Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1339 - Taming the Old World - One Second - Resolve

There was no more discussion… The small mushroom, not too reluctant anymore, forced its ethereal channels wide open, establishing a direct connection to the four sovereign rings resting on Ren's hand.

Ren ruthlessly shoved the lethal surplus of ether directly into the artifacts, aggressively overcharging their internal matrices exactly as he had done with the primordial cores. He felt each ancient item flare with heat as they absorbed a fraction of the huge pressure that was systematically incinerating his small yet bigger friend.

The immediate strain lessened.

Yet, it was still not enough…

Ren ran the calculations inside the suspended cognitive space, and the final tally chilled his blood. The total volume of ether they had hoarded for the prison array was too massive. It was an apocalyptic payload specifically designed to permanently seal a semi-god parasite that had once cracked the world in half. Even with four rings and seven guardian cores pushed to their absolute limits, their combined capacity was insufficient to warehouse the overload without Mooshito's network continuing to degrade into ash.

He instantly thought of Dragarion's original rings, the three remaining artifacts buried deep beneath the crumbling dome in the deepest vault. That was three more high-capacity reservoirs. However, he quickly measured how little of the surplus the first four had actually managed to absorb.

It was still not enough…

They were short by an important, still lethal margin.

And then, as Mooshito blindly swept its expanded perception through Ren's spatial shadow, a dimensional pocket the symbiote had finally gained unfettered access to during the frantic search for anything useful Ren was doing, it spotted something very unexpected.

Deep inside the shadow space, with its sensory grid thrown wide open, the mushroom finally took stock of everything Ren had been quietly hoarding. In the absolute dead center of the dark dimension, towering like a living, breathing cathedral of pure gold...

It was a huge mushroom.

"What in the world is that?" Mooshito asked. For the very first time during the entire frozen eternity, the ancient symbiote sounded genuinely bewildered. "That should not exist anymore... that is a mature fruiting body derived directly from our native mycelium. But it is... it is absolutely colossal."

Ren transmitted the explanation in the shortest, tightest telepathic pulse possible. He remembered the golden network they had tragically lost during the initial wave of the first war, the aggressive hyphae that had survived in the southern part of the continent, the scouts' reports about the localized system that had aggressively ballooned from a single original creature into a massive, independent biological infrastructure again fighting a small part of Selthia's army.

The symbiote fell completely silent for a fraction of a second, its expanded perception carefully studying the cluster of enormous fungal caps, its attention entirely fixated on the colossal much bigger central bloom.

"We could actually overcharge that," Mooshito deduced slowly, analyzing the organic density.

"That structure acts as a massive natural sponge for our unique ethereal frequency. Honestly, if my own base level were slightly higher, I could cannibalize that mass right now and trigger an immediate evolutionary leap, likely pushing myself within striking distance of the Diamond tier."

A brief pause followed, and a faint echo of the old Mooshito, the frantic small devil that constantly escaped to eat whatever looked good for him, finally bled back into the link. "But utilizing it as a heat sink right now, with all the systemic damage we have already sustained, is an astronomically reckless wager. It could trigger an instant evolutionary leap, exactly like it did back then... or, far more likely, we could both detonate…"

A risky wager…

"...The mathematical probability of catastrophic failure here hovers comfortably above ninety-nine percent. If that much golden energy enters our system and we lose control, it will completely vaporize the entire network and your system. There will be no mycelium left, no spiritual seed, no Ren... absolutely nothing. I need to be already at Platinum to use it correctly or have a much stronger net somehow…"

If the failure rate was that astronomically high, the logical conclusion was to immediately discard the option.

Instead, Ren only overcharged it.

He did not hesitate for a single microsecond beyond the time it took Mooshito to finish delivering the grim warning. He shoved the raging ether directly into the colossal golden mushroom and the smaller ones, flooding the living cathedral of hyphae until the entire structure pulled taut, glowing with blinding incandescence. The massive cap trembled violently, teetering precisely on the razor-thin wire separating an evolutionary leap from absolute annihilation.

It held…

And finally, finally, Ren saw the lethal margin narrow down to a sliver.

It was almost perfectly balanced… They just needed one final container.

One last, desperate purge to swallow the remaining fraction of the deadly overcharge before Mooshito's veins, and Ren's own, crossed the point of no return.

The rings.

The final three artifacts belonging to Dragarion, currently resting beneath the cracking dome. If he secured those final three and overcharged them precisely like the rest of the array, they possessed the exact volumetric capacity to absorb the very last drop of the lethal surplus.

But he didn't have them yet.

Not yet…

And in that singular, crystallized moment, Ren's entire strategy rearranged itself inside his head, forming a blueprint that was equal parts brave and utterly insane.

He would launch a full frontal assault.

He would shatter the weakened floor himself, dive into the vault, beat the dragon to the bottom, and rip the three sovereign rings straight out of Dragarion's petrified grasp. With those final artifacts secured, he would vent the remainder of the lethal overload, perfectly stabilizing Mooshito's network and simultaneously saving both his oldest friend and Dragarion's statue from assimilation.

And then, he would fight.

Face-to-face... Armed with seven fully overcharged rings, seven amplified guardian cores, and an apocalyptic payload of energy originally intended to forge a permanent prison, now entirely repurposed into a devastating arsenal. He would not allow the purple parasite to set foot inside the second vault.

He would end it right there.

Without access to the black seed, the mechanical beast should be manageable.

Right?

"Ren." Mooshito's voice echoed through the link again, sharp and piercing. "Are you absolutely certain about this?"

Time remained suspended. The beam was still frozen halfway.

"Look at the density of the indestructible artifacts bolted to its mutant chassis. Look at the 5 cores embedded in its chest, and the staggering physical mass it has accumulated. That creature is going to be a nightmare in close quarters. It is not the same lone Diamond rank puppet we fought the last time. Your meridian system is still fractured, and my golden network has practically been shredded to pieces. Even if we successfully breach the lower vault and claim the final rings, we are not going to survive a drawn-out brawl against that monster. Not with the damaged systems we are running on. The clean, logical exit is still sitting right in front of you. I finish the runic weave, you survive, and you go home to the people you love... It is the only safe play."

Ren was already moving.

The blinding gold blazing in his eyes was not born from morbid resignation or cold calculation. It was the exact same, deeply irrational stubbornness that had dragged him all the way to the top of the world from a kid with a single, small Spore he had once tried to scrub out of his hair.

"The ones I love… If they are not complete... I would rather fight till the end."

They were his final words on the matter. Buried beneath the sheer defiance was the only truth that actually mattered: there were certain things in the universe that Ren Patinder simply found unacceptable, and letting his very first contracted beast, his friend, die for him… Certainly was on that list.

The frozen second finally shattered.

And Ren launched himself headfirst into the light.

(∿°○°)∿ ︵ ︵ ︵ ︵ ︵ ǝʌol