Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1335 - Taming the Old World - Seconds - 3

Watching Ren march into a suicide mission alone was an unbearable prospect; actively risking their own lives right beside him was an entirely different conversation.

Throughout the entire planning phase, all three women had vehemently opposed any scenario where Ren carried the full weight of the danger, vehemently refusing to stand safely on the sidelines while he gambled his life.

But the moment Ren inverted the proposition, the moment he asked them to step into the fire with him, to share the lethal strain and put their own skin on the line to help keep him breathing, their stubborn resistance evaporated.

They were more than willing to risk their lives alongside him.

It was a profound psychological shift. It was the stark difference between being helpless spectators to a martyrdom and being active participants in a shared, desperate gamble that actually offered him a fighting chance.

♢♢♢♢

Larissa grasped the cold logic of the distribution protocol first, giving a slow, firm nod. Luna followed shortly after, though her agreement was laced with a reluctant scowl. Liora yielded last, her previous harsh demand to "find a third option, you idiot" now fully translating into a fierce, unwavering commitment.

"You are right," Liora had admitted quietly. "We have to act, no matter how much it hurts. We cannot just stand around and watch the clock run out."

Because that was the brutal truth hiding beneath their fear. Refusing to take the gamble was not the safe route; it was simply a guaranteed method of losing.

If they did nothing, the dragon would breach the vault and reclaim its full strength. The capital would be leveled, and everything they had bled to build would be reduced to ash, not because they had made a bold bet and lost, but simply because they lacked the courage to place the bet in the first place.

The only true, fatal risk on the board was cowardice.

They accepted the terms... All five commanders.

The operation was officially underway.

Snapping back to the present chaos.

Ren had already unleashed the massive feint. The initial barrage had consumed roughly two hundred percent of his normal capacity in dragon energy, deliberately controlled at half-concentration because the remaining half of his monstrous mental power and Perception was entirely dedicated to remaking the containment dome and feeding the twelve runic nodes while the five injected more energy in his system.

The dragon was currently weathering the storm behind its indestructible artifacts, thoroughly confident in its impending victory, utterly blind to the invisible snare closing around its throat.

Phase one was complete.

The strike roared. Mooshito's golden threads wove at blinding speed. The six elemental nodes locked into perfect resonance, one by one, as the luminescent network rapidly expanded around the perimeter of the fractured prison.

It was time to initiate phase two.

It was time to push the overload to its absolute peak, drawing the maximum capacity from all five commanders simultaneously.

"Now," Ren commanded over the link, actively tearing his right arm internal channels wide open to maximize his intake rate.

The ether stopped flowing into him in the staggered, meticulously calculated trickles Theodore had plotted out for the initial faint's power barrage.

His three-headed Hydra was still sustaining that decoy blast, but the time for holding back had passed. It was time to pour every ounce of their hoarded strength into the runic architecture. Liora, Larissa, Luna, Sirius, and Liu answered the call, each commander dumping the massive surplus of primordial energy they had been warehousing at their own crystallization risk directly into Ren's central node.

Ren's internal pressure spiked far beyond the threshold of his previous expenditure.

Two hundred and fifty percent capacity… Three hundred percent.

The lethal crystallization immediately began creeping up his left shoulder. He actively corralled the petrification process, forcing the jagged stone to consume the designated sinkhole and aggressively steering the hardening flesh away from the fingers of his right hand, which he desperately needed to maintain fine runic control.

Three hundred and twenty percent… Three hundred and forty.

Rapidly approaching three hundred and sixty percent.

It was a staggering volume of power, hovering dangerously high above any mana-biological limit his physical body was engineered to endure. Yet, the systemic damage was mitigated. The lethal friction was funneled into a now heavily mana-armored focal point, and the intake process had been executed in calculated phases rather than a single, devastating shock. It was a controlled, momentary spike in risk.

It was exactly enough raw power to snap the runic lock shut in one go.

Ren felt the oceanic ether filling his core. The ancient dragon energy whispered its seductive lies right into his ear, promising him that he was invincible, that he was a god, urging him to take more, to take everything and rule. He held the insidious euphoria at bay with cold, clinical clarity, perfectly aware that the sensation of ultimate glory was nothing more than mana poison.

Deep inside the network, Mooshito was weaving the final necessary pairs of runic nodes. The little symbiote was terrified and in agonizing pain, yet its geometric precision remained flawless.

The five commanders stood their ground around him, heavily overloaded, actively sharing the lethal burden to push him to the needed threshold.

Directly below them, the purple dragon weathered the power barrage, smiling inwardly at its own assumed victory.

And Ren, his left arm entirely encased in crystal and his internal system burning at three hundred and sixty percent capacity, pooled the absolute maximum energy required for the final stroke.

It was the singular motion that would snap the hexagonal prison shut.

It was the maneuver that would violently invert the half-mechanical beast's guaranteed triumph, transforming its escape route into an almost permanent tomb woven together by a dead engineer, a suicidal human boy, a complaining mushroom, three future wives, and two veteran commanders willing to risk everything.

"We are almost there, Moosh," Ren thought, his heart hammering strongly against his ribs, his left arm now completely lost to the crystal. "Just a little further… Hold the line with me!"

'I am sorry.'