Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1336 - Taming the Old World - One Second

Mooshito's response was incredibly strange, completely derailing the frantic momentum of the battle.

The symbiote was no longer screaming hysterically about the lethal overload. That sudden absence of panic was the very first indicator that something had gone catastrophically wrong, though it took Ren a fraction of a second to register the shift.

Throughout the entire initial phase of the operation, every single word the mushroom transmitted had been wrapped in frantic complaints and high-pitched shrieks about suicidal lunatics. In reality, Ren could feel through their shared link that the beast had never actually been angry; the shouting was simply Mooshito's coping mechanism, a way to vent the overwhelming stress of the moment and channel the erratic spikes of raw energy.

This response was entirely different.

'I am truly sorry.'

The words were quiet… Almost impossibly soft.

It was a tone of voice that contradicted everything Mooshito had ever been throughout its entire existence. That sheer, profound wrongness chilled the blood in Ren's veins before his brain could even process the meaning behind the apology.

Then, Mooshito expanded.

It was a sudden, internal explosion. The golden mycelium network entirely abandoned its defensive posture. It ceased acting as a protective cyst around the spiritual seed, shedding the compressed, tightly coiled formation it had maintained for so long.

The golden hyphae slammed open, instantly deploying a massive, Gold-3 tier mana grid that Ren had never utilized. It was a sprawling, hyper-dense mana-biological infrastructure designed to bridge half the continent, a network Ren had largely ignored because he had always been forced to rely strictly on his own human channels.

The vast majority of the lethal energy overload rushed directly into that newly opened grid.

It absorbed the entire three hundred and sixty percent spike all at once.

And Ren's eyes changed.

The familiar, deep jade green that had always defined his mana signature, the exact hue the kingdom had learned to associate with the Glorious General, was instantly incinerated. His irises flared into a blinding, intense gold. It was the searing, unfiltered brilliance of staring directly into molten metal.

Along with the blinding golden light and the fully expanded network came the heightened Perception.

Time stopped…

It was not a poetic metaphor for the boy's racing mind. With Mooshito's vast, continent-spanning network fully open and actively feeding his sensory input, Ren's cognitive processing speed accelerated to such an incomprehensible degree that a single second stretched into a metaphorical eternity.

He could see his own light beam frozen halfway down the shaft, and he could literally count the individual energetic ripples traveling along its length. He could see the intricate runic nodes of the new prison vibrating perfectly in their suspended resonance. He could see the five commanders standing around him, completely frozen in place like statues.

And he could feel the agonizing pain tearing his contracted beast apart.

That was the brutal cost of plugging directly into the world's nervous system while the World Mushroom actively destroyed itself through sheer energetic overload. Mooshito's pain was not a distant, abstract concept… It was absolute. It was the agonizing sensation of every single golden thread burning to ash as an impossible volume of ether was forced through a body that was already broken. Ren felt the incineration as if it were his own flesh burning, because in this suspended eternity, it was.

Their spiritual seed was left completely exposed.

The corrupted crack in his core was once again left entirely unguarded.

'I am sorry,' Mooshito repeated. Within the frozen expanse of time, the symbiote's voice arrived perfectly clear, devoid of any echo, transmitting directly into a space within Ren's consciousness that had nothing to do with physical hearing. 'Your strategy was flawless, you all executed your roles perfectly... You planned the logistics, you ran the calculations, and you did not skip a single step.'

A heavy pause hung in the static air.

'But in the end, this was always a gamble… And we do not get to win every single bet we place.'

Ren tried to speak. But he couldn't.

'I was the weak link in the chain,' the mushroom continued. It delivered the assessment without a trace of melodrama or complaint, speaking with a strange, ominous serenity.

'I sustained far too much systemic damage during our previous encounters. I never actually recovered back to one hundred percent capacity, even though I refused to admit it to you to not make you feel too bad. I simply cannot hold this structural load much longer… This catastrophic failure was bound to happen eventually, and it just so happens to be occurring right now, at the absolute worst possible second. I am deeply, genuinely sorry for that.'

Time remained suspended. The beam hung frozen in the descent. Standing at the epicenter of the frozen world, Ren finally began to understand exactly where this conversation was leading.

'Listen to me closely. I only have a few seconds left in the physical world, even if those seconds feel like an eternity inside this cognitive space.'

The golden network pulsed once, a weak, flickering throb of failing light.

'I can finish the runic weave myself.'

Ren felt something inside his chest drop into a bottomless abyss.

'The runic prison… I can finish the entire architecture completely on my own right now. In this fully expanded state, even with my channels this severely ruptured, I can easily handle the load. I can even anchor all seven primordial nodes perfectly, not only six. That arrogant purple idiot down there is never getting out… Ever.'

A brief, almost amused pause echoed through the link, reminiscent of the symbiote's old banter, though it entirely lacked its usual sharp edge. 'Or, at the very least, it will remain trapped until every single Tamer in your generation reaches the upper tiers of Platinum and can engineer a superior solution. That would be a rather massive tactical advantage, wouldn't it? Watching your entire generation finally standing tall, finally stepping up to the challenge. I really would have liked to see that.'

The word 'would' dropped into the silence like a lead weight.

'But executing this weave is going to destroy me,' Mooshito stated. There was absolutely no self-pity in the declaration. It was simply the cold, precise inventory of an organic machine finalizing its ultimate ledger. 'Completely... There will be no coming back from this.'