Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1182 - Taming the Old World - Last Key - 2

Selphira snapped her head toward Julius, her cloak whipping violently in the ash-laden wind. "Wasn't that vault still permanently sealed? The scholars explicitly stated we had more than a year left before the dense mana barrier dissolved."

"No." Julius's voice was utterly grim, stripped of any hope. "We were already close to running out of time."

For years, Arturo, Ren, and Wei had been meticulously studying the lingering effects of the old corruption on the massive crystal sphere buried beneath the academy, the exact same ancient sphere that slowly converted its mass into liquid ether because it was tethered to the castle's central grid.

Their classified research had yielded a terrifying conclusion. The decay caused by the original corruption in Yino had drastically accelerated the sphere's consumption cycle, quietly shaving nearly a year off the clock. They wanted to know exactly when the barrier was going to open and were making preparations, but…

"We theoretically had about six months left," Julius continued, his mind racing at a frantic pace to calculate the new variables. "But that estimate assumes the same normal conditions of the last few years. If the corruption has evolved to this unprecedented scale, and it is bringing that localized mana-siphoning effect that drags everything into its vortex..."

He stared at the massive, smoking sinkhole where the mechanical dragon had vanished.

"She isn't going to wait those last six months. It wants to absorb whatever layer of the barrier is left. It is going to forcefully drain the entrance to the sphere right here, right now."

Selphira grasped the apocalyptic magnitude of the threat in a fraction of a second.

If Selthia successfully secured the relic ring hidden inside that third node, her entire sprawling network, which was already parasitically tethered to the castle's leylines, would receive an unprecedented, even bigger buff to its fusion capabilities and biological regeneration.

This might have been the Witch's true master plan from the very beginning. Secure the ring first, elevate her entire army's baseline stats to an unkillable threshold, and then use that overwhelming advantage, spearheaded by her new mechanical dragon, to effortlessly crack the castle doors.

That specific realization turned Selphira's blood to ice.

Ren's adamantium tower was currently grinding mutants into pulp by the dozens. It was a flawless, unforgiving meat grinder. But a Diamond-rank artifact, powered by indestructible ancient mechanics, was not a mere Platinum beast.

The tower, for all its impossible resilience, might not hold against an entity of that caliber.

The mechanical dragon had slipped through their absolute best defensive line as if the Vanguard didn't even exist. And now, it was carving a perfectly straight, unchallenged line through the bedrock toward the third relic ring.

♢♢♢♢

A few minutes later, the earth near the castle gates ruptured. Ren burst onto the surface, riding on the broad back of his Wolverine.

Having successfully tethered the umbilical root to the subterranean mana vein, he took a moment to survey the field as the dust cleared. For a fleeting second, as he rose from the dark, he expected to find the rotting tide completely contained and the castle perimeter officially secured.

The first half of his expectation was a reality. The adamantium tower was an absolute slaughterhouse, churning through the mutant vanguard by the dozens exactly as he had engineered it to do.

The common swarm was effectively dammed.

The second half of his expectation at having felt the new enemy's aura was a nightmare.

Selphira met him the moment his boots hit the cobblestone. She delivered the tactical report with the rapid, unadorned bluntness of a commander who knew every wasted syllable may cost lives.

"Nobody could stop the new artifact."

She outlined the rest of the catastrophe in the brief window it took Ren's exhausted mind to process her first sentence.

The artifact had mutated. It was no longer the chaotic, floating sphere of tangled mechanical appendages they had fought in the past. It had assimilated a sprawling, draconic chassis, radiating a pure Diamond-rank aura, and it had effortlessly bypassed their entire containment line without taking a scratch.

It was currently burrowing straight toward the third Yino ring beneath their abandoned central academy…

Liora and the girls were already in transit, racing back from the outer districts at maximum speed. The Royal Guards girls and Ren's parents had immediately taken over their defensive sectors and his on the Yano's side of the wall. Now that Selthia's ultimate objective was laid bare, it was almost a tactical certainty that she wouldn't waste high-tier resources aggressively pushing the outer flanks anymore.

Those secondary sectors would hold, and even if they had to slowly bleed ground in a prolonged, grinding retreat, the territorial sacrifice was entirely justified to protect the core.

"But I highly doubt," Selphira concluded, her expression hardened into a mask of cold fury, "that even all of your future wives fighting together can prevent that artifact from shattering the barrier and claiming the final ring."

Ren closed his eyes… He didn't blush at the remark; the suffocating gravity of the situation completely smothered any room for their usual banter.

He extended his perception deep into the earth, casting his senses through the rumbling bedrock to track the artifact's progress in the dark.

And he confirmed the horror.

The vortex runes that Selthia used to feed her mutants, the intricate, parasitic network that bent and forcefully redirected corrupted ether, were also carved with localized absorption arrays. The artifact wasn't trying to physically smash the crystal sphere beneath the academy. It was utilizing that exact siphoning mechanism and its old nature as a Queen Shadow Stalker to aggressively drink the remaining mana directly out of the barrier walls.

It was acting like a colossal parasite strapped to a dying star. It was accelerating the draining process exactly as Julius had predicted. It wasn't breaking the lock; it was dissolving the door entirely.

Ren rapidly calculated his remaining reserves, feeling the hollow ache in his chest.

He was hovering at less than ten percent.

With a core that empty, he was tactically useless against this powerful threat. He absolutely could not engage a Diamond-rank entity in a straight physical fight right now. He also lacked the raw mental output to sever Selthia's ethereal siphoning runes from a distance, and he possessed absolutely no mechanical means to stop the artifact from draining the sphere and claiming the third ring.

And once the relic was secured, the mechanical dragon would simply pivot. It would march straight back to the castle.

Armed with the compounding buffs of the new ring feeding its network, the artifact would face down his adamantium tower, the single obstacle left on the board blocking Selthia from the castle doors.

Ren looked at his towering creation… He was profoundly proud of it, and rightfully so.

Selthia was going to have an absolute nightmare trying to tear down a dual-layered, Diamond-powered structure directly fed by a primordial mana vein.

But pride didn't alter the mathematical reality of attrition. He wasn't sure the tower could hold indefinitely. Because adamantium, no matter how ridiculously resilient it was against heat and kinetic force, was not fundamentally indestructible in the way the ancient artifacts were.

The eight segments composing the mechanical dragon were virtually immune to physical destruction. They aggressively regenerated their shielding using corrupted mutant flesh. Anchored by a Diamond level mutant body and driven by the special beasts writhing at its core, the entity had all the time in the world to systematically grind his tower into dust.

The monolith would buy them time. It would not win the war.

And Ren, standing in the ash with less than ten percent of his mana, had absolutely nothing left in his arsenal to change that equation.

Except for one single card.

It was a card he had sworn to the important people here, his parents and his future wives that he would never play unless the world was truly ending.

♢♢♢♢

"I am going to use the power that froze our King," Ren said quietly.