Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 858 - Taming the Fifth Year - Pieces of the Board - 3

Yanoʼs approach had been incomplete. Had stopped the exploration after the deaths, deciding the cost exceeded the likely benefit thinking only of the double potions.

A miscalculation, as it turned out.

The fundamental difference in Yino hadnʼt been in raw power of their tamers or sophistication of techniques they employed.

It had been in willingness to sacrifice people with fewer scruples about the moral cost of actions deemed ”necessary.”

Yano was weaker there because it operated under restrictions that many noble families imposed collectively, concerns about lineages and inheritances that made sacrificing valuable Gold-rank members a decision requiring extensive debate and justification.

Family politics paralyzed action, every risk or sacrifice demanded approval, every death required throughout explanation to the families involved, compensation negotiations, political favors exchanged to smooth over grievances.

Cautious approach layered on top of cautious approach until the expeditions moved backwards or stopped based on the decision of the main family of the territory.

Yino under much more centralized leadership had none of those paralyzing restrictions. When a ruin with promise of power demanded sacrifice, that sacrifice was executed from the least important usable links without prolonged hesitation. When the new cores required blood of certain caliber, it was provided without much consideration for political implications of who died in the process.

The ruins didnʼt belong to any family owning a zone like in Yano… There was no bureaucracy, no permits required to access power that would have been family property. They were attacked with the majority of Gold-rank tamers available working collectively, and the rewards belonged to the crown.

No debate about distribution, no negotiation about who deserved what. Results went where centralized authority directed them.

That brutal pragmatism had allowed Yino to obtain the 3 ruins and the 3 cores necessary from the three runes, (cores that controlled final access to the central ruin) very quickly by comparison. A matter of a few years.

Dozens of high-rank tamers had overwhelmed the guardian beasts even if they were semi-dragons of Platinum rank, through pure numbers.

Not through superior tactics or more skilled individual combatants.

Through willingness to throw enough bodies at the problem until it stopped being a problem.

Even if 5 Gold 1 tamers out of the just above a hundred that Yino had died, it meant nothing when what waited on the other side justified the expenditure.

Yano would never have authorized those numbers even when they had 500. The political fallout alone would have destabilized the kingdom.

Yino didnʼt care about political fallout. Political fallout was a peacetime concern… And they were always, even if silently, at war.

And it also helped their decision that they had known exactly what reward waited beneath the last door long before opening it, information obtained from that crystalline invader, that entity that had deciphered and provided information about locations and rewards that Yano had never had access to outside of Renʼs mushroomʼs head.

Yanoʼs exploration was mostly blind in contrast. Each step forward was educated guesswork, researchers mapping as they went, sacrifices demanded unexpectedly by mechanisms they hadnʼt anticipated.

Yinoʼs exploration was guided because the crystal entity had provided information and maps. Had identified which doors demanded what sacrifices and had even calculated optimal routes that minimized unnecessary losses while still moving forward.

It was the difference between navigating a minefield without a detector and walking through one with a perfect map.

They even knew what technology awaited.

They had obtained so much information in exchange for allowing that apparently indestructible ball of corruption, that ended plaguing their region, to link directly to a part of that same reward they were seeking.

A devilʼs bargain… Knowledge in exchange for contamination.

The corruption entity they had discovered when it landed on the outskirts of their city wasnʼt simply a dangerous energy source, but an interface capable of connecting with a much larger system… A system that had been operating for centuries beneath their feet without human supervision.

Centuries. The framework had been running autonomously, processing, maintaining, doing whatever it was supposed to do when left without operators.

They had let it link to ”The Brain.”

That was the term Yinoʼs high command used for that enormous central device, a crystal intelligence or control system that had guarded knowledge of many fundamental aspects of how the previous civilization operated.

The Brain had been dormant for centuries before the corruption entity activated it. Or perhaps ”dormant” was the wrong word. Perhaps it had been waiting.

And when Yino finally penetrated the final chamber where the Brain waited, they found exactly what the corruption had promised: technology exceeding anything the modern era could replicate, knowledge codified in formats that would take years to decipher appropriately.

But it wouldnʼt take time if the entity connected directly.

The corruption served as a translator... Bridge between ancient systems designed for a civilization that no longer existed and contemporary human minds trying to extract useful information from it.

From that information were born Yinoʼs multiple tamers… with beasts different from natural ones that promised certain synergies and specific powers that the tamer desired after covering certain points the ”crystal needed”.

But the promise was enough…

Custom beasts designed rather than discovered, beasts cultivated according to specifications rather than natural development patterns.

They had arrived at developing sextuples very late in the process of the war. But they had arrived.

The corruption delivered, and… The Brain, despite everything, had been an enormous reward and advantage.

But the Brain had two parts. That was a discovery that came after the initial analysis.

The entity understood there were references to a secondary component in the disconnected side of the earth, a complementary piece that would complete the system and unlock other capabilities remaining inactive without proper complete connection.

Two halves of something designed as a whole. Separated by a divided earth that didnʼt let the system be fully functional.

Orion wanted to control that second part of the Brain and its wisdom too, an obsession that had grown during the last 3 years of studying what the first part revealed.

Because he had realized before others, before even Yinoʼs leadership that had originally discovered the Brain, that he needed the second part specifically to discover the true way to handle ”the Crystal”.

Not ordinary crystals that everyone used as currency. Not corrupt crystals that pretended to be messiahs. Not even cores or crystallized statues.

Although all were part of one same system, none represented the true ”Crystal.”

The Crystal with capital C was the fundamental system sustaining literally everything that existed in the known world.