Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1220: Chapter 1220 - Taming the Old World - Impasse

Julius felt the subtle, tectonic movement instantly.

"I have your frequency," the Qilin prince murmured, his palm pressed flat against the ringing metal and stone, his golden eyes sliding shut. He was entirely in his element dealing with subterranean structures, possessing an overwhelming, sovereign advantage when manipulating the earth. "I feel exactly where your energy is going."

And with flawless, Larissa-like royal precision, Julius fused and pushed his massive reserves of ether in the exact same direction.

The initial attempt didn’t yield almost any extra results, yet it definitively proved the concept was viable.

They immediately summoned Taro and every single high-tier Earth Tamer remaining on the battlefield. The elites arranged themselves in a tight perimeter around the monolithic dome. Each warrior pressed their palms flat against the surface, waiting for the signal. Ren took the lead once more, channeling his runic energy, but this time he had dozens of synchronized hands following his exact architectural guidance.

The second coordinated push proved far more effective. Slowly, driven by their combined ethereal output, they began to literally stretch the hyper-compressed bedrock surrounding the almost breached tunnel. They dragged raw material directly into the massive gouge the beast had carved, relentlessly packing the stone, successfully sealing away a fraction of the progress the monster had painstakingly made over ten days.

It was far from a flawless repair... The newly stretched stone was noticeably thinner. However, the escape route was undeniably shortened.

When they finally broke the connection, gasping for breath and utterly drained, Julius pressed his palm against the metal to run a fresh diagnostic.

"We reclaimed a single day," the prince announced. "Give or take a few extra hours."

A single day. After expending that staggering amount of collective effort, they had only managed to buy themselves a meager twenty-four hours of breathing room.

♢♢♢♢

The monstrous entity trapped inside did not appreciate the interference.

The rhythmic pounding instantly intensified, growing significantly more erratic and deafening, the ancient artifacts gouging into the stone with a sudden fury. Julius kept his hand firmly planted on the alloy, listening closely to the subterranean echoes, and his regal expression rapidly darkened.

"It was hoarding its stamina exactly as we suspected," Julius explained. "Now that we have actively stolen its progress, the creature is finally demonstrating its true output." He meticulously measured the accelerated tempo of the scratching. "Our actual net gain is only half a day, not a full one. The beast is compensating for the setback through sheer, unadulterated rage."

Ren nodded slowly, the exhaustion weighing heavily on his shoulders. Half a day.

"That leaves us with exactly three and a half days, then... Potentially."

"Potentially," Julius confirmed grimly.

It was a pathetic margin. Yet, it was still a fraction more time than they possessed upon arriving at the courtyard, and given the nature of their current board, stealing even twelve hours back from the corruption was a crucial tactical victory for Ren’s recovery.

"Even so," Ren stated, completely severing his fusion and allowing himself to slump back against the warm metal of the dome, his chest heaving as he gasped for air, "this containment strategy cannot be sustained indefinitely."

The surrounding Vanguard elites turned their attention to him in silence.

"We are simply displacing the existing rock around the tunnel to plug the gap. However, the hyper-compressed stone cannot be stretched infinitely. Every single time we manipulate the structure, the surrounding walls become thinner, growing increasingly fragile under the stress. We will inevitably reach a breaking point where the material simply can’t win more, and the escape route will blow wide open for good."

He tilted his head back against the massive dome, feeling the heat radiating through the alloy.

"We can artificially prolong the countdown, but we cannot spontaneously generate time out of thin air. Therefore, we must utilize every single day we salvage with absolute care."

He forced himself to stand upright, pushing through the agonizing ache in his crystallized muscles, and his voice instantly regained the hardened, commanding tone of the Glorious General his wall army had learned to follow blindly.

"Begin organizing two distinct strike teams. The first unit will be tasked with locating and neutralizing the Light and Darkness dragons, the final two sovereign guardians we still need to secure before Selthia regains her will to fight and claims them for herself. And another team will accompany me directly to the Wood ruin."

"The Wood ruin?" Taro asked, his brow furrowing in slight confusion.

"The exact same one Selthia utilized as her primary surveillance node." Ren shifted his gaze toward the distant western horizon, looking far beyond the towering walls of the star-prison. "It is finally time to conquer it."

Conquering the Wood sanctuary would grant Ren access to another elemental crystal. And he required one with absolute urgency. He had forfeited the five sovereign cores and crystals that exponentially multiplied his elemental output the moment he integrated them into the prison’s runic array, willingly sacrificing his ultimate amplifiers to sustain the frequency resonance keeping the Hydra caged.

Every single one of them was now fused into the apex of the five adamantium pillars, anchoring a primordial dragon core, rendering them impossible to retrieve without completely dismantling the trap.

Stripped of those vital amplifiers, Ren was operating at a significantly lower power threshold than the rest of the Vanguard currently believed.

But there was a vastly more critical, strategic motivation driving his decision to strike the ruins now, and it was entirely a matter of unprecedented tactical opportunity.

The indestructible artifacts of the corruption, the exact ancient relics that possessed the terrifying capability to permanently seal him inside the subterranean stairwells of any ruin he attempted to breach, were simply no longer a threat on the board.

They were currently locked away. Caged by the Vanguard themselves, a profound, almost ironic shift in the balance of power.

Those terrifying relics were buried within the monolithic star-prison, desperately scratching at the bedrock to secure their own freedom, completely incapable of projecting their influence elsewhere. Selthia no longer possessed the necessary mechanical tools to ambush him within the Wood ruin, primarily because her absolute best weapon was entirely preoccupied with trying to escape its own containment.

It was the absolute perfect window to strike.

And as his mind rapidly processed the tactical geometry, a secondary, significantly darker idea bloomed in Ren’s thoughts. It was a murky, ethically questionable strategy that he attempted to discard almost as quickly as it surfaced, yet it stubbornly lingered in the back of his mind.

The elemental crystals he so desperately needed were generated exclusively within the ruins. The Wood sanctuary would naturally yield one if he deployed his spore beast to harvest it. However, if he were to request the direct assistance of another Tamer, whether at the Wind, Earth, or Wood ruins, someone entirely willing to temporarily surrender their own core for the harvesting process, he could theoretically secure two amplifiers instead of one...