Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

The energy in Orion’s hand promised death as a black-purple light. Not firing yet but prepared to… Just waiting for her decision. Stay or go. Choose now.

And they both knew what she’d choose. He’d calculated this perfectly.

Finally Selphira couldn’t resist anymore.

She transformed in an explosion of mana that made the air around her cool precipitously. The fusion activating in a fraction of second. And she launched toward the entrance with a furious look communicating exactly what she’d do to Orion if she managed to get out of there.

Not a threat but a promise. After she survived this, and she would survive this, she’d make him regret every choice that had led to this moment. All of it would be repaid with interest that would make his current confidence seem like a tragic miscalculation.

Orion removed himself from the entrance instantaneously to let her pass.

The movement being smooth suggested he’d been expecting this still. He’d known exactly what buttons to push. Known how much pressure to apply before she snapped and did exactly what he wanted.

Was he watching that intently all those afternoons when Sirius trained with her?

Barely a second after Selphira passed through the threshold, Orion repositioned himself at the entrance with the barrier still active. A blockage preventing her from retreating to escape from the trap into which she’d voluntarily entered.

The black beam already charged began launching immediately. A projection converging toward Selphira’s back that was vulnerable during the instant where she was completely committed to forward movement until reaching Victor.

But she still covered herself with ice armor she’d anticipated manifesting. The protection ended up absorbing the blow and giving her more forward speed.

The ice cracked, but held long enough.

Selphira reached Victor about twenty meters before he would’ve reached completely to the bottom of the stairs where the six dual-beast tamers Orion had sent ahead were waiting. Her speed was sufficient to intercept the fall with space to spare.

She had the option of exiting the stairs’ confined tunnel and fighting with the six tamers in the more open space where mobility would provide advantage.

But Victor was literally in his final moments. Life being sustained by a margin so narrow that any additional perturbation could end it permanently.

She had to restore him immediately before considering any confrontation with enemies.

Every second counted and every delay increased the risk that he’d die before she could stabilize him. And she’d have come all this way, sprung all these traps, expended an irreplaceable potion… Would that be just to watch him die in her arms because she’d been too slow?

Unacceptable.

Selphira decided to give absolute priority to healing.

The rescue didn’t serve its purpose if Victor died during the extraction process. So she invested a good quantity of mana and covered the tunnel with ice from both sides, taking advantage of the moment between Orion’s first and second beam.

And below it worked better, where the six tamers were beginning to ascend to reach her.. Having sensed that the initial situation of Victor reaching the bottom had been prevented, they tried to cheat going up but 3 ended up frozen.

It’d take them some minutes to free themselves.

It was an expensive technique supposing an investment of approximately ten percent of her mana in a powerful long-range ability creating a plug of ice ‘barriers’ that were considerably more resistant than her normal ice would be.

The ice wasn’t simple frozen water. It was reinforced with tons of mana that made it very sturdy. Not impenetrable but resilient enough to buy time measured in seconds or even minutes rather than milliseconds.

For now the six tamers couldn’t reach her easily. A separation providing precious moments she needed to stabilize Victor’s condition.

Though she recognized that on the other side, Orion’s beams would destroy the ice considerably faster than the Gold tamers could. She calculated she should have barely sufficient time for at least initial healing before the eighty meters of the upper ice barrier completely collapsed.

It was a powerful barrier but very costly. Using it too much would only give Orion a target for his beam and would waste her mana much faster… In a few minutes.

But this once was all she needed.

The water and light mana she controlled at expert level, additionally amplified by the potion’s effects she’d just consumed, flowed toward Victor in a constant current beginning to repair the damage that captivity’s abuses had caused.

It was healing operating at levels no healer in the kingdom could equal.

Water mended torn tissues and reconnected severed vessels.Light flushed corruption from systems barely functioning,burned away the foreign energies trying to establish themselves in his mana channels.

And together they worked miracles. Taking a body that should’ve been a corpse and dragging it back from the edge of death through sheer force of will and centuries of accumulated skill.

Victor woke up gasping after barely three seconds of intense treatment.

Consciousness returned abruptly in a manner that was disorienting when the last memory had been pain and darkness without apparent end. Then suddenly this, cold air, warm hands, someone shouting his name through what sounded like underwater echoes.

But still, he remained practically incapacitated despite recovering his consciousness. His system didn’t stop being affected by crystallization, that was something perhaps only Ren could heal… And probably only partially.

Victor’s crystals were enormous and Platinum-rank according to the analysis Selphira could make feeling the mana density they contained.

They weren’t anything like the small Gold and Silver-rank crystals that had affected Zhao during the previous incident that had been resolved by Ren relatively easily. Though they weren’t as impossibly difficult as completely de-crystallizing a Diamond energy statue like Dragarion, they also weren’t something achievable without considerable effort and risk of causing more damage during the removal process.

Still, Selphira was considerably more hopeful now that she had Victor in her hands. Physical contact permitting her to directly monitor his condition rather than simply observing him being dragged from a distance.