Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 1202: Chapter 1202 - Taming the Old World - Exiguous...? I’m not small!

If Selthia was actively hoarding the elemental dragon cores to power back up again...

”We need to win fast...”

”Then expand our network. Just a little,” Ren ordered, making the suicidal decision to follow not one but both of Moosh’s ideas in a fraction of a second. ”Help me manually control a larger volume of ether and I’ll take their corruption as extra energy to reach the amount needed for a big enough hit. I need the power hurting them to end this right now anyway.”

The mushroom panicked. It screamed at him, its voice pitching into a frantic, high-decibel alarm.

”Unravel the layers of our network that actively keep our primordial seed safely contained in one piece?! Just to funnel more energy?! Are you completely insane?! If you absorb the volume of ether required to launch a killing blow while our system is compromised, you will just be repeating exactly what that idiot King did! You will crystallize! Or worse you will be completely corrupted! Or... and this would be a genuinely horrifying historical record you absolutely do not want to break, you will suffer both simultaneously!”

”There is no other option left,” Ren said.

He lowered his voice. For a fleeting moment, he completely dropped the unyielding persona of the General. He wasn’t barking orders anymore. He was just a boy, speaking intimately to the very first true ally with power he had ever made in his small world.

”Please. Help me just one more time... I know I probably haven’t said it enough since the very first day you saved my life from those toads in the Iron ring. But I am profoundly grateful to have you with me... From that day until this exact second, I have trusted you completely.”

The spore mushroom fell completely silent.

And in that profound, echoing silence within Ren’s soul, the tiny beast remembered.

It remembered the quiet, gentle interactions with the girls. It remembered the loud, chaotic banter with his friends. It remembered every single noisy, irritating, wonderfully vibrant human being that had slowly but surely filled its human’s previously unpromising life. It recalled these memories with heavy reluctance, the stubborn reluctance of a loyal companion who constantly pretends to be furious when they are called small, and fiercely pretends not to care about anyone, despite having grown to love them all deeply anyway.

”...Fine,” the mushroom finally whispered, letting out a long, resigned sigh. ”Fine! I will help you! This entire board looks like a complete disaster anyway, and if we let that psychotic girl secure the castle, we are just tying the noose around our own necks regardless...”

A massive, overwhelming wave of relief washed over Ren’s mind.

”But you listen to me very carefully.” The small beast’s tone hardened. It became deadly serious, vastly more serious than Ren had ever heard it in their entire time together.

”You are already hovering dangerously close to your absolute limit. According to my meticulous calculations, a 50% surge should provide exactly enough raw output for you to deliver one final blow to that hideous flesh... So, when you reach down and manually absorb the corruption from your allies to stabilize them, you absolutely cannot get arrogant or try to get ALL from them. You cannot exceed your 300% capacity.”

The mind link flared with ironclad authority.

”Not even a single fraction of a percent more! Three hundred is your absolute ceiling. If you cross that specific threshold, there is no runic network, no cosmic resonance, and no brilliant, genius mushroom in existence that will be able to pull you out of the crystal. Is that perfectly understood!?”

”Understood...”

”Three hundred, Ren. Not a single drop more!”

Deep within his soul, the bioluminescent fungal network began to slowly, terrifyingly expand. It uncoiled its layers, forcefully opening the floodgates, paving the exact path Ren needed to draw the energy required to finally end this war.

Or to permanently lose himself in it.

♢♢♢♢

Ren was finally able to pull Liu and Sirius back from the abyss.

The girls hovering in the sky had also been struck by the mental backlash of the corruption’s exalted aura, but the effect on them was vastly different. Because they were only affected by their unique ethereal tether to Ren, they didn’t absorb the literal, corrupted rot. They only experienced the agonizing, amplified echoes of the sensation.

They were holding on... Liu and Sirius were not.

So, Ren acted as the ultimate mana-biological sponge. He reached out and forcefully siphoned the equivalent of 25% of his fused power from the hyper-toxic, exalted corruption directly out of each of the two tamers’ core, dragging the lethal poison into his own veins.

The moment the corrupted ether breached his system, Ren let out a muted scream of pure agony.

That was the fundamental, sadistic cruelty of this energy. The only time the corruption didn’t burn was when a host finally stopped resisting, when they surrendered their sanity, yielded to the corruption, and allowed the poison to take absolute control of their soul.

To swim against the current, to actively contain it, to forcefully direct it, and to stubbornly refuse to yield, that was what caused the blood to boil. And Ren, a boy who rejected the corruption with every single microscopic fiber of his being, was burning alive from the inside out.

He ground his teeth together so hard his jaw popped, desperately resisting the enticing power. He had forcefully ripped open two brand-new doors in his own core system, deliberately stacking two massive payloads of foreign corruption directly on top of his own overflowing burden.

He looked down and saw that despite his agonizing sacrifice, Sirius and Liu were still visibly suffering. A heavy, suffocating reluctance washed over him. He desperately wanted to draw more of the poison out to completely alleviate their pain.

But he stopped...

He forced himself to stand straight, leaving the two tamers coughing at his feet. They were breathing significantly better, no longer on the absolute brink of corruption, even if they hadn’t fully recovered.

Ren started feeling a numbing sensation so he looked down at his own forearms. He reached up and touched his cheek.

Small, jagged crystals had begun to physically manifest across his skin, glittering dangerously in the light.

It was the mark of the limit of his system.

He had to contain himself. He had to explicitly obey his mushroom’s desperate warning. If he absorbed any more corrupted energy, he might temporarily save his friends from their pain, but he would permanently lose himself to the solid mana. And a crystallized Ren couldn’t save anyone...

♢♢♢♢

Ren vanished from the ground and materialized directly beside Liora in the sky.

”Inject your spiritual energy directly into my attack,” Ren commanded, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, dual-layered resonance. ”I am going to drop something big.”