Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1269 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Reinforcements - 2

Fire was the only wall…

And those fiery barricades were no longer operating at peak efficiency.

The core problem was elemental countering. The corrupted beasts were actively utilizing their innate affinities (which were low-tier but undeniably present within the hive mind's physical network) to bypass the defenses. Launching a concentrated burst of water mana against the wall of fire and sprinting through the resulting gap served as a highly effective strategy.

They did not need to extinguish the entire inferno; they only needed to carve a momentary path and rely on their natural regeneration to heal whatever burns they sustained during the crossing.

The blazing wall had essentially been reduced to a simple energy toll. It was a cheap tariff the mutants willingly paid with a splash of water and a brief burst of healing.

And the mutant numbers continued to swell.

They were no longer dying quite so easily. The southern shadow dragon, which had initially wreaked utter havoc upon the incoming waves, no longer possessed the necessary breathing room to strike with calm efficiency; the mutants were swarming the beast from far too many angles, forcing the guardian to focus entirely on desperate self-defense rather than organized hunting.

Deprived of the dragon's lethal crowd control and lacking the sturdy stone walls to bottleneck the flow, the corruption's numbers were multiplying much faster than the Vanguard could thin them out.

The human tamers were almost exhausted.

They had deployed their fusions in carefully managed shifts, taking turns and stretching their combat endurance through a strict relay system. Yet even with those precautions, they had been fighting a high-intensity engagement for far too long, and the accumulated fatigue was becoming undeniable. It showed in every sluggish movement, every weakened elemental strike, and every defensive shield that held on by a mere thread.

The prospect of victory was looking exceedingly bleak. It would be a monumental struggle if they hoped to win this encounter in any shape or form.

Until a new message arrived.

Lin heard the crucial update directly from Zhao, catching the words between her thunderous kicks as she successfully ruined the retreat timing of a mutant that the dragon's shadows promptly devoured a second later.

Her eyes instantly lit up.

They sparked with that familiar, sadistic determination that always surfaced whenever a grueling battle finally handed her a genuine reason to enjoy the combat once more. The deep fatigue did not magically vanish, but it was completely overshadowed by something vastly more potent: a renewed sense of purpose, a clear path forward where only moments ago there had been nothing but endless attrition.

She would have to deliver vastly more strikes. She had to move exponentially faster. She needed to squeeze every last residual drop of energy from her current fusion.

But the tactical pivot was entirely worth the effort.

Lin flashed a sharp smile, loudly cracked her knuckles, and launched herself back into the suffocating tide of mutants with twice the ferocity she had displayed before.

That single message had fundamentally altered the board.

And back in the capital, another dispatch was on the verge of changing something else entirely, as all three theaters of the global war steadily approached, each in their own distinct manner, the definitive climax where everything would be decided.

♢♢♢♢

Lin was still fighting with everything she had.

Having recovered her intensity, with that sadistic determination burning in her eyes once more, she had managed to flip the situation around.

They were no longer barely defending themselves; now Lin sprinted among the mutants, ruining their timing, and even the southern shadow dragon had regained enough breathing room to become offensive rather than defensive, no longer swamped from every conceivable angle.

Zhao provided covering fire from above, shooting down the beasts attempting to flank her. Ignatius's firewall and the reconstructed sections of Yang's stone barricade held firm once more, containing the airborne elemental strikes. Between Lin's rapid movements, Zhao's aerial support, and the restored defenses, the southern front had transformed back into a slaughterhouse for the corruption.

But an adrenaline rush born purely from good news eventually reaches its limit…

The Lightning master's energy reserves were running dangerously low.

Lin could feel it in every kick that landed a fraction of a second slower, in every passing moment of her fusion that demanded more effort to sustain. She had been fighting at maximum capacity for far too long, and no matter how much sheer willpower she possessed, her mana pool was not infinite.

She faltered during a highly dangerous maneuver.

A Platinum beast closed the distance, and Lin launched a kick meant to cleave it in half, but the strike landed without its usual devastating force or momentum. Zhao tried to cover her, yet he was also running on fumes, and his hardened feather lacked the necessary mana to pierce the creature's thick skull.

Their combined efforts only succeeded in enraging the monster.

Instead of stepping back, the mutant lunged forward, turning the situation genuinely lethal. Lin was exhausted, thrown off balance, and facing a furious Platinum predator bearing down on her.

Her run would end right here, or at the very least, she would be severely crippled and taken out of the fight.

A crunching sound…

But not from Lin's bones, since a chaotic beam of energy destroyed the ugly cranium and then blew the mutant's head clean off.

High above, Sirius had arrived just in time.

Riding atop Mayo's massive bird, he dropped into the fray at the exact second Lin needed him most. His signature attack, a turbulent blend of light and darkness, had carved through the air to decapitate the beast before it could even touch her.

And he had not arrived alone.

A wave of fresh tamers accompanied him. Arturo's grand investment, the tactical decision he had been agonizing over, finally revealed itself. He trusted his incoming northern reinforcements enough to divert a portion of his capital defense to support the south. He didn't abandon his post or send the entire army, but he injected just enough fresh blood to ensure the southern front didn't collapse while the north resolved its final stages.

With Sirius and the newly arrived Vanguard, the south reclaimed the upper hand.

"Thanks for the assist," Lin called out to Sirius while catching her breath. "I owe you one."

"You don't owe me a thing," Sirius replied, already aiming his next shot at another beast. "But I'll accept your gratitude."