Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1090 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins - Deals - 2

Renʼs jaw tightened. ”What exactly do you want to negotiate?” he demanded, his eyes locked on the crushing limbs ahead of him. ”What do you mean by that? Whatʼs your price?”

”Oh, please... You all seem to know already what I want,” Selthia mocked, her voice vibrating through the purple rotting tendons. ”You didnʼt even try to hide it.” A dark giggle echoed down the stairs. ”The egg... The one your little jester-fool guard is carrying. That is what I want.”

Mayoʼs breath hitched. She had been clutching the big, silver, wind-aspected egg to her chest since they fled the bottom chamber. Instinctively, she tightened her grip.

”Just like you, handsome, Iʼm building a squad to fill all my free nodes,” Selthia continued. ”Iʼm looking for beasts too... But I want special ones. And that dormant little storm in her arms is very, very special.”

Worried, Mayo tried to shift the massive egg behind her back. But it was a completely futile gesture, like trying to hide a boulder behind a sapling, yet she did it anyway and started muttering some nervous jokes about how dumb would be giving away free power to the enemy. The alternative was standing still and accepting she was holding something she wanted for some reason.

Selthia laughed. It was a high, melodic sound.

”Or, if you prefer... you could offer yourself, handsome.” Her tone shifted again. It wasnʼt a growled threat; it was breezy and casual, like someone perusing a dessert menu. ”Give yourself to the corruption and join me... That way, we can chat every single day, and Iʼll kindly let your little friends walk away until the day we save them all from their sad little lives.”

”In your sick, twisted dreams!” Liora snarled. Her voice dripped with absolute venom. The very idea of Selthia claiming Ren as some sort of trophy for corruption ignited a furious, blinding rage in her chest. ”Over my dead body!”

”Well, well... if all else fails,” Selthia sighed, completely unfazed by Lioraʼs death glare. ”You could always just leave me that old man for now. Heʼs already tainted so... It would be beautifully easy to re-infect him. It would be nice to have another defrosted pawn on the board... Just like poor Orion to be able to do some errands pure ʼcorruptionʼ canʼt.”

The trap didnʼt spring with a roar or a kinetic blast. It triggered the exact second the last syllable left her lips, using her casual dialogue as the ultimate misdirection.

It wasnʼt actually an attack, more like a strange resonance. The blackened artifacts clogging the stairs suddenly pulsed with a sickening, violet luminescence.

The waves of purple energy hit Ren first. Sickly black veins violently spiderwebbed from his chest across his neck and arms. The corruption moved with huge speed from the point blank distance, recognizing the lingering vulnerabilities in his core rift, the crack left over from his still non fully recovered system, and flooding them.

The entire group tensed, already merging with what little energy they had, adrenaline spiking in blind panic.

But Ren didnʼt scream or trash, he didnʼt break… Without relying on a massive effort or falling for the dramatic surge of power, he applied the cold, clinical methodology he had painstakingly mastered from many attempts and lately inside the mental landscape of the crystals.

He read the incoming flow of necrotic like mana. He mentally seized its own internal runes and violently counter-rotated them. The purple lines halted, hissed, and dissolved into harmless, pure energy before they could dig their claws into his soul.

They didnʼt corrupt him, they only recharged a small amount of his energy…

”Ugh... Youʼre no fun when you donʼt lose control,” Selthia complained, an audible, childish pout in her voice.

But the resonance wasnʼt finished.

The silver egg in Mayoʼs arms abruptly convulsed. It wasnʼt a violent thrashing, but a deep, rhythmic vibration.

Mayo gasped surprised... She could feel it against her ribcage, a living, ancient thing eagerly responding to an external corrupted pulse. The lingering rot tainting the bottom half of the shell flared to life, singing in perfect harmony with Selthiaʼs projected power.

It recognized the source and it wanted to answer.

Terrified for a short moment, Mayo loosened her grip. She didnʼt drop it, but she pushed it away from her body, desperate to sever the sickening, vibrating connection from her own flesh, muttering something about the unexpected infidelity of a creature so young.

Then, the true catastrophe struck.

A heavy thud echoed over the howling wind. Sirius Starweaver collapsed to one knee.

He gripped his chest, his face contorting in sudden, blinding agony. The same sickly purple veins that had attacked Ren the first time, when younger, now violently erupted across Siriusʼs skin, crawling up his throat and down his forearms.

But Sirius didnʼt possess Renʼs impossible immunity. He hadnʼt spent hours decoding the corruptionʼs logic. The residual twenty-five percent of the corruption in his core, the necrotic anchor Ren simply hadnʼt had time to cleanly purge before resurrecting him, woke up.

Siriusʼs corruption greedily devoured Selthiaʼs ambient energy, rapidly expanding, feeding on the external pulse with the terrifying ease of a parasite finally reuniting with its hive network help.

Renʼs eyes widened in horror. He whipped his head toward the fleshy parts behind the artifactʼs cover.

”Stop it!” he roared.

It wasnʼt a negotiation anymore; it was a desperate command. The gale-force wind he was projecting exploded in intensity, howling through the chamber, but it still wasnʼt enough to physically dislodge the massive, anchored artifacts.

”I can stop, sure... I will stop the second you give me something else I want,” Selthia replied. Her laughter tinkled down the stairs, light and breezy, the sound of a predator perfectly comfortable playing with her food. ”But honestly? I donʼt mind. You can stay right here and think it over. We can chat a little longer, if youʼd like.”

A soft, echoing giggle vibrated through the purple meat.

”But fair warning... when my Platinum beasts finally arrive, and youʼre all bleeding and exhausted? The negotiations are going to get much, much more aggressive. My leverage is going to be absolute.” She let the silence stretch for a heartbeat, ensuring the crushing weight of her threat settled over them. ”And it wonʼt be nearly this cheap to let you walk away.”