Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Each minute that passed without news was another minute of uncertainty accumulating over the previous ones until becoming an almost unbearable weight.

Where the hell had his older brother gotten himself into?

The question had been circling in his head without a satisfactory answer since the first reports arrived late yesterday.

Victor had entered Goldcrest territory with twenty powerful, highly capable men, had descended into the ancient ruin that their enemies had finally opened under political pressure, and then… silence.

No communication.

No progress reports.

Only absence that extended beyond any reasonable timeframe.

Had they really attacked and defeated him?

Julius stopped each time that thought crossed his mind because the implication was fundamentally impossible to accept.

Victor was basically as ‘powerful’ as their father now after completing the thousand-day method and the additional cultivation that the resources Ren’s help had freed up had made possible. That put him in a category of tamers who could be counted on one hand throughout the entire kingdom.

Who would dare attack him?

He himself, Arturo and Selphira weren’t far from that level either… all had reached heights that made them forces to be reckoned with in any serious military conflict.

Did the opportunistic nobles really now have a way to deal with so much power overnight?

If that were the case, if they truly possessed ability to neutralize a tamer of Victor’s level, they would have attacked much earlier when the political situation was more favorable for them. They would have struck when Selphira, Julius and their faction were less prepared, when their political image wasn’t so damaged, when they could have caused maximum damage before they finished their cultivation.

But they waited until now?

How could anyone with even two neurons think Victor could be in danger considering all the factors?

It was impossible.

It had to be impossible.

Selphira and he had let Victor handle the expedition to Goldcrest territory precisely because there was no realistic way to defeat him.

His power put most combatants in a desperate position from the start. His mobility with the fusion of Qilin and Golden Eagle gave him a tactical advantage few could match. He could retreat if the situation became unfavorable, could reposition faster than armies could respond, could strike from unexpected angles and disappear before counterattack was possible.

Was there a way they could really trap him?

There shouldn’t be. Simple logic of capabilities suggested Victor could escape from practically any situation if he decided retreating was necessary. It wasn’t arrogance thinking that… It was a cold assessment of what should have been the tactical realities.

Reacting differently, sending more troops than necessary, accompanying Victor… those would have been overreactions that opened doors to more aggressive responses, reactions they wanted to avoid. Reactions like the one that ironically did happen.

But it still wasn’t logical… They couldn’t leave another front unattended. Accompanying Arturo meant weakening surveillance at the school, with Luna and Ren being such important targets. It meant leaving the wall more unattended, with the mutants waiting for an error…

The logical thing was letting Victor handle it alone as he himself had requested.

But the accounts that had arrived during the morning told a different story that didn’t align with any of those logical assessments.

Everything seemed to point to them having him retained in enemy territory somehow. The scouts that Arturo had sent to investigate couldn’t penetrate deeply into the area due to the large number of enemies now patrolling the borders of the small territory, (the last frontier of Goldcrest territory that stubbornly resisted their advances again…) with diligence suggesting anticipated preparation. It was as if they knew exactly that someone would come searching for information and had established an impossible plan to prevent exactly that.

And if the scouts couldn’t enter without risking being captured themselves, then Julius was operating with severely limited information about what was really happening there. It was a frustrating situation that made him feel powerless in a way he rarely experienced.

“Did the faction of opportunistic nobles really entrench themselves completely there?” Julius murmured aloud, not expecting a particular answer but needing to vocalize the thought anyway.

Arturo looked up briefly from the desk where he was drowning in logistical work. Papers covered every available surface, maps unfolded showing possible march routes, lists of supplies necessary to mobilize the army appropriately, calculations of deployment time based on different force sizes.

He was preparing everything necessary to finally send a complete military campaign if that became necessary, work that required meticulous attention to innumerable details.

“It seems so,” Arturo responded with a voice showing fatigue from hours working without proper rest. “Reports indicate a concentration of forces we haven’t seen from them in years. As if they’d called in every vassal, every minor ally, every resource they could mobilize and positioned them around that ruin in Goldcrest territory specifically… They mobilized so much that I’m surprised having so much manpower they didn’t act during the war against Yino.”

Julius frowned, his mind racing with implications. “That requires coordination that takes weeks to establish. It’s not something they could have orchestrated in reaction to Victor entering the territory. This was planned in advance; they must have acquired that power recently, but not that recently…”

“Exactly my conclusion, too,” Arturo agreed, making a note on one of the documents in front of him. “Which means they might have been expecting someone like Victor to come. Or at least anticipating that someone of our caliber would eventually investigate.”

The deduction was unsettling because it suggested a level of premeditation that transformed this from a simple ruin dispute into something potentially more complex. Julius began pacing again, his footsteps echoing in the office as his brain continued to process the problem from every possible angle.

Was Orion really that clever?

How on earth had they managed it?

He kept returning to that fundamental question. Accepting for a moment that they had somehow neutralized Victor temporarily, that they had him contained or restrained in some capacity… how?

What method had they employed that could work against a tamer of that caliber?

And then Jin’s case came to mind. Ren and Professor Zhao had reported that incident days earlier…