Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1331 - Taming the Old World - 0.5 hours

Nearly a thousand Platinum-tier beasts were marching on the capital.

The very first wave of the corrupted tide had already reached the outer trenches, and every single available Vanguard soldier manned the fortifications to hold the line with everything they had.

The siege commenced exactly as the command staff had anticipated, largely because a magical signature of this magnitude was impossible to conceal. A surge of power that massive rippled across the continent like a seismic tremor, meaning the corruption did not need to deploy forward scouts to locate the most pressing threat on the board.

It was like a blinding lighthouse in a sea of absolute darkness.

At his core, that was exactly what Ren represented. He was the radiant beacon providing hope to the remnants of humanity, yet he was simultaneously the irresistible flame drawing the purple aberrations out of the shadows.

The towering behemoths converged on that brilliant flare, driven by an urgent imperative to eradicate the only enemy they could not afford to ignore.

♢♢♢♢

Ultimately, the fast expansion of Selthia's army had been indeed contained despite all.

Just as the Vanguard's strategists had projected, once the swarm surpassed the critical mass of six hundred units, stunting their reproduction became exponentially more difficult. There were simply too many scattered packs roaming the wilderness and far too many blind spots for the human strike teams to monitor effectively.

However, those raids had accomplished exactly what they needed to.

While the initial six hundred beasts did manage to swell into a thousand over the following twenty-four hours, the final tally could have been vastly more devastating.

Standing on the ramparts, Arturo ran the grim arithmetic in his head as a bitter form of comfort.

Without the Vanguard's relentless interference, the initial four hundred monsters would have doubled to eight hundred in the first sixteen hours.

They would have hit sixteen hundred by hour thirty-two.

And by the forty-eighth hour, the Witch would have commanded a staggering three thousand and two hundred Platinum titans.

That unchecked exponential growth would have buried the city beneath an insurmountable ocean of purple flesh.

Facing one thousand beasts after fifty-one hours of preparation was a quiet, uncelebrated triumph. It was a silent victory that no one would ever sing songs about, yet it had successfully spared the capital from facing more than three times the lethal force.

But that war hardly mattered right now.

The true battle for survival was unfolding in Yino, right on top of the castle dome.

♢♢♢♢

Deep inside Ren's system, Mooshito was screaming.

"IT IS TOO MUCH! THIS IS TOO MUCH ETHER, REN! WHAT PART OF 'DO NOT EXCEED THREE HUNDRED PERCENT' DID YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE LAST TIME AROUND!? YOU ARE BLOWING PAST THE THRESHOLD! THIS SURCHARGE IS ACTIVELY CONSUMING US RIGHT NOW, I CAN FEEL IT BURNING THROUGH EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL, JUST LOOK AT YOUR LEFT HAND!"

The unrefined dragon energy roared through Ren's spiritual veins with an intensity that vastly outstripped his maximum physical capacity. Dwelling directly inside that network, Mooshito perceived the lethal reality with terrifying clarity. The ancient power was not merely filling Ren's core; it was incinerating it, slowly eating away at his channels while the human boy embraced the overload as if it were a mantle of glory.

The most dangerous aspect of the surge was that Ren did not register the impending lethal threat.

Flooded with that much primordial authority, he felt euphoric, immortal, and completely invincible. The dragon energy was a seductive power as much as corruption. It projected an illusion of boundless strength exactly where it was causing structural destruction, making him feel godlike right as his physical form approached an imminent collapse, feeling like being able to go anywhere while approaching permanent paralysis fast.

Mooshito recognized the lie, yet Ren's mind seemed entirely deaf to it, which was precisely why the little symbiote was shrieking in sheer panic.

"DO NOT LET THE EUPHORIA FOOL YOU! EVERYTHING YOU ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW IS A FEEL GOOD LIE! WE CANNOT SOLVE THIS THROUGH BRUTE FORCE ALONE AND..."

"Stop overthinking," Ren cut him off through their mental link. He projected a chilling, razor-sharp calm that made Mooshito want to tear its own hyphae out by the roots. "I know you can feel the exact same high I am feeling, but relax, I'm not going to wallow in the sensation. It is time to move! If you do not want to waste our window and turn into a permanent statue before we win this, you need to hurry up. I am leaving the twelve nodes entirely in your hands!"

A half-second of stunned silence echoed through the link.

Then came the inevitable explosion.

"TWELVE NODES!? OH, OF COURSE! THAT IS THE EASIEST CHORE IN THE WORLD! JUST LET ME COORDINATE A DOZEN SEPARATE SOURCES OF HIGH ELEMENTAL ETHER INTO A STATE OF FLAWLESS HARMONIC RESONANCE WHILE YOU ACTIVELY DISINTEGRATE AROUND ME, AS IF I AM JUST TAKING A CASUAL AFTERNOON NAP!"

Mooshito practically spat the words out in a frantic, high-speed rap tirade.

"BESIDES, WE DO NOT EVEN HAVE THE CORES YET! EXACTLY WHICH TWELVE NODES DO YOU EXPECT ME TO WEAVE WHEN WE ONLY HAVE TWO NEW PAIRS SITTING IN OUR SHADOW POCKET, YOU RECKLESS DRAGON ENERGY ADDICT SUICIDAL LUNATIC!?"

"They are coming," Ren replied coolly. "Just watch a second and start."

Ren was already multitasking on his max level. He was actively overcharging a massive strike while simultaneously manipulating his own petrification, deliberately forcing the lethal crystalline backlash down into his left hand. The limb looked far worse than it actually felt, completely encased in jagged solid mana to act as a heat sink for the overload.

He endured the transformation just to keep a devastating attack half-chambered. He could not commit to a full charge because the other half of his immense concentration was locked onto a completely separate task: preparing to crack the containment dome wide open.

His two hands, one made of living flesh and the other of cold crystal, were executing two entirely different operations at the exact same time. He was dividing his magical authority in a way no other Tamer could ever hope to manage thanks to his awoken mushroom net, hoarding raw destructive power with one side of his brain while painstakingly dismantling the intricate locks he had spent days reinforcing with the other.

The steel dome hissed and split open.