Read Novel Full Chapter 1226 - Taming the Old World - Lead - 5
Chapter 1226: Chapter 1226 - Taming the Old World - Lead - 5
Ren let out a dry breath; this wasn’t a lethal trap, just a piece of profoundly ironic historical trivia now.
This simply meant that this specific ruin was chronologically the first.
"This was the first sanctuary we were supposed to discover," he muttered aloud, speaking half to himself. "And it is the absolute last one we managed to breach... We executed the entire sequence backwards."
"Backwards?" Larissa asked, tilting her head.
"The Brain, the other 3 parts of it, absolutely everything else we conquered came chronologically after this. And it turns out, this specific threshold was designed to be the starting line." Ren stared at the now-open doorway, contemplating the ancient knowledge it promised. "We effectively started at the finish line in Light and Shadow and ended at the absolute beginning."
He paused, his mind churning through the implications.
Why? Were the ancient sanctuaries geographically misplaced, scattered across the continent in an order that defied their intended difficulty curve? Or was the reality exactly the opposite: did the mere fact that this specific ruin was located deep within the Gold 3 ring imply that the chosen vessel of the sun had to achieve a specific, high-tier threshold before even attempting the initial trial it offered? Perhaps it wasn’t a geographical error at all. Perhaps it was a deliberate, brutal filter. Only a vessel that had already grown strong enough to survive this deep into the hostile territory was truly prepared to seek the power the path of the ruins provided.
Ultimately, the philosophical debate mattered very little...
"It is irrelevant," he stated, physically shaking off the lingering doubt. "The threshold is open... It is time to move."
He stared into the pitch-black abyss stretching beyond the ancient door, where the promised knowledge, the elemental amplifier, and whatever secrets the first sanctuary had guarded for untold centuries patiently waited.
"Let’s go claim our rewards," he ordered. "And retrieve our statue."
♢♢♢♢
Zhao was originally assigned as the fast flier to hold the perimeter, tasked with guarding the cavern entrance alongside Mako and Shizu.
That was the established tactical blueprint... However, the prospect of exploring the ancient sanctuary alongside Ren filled Zhao with such overwhelming anticipation that his face contorted in a comical display of pure, unadulterated suffering.
His sheer desire to participate was so ’loud and legible’ in that face that Victor, completely exhausted by the unspoken melodrama, grudgingly volunteered to swap places and hold the perimeter instead.
"Go," Victor muttered, shaking his head with an exasperated sigh. "Just make sure you deliver a comprehensive personal debriefing the second you come out."
The perimeter guard protocol was straightforward...
The two combat maids and their respective Victor would secure the entrance and immediately broadcast an ethereal warning by Victor’s fusion into the depths if any big hostility materialized. Should the threat escalate beyond their 2 earth tamers containment capacity, Victor was instructed to launch mail fast birds or physically fly back to the capital to secure the necessary caliber of reinforcements depending on the level of threat.
Ren, however, was quietly confident that holding the door would prove entirely unnecessary today.
♢♢♢♢
The subterranean architecture closely mirrored their initial projections.
They encountered the standard array of elemental spirit trials, remarkably similar to the ones guarding the dual sanctuaries. The rewards were also familiar, yielding a steady trickle of mana crystals and ancient artifacts. There were minimal deviations from the established pattern; the most glaring and undeniable difference was the sheer lack of lethal intensity.
The difficulty scaling in this specific ruin was noticeably, drastically lower than anything they had faced in the dual caverns.
"It registers as significantly easier then," Zhao observed, watching the girls effortlessly dismantle a runic puzzle that would have at least served as a warm-up exercise in any of the other sanctuaries. "Significantly easier you say..."
"Because it is chronologically the first," Ren explained calmly again. "It is highly probable that the power granted upon clearing this ruin was explicitly designed to aid the worthy vessel in surviving the subsequent, vastly more lethal caverns. We executed the entire campaign backward, tackling the big trials first and finally arriving at the tutorial stage."
It was far too late to dwell on the logistical irony now. They pressed deeper into the abyss.
And unlike the previous encounters, the final guardian did not relinquish a massive, multi-elemental core like the one required to breach the ultimate threshold in the Light and Darkness sanctuary. Instead, upon its defeat, it dropped a significantly smaller, un-fused core. It was a vibrant, pulsating emerald green, radiating a pure Wood affinity that almost perfectly matched the shade of Ren’s eyes.
However, upon finally breaching the ultimate chamber, the strike force encountered an anomaly they absolutely had not calculated for.
Initially, the room contained exactly what their models predicted: pristine vials of dual-fusion potions. The overall quantity was exactly half of what the dual sanctuaries hoarded, yet they were undeniably present, perfectly aligned in their illuminated, ancient alcoves.
Ren stared at the glowing liquids with his usual, complex cocktail of emotions.
He understood the fundamental biological mechanics of these potions far more intimately now, and that profound comprehension only sharpened the bitter sting of knowing he could not utilize them. They were engineered as radical amplifiers for the ethereal network of a vessel beast explicitly destined to carry the soul of a god.
Seeing them resting there, so immaculate and pristine upon their ancient pedestals, hit him with a familiar, hollow pang. It was a stark, undeniable reminder that he was permanently stranded in a limbo, disqualified from the path designed for a true, chosen vessel of this sanctuary.
Because for Ren’s unique anatomy, these potions were entirely useless.
If he consumed them, he would only extract a microscopic, mathematically irrelevant fraction of the amplification they provided to others.
When a standard human Tamer ingested the liquid, the potion forcefully expanded their ethereal network, splitting their core to accommodate a secondary node, before permanently sealing the circuit in a closed loop that could not expand any further. This was the precise, perhaps unintended, biological mechanism that facilitated the human dual-taming pathway.
Conversely, if a chosen, feral beast... A pure Plant, Amphibian, or Fungal entity selected to eventually house a divine soul through preliminary augmentations consumed the potion, the liquid would aggressively expand its ethereal connection to the mana network. It would force the beast’s spherical core to spin and grow, inching it closer and closer to the unfathomable capacity required to physically anchor a god.
Ren was fundamentally neither of those things.