Read Novel Full Chapter 1232 - Taming the Old World - Engineered Doubt
Chapter 1232: Chapter 1232 - Taming the Old World - Engineered Doubt
The flow of data abruptly ceased, leaving Ren standing completely frozen before the ancient panel. His right hand remained perfectly slotted within the human-shaped indentation, while the suffocating, heavy silence of the subterranean chamber pressed firmly against his ears.
The rest of the strike force was simply staring at him, having heard absolutely nothing of the cosmic transmission. To their perspective, their Glorious General had merely placed his palm against the metal and stood perfectly motionless for an agonizingly long minute.
"Ren?" Luna took a cautious step forward, breaking the quiet. "What happened? What did you see in there?"
Ren did not formulate an immediate reply.
His mind was frantically processing the phantom echoes of a man who had recorded a desperate broadcast who knows how many eras ago.
An ancient ’engineer’ whom the corruption spat out as ’the traitor’ with absolute malice in every syllable.
A man who, in the final message he would ever leave for the future, had playfully faked an epic narrator’s voice purely for his own amusement, had affectionately dubbed Ren a lucky bastard, and had asked, with a surprising, almost shy vulnerability, that he please try not to die.
This eccentric, colloquial persona was absolutely not how Ren had envisioned the seemingly omnipotent architect of the ruins’ unbreakable system.
That mythical creator was infinitely more... human.
And that entirely relatable man had just delivered two catastrophic pieces of intelligence that fundamentally rewrote the entire board. First, his golden spore mushroom, his brilliant Mooshito, his most intimate lifelong companion, possessed the latent capacity to turn against him under the wrong conditions. Second, the true enemy was never solely Selthia.
The ultimate threat was genuinely the ancient purple entity that had originally manufactured her, and presumably, the rest of the sovereign dragons as well.
"Ren..." Luna spoke again, her tone noticeably softer, anchoring him back to the physical world. "Talk to us..."
Ren slowly extracted his hand from the metallic indentation, letting his arm drop to his side.
"We need to reach the third vault," he stated in a low, measured whisper. "And I have something monumental to share with all of you... But not here."
He tilted his head upward, gazing toward the cavern ceiling, looking straight through the bedrock toward a surface world where in a monolithic star-prison a monster was currently clawing its way to freedom, and where the final two dragon elements were still waiting to be claimed.
"When we are completely secure," he added, forcing a reassuring calm into his voice. "I will tell you everything, I promise."
♢♢♢♢
Ren swiftly removed the pulsating green core from the secondary receptacle, and the small doorway concealing the terminal window smoothly slid shut, sealing with a heavy click.
It would be a massive tactical error to leave the window and the data node exposed. If the sprawling network of corruption managed to establish a link to this window it would gain more size, complexity and power... And if Selthia actively utilized her subterranean resources to snoop through the forgotten corners of this sanctuary exactly as Ren had just done, she could potentially intercept the engineer’s encrypted warning.
Ren paused, a cold realization settling over him.
"Although, it is highly probable she already knows," he thought grimly. "Or perhaps she uncovered the matching data packet on the Yino side, considering her faction had already secured the seven elemental crystals years ago..."
After all, Selthia already referred to the architect as ’the traitor’. That specific, venomous epithet originated from somewhere.
There had to be a sprawling, ancient history buried behind it, a profound reason why the corruption despised a mere mortal engineer with such unadulterated intensity, but that missing historical context was not currently available in his mental archives, and this was absolutely not the time to chase ghosts.
There was a vastly more pressing crisis demanding his immediate focus.
His tiny, brilliant ally could ultimately become his executioner.
At the absolute worst possible moment, precisely when Ren believed he was on the verge of securing a monumental victory, he would be seamlessly absorbed into a ’hive mind’. That was the explicit, terrifying warning. And it was, without a single shred of exaggeration, the most catastrophically relevant piece of intelligence Ren had received in his entire life.
Ren rapidly turned the variables over in his head, desperately attempting to contain the threat.
"But the engineer explicitly stated that I merely need to avoid feeding him that specific potion, right?" The ancient architect had been incredibly precise with his terminology; the Seed Fusion Potion was the trigger. "And the colossal artifact, that synthetic ’mecha’ shell, is likely something I cannot ’pilot’ to my advantage anyway, so it makes perfect tactical sense to avoid constructing it until I completely comprehend its architecture."
Two highly specific conditions; two distinct actions to actively avoid. As long as he strictly adhered to those parameters, theoretically, he remained safe.
Yet, a deeply unsettling question stubbornly refused to leave his thoughts.
Would Moosh actually betray him?
He scrutinized the terrible concept from every angle, and he profoundly hated every single logical conclusion.
Mooshito had been tethered to his soul since the very beginning of this nightmare. The beast had ruthlessly scolded him, miraculously saved his life, constantly complained about having an impulsive human host, yet had willingly risked its own integrity to push the corruption back whenever Ren was dying of agony.
They had shared profound mental fist bumps...
The spore mushroom had even admitted, just a few chaotic days ago, that it was genuinely proud of how much Ren had grown.
Was every single one of those intimate moments nothing more than a calculated, parasitic performance?
Ren absolutely did not want to believe it. He stubbornly refused to accept such a cynical conclusion without concrete proof.
But he also could not afford to simply ignore the desperate warning of a man who, judging by the brief, authentic vulnerability in his voice, possessed absolutely no reason to lie to him.
A man who had asked him, with genuine, timid concern, to please survive and save humanity.