeating it between bursts of laughter, wiping a tear from his eye.

In exchange, Min shared a few absurd stories of his own. He talked about clueless rookies, boring night shifts, and the mundane daily life of a high-tier Tamer who vastly preferred cracking a joke over intimidating his subordinates.

For a little while, standing on the edge of the Yino wall, there was nothing but laughter.

♢♢♢♢

When Li finally mentioned he needed to get moving, Min flat-out refused to let him go.

"Leaving already? Absolutely not," Min said. He threw a heavy, familiar arm around Li's shoulders, entirely ignoring personal space. "You literally just got here. Look around. Take a really good look. Do you see a siege happening? Any emergencies? I don't see a thing..."

Min gestured broadly toward the plains below. The perimeter was completely, eerily dead.

"We haven't had a genuine attack in weeks," Min continued, thoroughly pleased with his own argument. "Ren's wooden towers do absolutely all the heavy lifting now. He planted those things months ago, they grew on their own, and now they just swallow the few stray mutants dumb enough to wander out of the tree line. At this point, my prestigious position as a frontline commander consists entirely of watching those giant weeds grow."

He chuckled, taking a sip from a canteen.

"The other day, I watched one of those towers snap a Gold 1 mutant right in half. I didn't even fuse. I just yelled 'bon appétit' from the balcony and went back to drinking my tea."

Li shifted his weight, glancing down the wall. "Even so, I really don't think I should be taking up so much of your important time to..."

"Oh, come on... Since you're twisting my arm, I'll escort you over to see Taro!" Min was already physically dragging Li toward the nearest guard post. "He's stationed close by. Joking around with him for a bit isn't going to hurt the defense, and I'll have you on a carriage back home before sunset tomorrow. You have my word as a commander."

Li rolled his eyes. "Your word as a commander is completely worthless, Min... You literally told me every other commander says so!"

"They are all just deeply jealous of my management style." Min flashed a bright smile. "Let's go!"