Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1302 - Taming the Old World - Light Dragons - 6

A messenger bird descended from the southern sky shortly after the vanguard arrived at the guardian's mountain, dropping Ren's dispatch straight into Arturo's hands.

The parchment carried a blunt warning... The battle was about to get complicated.

Selthia had redirected her two hundred surviving southern units, along with her newly minted Diamond titans, toward the north. Their marching route would bring them directly to the city walls and many if not all may stay to siege them.

Ren's orders were concise: hold the line.

In the best-case scenario, he would finish his hunt and circle back to reinforce the capital before the marching horde even arrived. In the worst-case scenario, at least two of the girls, flanked by Sirius and Liu, would drop in shortly after the siege began. Because the strike team was traveling by air, their return trip would take less than one hour.

If Ren's fiery trap worked as intended, the Light Dragon would not stall them for long.

Arturo read the brief, gave a curt nod, and immediately began running the numbers.

Calculating brutal odds like these was what he did best.

The immediate situation outside the walls was entirely manageable. Selthia had only committed a hundred Platinum beasts and a single Diamond mutant to the capital's perimeter. Furthermore, ever since Ren vanished into the southern sky, the corruption had only launched half-hearted probing strikes.

The attacks lacked genuine aggression... They felt highly strategic, as if the Witch were merely testing the waters.

She was using the capital's reinforced walls as a testing ground for her new Diamond asset, carefully measuring its baseline output against a concentrated human defense before committing to a larger offensive.

Arturo studied these brief skirmishes with the sharp, unblinking focus of a chess grandmaster analyzing a rival's opening moves.

The tactical consensus among the defending commanders was perfectly clear. A veteran of Julius or Taro's caliber possessed the raw defensive output to contain the towering Diamond mutant. Containment, however, was a far cry from a clean kill.

Actually executing a single Diamond required the synchronized effort of at least two elite commanders pushing their double fusions to the breaking point. A Diamond was not a standard Platinum that could be overwhelmed by coordinated Golden tamers' numbers; it was a walking mountain with a terrifying regenerative factor that could not be damaged by less than high platinum level mana and demanded an equally massive response as its size.

That tactical reality was a double-edged sword.

On one hand, dealing with just one Diamond and a hundred Platinums was a sustainable chore. Julius could easily anchor the giant, while Taro and Yang managed the Platinum packs with the support of thousands of Gold-tier defenders. Arturo could oversee the grid and keep the line stable. It was an uncomfortable standoff, yet nobody was in danger of breaking.

The real nightmare was scheduled to arrive in roughly two hours.

Arturo mapped out the approaching disaster in his head, preferring to stare the grim arithmetic right in the face. If the six southern Diamonds currently marching north decided to join the single titan already harassing the city, the entire paradigm would shatter.

Seven Diamond mutants and three hundred Platinums pushing against the walls all at once.

Under the crushing weight of seven titans, the capital would buckle. According to Arturo's strict calculations, executing seven Diamonds required fourteen Tamers operating at Julius's level, and the city simply did not have fourteen powerhouses left in reserve.

The defenders would be forced to cede ground, bleeding for every inch, fighting tooth and nail against a force that vastly outmatched them in the only metric that truly mattered survivability.

"They cannot arrive too early," Arturo murmured to himself, his eyes locked on the sprawling tactical map. "If those seven titans reach our walls more than thirty minutes before Ren gets back, the perimeter will collapse."

But they still had a buffer…

That was the crucial variable, and Arturo clung to it tightly. Based on the movement speeds recorded during yesterday's campaign, the southern mutants would need at least two full hours to cross the plains and reach the city limits. Two hours of marching through broken terrain just to get within striking distance.

That was plenty of time for the Vanguard to maneuver.

Both the northern and southern strike teams could make the return trip in half that time by taking to the sky. A Tamer riding a winged beast crossed the continent way faster than a rotting army dragging its feet through the mud. If Ren dismantled his Light Guardian quickly, he could easily touch down in the capital before Selthia's reinforcements even crested the horizon.

The entire war had once again narrowed down to a ruthless race against the clock.

So, for the time being, Arturo did what he did best… He waited, he watched, and he calculated.

He kept his aerial scouts circling high above the plains, ordering them to track every minor shift in the horde's formation, measure their marching speed, and update the estimated time of arrival constantly. He kept Julius and Taro on a tight leash, ready to intercept the lone Diamond the moment it escalated from probing strikes to a genuine breach attempt. He kept the garrison tense but disciplined, ensuring no one wasted precious ether on the enemy's feints.

Above all else, he maintained a profound, unshakable calm.

Arturo understood the math, and the numbers confirmed his strategy time and time again. As long as the city held its breath for those two hours, as long as those seven Diamond beasts did not synchronize their assault, time was firmly on humanity's side. Ren was incredibly fast at taking down dragons now.

The final guardians would likely fall long before Selthia's scattered armies could converge.

They just needed to endure. As always, they just had to hold out a little longer.

"Tell all the scouts," Arturo ordered, his eyes never leaving the parchment map spread across the table. "I want to know the exact second any of those Diamond mutants change their trajectory toward this city. The very instant it happens, not a minute later."

And so the capital, currently fending off one testing titan and a hundred roaming Platinums, braced itself for the most critical race of the entire war; the grueling marathon of surviving until their heroes fell from the sky again.