Read Novel Full Chapter 1222 - Taming the Old World - Lead
Chapter 1222: Chapter 1222 - Taming the Old World - Lead
The absolute reason for his sudden haste possessed a name.
Selthia...
Ominous mutant activity had been detected lurking near the outskirts of the sister cities once again. It was not a coordinated siege yet; nothing as blatant or structurally organized as the previous assault.
However, the scattered, corrupted beasts that had aimlessly dispersed following the Hydra’s defeat were actively regrouping. They were shifting into a distinct, calculated pattern that absolutely did not belong to feral creatures casually roaming the wilderness, even if they remained positioned far beyond the outer walls. Ren recognized the subtle tactical signature immediately.
Only one entity was capable of broadcasting that organized geometric pattern in them now. Selthia, either fully recovered or rapidly healing, was already weaving a brand-new snare in the dark.
Ren absolutely refused to grant the corruption the luxury of time.
If she was preparing to abruptly shift the overarching status quo, patiently waiting to achieve optimal physical health could easily cost him the singular opportunity to secure the sanctuary cleanly. It was vastly more logical to strike right now, while the ancient artifacts trap remained neutralized inside the star-prison, and claim the elemental amplifier he desperately required before the enemy could reposition her pieces on the board.
Consequently, he rapidly assembled a strike force.
It was heavily prioritized for maximum mobility, utility and concentrated lethality, strictly limited to the absolute essential personnel. He could not afford to deploy a massive army for this specific operation either. The density of Platinum-tier horrors was steadily creeping up along the city’s perimeter. While they were not actively charging the barricades, their menacing presence demanded constant, heavy vigilance. Stripping the capital of its premier frontline combatants for an external expedition was precisely the kind of arrogant, fatal miscalculation Selthia was patiently waiting for him to make.
Ren’s hand-picked squad was compact. Victor, Zhao, his three fiancées accompanied by their respective elite guards and the three combat maids, alongside Li, Min, and Wei.
Wei had experienced an exceptionally productive week.
Over the past few days, much like a certain other pragmatic mushroom user who possessed a keen eye for finance, Wei had finally successfully ascended to the Gold rank. Ren was always capable of cultivating the specialized golden mold required to produce the special fungal eggs, slowly but with relative ease. And although that specific mold could be processed into explosive charges highly effective against Silver-rank mutants, mass-producing them simply wasn’t worth the logistical effort for his sleeping friend, as a standard, well-placed arrow remained vastly more efficient for culling Silver fodder.
However, slowly stockpiling the raw golden mold had absolutely not been a waste of resources.
A massive accumulation of the substance was fundamentally required to synthesize a mature fruiting body possessing enough ethereal density to force a Tamer through the Gold bottleneck. Utilizing the highly classified beast data extracted from the Brain regarding the optimal processing of Platinum-tier biomass as fertilizer, Ren had significantly accelerated the cultivation timeline, achieving the breakthrough even without the ideal special conditions of a dedicated crystal cavern.
Wei had officially commenced his combat career as a triple-fusion Tamer.
His specific symbiotic mushroom only provided a baseline ethereal Omni-amplification roughly equivalent to Bronze 2 or Silver 1, depending entirely on the beast tier compared, and his newly contracted beast was still lingering at the Iron rank.
He was absolutely not prepared to serve as a heavy-hitting vanguard warrior just yet.
Nevertheless he wasn’t weak and his tactical utility was undeniable. He could function seamlessly as a massive, localized node within Ren’s fungal network, serving as a vital ethereal anchor if the squad needed to rapidly deploy a net for something like a complex runic array in the field.
And Li was also deploying with the strike force...
The young man carried a heavy, profound resolve in his posture. Ren deliberately refrained from asking if he was absolutely certain about participating in the raid again. The sheer determination radiating from Li as he silently mounted the colossal avian transport, his jaw locked in unyielding focus, spoke volumes. He had clearly reached a definitive, unshakable decision regarding his role in the impending conflicts.
Feeling somewhat useless last time had a big impact on him.
♢♢♢♢
They took to the skies on the backs of incredibly fast, massive winged beasts. The compact unit of nearly twenty elite Tamers rapidly crossed the sprawling planetary rings, charting a course toward the northwest, banking mostly north.
As they finally breached the airspace hovering directly above the designated Wood ruin zone, Ren immediately engaged both his physical sight and his advanced ethereal perception, meticulously scanning the terrain for the exact anomaly he had encountered during his previous scouting mission. He was hunting for the hyper-dense logistical node, the swirling vortex of reorganizing mutants, the hive of corrupted activity that had initially betrayed Selthia’s presence.
It simply wasn’t there...
This time around, the perimeter was only populated by a handful of scattered beasts wandering aimlessly through the place near the entrance, completely devoid of any militaristic formation, leaving the primary access routes to the sanctuary entirely unobstructed. Whatever massive, subterranean infrastructure Selthia had previously established in this sector, she had either completely uprooted it, forfeited it during her catastrophic defeat, or secretly relocated the entire operation to an undisclosed coordinate.
Selthia was undoubtedly going to realize they had breached the door once inside. That was a grim certainty, as her omnipresent network would instantly trigger the alarm the second Ren set foot inside the sanctuary.
But completely stripped of the indestructible ancient artifacts and her meticulously engineered trap, she theoretically lacked the raw mechanical assets required to halt their advance.
The avian transports descended at breakneck speed.
A massive, jagged cavern opened wide into the side of a steep hill, perfectly aligning with the ethereal coordinates Ren’s mana vision identified as the primary corridor leading to the sanctuary’s vault door. The pitch-black entrance waited for them in absolute, unsettling silence. There were no elite mutant patrols, no suffocating pools of concentrated corruption, and absolutely zero visible runic snares.
It was arguably far too quiet, bordering on suspicious.
However, Ren simply did not possess the luxury of time to second-guess a stroke of genuine tactical fortune. With his elite squad falling into a tight defensive formation right behind him, he confidently marched into the cavern, heading straight for the ancient threshold that Selthia had so desperately monitored before.
Today, he was finally going to cross it.