Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1254 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons

Yano's Shadow Dragon loomed mere minutes away, completely oblivious, lazily guarding its ring without the slightest realization that death was currently crouching at the very edge of its territory.

Ren ran a final diagnostic on his internal network. He was operating at virtually one hundred percent capacity, the refined environmental ether smoothly topping off his remaining deficit.

He glanced over at the girls. All three of them were tense and fully prepared for combat, with their carefully regulated twenty-five percent fraction of the primordial dragon energy circulating smoothly through their veins just like the rest of the elites, each one possessing a crystal-clear understanding of their role.

Every single combatant had requested the exact same calibrated dose.

He scanned the overcast sky, searching for the small avian messenger that would deliver the first vital confirmation.

And he waited.

The suffocating silence preceding the storm hung over them, just as heavy as the surrounding mana, thick with the weight of everything that was about to be decided.

Somewhere far to the south, at this exact same moment, another dedicated team was holding their breath for the moment to launch themselves against another guardian.

And the second those two confirmations crossed the continent and landed in Ren's hands, the ultimate hunt for the final sovereign dragons would officially begin.

♢♢♢♢

The first encrypted message finally arrived.

Ren carefully untied the small scroll from the avian messenger's leg with precise fingers, scanning the contents in a single fluid motion.

Confirmation!

The southern Vanguard detachment had officially initiated their assault.

However, the execution was distinctly different from what Selthia likely anticipated.

They had not launched a direct offensive against the southern shadow guardian. Instead, they executed a small strike against the sparse flow of mutant Platinums, specifically targeting that thin line of corrupted beasts Selthia maintained to exert a constant, low-level pressure on the southern dragons.

It was a highly measured engagement, meticulously calculated to project the illusion of a massive maneuver without genuinely committing to the final siege. The opening piece of their grand deception was officially on the board.

Now, Ren required the second confirmation, that last piece of intelligence.

The specific message that would verify exactly how Selthia chose to react.

The entire overarching strategy hinged entirely on decoding her counter-maneuver.

♢♢♢♢

Far away, Victor's aerial squadron was flying in tight, continuous circles around the perimeter of the capital's Great Wall.

They maintained strict surveillance over the surface, while several elites utilizing mana vision peered deep underground, bouncing their gathered data directly to the Earth tamers stationed within the subterranean basin. If the corruption child decided to exploit the distant distraction to strike the city, effectively abandoning her dragons to inflict damage where it hurt most in a desperate bid to force Ren's retreat, Victor's squadron would detect the incoming siege with plenty of time to spare.

The capital's defensive grid was undeniably operating with reduced personnel, but it was heavily condensed into a vastly smaller, hyper-dense area; it possessed the structural integrity to hold the line for a good while, and the Vanguard could easily rush back to provide reinforcements if the situation demanded it.

That was the first tactical flank safely covered.

Down in the deep south, a dedicated surveillance team led by Zhao remained on high alert for an entirely different reason. If Selthia opted to unleash her full, apocalyptic might against the exact same target the humans had just engaged, perhaps hoping to crush the attacking unit by concentrating her power into a single point, Zhao's group would instantly register the massive army. And if that catastrophic concentration of force occurred in the south, it meant Selthia had fully swallowed the bait, leaving the northern hemisphere entirely exposed for Ren.

That would mean Ren should wait a bit longer, so Selthia moves as many mutants there as possible.

That was the second flank effectively monitored.

And positioned relatively close to Ren in the north, the third flank was equally secured.

Min had concealed himself several kilometers behind the primary strike force on a slightly elevated hill, a vantage point that offered a commanding view of the surrounding terrain. Taro and Liu anchored his position, all three of them prepped to broadcast whatever transpired here in the north, whether from the air or from the underground, the moment they received the signal to break cover.

Because there was one highly specific scenario that favored Ren's calculations more.

If Selthia launched an aggressive siege against the north, aiming to avoid the humans' supposed entanglement in the south to steal the Darkness guardian of Yano, Ren's primary unit could simply remain perfectly hidden. His team was the most lethal and powerful of the three deployments, and they could patiently wait in the shadows.

They could allow Selthia to grind down her own mutant armies against the guardian dragon. Then, just before the bitter end, once the corruption had completed the grueling heavy lifting of weakening the sovereign guardian, Ren's elites would sweep in to annihilate both the exhausted corrupted beasts and the heavily injured dragon in one synchronized blow.

Selthia would perform all the grueling labor; Ren would effortlessly claim the ultimate prize.

It was maybe the best-case scenario possible. He merely needed the incoming intelligence to confirm the trap was set.

♢♢♢♢

Ren waited in the shadows, keeping the first decoded scroll clutched in his hand.

The three girls watched him closely, their posture coiled with tension, awaiting his final command. The colossal Darkness dragon loomed merely a few minutes away, completely oblivious to the shifting board.

The dense ambient mana hummed constantly against their skin. The entire operation dangled on the wings of the next bird, relying entirely on the next line of ink to reveal what humanity's greatest enemy had chosen to do.

A small silhouette darted across the overcast sky.

It arrived remarkably fast, taking barely ten minutes, a metric that already conveyed crucial data; if this was a confirmation then Selthia had reacted with terrifying speed, possessing zero hesitation. Ren intercepted the encrypted message, broke the seal, and began reading to finalize his next command.

Confirmation two!

The tactical picture seemed clear then, prompting Ren to quietly brief his unit. They merely needed to wait for Min's small observation team to return and let the final five-minute window expire to confirm the exact status of the other two fronts still, in case help was somehow needed anyway.

But just before they finished their combat formations, an irregularity forced them to halt.

The five-minute buffer had not elapsed.

Yet another avian messenger descended from the clouds.

Ren looked up from the initial parchment, his eyes narrowing in deep confusion. The communication network was meticulously coordinated, the dispatches deliberately spaced apart; another bird should not have arrived this quickly, certainly not before he had the opportunity to act upon the first wave of intelligence.

He caught the third scroll.

And as he began to untie it, while the first confirmation still had not genuinely altered the battlefield conditions, a fourth bird materialized in the sky right behind the third.

No, not just one more.

Two of them.