Chapter 1305 - Taming the Old World - Light Dragons - 9

Chapter 1305: Chapter 1305 - Taming the Old World - Light Dragons - 9

Ren carefully drew back the dense dragon energy currently flooding the channels in his left arm...

He didn’t need to retract Mooshito’s network, as the little mushroom had already condensed its presence deep within Ren’s own core for hibernation.

With the system channels in his petrified arm temporarily clear, Ren reached out to the sprawling ethereal grid of the ancient corruption, the very same poisonous frequency he had been involuntarily tethered to through his spiritual crack for years now.

He carefully invited a tiny, heavily controlled trickle of that dark ether into his system, routing it straight down his left arm. He felt the familiar, sickening nausea, the agonizing burn of a poison his body normally wanted to reject, but it was a manageable dose.

Besides, the nerve endings in his crystallized arm barely registered the pain anymore.

He gathered just enough of the dark ether in his palm to condense a small, dense ball of purple corruption.

He held his hand out and crushed the sphere, unleashing a short, concentrated pulse of dark energy directly into the golden roots wrapping the core.

The instant the purple ether made contact, the golden lines withered, the two opposing energies neutralizing each other on the spot.

The corrupt pulse rippled through the invasive hyphae network surrounding the heart. The vast majority of the golden roots blackened, shriveled, and turned to ash, leaving the Light Core significantly cleaner, brighter, and largely purged of the parasite.

Corruption was lethal poison to this golden web, exactly as it was that time. The immediate reaction confirmed his grim suspicion beyond a shadow of a doubt.

It was an ancient fungal network.

Ren didn’t waste another second... He grabbed the core, physically tearing it free from the few remaining roots, and shoved it straight into his shadow space. The primary objective was secured.

The purge had worked flawlessly. Exactly as he had predicted.

And that flawless execution only made the knot in his stomach twist tighter.

A second later, his worst fear materialized.

The massive carcass of the dragon did not dissolve.

It should have started to evaporate instantly. A dead guardian stripped of its core was nothing more than an empty vessel connected to the ether; its physical form always broke down into ambient mana within moments. This massive body should be dissolving into harmless motes of light right now.

Instead, it began to twitch.

The heavy, viscous flesh surrounding the crater, which had gone perfectly still, began to writhe. And then, defying every known law of draconic biology, the ruined tissue began to actively rebuild itself, frantically knitting back together despite lacking a core to power the regeneration.

Something else inside the carcass was reanimating the flesh. Something completely separate from the Light Core Ren had just stolen.

Something that had been lying dormant in the dark, patiently waiting for this exact moment to wake up.

????

"PRESS THE ATTACK!" Ren roared, leaping backward out of the cavernous chest as his bad premonition spiked into full-blown panic. "SOMETHING IS WRONG IN ITS STOMACH! HIT THAT EXACT SPOT WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!"

The five commanders, who had just begun to lower their guard and catch their breath after securing the kill, instantly snapped back into combat stances.

But Ren could already feel it.

Through his heightened mana perception, he tracked the massive disturbance echoing from deep within the resurrecting dragon’s gut.

An energy signature.

And it was growing at a terrifying rate.

It was not the Light Core he had just claimed.

It was not the fading echo of the guardian.

It was something entirely alien; a distinct, terrifying presence that the golden fungal network had been quietly feeding and incubating this entire time, hidden deep within the bowels of the parasitized dragon.

A new entity was waking up inside the beast’s stomach, its power swelling exponentially with every passing second.

????

Wei had petitioned, argued, and pulled every bureaucratic string available just to guarantee he was stationed in whatever defensive sector Finch was assigned to.

He had ultimately gotten his way, and from the moment they took their posts on the wall, the interrogation had not stopped. He fired off question after question regarding the perimeter defense, the ethereal pulse of the golden network, and the exact mechanical process Finch had used to weaponize the ethereal golden hyphae against the mutant horde.

Wei was completely consumed by the manic obsession of a scholar who had just caught the scent of a breakthrough and refused to let go until he had dissected the phenomenon down to its roots.

Finch, on the other hand, had already explained the entire sequence of events more times than he could count.

During the first few retellings, he had leaned into his usual dramatic flair. Lately, however, he had dropped the theatrics entirely.

The endless repetition had eroded his patience, draining him of any desire to be theatrical.

"I did not do anything special," Finch stated for the umpteenth time, his voice flattened into a thin sheet of pure exhaustion. "How many times do we have to go over this? I did nothing out of the ordinary."

"But the resonance..."

"I extended the network, the exact same one you already know about, you have one too," Finch interrupted, rubbing his temples. "That is the entire secret... I extended the threads, I linked up with the others, and I used Theodore as a central focal node to physically touch that monster."

Right on cue, Theodore, perched securely on his owner’s shoulder, gave a solemn little nod to corroborate the testimony.

"The golden network seems to act as a natural repellant to the corruption," Finch continued. "To my eyes, which are the eyes of a simple accountant who understands absolutely none of this magical theory, that was what hurt the mutant. But it only stunned the thing... It scrambled its connection to their hive mind thingy for a second, and that is it!"

"And how did you manage to condense that huge sprawling network into a single, localized point through the mouse? The control and density required for that is..."

"Comrade," Finch sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I do not have the faintest idea what you want from me. I am just a humble accountant... My mouse counts crystals; he does not fight wars. One day, out of sheer, blind panic, I got the bright idea to poke a monster with him... Luckily, we were not eaten alive, and here we are. There is no grand science behind it... It is just blind luck and a massive amount of desperation, in that exact order!"

Wei did not believe that explanation for a single second.