Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1337 - Taming the Old World - One Second - 2

Ren felt a sudden, heavy dampness on his face.

He had no idea when the weeping had actually started. He wasn't sobbing, his shoulders weren't shaking, and he wasn't making any of the broken, choking sounds people usually made when they cried.

There were simply silent tears streaming down a face that did not even truly exist within this ethereal cognitive space.

A suffocating knot formed in a throat made entirely of projected consciousness, carrying the exact, agonizing sensation of grieving a profound loss while the victim was still standing right in front of him.

'And I would take the jade seed with me,' the mushroom continued, its tone inexorable and cold. 'I have to destroy it entirely because it cannot grow without my network to anchor it, and a thing that ceases to grow simply festers and causes systemic damage. It is much better if it fades away with me… A clean break, leaving no loose ends behind to poison your channels later.'

'But at the very least,' the symbiote said, its voice softening by a fraction of a degree, 'I can actively shield your three primary beast nodes. The Hydra, the Mantis, and the Wolverine. All three of them will be spared from the collapse. I can leave your fundamental core perfectly intact, ensuring you remain the only triple-contract Tamer in the world… You will still be the strongest.'

Ren continued to weep in complete, paralyzed silence.

'And honestly? I think this might actually be for the best…'

Then, Mooshito voiced the one thought Ren was completely unprepared to hear.

'Lately, I have begun to feel that my very existence is fundamentally flawed. That I might actually be a highly dangerous, unstable variable for you… There is something malignant growing deep inside my code, a creeping sensation of dormant danger paired with a completely illogical sense of guilt…'

'…Even though I do not believe in abstract concepts like destiny or spiritual taint, that underlying feeling prevents me from resting properly. Perhaps that is why I am always so easy to jolt awake… Yes, that must be why I wake up so easily. It is likely the reason I never managed to heal my ruptured channels properly, and why I failed to support you the way I was supposed to. Because we were supposed to be a flawless team of two, weren't we?'

The entire picture snapped into focus, hitting Ren with the force of a physical blow.

The ancient engineer's cryptic warning, the Seed Fusion Potion, the final recorded message from that brilliant, lunatic ghost who had casually suggested, tucked between weird jokes and theatrical threats, that the symbiotic mushroom might eventually turn against its host. The engineer had told him to monitor the parasite closely, to systematically restrict its access to his higher cognitive functions and memories.

The ancient engineer's cryptic warning, the Seed Fusion Potion, the final recorded message from that brilliant, lunatic ghost who had casually suggested, tucked between weird jokes and theatrical threats, that the symbiotic mushroom might eventually turn against its host. The engineer had told him to monitor the parasite closely, to systematically restrict its access to his higher cognitive functions and memories.

And Ren had actually done it…

He had quietly erected subtle mental barriers in secret, never breathing a single word of it to Mooshito. He had, even if slightly, distrusted the single entity that had unconditionally supported him since the very first day he ingested that poisonous mana in his 10 years old body, back when it was nothing more than a tiny spore clinging to his side.

He had doubted who his partner was long before he became a renowned commander, long before the power and the legendary triple fusions. Even if he had relegated that suspicion to a tiny, heavily repressed corner of his mind, he had treated the symbiote as a dormant threat while the mushroom was busy tearing its own anatomy apart in every single battle just to keep his heart beating.

Now, that same mushroom was offering to sacrifice everything.

It had even begun to suspect its own nature by itself, naturally detecting that dormant danger within its code, yet instead of hiding the anomaly insidiously to plot a betrayal, it was using that flaw as a twisted form of comfort… It was treating the anomaly as permission to die.

The symbiote genuinely believed it was doing Ren a massive favor by bowing out. It was framing its own total erasure from the world as a tragic apology for a creeping distrust it had never actually earned.

The suffocating knot in Ren's ethereal throat morphed into a profound agony that lacked a proper name. The crushing pain was so severe that the lethal draconic energy actively incinerating their shared network felt like nothing now, completely faded into the background.

'You have matured so much more without me constantly guiding your every step,' Mooshito said. The symbiote meant every single word, speaking with genuine pride, delivering the assessment like a final, parting lesson. 'Just look at what you have accomplished. Look at where you are right now. You are likely destined for far greater things, and I have simply been acting as an anchor dragging you down. Perhaps this entire time, I was just...'

Ren wiped his face.

He executed the motion in a single, decisive sweep. It was a harsh brush of an arm that possessed no physical mass in this frozen cognitive realm, yet the gesture functioned perfectly nonetheless. That single swipe cut through the silent tears, sharply interrupting the symbiote's morbid speech and completely shattering the meticulous inventory of logical excuses Mooshito had compiled to justify its own self-execution.

Reclaiming absolute authority over his own mental domain, Ren forcefully halted the mushroom's expanding golden network and finally opened his mouth.

"No!"

The frozen fabric of time literally shuddered around them.

"I am going to find another way!"

The declaration was not a desperate plea, it was not the blind denial of a foolish boy refusing to accept an inevitable tragedy... It was the fierce, familiar shade of those jade green eyes fighting to reignite beneath the borrowed golden glare.

It was the cold, calculating tactician picking himself up from the floor in the middle of overwhelming grief. It was the core foundation of Ren's identity, the stubborn anomaly that had never once accepted a bet was lost simply because the surface mathematics declared it impossible.

Because there was one crucial variable that Mooshito, despite all its flawless final calculations and the eerie serenity of a creature that had already embraced the grave, had completely omitted from the equation.

Ren Patinder had never been particularly good at accepting the two terrible options the board presented him.

There was always a third path.

Always.

And he was going to tear his mental universe apart to find it before that damned beam finished falling.