Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1253 - Taming the Old World - Stealth - 2

Ren and his three future wives waited in deep concealment, crouching dangerously close to the boundary of the Platinum 3 ring.

The grueling trek had consumed nearly the entire day. Taking to the skies was entirely out of the question, as an airborne beast group served as a glaring beacon to anything monitoring the airspace, and Min plus the artifacts simply could not cover a huge beast and maintain a seamless optical illusion at such high velocities against the wind. Consequently, they had advanced strictly along the ground.

They had moved with agonizing care, masking the entire strike force using the most advanced ethereal suppression artifacts they possessed carrying them around the small group.

Initiating even a minor skirmish was completely off the table.

A single clash would instantly alert Selthia, causing their entire tactical blueprint to crumble into dust; the stealth, the precise synchronization, and the coordinated ambush against two guardians simultaneously would all be ruined.

Therefore, the logistical reality of the march had been an exhausting nightmare of evasion. They had snaked their way between territorial wars fought by feral creatures, all while the ambient energy density offered them zero favors.

Hovering this close to the third Platinum tier, the atmospheric mana was so incredibly dense that it threatened to overload the internal networks of their standard tamers. The elite squad had already been forced to consume their anti-saturation medicine twice during the journey, ensuring their systems remained in pristine condition to avoid severe internal damage from the crushing pressure.

The only individual completely unaffected by the oppressive atmosphere without needing medicine was Ren himself.

On the contrary, Ren genuinely welcomed the abundant energy.

He had stumbled upon a highly beneficial realization during the long march. Ambient mana was not inherently compatible with the ether his own body generated; by fusing with a beast, his internal reserves gained a distinct, personalized signature entirely different from the raw environment.

However, he learned today that, despite the sheer complexity of the task, it was entirely feasible to purify it and put it to work.

By applying an intricate filtration process, a technique likely only someone possessing his unique crystalline architecture could easily replicate, he could siphon the heavy environmental ether, refine the raw particles, and channel them to accelerate his core's natural recovery.

This sudden breakthrough had saved him nearly five hours of meditation. It provided roughly a twenty percent boost in overall recovery efficiency, a margin he had never previously found a reason to explore outside of active combat where he could simply siphon pre-processed energy from an enemy.

This discovery was already planting new seeds in his mind, though the practical applications remained logistically complex, considering traveling all the way to a Platinum ring purely for a bit faster daily recharge was highly inefficient.

Yet, he could certainly practice the technique and brainstorm alternative applications moving forward…

They often say that war is the mother of invention. Pushed to his utmost limits and forced to squeeze every microscopic advantage from his surroundings, Ren was unlocking techniques he never would have bothered developing during times of peace. Necessity was actively forcing a level of creativity that comfort never could have nurtured.

Thanks to that quiet innovation, his internal reserves were currently sitting at nearly maximum capacity, prompting him to dispatch the encrypted signal the rest of the Vanguard was waiting for, even ahead of schedule.

♢♢♢♢

Covert messages were steadily arriving from every operational front.

The avian messengers darted back and forth to coordinate the scattered factions, and every single bird carried the exact same encouraging intelligence: Selthia remained completely oblivious. She had not altered her behavior in any sector, she was not repositioning her mutant dragons, and she had not redirected her mutant hordes.

The corruption minions simply continued their standard, low-intensity siege and habitual consumption, entirely unaware that two separate teams of elite tamers had slipped right up to the edges of two distinct guardians at the exact same time.

The stealth protocol had worked flawlessly.

The hour had finally arrived.

The primary strike force comprised of Ren, the three girls, his three closest academy friends, Selphira, Julius, Wei, and the remaining part of the regular royal guard and maids, held their position in the northern hemisphere.

They were positioned just a few minutes away from Yano's Darkness dragon the moment they decided to break cover and sprint at maximum velocity.

But they would not strike first.

The overarching strategy was a delicate two-step dance. Initially, the secondary Vanguard unit would launch an assault against the southern guardian, located on the complete opposite side of the explored world, effectively as far away as geographically possible.

And exactly fifteen minutes later, not a single minute more or less, Ren's primary unit would strike here in the north.

The logic was to deeply confuse Selthia and divide her tactical options.

Facing simultaneous sieges on two vital guardians resting at opposite ends of the continent, the hive mind orchestrating the corruption would find it impossible to concentrate its entire response on a single target. The entity would be forced to split its attention, hesitate, and ultimately choose a priority.

And while the monster hesitated, both human factions would press their advantage. That crucial fifteen-minute delay served a vital purpose; it allowed the northern team to receive a message confirming that the initial southern strike had successfully baited Selthia before committing their own forces.

Furthermore… If an attack occurred or not in the south, Ren still retained the option to abort the northern siege or delay the timer by another fifteen minutes as the situation demanded.

They needed two distinct encrypted confirmations proving Selthia was actively mobilizing her assets. That was the green light.

The second those messages arrived, Ren would initiate the ambush.

♢♢♢♢

So, they still waited…

Crouched among the jagged rocks of their Platinum ring, with the dense atmospheric mana buzzing heavily in their ears and their suppression artifacts operating at maximum capacity, they kept their ethereal auras suppressed just below the double-energy threshold to avoid detection.

Although immersed within the crushing pressure of the Platinum 3 zone, their baseline energy was already difficult to track; only the massive outputs generated by fusions like those wielded by Ren, his three brothers-in-arms, and the three girls registered slightly above the ambient background noise.