Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 857 - Taming the Fifth Year - Pieces of the Board - 2

The timeline wasnʼt coincidental. Orion had known the Dravenholms would eventually find the brain, the corruption spreading through Yinoʼs tunnel systems was only a temporary obstruction, not a permanent seal. Given enough time and enough tamers clearing paths, Juliusʼs earth tamers team would inevitably reach the destination.

But arriving at a destination without the key was meaningless.

Like finding a locked door and having no way to open it. The finding meant nothing without the means to use it.

ʼAnd each time I understand and control the keys better.ʼ he thought to himself.

3 years of study…

3 years of careful experimentation, testing boundaries, mapping the energy patterns, understanding how each stone interacted with the others.

He was further along in that understanding than anyone suspected.

Orion thought with satisfaction that the advantage had been enormous for Yino… They had it all during years when the city had been under control of leadership that understood the real value of what the ancient ruins contained.

ʼAll that ancient knowledge at their fingertips...ʼ

It was knowledge that made the current-generation techniques look primitive. Understanding of elements, of spiritual cultivation, of power systems that current academia had rediscovered only fragments of over 5 centuries of painstaking research.

Everything the old civilization had known. Everything theyʼd built into those ruins before they vanished.

And he wondered internally, not for the first time, how the hell Yino had lost the war against Yano if they had access to all that information and technology that should have given them absolute dominance in the last large-scale conflict.

It was a question that had bothered him for years of planning, a contradiction that didnʼt fit cleanly with his understanding of how relative power should determine outcomes of confrontations on that scale.

Superior crystal technology, superior ancient knowledge and access to ruins that Yano had barely begun to explore. Resources that should have been overwhelmingly decisive.

And yet Yino lost.

How?

The question mattered because if Orion didnʼt understand why Yino had failed with superior advantages, he couldnʼt guarantee his own plan wouldnʼt fail for the same reason.

But he had an almost perfect answer.

ʼIt has to be that... They trusted that damn crystalline entity invader, they let it use them instead of using the stonesʼ power for themselves. Look how they contaminated them...ʼ

The theory had been forming for many years now, pieces clicking into place as Orion studied the stones and the corruption that permeated Yinoʼs underground.

The crystalline entity had landed from the sky in Yinoʼs territory.

And instead of treating this unknown entity with appropriate suspicion, Yinoʼs leadership had ended up welcoming it. Had listened to what it suggested. Had allowed it access to the ancient ruins and the crystal hearts and the knowledge systems that should have been the foundation of Yinoʼs power.

Trust given to something that shouldnʼt have been trusted.

The corruption spreading through Yinoʼs tunnels… the purple crystalline growth that made navigation difficult and that had been slowly poisoning the cityʼs underground for years, was a direct consequence of that trust.

The entity had been feeding… Or growing… Or something between the two that didnʼt translate cleanly into concepts human minds processed easily, something to do with crystals.

And Yinoʼs leadership had let it happen, possibly not understanding what was happening until it was too late to reverse.

ʼIdiots. They had everything and they gave it to something that didnʼt save them in the end.ʼ

Orion would not make that mistake.

Yino had a ruins system very similar to Yanoʼs, that was a well-known fact among the faction opposing Dragarion, even if specific location details remained classified for some ʼnon direct supportersʼ.

Both cities had been built above ancient structures for reasons of space, the new civilization having occupied the same territory that was convenient, or perhaps necessary, to construct new settlements directly over old foundations that were the only place free of mana.

But for some reason theyʼd lost access to the technology and knowledge the previous civilization had left behind when it disappeared suddenly and without clear explanation.

One moment the old civilization existed... The next it was gone. No data of gradual decline, no war of extinction, no plague or natural disaster that left traces.

Just absence.

Had the new humans invoked a mountain of earth above the ancient city to escape the mana from the depths? As many other theories, it was a guess since nobody truly knew what happened then.

The apparent disappearance remained the greatest unsolved mystery in recorded history. Scholars had debated it for 5 centuries. Religious groups had built entire belief systems around it. Military strategists had built contingency plans assuming the civilization might somehow return.

None had answers.

But what they did know was that both cities sat atop ruins containing crystal technology that far exceeded current capabilities. And both had, at various points in their short history, gained partial access to that technology before losing it again through combinations of ignorance, corruption, and poor decisions.

And of all their relatively identical ruins, Yino had one that was functionally identical to the one that had claimed the life of Orionʼs wife and the wife of his brother Sirius.

Same structure of chambers, same doors requiring specific sacrifices to open and the same final design requiring 3 large cores guarding a purpose that transcended simple artifact storage.

Orionʼs hand tightened slightly around the stones.

The memory was old. But it hadnʼt faded the way some people promised it would.

The sacrifice the door demanded wasnʼt voluntary. It was simply extracted from whoever had the elemental aptitude and was closest when the device activated.

Sheʼd been closest.

Siriusʼs wife had died just as his.

Orion hadnʼt felt grief the way others expected him to. Heʼd felt clarity. Sharp, cold, absolute clarity about what these ruins actually were and what they demanded of anyone who sought their secrets.

They werenʼt gifts… They were tests.

And the price was measured in lives.

But where Yano had failed to keep opening them for almost a decade now after its first attempt… losing valuable lives in the process without reaching the final reward expected in the depths, Yino had managed to reach the end on their side.

They had been capable of completing the full sequence the ruins demanded to reveal the deepest secret.