Read Novel Full Chapter 1188 - Taming the Old World - Exiguous
Chapter 1188 - Taming the Old World - Exiguous
Selthia stood before the tower.
And she was, she had to admit, genuinely impressed.
She hadn't anticipated this much genius from the handsome boy... She knew Ren possessed raw, explosive talent, she had measured his growth up close, conversed with him inside the net, and felt the absolute precision of his ethereal control firsthand.
But bending Metal, an elemental affinity that virtually no one on the planet could perceive or manipulate today, and using it to engineer an architectural monstrosity of this caliber? A dual-layered fortress featuring an almost-adamantium chassis housing a Diamond-rank wooden core, directly plugged into a primordial planetary mana vein to absorb steadily without exploding, that was an entirely different tier of engineering.
The boy's understanding had evolved significantly faster than the crystal's predictive models had calculated. And the crystal had been calculating variables for a very long time.
Even so, she wasn't worried about the tower.
She could tear it down. It would require a methodical, sustained expenditure of resources, but she possessed the capability to reduce it to rubble in the end, provided she utilized her mechanical artifacts intelligently and prevented the diamond-energy-plated roots from encasing her biological chassis completely.
A structure like this, no matter how brilliantly designed, remained a static structure. It possessed absolute limits. And the corruption was exceptional at finding those exact breaking points.
Her true concern lay elsewhere.
She was actively calculating what the human defenders would sacrifice to prevent her from reaching her ultimate objective.
Selthia was intimately familiar with humanity's high-tier trump cards.
There were desperate gambits that would undoubtedly prove to be a massive headache, tactical plays that would cost her precious momentum if the defenders had the sheer audacity to execute them.
The most obvious counter was siphoning an overwhelming volume of primordial energy directly from their second subterranean chamber. It was no secret to her; they had executed that exact insane maneuver once before in history, when King Dragarion had weaponized that very current to forcefully freeze her crystal network, rendering him temporarily unstoppable.
They could easily repeat the trick. They could deliberately sacrifice a handful of high-tier Tamers to channel that raw, unadulterated ether changing power. In fact, she knew they possessed at least ten or more individuals capable of pulling the conversion process if they pooled most of their collective stamina.
If they played that card, if they descended upon her frontline overflowing with the devastating, volatile energy of ancient dragons, the equation would become exponentially more complicated.
Yet, Selthia had prepared for that exact contingency too.
Despite the staggering variables, she was ready. She believed she understood the battlefield she was dominating.
She had spent centuries plotting this exact hour, quietly breeding her endless army in the dark, mutating her bio-mechanical artifact into a predator that the vast majority of the city's population lacked the minimum output to damage. She had arrived equipped for every rational counterattack a logical enemy could possibly mount.
The primordial energy of the dragons was accounted for. It was written into her ledger.
And so, she did not hesitate.
She pushed forward.
♢♢♢♢
The war of attrition against the tower commenced just moments before the amplified Tamers arrived from the other capital.
The opening exchanges of probing were remarkably balanced. The Diamond-rank roots shot out from the metallic seams like ballistic missiles, desperately attempting to impale the mechanical dragon exactly as they had skewered the Platinum fodder earlier.
For a brief, deceptive window, it genuinely appeared as though the monolith might hold its ground indefinitely, actively feeding its structural integrity by harvesting the biomass of the corrupted creation.
However, the crystal analyzed the exchange with the cold, unblinking detachment of an entity that had fought a hundred thousand battles. It systematically isolated the single flaw that broke the balance.
When a Diamond root successfully pierced the artifact and began aggressively draining its corrupted ether, one of the independent mechanical appendages brutally retaliated. Instead of merely hitting the tower back it ended severing the root, the artifact strongly dragged the sprawling organic tendril inward, absorbing the foreign bio-mass directly into its diamond core. The net exchange of ethereal energy suddenly favored the corruption.
Selthia realized she could defeat the tower's organic core like this.
Through intelligent resource management, victory was easily achievable. Her artificial beast could utilize its six independent and indestructible arms, components whose durability vastly exceeded the exterior plating of Ren's tower, to systematically hack away at the meaty spears.
Every single time a root lunged forward to impale the new powerful Diamond rank mutant body, an artifact looked it in place at the same second the organic tissue made a hole, aggressively cleaving massive chunks off the tower's wood matter and mana.
The asymmetry was glaringly obvious: offensive dominance belonged to Selthia due to her six indestructible blades, while defensive endurance belonged to Ren's tower due to his thick semi-adamantium shell.
Yet, that structural asymmetry heavily tipped in her favor as the clock ticked.
As long as Selthia avoided wasting energy and deployed her artifacts for the heavy labor, relying on components infinitely more indestructible than the tower shell itself, she would steadily outpace the monolith's regeneration rate. True, the tower could draw upon the subterranean mana vein to heal its wounds. But Selthia and the corruption understood a fundamental law of bio-mechanical mana engineering: every single regeneration cycle forced the organic cells to stretch beyond their natural limits. The absorbed ether wasn't pure, pristine wood mana; it was forcibly synthesized primordial one.
And Ren's runic operating system did not function like a living, breathing biological organism. A living entity naturally grew fresh, pristine tissue, whereas a runic construct merely stretched existing cells thin, plugging structural gaps with overcharged, artificial lower density. Every single healing cycle left the structure fractionally weaker, slightly less dense, until the overall physical resistance degraded beyond functional utility.
It was a slow process.
Frustratingly slow...
But it was functioning. Selthia was winning the battle.
♢♢♢♢
And then, the fifteen vanguard anomalies arrived.
They plummeted from the ash-choked sky like a volley of falling stars, and Selthia perceived their auras simultaneously: Ren, Sirius, Selphira, the three young women, Ren's inner circle of friends, the elite academy instructors, and the three Qilin princes. Fifteen of the absolute most formidable Tamers still breathing in the sister cities, descending upon the battlefield as a unified front.
And yes... They were radiating the undeniable signature of the dragons. Selthia registered it instantly, that unmistakable, world-shaking current of energy from the second subterranean vault surging through their collective systems.
They had indeed played the exact card she had predicted…
But they had played it like cowards.