Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 912 - Taming the Fifth Year - Attrition - Final Battle - 11

The group of almost forty high-quality tamers Selphira had brought was exceptional in terms of individual capability. Each one trained and experienced. Each one worth ten normal soldiers in combat.

But they couldnʼt cover the complete open area and underground that the flow exploited.

The math was impossible and cruel... Forty defenders spread across kilometers of frontage meant gaps. Meant hundreds of mutants slipping through regardless of how efficiently defenders fought. Meant failure not through lack of skill but through insufficient coverage.

Hundreds of mutants entered the city through a breach they couldnʼt close. Massive infiltration that would have resulted in massacre of defenseless civilians under normal circumstances.

And all Selphira and Arturo could do was observe with growing horror while containment failure unfolded despite their best efforts.

They killed dozens... Then hundreds. Their beasts were effective. But for every mutant they eliminated, three more passed around them. The flow was simply too broad and too sustained to stop with available forces.

The enemy soldiers now watched from a safe distance near the ruinʼs entrance.

Most waiting and observing how Selphira and Arturo tried with a few of their own to stop the flow but only tired themselves more in attempts that were futile from the beginning.

They didnʼt intervene to help. Didnʼt celebrate the success of the strategy their leaders had executed. Just watched with expressions varying widely depending on family affiliation.

Many soldiers looked with disdain because they knew their families wouldnʼt be affected by location. And because theyʼd been explained before how the ”new technology” recovered and improved from Yino functioned.

These were the loyalists. True believers in Orionʼs group or at least committed enough to the rebellion that unknown civilian casualties didnʼt matter if they served a larger purpose. They watched the mutant invasion with satisfaction. Proof that plan was working. Proof that Selphiraʼs and Arturoʼs authority was insufficient to prevent catastrophes.

Many other lower-rank soldiers looked with deep sadness as mutants invaded the city they belonged to. Places where their families lived and where theyʼd grown before being forced to join military forces.

These were conscripts... People whoʼd had no choice about serving, whoʼd been told to fight for a cause they didnʼt necessarily believe in. Now they watched their city being invaded and could do nothing without inviting execution.

Some more attempted deserting. Breaking discipline driven by desperate need to protect their loved ones in direct danger.

But they were also eliminated by their leaders without hesitation or mercy.

Summary executions communicating that betraying the rebel faction was punished with immediate death. Warning making others contemplating similar action reconsider and remain in their assigned positions.

The other soldiers stopped trying to help or desert finally at a certain point. Defeated acceptance that there was no option that would be not resulting in terrible consequences one way or another.

A few more managed escaping by exploiting chaos to slip between lines. Running toward the city with hope of reaching their families before the mutants did.

And what those few who escaped found when they reached more internal parts of the city was... confusion mixed with massive relief.

The mutants hadnʼt attacked the civilian population.

Werenʼt massacring defenseless residents, werenʼt destroying structures and werenʼt causing chaos that invasion of this scale should inevitably produce.

Instead, after penetrating approximately three kilometers into semi-urban territory, theyʼd gone underground again. Excavation carrying them deeper toward a destination that perhaps wasnʼt the city itself.

Extraordinary luck? Or something more deliberate in how they were being directed?

What was a tremendous relief for several soldiers whoʼd managed to escape to protect their families was simultaneously the battle Ren and the academy students were facing several hundred kilometers away.

Because the mutants hadnʼt dispersed randomly but had converged specifically toward the educational installation. Targeting that wasnʼt coincidence but execution of a plan someone had carefully orchestrated.

The connection between the breach Selphira couldnʼt close and the attack the academy suffered wasnʼt obvious to those in the middle of events. Couldnʼt be seen when you were fighting for survival or desperately searching for family members in chaos.

But it was terribly clear for anyone who could observe the complete situation from an elevated perspective revealing patterns rather than just local chaos.

Draw the massive force away from the objective toward the city. Forced that force to spread thin trying to protect civilians. Created a gap in containment through sheer volume. Then redirect the breakthrough underground toward the real target that now has insufficient defenders because the best tamers were kilometers away dealing with a diversion.

Classic military deception.

And Selphira had fallen for it completely. Not through incompetence but through having no good alternative. She couldnʼt let mutants massacre civilians just to keep her position against rebels. Her values wouldnʼt permit it… And Orion had known that.

♢♢♢♢

Orion found himself in a wide chamber of the ruin that had been his base of operations during the last weeks.

Seven crystals floated and danced around him in complex orbits requiring constant attention but that heʼd practiced until control was almost subconscious. Automaticity freeing his mind slightly to process broader strategic aspects of the situation.

Each crystal connected to a different subset of mutants. Each one transmitting signals that guided corrupt creatures along predetermined paths. Together they created a network of control spanning kilometers of territory and directing thousands of individual beasts.

He smiled while processing the information flowing through connections that the crystals linked to that great purple brain provided. Data about mutant positions and their movements through vast territory.

The smile wasnʼt a pleasant one. It was an expression of satisfaction bordering on smugness. Everything was proceeding according to plan and all the pieces were moving exactly as heʼd calculated. Opposition was reacting predictably to stimuli heʼd created.

And while observing the development of a plan heʼd invested years building, he thought about how everything preceding it had finally borne fruit.

Not victory heʼd achieved alone. Not success coming from individual brilliance only. It was the culmination of many peopleʼs work. Efforts of those whoʼd come before and whoʼd established foundations upon which he now built.