Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1322 - Taming the Old World - Last Dragon - Outcome

Having finalized her retreat, Selthia commanded her entire surviving swarm to expand and multiply.

Her four hundred Platinums and her eight remaining Diamonds scattered across the vast uncharted territories, putting as many miles between their packs as possible.

They dispersed like a viral infection, rendering them virtually impossible to track or corner in large numbers. A concentrated, marching army was a glaring target for Ren's massive attacks and Liora's spiritual fire; a decentralized plague spread across hundreds of miles of deep wilderness was an infestation that not even the combined might of humanity could eradicate.

As long as her beasts remained separated, the human heavy hitters could not inflict meaningful damage on her overall infrastructure. While the Vanguard chased shadows, her swarm would aggressively reproduce, draining the outer rings and compounding their numbers at a terrifying rate.

And her best unit was not going to be wasted, she had an idea about its body base Platinum level that could be enhanced inside one of the mountains…

Selthia was falling back, but she was not surrendering the war.

She was merely setting the stage for the final clash.

♢♢♢♢

Back in the capital, Ren processed the shifting landscape with mixed emotions.

They had undoubtedly won the war for the final guardians, and they had done so with flying colors. All four guardian dragons of light and shadow had been put down; all four elemental rings plus three cores were safely locked in their possession.

Yet, a heavy shadow hung over the victory.

Selthia's army had not been destroyed. She had simply scattered it to the winds, retreating into the dark and would be able to breed an army of thousands. She was very likely actively hoarding her strength right now for a final, overwhelming siege against Yano's walls, an inevitable clash that promised to be the bloodiest nightmare of their lives.

"We secured the dragons," Ren stated quietly, staring down at the war table where the corrupted markers were spreading outward like a fungal bloom. "But the final battle is going to pit us against numbers we have never seen before. We need to start preparing our defenses right now."

A much more immediate crisis occupied the back of Ren's mind. The prison in Yino could not be ignored.

Later tonight, he would go there and restore the star-shaped dome one last time, packing fresh stone into the excavated tunnel before the bedrock reached its absolute structural limit for stretching. That final patch job would only buy the city more or less two days of peace.

It was a temporary bandage, not a cure.

The purple parasite trapped inside was currently pooling volatile ether within its chest, quietly charging the single, devastating blow required to shatter its cage whenever it pleased.

Ren had to calculate exactly how to spend the precious hours left on his clock, and he had to do it with flawless efficiency.

Should he rip the vault open as soon as possible, utilizing all seven secured cores to forge the ultimate, flawless seal while plugging the shadow leak once and for all? It was the safest long-term play, yet attempting a total runic overhaul on a fatigued system carried a terrifying probability of full-body crystallization.

Or should he hold off, prioritizing a full physical recovery, and risk the ancient machine reaching critical mass before he was ready to rebuild the lock?

Two days... Give or take a few hours.

That was the timeline he had to work with. He had two days to finalize a decision, fortify the capital against a rapidly compounding mutant swarm, and permanently seal an ancient prison before its occupant decided it was done waiting in the dark.

Ren decided on the order of things after thinking for a while.

The frantic scramble for the elemental dragons was officially over. The true war for survival was only just beginning.

The very first priority was fortifying the capital…

Once he came back to inject the last of his surplus dragon energy into the crumbling containment dome, he planned to oversee the construction of a new grid of reinforced turrets along the inner walls.

His motivation was simple necessity; he needed to guarantee his loved ones had the strongest possible defensive perimeter in the terrifying event that he failed his ultimate objective.

A line of turrets would never be enough to completely halt a marching swarm of thousands of Platinum horrors, but they would undoubtedly buy the garrison precious hours. That extra time provided a vital safety net while his own meridians recovered from any strain, acting as an insurance policy just in case Selthia lost her temper even more and launched a premature assault before her army reached critical mass.

There was also a highly pragmatic secondary benefit to this engineering project.

Forging high-grade turrets required dense mana-biological materials salvaged directly from Platinum-tier mutant carcasses. To gather those resources, the Vanguard would be forced to organize strike teams around their elite dual-contract Tamers and actively hunt Selthia's dispersed packs.

It was a perfect tactical loop…

By stepping out to harvest building materials, they would actively cull the corruption's sprawling numbers, competing for resources and crippling her compounding growth. It was killing two birds with one stone: securing raw materials to harden their walls while simultaneously shaving the teeth off the monster breeding in the dark.

The spoils he had claimed today would play a crucial role in that hunting phase.

Holding four rings significantly boosted his external elemental output. Even if he temporarily handed one of those artifacts over to Liora, it would simply amplify the Vanguard's most lethal mutant incinerator, ensuring the tactical exchange remained entirely in humanity's favor.

Beyond their raw power, the rings offered a massive advantage. Ancient ruin crystals had to orbit the user, demanding constant ethereal upkeep and placing a continuous, exhausting strain on a Tamer's system to maintain their trajectory. The elemental rings bypassed that burden entirely… They carried zero internal weight and required no conscious balancing or sustained mana flow; they simply rested on his fingers, passively multiplying his elemental authority without demanding a single ounce of his mental bandwidth in return.

That passive enhancement provided Ren with a desperately needed sliver of confidence as he faced the impossible task looming on the horizon.

It was a suicide mission he needed to brief the command staff on soon, and he dreaded the inevitable reaction from the girls.