Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1281 - Taming the Old World - Shadow Dragons - Last Front - 6

Outside the mountain, the situation had indeed collapsed into an absolute disaster.

Lin crackled with volatile, unstable lightning. She was exhausted, her breathing ragged, yet she stubbornly held the line directly in front of the mountain's entrance, desperately fighting to keep the horde from fully pouring inside.

Looming directly in front of her was a towering, grotesque mutant that roughly mirrored the silhouette of a dragon.

The Vanguard had been entirely unable to peel the mountain of mutant flesh off the prize. The Shadow Dragon was simply too massive.

The sheer surface area of the guardian had allowed hundreds of mutants to latch onto its body simultaneously, literally constructing a secondary mountain of writhing meat over the dissolving corpse. Dislodging that kind of density was impossible with the meager reserves the Vanguard had left.

The horrific result was a gargantuan, stitched-together monstrosity, assembled from the fused bodies of some of the very beasts that had tried to devour the guardian's heart.

The situation was so dire that Mayo had completely stopped making jokes.

The young woman dove through the smoke on the back of her cloud-bird, executing a desperate swoop to rescue Yang. The earth and wood tamer was operating on fumes, his colossal armor of bedrock and ironwood almost entirely pulverized. It was the exact same emergency extraction Mayo had already performed for Hikari, Umi, and the academy directors.

Those veteran warriors currently lay unconscious on the broad, soft back of Mayo's hovering avian beast, their mana cores completely depleted. They were being frantically tended to by some healers, the royal guards and Mayo's maid companion, who were the only individuals on the mount still clinging to consciousness.

Down in the ground, only Lin remained on the frontline, supported by Zhao providing covering fire from the sky.

And looking at the colossal shadow-wielding abomination rising before them, it was painfully obvious that neither of them would last much longer.

♢♢♢♢

Back inside the ancient mountain, Sirius fought a losing battle against the living shadow anchoring his legs to the crystal floor.

"Liu!" he shouted, straining his legs against the viscous grip. "Grab the ring and get out of here! Do not look back! I will figure a way out of this later!"

Liu did not bother giving a verbal reply… He did exactly as he was told regarding the artifact; he snatched the heavy ring from its pedestal. And immediately after securing the prize, he initiated his fusion. His physical form rapidly expanded, twisting into his ultimate combat state.

The blood wendigo emerged to his side too, a towering nightmare of crimson muscle and bone that had made seasoned soldiers tremble just by looking at it. Liu launched himself directly at the Diamond-tier mutant that was now attempting to fully nullify Sirius's shadow magic.

But mid-flight, he threw the ring straight at Sirius.

"Two men is the minimum for extraction!" Liu roared, his voice distorted by his monstrous jaws as he collided with the behemoth together with his duplicated fused Wendigo. "You need someone to cover your blind spots if we want to walk out of this mountain alive! Against a beast casting shadow spells, I cannot do this alone! Put it on!"

Sirius caught the ancient band of crystal against all odds. He hesitated for a fraction of a second. This was the ultimate prize, the sole reason they had bled for hours, and wearing it felt like a breach of protocol. But the shadow tendril creeping up his calves tightened like a vice, and Liu was already trading heavy blows with the giant.

There was no time for moral scruples... Sirius felt a sudden, profound respect for the young men and women orbiting Ren; they were cut from a genuinely rare, fiercely loyal cloth in this generation.

He slid the ring onto his finger.

His shadow affinity experienced a massive, instantaneous fifty percent amplification. The surrounding darkness answered his call with a terrifying new potency.

Riding that surging adrenaline, Sirius flexed his aura and broke the binding. He tore his legs free, shredding the Diamond mutant's dark tendril into harmless mist.

Fortunately, the corrupted swarm was still amateurish when it came to manipulating elements, especially the new shadow element. The hive network also lacked the full infrastructure needed to feed them maximum magical output.

Even in a mana rich environment like this, the ambient mana inside the ruin was exceptionally pure, not purple, drastically hindering the beast's corrupted mana hungry spells. The mutant's shadow magic was still dangerous, but it was nowhere near the catastrophic level of a true Diamond-rank shadow guardian exhaling its breath.

That slight inefficiency was the reason an exhausted Sirius could still break the hold.

Liu, however, was in deep trouble now.

His blood strike, theoretically his most devastating attack, had failed to execute the mutant. The creature was already knitting its torn flesh back together. Worse still, by engaging his fusion and casting blood magic together with his beast in such close proximity to a corrupted behemoth, Liu had inadvertently absorbed too much of its corrupted energy.

The toll was immediate... He gasped, struggling to contain the invasive sickness as his veins darkened with black sludge. The exact same poison that had nearly consumed his mind in the previous campaign was climbing back up his system.

Sirius did not waste time overthinking his next move. Empowered by the ancient ring, he shadow-jumped directly to his partner's side and pressed his hand firmly against Liu's chest to take some and help him process the corruption.

Sirius instantly felt a sickening portion of what Liu was enduring, while Liu immediately felt the crushing weight on his mind lighten. The veteran felt the magnetic, maddening pull of the venom trying to hijack his thoughts.

But Sirius refused to let it dominate him…

He had been intently observing Ren, quietly studying how the boy managed to shoulder that exact same poison.

Sirius tapped into that understanding, and rather than fighting the infection, he forced it to work for him. He was no longer the same broken man from years ago; he had a complete family now, a perfect happy life he was fiercely determined to protect.

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