Read Novel Full Chapter 1327 - Taming the Old World - 25.5 hours
Chapter 1327 - Taming the Old World - 25.5 hours
Selthia had already tested several countermeasures against the rogue corpse variable, and each failed skirmish taught her something deeply unsettling.
The first learning was a matter of raw numbers: throwing five Platinum mutants at the abomination was woefully insufficient.
During their initial encounters, the reanimated puppet actually displayed a degree of caution when faced with multiple corrupted enemies. It hesitated to engage a pack head-on because the energy reaction between the two forces was mutually destructive.
The purple corruption aggressively burned the golden hyphae, and the golden network aggressively dissolved the corruption; in a direct physical clash, both sides suffered systemic damage. Because of this volatile chemistry, the puppet initially retreated, preferring to isolate stragglers and fight one-on-one rather than risk being overwhelmed by a group.
However, when Selthia ordered a pack of five Platinums to chase the retreating beast down and secure the kill, they unknowingly crossed into what the entity had claimed as its personal domain.
The entire dynamic shifted in an instant.
It was a general infection.
The golden, luminescent mushrooms had quickly seeded the surrounding terrain. They formed a thick, glowing carpet that multiplied rapidly across the soil, and that golden network reacted to the presence of the purple one.
The golden ether actively neutralized the corrupted mana, just as it did during physical contact with the beast, but now the cancellation effect scaled across the entire environment. The moment Selthia's Platinums stepped into that glowing zone, they began to weaken rapidly, their internal reserves constantly draining away as they fought against the very air they breathed.
It was an environmental hazard far worse than the Purple Dragon's innate corruption. Exponentially worse.
Despite all the time, ether, and ancient ruin artifacts Selthia and it had invested in their swarm, her network still could not passively contaminate an environment to this degree. Her mutants carried their own corrupted mana within their bodies, acting as temporary, localized rivers of rot, but they did not permanently infect the soil they walked on.
The only thing that had ever achieved stable, permanent environmental corruption was the massive crystal core buried beneath the capital, and that process had taken decades of slow, agonizing seepage into the mana inversion zone beyond the underground Gold ring.
It had required an eternity and incredibly specific geographical conditions.
This golden abomination required none of that…
This freak could infect the surrounding environment directly, and it did so at a terrifying pace.
It did not require decades of slow seepage.
It was entirely unfair.
Was this invasive network yet another byproduct of that ancient engineer?
Selthia pondered the question, her thoughts swirling in a dark mix of seething anger and something uncomfortably close to bitter envy.
The engineer…
The grand traitor. The man whom the purple dragon, the ancient voice that had promised to return her mother to her, and more recently, promised to reunite her with her father and brother too in a perfect, remade world, over and over again, always spoke of with profound disgust and deep-seated disdain. It was the kind of lingering resentment of an entity remembering a betrayal that still burned fiercely even after centuries.
Had that human actually managed to reverse-engineer the architecture of the purple network and forge a biological grid capable of such aggressive, instantaneous expansion right from its inception?
A network that did not require decades of slow accumulation or a buried crystal core to function?
A system that could rapidly infect an entire environment with golden mushrooms and spores specifically tailored to neutralize her corruption on contact?
If that were the case, it was no wonder the ancient dragon harbored such an absolute, consuming hatred for the man.
Selthia, for her part, simply wanted to eradicate the abomination. She wanted it swept off her board.
She desperately wanted to stop dealing with a rogue variable that Ren had casually dumped into her lap without even intending to.
However, removing the piece was proving to be exceptionally difficult.
Her strike team of five Platinum mutants found themselves utterly outmatched the moment they crossed into the golden zone.
Constantly weakened by the ambient golden ether actively draining their corruption, the Platinums stumbled into one brutal ambush after another. The glowing fungal beast hunted them down one by one, flawlessly utilizing its infected territory to maintain the upper hand.
Selthia was forced to order a frantic retreat, pulling her two surviving Platinums out of the zone before she lost them as well.
Realizing brute force was failing, she pivoted her strategy.
She reinforced the battered squad, bumping the hunting party up to a fresh group of ten, anchored by a newly minted Diamond titan. Instead of sending them back into the meat grinder, she ordered them to establish a wide perimeter. They surrounded the infected golden zone, deploying ten thousand low-tier mutants to form a dense physical cordon. The objective was no longer to enter the hostile territory and fight; it was strictly to contain the expansion of the golden hyphae.
Eradicating the beast outright would cost her far too many elite units during this critical growth phase.
Containment was the only viable, cost-effective option.
The infected golden zone proved to be significantly larger than she initially estimated. Still, with ten thousand lesser beasts walling it in, the fungal carpet would at least be restricted from claiming any more of the southern forests.
The glowing abomination was rapidly becoming a severe nuisance, yet it had not crossed the threshold into a genuine crisis just yet.
The true crisis was unfolding elsewhere.
The humans.
While Selthia was busy micromanaging the containment of the fungal beast, the Vanguard had organized massive hunting parties. They poured out of the capital's gates and invaded the surrounding wilderness, actively striking her dispersed packs in a concerted effort to cripple her army's expansion.
And they were executing the operation flawlessly… Far too flawlessly.
They chased away her hunting Platinums. They outright slaughtered them whenever her beasts suffered a stroke of bad luck or poor positioning. Worse still, the human Tamers actively intervened in the ecosystem, aiding the local wild beasts to win skirmishes they were on the verge of losing, systematically tipping the scales of every single territorial clash against the corruption.
The absolute worst part, however, was the theft.
They were stealing her biomatter.
That was the calculated strike that truly bled her logistics dry.