Chapter 1223 - Taming the Old World - Lead - 2

Chapter 1223: Chapter 1223 - Taming the Old World - Lead - 2

The exact second the Vanguard breached the outer cavern, the deceptive, superficial labyrinth designed to mask the true subterranean entrance, the mutant ecosystem went haywire.

But they didn’t attack... It was something significantly stranger, almost eerie to witness. The small segregated mass of corrupted beasts agitated, behaving exactly like an ant colony that had just registered a massive chemical alarm, and then they simply scattered. They hurriedly retreated deeper into the surrounding darkness, abandoning the primary corridors entirely, leaving the path wide open without mounting a single attempt to intercept Ren or any one on his strike force.

"They no doubt felt us cross the threshold," Zhao muttered, his keen eyes tracking a massive, segmented horror as it rapidly slithered away into a side tunnel. "But they are actively refusing to engage."

"Selthia is fully aware we are here now," Ren stated, his tone flat and unbothered. "But I fully expected her to be... Keep moving."

♢♢♢♢

Ren meticulously scanned the cavern walls and immediately requested Wei to expand his newly acquired fungal network.

Because Ren’s own net system was currently tightly coiled around his fractured core, actively keeping the sleeping Mooshito safely insulated from the pushing corruption, hijacking surface-level administrative control of Wei’s network drastically accelerated his processing speed.

With the golden fungal network actively deployed across the fake chambers of stone, the combined ethereal processing capacity of the two Tamers spiked. Working in tandem, they began to isolate small architectural details that Ren never would have detected relying purely on his organic vision. There were incredibly complex, microscopically different runic arrays etched directly into the bedrock. They were sporadically pulsing with faint, nearly invisible bursts of ether, and according to Ren’s rapid cryptographic analysis, they appeared to be broadcasting some form of highly encrypted energetic telemetry.

"It is a weird frequency wave," Ren concluded, tracing the invisible runic pattern with his eyes. "They are actively transmitting data. It is highly probable it is a proximity alarm or an environmental report... What an interesting way of getting information, energy waves eh?"

"Waves transmitting directly to Selthia?" Larissa asked, "Like Liu’s Vampire Bat did when small?"

"Something like that but different, almost certainly..." Ren didn’t even bother feigning surprise at the ancient entity having more complex knowledge than him, it wasn’t a new problem. "Liora, incinerate those nodes and the corresponding anchor points with your spiritual fire."

Liora offered a sharp nod. Twin lances of bluish yet almost white-hot spiritual flame erupted from her palms, completely consuming the broadcasting runes and permanently melting the stone.

"Erasing the transmitters will not prevent her from already knowing we breached the perimeter," Ren clarified while the fire worked its absolute destruction. "That tactical variable is already burned. However, permanently disabling the waves might prevent her from easily tracking exactly when we extract ourselves, or intricately monitoring whatever operations we execute deeper inside."

Encountering absolutely zero resistance from the scattered mutant horde, they ventured further into the abyss.

As they descended deeper, Ren registered a chilling ecological reality. There were absolutely no natural subterranean terrors. No massive, Gold 3 tunneling worms, no indigenous blind predators, absolutely none of the beasts that should naturally govern a high-density mana underground zone like this. The sprawling tunnels they were currently traversing bore the unmistakable physical scars of massive, burrowing creatures, yet the corridors were entirely empty.

"The mutants cannibalized them," Ren concluded grimly, his voice echoing in the dark. "They systematically slaughtered and consumed every single beast native to this entire sector purely to feed their army. That is exactly why the ecosystem feels so profoundly dead..."

They descended deeper and deeper, until they finally reached the ancient threshold.

♢♢♢♢

For the very first time since his journey began, Ren stared at a ruin door that required only a single, solitary elemental crystal to breach instead of two.

The other three sanctuaries he had successfully conquered possessed different runic configurations too. This door was a bit simpler in its architectural design. And yet, there were glaring, contradictory details that absolutely did not fit the established logic.

There was a hollow, physical indentation perfectly molded into the ancient metal, remarkably similar to the biometric scanner Luna should have been forced to interact with deep beneath the Yano castle. There were strange, completely foreign runic dialects etched around the frame. And the absolute most jarring, unexpected difference of them all: there was a corrupted core wedged directly into the door’s primary receptacle.

It was almost consumed halfway.

Ren cautiously approached the threshold, completely ignoring the sharp spikes of anxiety flaring through the girls’ ethereal tethers.

"I am absolutely not going to execute any reckless maneuvers," he assured them, proactively cutting off their impending protests. "I merely intend to run a diagnostic on the embedded crystal."

He focused his full attention on the core, meticulously reading its structural integrity using his advanced mana perception, and instantly recognized the signature. It was a synthetic heart, forged using the exact same horrific alchemy Selthia had utilized in her attempt to possess Sirius. But this core was fundamentally different.

Because it didn’t appear to be structurally incomplete.

It just appeared to be half-consumed.

Ren frowned deeply, his mind racing through the variables. Something about the erratic energy flow bleeding from the ancient door, combined with the degradation of the core itself, strongly suggested this was absolutely not an unfinished prototype. It was a fully functional battery that had been slowly bleeding out energy for an extended period of time.

It was actively draining, exactly like an ancient, forgotten battery abandoned in a rusted slot.

"This is highly irregular," Ren muttered, immediately calling Wei and Larissa forward to analyze the situation.

"It does not register as a trap," Wei offered after a moment, meticulously sweeping the door with his own perception, heavily augmented by his golden fungal network.

"I concur," Ren nodded. "However, I must extract this corrupted crystal before I can insert my own. And I absolutely need to comprehend exactly what this mechanism is before I risk making physical contact."