Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1273 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Reinforcements - 6

The city was fighting a battle that grew more desperate with every passing minute.

Even Julius and Taro, who had arrived later and actively conserved their energy during the flight, were running on fumes now. There was simply no way to pace themselves against monsters of this caliber and volume.

Bringing down a single high-tier mutant demanded a massive, devastating strike, and just one of those high-octane spells carved a deep hollow into a defender's mana reserves.

A dual fusion allowed them to hit significantly harder, yes, but those transformations operated on a strict countdown. That their mana-biological ticking clock pushed against them just as relentlessly as the endless tide of rotting flesh.

Strike after heavy strike, their mana pools evaporated.

And inevitably, a few mutants began to slip through the cracks.

They reached the inner walls in the end. It wasn't a massive or a catastrophic breach just yet, but enough horrors slipped past the vanguard to severely endanger the sections lacking a high-caliber fighter.

There were still pockets of great strength scattered across the defensive grid.

Like Ren's parents who anchored their designated perimeter with huge, seemingly impenetrable water and wood barriers, while Isaac held his ground as a dual-fire powerhouse. Yet, they were merely isolated islands of stability along a defensive line that remained far too long for the exhausted army to properly cover.

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Over in Klein's sector, the situation turned grim.

A Platinum 3 behemoth had broken through the line. Klein had pushed his body to the absolute brink trying to stall it. He fought with everything he had, buying the surrounding troops precious seconds across multiple city blocks. But his mana core finally ran dry, leaving him gasping and utterly drained at the worst possible moment…

He collapsed onto the shattered pavement with the gargantuan mutant looming directly over him, its jaws parting to consume him whole.

And standing right there in that doomed sector, purely due to a ridiculous administrative accident, was Finch.

The aging accountant had bumped into Klein earlier purely for territorial bookkeeping purposes. He had been meticulously auditing the sector's supply inventories right before the official order to retreat to the inner city was broadcasted days ago. When the chaos erupted, Finch had simply stayed put, getting swept up and trapped in the quarantine zone alongside Klein's working group.

Finch was not a fighter... He heavily dramatized that exact role in his daily jokes, but it was the undeniable truth. He was a man of ledgers and ink, the kind of person who stared down a mismatched financial column with far more steely determination than he would ever point a sword.

His contracted fungal spore had eventually reached the Gold rank, allowing him to link with a third beast, a very unimposing messenger bird. Officially, that made him a triple Tamer, but even that miraculous upgrade had not transformed him into a warrior.

The mere concept of him being genuinely useful on an active battlefield was, to Finch himself, frankly absurd.

And yet.

When he saw Klein sprawled on the ground, the massive shadow of the Platinum beast eclipsing the young man, Finch did not turn and run.

His knees knocked together and for a moment shook uncontrollably. He wore the unmistakable expression of a man who fully realized he was in the wrong place, fully aware he belonged behind a wooden desk instead of a ruined street, but who stubbornly refused to take a single step backward.

"Theodore," he whispered to the white mouse peeking out from his collar, its tiny whiskers stiff with sheer panic, as the accountant began to shuffle forward. "Take a memo. I am resigning my position, effective immediately. Let the official minutes reflect that I died off the clock and without proper hazard compensation."

The mouse let out a frantic squeak that sounded suspiciously like a formal administrative protest.

"What do you mean this is not the time? It is always the perfect time to save our Glorious Employer some payroll expenses, especially since we don't have any heirs to collect a pension! This is the ONLY time we have left!"

"You there!" Finch barked, spinning toward a handful of stranded, terrified youths clutching their own fungal spores, all of them looking just as unsuited for combat as he was. "Yes, you lot hiding in the back looking completely useless! Link your mushroom networks to mine! DO IT NOW! Before that ugly thing eats the only employee who actually files Ren's taxes on time!"

The young recruits obeyed instantly, driven more by his sharp, panicked tone than any actual tactical understanding.

The golden networks of mana-hyphae rapidly intertwined, mimicking the exact same communal structure Ren utilized.

Finch nervously adjusted his spectacles, the thick lenses magnifying his eyes into two moons of polite terror. "A glorified bookkeeper and his rodent assistant fighting in a siege... Theodore, the universe has a remarkably poor sense of humor."

Yet, despite his endless complaining, he never stopped moving his feet. Because giving in to panic was one thing, but letting a foolish, brave kid die right in front of his nose was an entirely different ledger entry.

The network finally locked into Finch and Theodore's central node… It flared to life, expanding rapidly and glowing with the specific, golden frequency that directly countered Selthia's corruption.

That golden mana fundamentally interfered with the mutant's tether to its external energy source, an effect that caused agonizing pain even to a Platinum-tier behemoth.

Theodore had launched himself from Finch's shoulder with astonishing speed. Even if only having support beasts, he was a triple in the end… And because multiple minor tamers had linked together, their stacked enhancements easily pushed past the two hundred percent omniboost threshold, flooding the tiny beast with systemic power.

The moment the mouse's tiny paw slapped against the monster's hide, the giant mutant convulsed.

The freshly connected network didn't kill the creature; they lacked the raw firepower for an execution. But it completely ruined the beast's feeding cycle. The golden shockwave severed the flow of the corrupted runes sustaining its elemental mana feeding and some of its movement, making the gargantuan monster stagger backward its head just as it was about to snap Klein in half.