Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1178 - Taming the Old World - Adamantium Defense - 2

The tower was made…

But the monolith was still dormant.

An autonomous tower of this caliber required an astronomical amount of fuel to wake up. The ambient ether drifting through the war-torn plains of Yino was pathetic, barely enough to sustain a Silver one, let alone a Diamond-rank superweapon. His standard towers survived out here by employing slow, trick-based mana accumulation techniques, but this new monstrosity required a genuine, roaring power source.

Ren slammed his palm against the dirt and summoned his Wolverine.

He abandoned the surface, leaping onto the beast's back as it immediately began to shred through the bedrock. As they dove into the suffocating darkness of the underground, Ren reached up and grabbed the end of the primary Diamond-rank root dangling from the base of the tower.

He channeled a tiny trickle of wood mana into the fiber, coaxing it to stretch and grow, dragging it down with him into the depths. It acted as a massive umbilical cord, designed to bridge the gap between the sleeping weapon on the surface and the subterranean power grid.

They plummeted through the layers of earth that Julius and the Qilin princes manipulated so effortlessly.

Ren closed his eyes, casting his senses into the crushing dark. He was hunting for a specific target. A mana vein. He needed one of those ancient, thrumming rivers of liquid ether that ran deep beneath the planet's crust. He knew a massive one existed right here, serving as the twin to the colossal vein running beneath Yano Castle.

The living Diamond root stretched endlessly behind him, vibrating with anticipation, desperate to drink.

Ren felt the atmospheric pressure in the soil begin to shift. The sheer density of the ambient mana was spiking with every yard they descended, making the dirt hum against the Wolverine's claws. He pushed the beast harder, accelerating the growth of the root toward the glowing pulse in the deep dark.

He just needed a little more time.

If his friends could just hold the line for a few more minutes, the gates of Yino Castle would possess a guardian that the Platinum corruption could not move.

♢♢♢♢

Back on the bleeding frontline, the situation officially transitioned to desperate.

The second supply line had arrived.

The beasts that had successfully hunted and butchered the ancient Wood Dragon finally reached the perimeter, and they brought with them an unprecedented, mind-numbing wave of Platinum-tier horrors. The tactical nightmare that Selphira had predicted was no longer an abstract fear discussed in a war council. It was a concrete, roaring tide of teeth, bark, and stolen world level amount of mana crashing directly against their crumbling shields.

These were not the mindless, fleshy beasts of the initial wave. These monsters were heavily mutated, their bodies warped and armored by the Wood element they had just consumed. Thick slabs of ironwood grew directly out of their scales. Tangled, thorny vines whipped through the air, parrying the Vanguard's strikes and draining the blood of the fallen.

The sheer volume of the horde was suffocating.

They poured over the horizon in numbers that, just a few hours ago, any sane commander would have sworn were biologically impossible to field. The veteran defenders braced their boots against the cracked stone, staring up at a sea of Platinum monsters that blotted out the ash-choked sky, realizing with sinking stomachs that the true war had only just begun.

Yet no one surrendered…

The sky belonged to Victor.

His aerial superiority was absolute, and he made sure the mutant horde suffered for every inch of ground they tried to steal. Fused with his winged Qilin, he was a tempest of localized destruction. He dove through the ash-choked clouds, leading relentless strafing runs that carved massive, bleeding trenches through the endless sea of rotting flesh below.

Gravity itself became his weapon. He summoned jagged boulders the size of houses, dropping them like crude meteors that pulverized beasts on impact. When he pulled up from a dive, the sheer kinetic force of his Qilin's wings generated razor-sharp vacuum blades. These invisible scythes shredded entire columns of Platinum horrors, amputating limbs and decapitating monsters before they even realized they were under attack.

There was absolutely nothing the mindless swarm could do to reach him or his duplicated Qilin up there. They were untouchable.

Yet, as Victor banked for another pass, the bitter reality settled in his gut. It wasn't enough.

No matter how much catastrophic damage they inflicted, their efforts were a drop of blood in an ocean. For every bleeding trench his vacuum blades opened, the tide simply rushed in to fill the void.

The horde did not care about its own casualties. They possessed no self-preservation... The monsters marching in the rear instantly swarmed the fresh corpses Victor left behind, their jaws snapping as they devoured their fallen kin.

The runic cannibalization cycle immediately recycled the lost biomass. Every beast Victor slaughtered merely served as a high-calorie meal to refuel the monsters replacing it.

Down on the shattered earth, Yang served as the absolute anchor of the perimeter.

He had planted himself directly in the center of the bleeding chokepoint. Fused with his Behemoth and Royal Gold Treant, he had transformed into a towering, living fortress of ironwood and gilded muscle. He was a biological monolith, standing exactly where Ren's adamantium tower was meant to be.

Yang did not yield a single inch.

The horde crashed against his towers like a tidal wave hitting a cliff. Dozens of Platinum beasts hurled their massive bodies, burying their fangs into his golden bark, desperately trying to drag them down by sheer weight. They bounced off his impenetrable carapace, their teeth shattering against his armor.

The few that managed to secure a grip were instantly pulverized.

Yang's towers didn't bother with intricate spells; they simply swung their massive, trunk-like arms, swatting Platinum predators out of the air like irritating insects and crushing their skulls against the cobblestone.

He rarely launched an offensive attack. His sole purpose was to endure… By absorbing the crushing kinetic pressure of the swarm's vanguard, he provided a static, immovable pivot point for the rest of the Vanguard to maneuver around.

Behind Yang's impenetrable blockade, Lin and Zhao operated as the executioners.

They were the second filter. Any mutant cunning or lucky enough to slip past the Qilin's carpet bombing and squeeze around Yang's tower's massive frame immediately ran into them.

Lin was a blur of lethal violence. She didn't waste ether on flashy, wide-area spells either. She relied on absolute precision, weaving through the chaos with explosive martial arts. Every time her heel connected with a mutant's joint, a concentrated burst of lightning mana detonated on impact, shattering Platinum-tier armor and severing spines with a sickening tunder.

Zhao provided close-air support, dropping from the sky in a series of punishing dive-bombs. He hurled volleys of hardened feathers that pierced mutant skulls like armor-piercing artillery. When a beast got too close to the retreating gold rank empty soldiers, Zhao engaged the secondary half of his fusion. He manifested the massive, serrated talons of his Raptor, physically tearing the throats out of the stragglers before launching himself back into the safety of the smoke.

They were the safety net. The only reason the inevitable cracks in the frontline hadn't cascaded into a total massacre.

And yet, despite their flawless execution, the defense soon began to hemorrhage.