Chapter 1219 - Taming the Old World - Respite - 5

Chapter 1219: Chapter 1219 - Taming the Old World - Respite - 5

They departed for the courtyard almost immediately. Victor carried Ren upon the broad back of his majestic avian beast, with Julius and the three girls behind.

As the wind rushed past them, Ren rapidly outlined his ideas.

"I intend to partially regenerate the structural integrity of the star-prison. The entity trapped inside has been relentlessly clawing at the vault doors for ten consecutive days, and it only needs a few more days to carve a viable escape tunnel. But if I can successfully repair even a fraction of the subterranean damage it has already inflicted upon the bedrock, we reset the countdown. We buy the continent an extra day or two, perhaps even more."

"And you are capable of executing an architectural maneuver of that scale in your current state?" Larissa did not attempt to mask her deep skepticism, her eyes locked onto his crystallized arms.

"I can do it utilizing whatever mana I have left, combined with yours." Ren met her gaze, before looking at Larissa and Liora. "If I engage my fusion and we establish an ethereal tether, the four of us combined might generate enough output to manipulate the bedrock. The entire monolithic dome carries my personal mana imprint. I engineered the architecture, so the material will naturally obey my runic commands vastly easier than anyone else’s. I just need a big external injection of energy to guide the reconstruction... Julius and the Vanguard’s elite earth users could also prove highly beneficial, so we will integrate their output into the array as well."

He fell silent for a heavy moment, his gaze fixed on the approaching horizon, before adding something almost entirely to himself.

"I just pray I don’t have to absorb any more primordial dragon energy to generate the necessary force."

Because that was the absolute, non-negotiable biological line he was terrified to cross. His core was already compromised, riddled with small crystal and forcibly widened fractures. It was entirely too unstable to risk tapping into that energy frequency again.

"With any luck," he murmured as the colossal star-prison loomed ahead, warm to the touch and constantly vibrating from the relentless scratching of the nightmare trapped inside, "we won’t need to cross that line."

♢♢♢♢

Ren arrived at the monolithic dome flanked by his entourage.

A fraction of the Vanguard elites were already stationed, maintaining the unbroken perimeter guard they had held for ten anxious days. Ren offered them a silent nod, completely unwilling to expend precious seconds on unnecessary formalities, and walked straight toward the massive structure. He stopped at the base of the prison and pressed his bare palm flat against the ringing metal.

He felt the structural degradation the second his skin touched the alloy.

The damage was extensive near the door. He could perfectly sense the jagged, subterranean tunnel the trapped entity had spent ten consecutive days frantically carving. It was a massive gouge carved directly into the semi-adamantium and the hyper-compressed bedrock, extending terrifyingly far toward the outer perimeter. Julius had absolutely not exaggerated the grim mathematics of their situation.

They truly only had a handful of days left.

"Listen to me closely," Ren instructed, turning his pale face toward the elites capable of assisting the operation. "I am going to attempt to repair the internal structural damage. We need to regenerate the wall and reset some of the countdown. Every single Tamer standing here who possesses an Earth affinity, I require your output right now. But do not push your mana blindly. You must feel the specific direction of the mana I am weaving into the stone first. Wait until you completely understand that architectural direction, then push alongside me. If you just dump energy into the array at random, you will only disrupt my push and obstruct the repair."

He swept his heavy gaze across the gathered warriors.

"Given the sheer density of this material, perhaps only the dual-earth Tamers will possess the capacity to push this, but you still can help a bit even if you can’t feel it alone. Julius, you will anchor the primary effort to start. But it is worth seeing exactly how much raw output this unit can generate as a whole."

The girls, bound to him by their unique ethereal tether, were also a crucial component of the operation. Their role wasn’t to manipulate the hyper-compressed stone; a task completely misaligned with Liora’s spiritual flames. Their absolute priority was to act as energy supports. They also needed to help meticulously stabilize his erratic ethereal flow, serving as an external life-support system to sustain his fragile core when his internal pathways inevitably buckled.

And his system was absolutely going to buckle. Ren knew the grim certainty of his own limits before he even ignited his aura.

♢♢♢♢

He engaged his fusion.

The colossal jade Hydra materialized into the physical plane, but it was a haunting, translucent shadow of its former glory. The sovereign Diamond aura flickered erratically in the air, perfectly mirroring the compromised state of its master. Ren took a slow breath and began to carefully test the waters.

The absolute most critical mandate of this operation was to leave the star-array entirely undisturbed. The structural geometry, the five towering adamantium pillars, the five primordial cores maintaining their flawless orbit with their respective elemental crystals; every single component of that formation had to remain perfectly untouched. If he accidentally shifted the alignment by a single millimeter, the prison could lose the precise frequency resonance actively neutralizing the five-headed dragon. He was strictly permitted to manipulate the bedrock of the dome. Absolutely nothing else.

He proceeded with agonizing caution.

And almost immediately, he collided head-on with the exact nightmare he had anticipated. His severely crystallized system was riddled with roadblocks. The hundreds of small, jagged shards of mana the master healers had been forced to leave behind, simply because pulling them would have permanently severed critical mana arteries, actively choked his mana flow at hundreds of different microscopic junctions.

In the past, fueled by the limitless, overflowing power of the ancient dragons or the raw, chaotic fuel of corruption, he could simply blast his mana straight to work. That was no longer a viable option. Every single shard of crystal now acted like an impenetrable dam in a rushing river, forcefully deviating and strangling the ethereal current.

Ren ground his teeth together until his jaw popped, forcing the connection anyway.

He painstakingly adjusted his internal routing. He meticulously hunted for the secondary, undamaged pathways that were still functional, redirecting the erratic flow wherever he could find a small opening.

He was forced to intricately weave his mana around the jagged obstructions rather than blasting directly through them. The process was agonizingly slow, incredibly clumsy, and drained his stamina at a worst rate.

But slowly, miraculously, the hyper-compressed stone of the monolithic dome began to shift.