Chapter 1311 - Taming the Old World - Light Dragons - 15

Chapter 1311: Chapter 1311 - Taming the Old World - Light Dragons - 15

Miles away, secluded in the cold silence of her crystal chamber, Selthia was seething.

She had already written off the southern front... She had swallowed her pride, accepted defeat, and pulled her surviving units out of the sector to save them from being melted by Ren’s unquenchable black fire.

She had made the pragmatic choice to recycle those troops for a stronger push on the remaining fronts.

Yet, the southern peak she thought was a closed book was suddenly generating fresh nightmares.

She had no idea what kind of sorcery Ren had just pulled off.

Somehow, he had turned the mangled corpse of the Light Dragon against her soldiers. A radiant abomination was currently roaming the southern plains, spreading a golden infection on the ground, hunting her scouts and aggressively tracking down her corruption with an obsession Selthia could neither comprehend nor control.

To her perspective, it felt like a deliberate, deeply personal insult.

The worst part was the sickening irony of the tactic. Ren was seemingly mocking her by deploying a flawless copy of her own hidden advantage.

The stitched-together Shadow Dragon mutant was her ultimate trump card. She had kept it buried underground, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to deploy her masterpiece on whichever front Ren could not reach. It was the heaviest piece on her board.

Now, right in front of her eyes, Ren had unleashed a rogue Light Dragon mutant that functioned exactly like her own weapon, only operating in reverse. He had casually converted a dead guardian into an autonomous killing machine, as if he had read her grand strategy and casually tossed a funny copy version of it right back in her face without even breaking a sweat.

Selthia clenched her jaw, her nails digging into her palms in the empty space, figuratively...

"How does he do it?" she whispered to the silence, having no ancient advisor left to provide an answer. "How does he always manage to CHEAT like this!?"

????

Rewinding the clock a few minutes, Ren’s strike team had claimed the Light Ring in record time.

With their commander back from redirecting the fungal abomination, the six of them cleared the ancient mountain trials at a blistering pace. They completely abandoned the paranoid caution usually required for exploring deep ruins. There was no guardian left to defend the entrance, no traps laid by the Witch, and no hidden artifacts waiting in ambush. The entire operation, from the first strike against the dragon to breaching the vault chamber, took them just over half an hour.

And there it was.

Ren reached out, claimed the artifact, and slid it onto his right hand.

He now wore four rings... Fire, earth, shadow, and light.

Four elemental guardians defeated, and four fundamental elements condensed directly into his grip. With every new addition, his elemental mastery climbed another step, the ambient light ether responding to his will with an effortless, terrifying new fluidity.

His five companions offered their congratulations.

"That makes four, you are sensationally remarkable Ren," Larissa noted. She spoke with her usual cool detachment, smoothly masking the profound relief underneath. "We secured three yesterday, and now we have this one. All that remains is figuring out how to recover the final three from my father’s hand, and the last vault is ours."

"Good work my glorious general hubby, I knew you’d make it another record run you reckless handsome idiot," Liora added. Coming from the fiery spiritual mage, the insult was actually a compliment.

Luna simply offered a tired, stressed, but deeply satisfied smile followed by a fast small kiss.

Liu clapped his hand against his shoulder.

Sirius, still wearing the Yino Shadow Ring on his own finger, gave a slow nod of approval. It was the quiet, evaluating look of a future father-in-law who was finally starting to believe this young man could truly carry the weight of the world.

"There is no time to celebrate yet," Ren said, though a faint smile touched his lips. "We need to get back in the air and push the pace."

He ran the math out loud for the group.

"If we leave right this second and fly without stopping, we will touch down in the capital roughly five minutes before Selthia’s marching Diamonds arrive." He looked at the faces surrounding him in the dim vault. "It is a small margin, but it is enough. If we beat them to the walls, the corruption will not dare launch a full-scale siege. Selthia knows that with us standing on the ramparts, her elite army and her precious titans are walking into a meat grinder."

????

Snapping back to the present.

Miles away in her crystal chamber, Selthia screamed in pure, overwhelming stress.

Ren’s strike team had cleared the mountain far too quickly. That speed shattered her entire plan. Her grand strategy to press the capital and sacrifice the southern peak relied entirely on humanity’s champion getting bogged down.

She had deliberately left the Light Dragon unreinforced, banking on the legendary healer dragging the battle out for hours. That delay was supposed to give her the necessary window to batter the city walls while her greatest threat was tied up a hundred miles away.

Ren had not taken hours... He had barely taken half one.

He had finished the job in less than half the projected time, even with the bizarre, unpredictable interference of the fungal beast. Now he was already airborne, tearing across the sky on a direct intercept course for the capital.

She was not even going to have the chance to initiate the main assault to try and get Yano castle’s golden widow.

That was the brutal reality burning through Selthia’s mind. If she threw her forces against the city walls while Ren was present, her three hundred beasts and her seven Diamond titans were as good as dead.

Ren and Liora fighting side by side could sweep her entire army; Ren alone could dismantle her Diamonds piece by piece. Hurling her carefully hoarded strength against a perimeter defended by the boy was not a siege, it was a foolish sacrifice. She would lose everything she had painstakingly bred in the mountain incubators for almost nothing at all, repeating the exact same catastrophic blunder she had made across the first three fronts.

She could not afford that outcome... A total loss here meant she would be forced to flee into the deep wilds, hiding in the dark with a crippled swarm and zero infrastructure to rebuild.

Yet, sitting idle was not an option.

Cornered by the shrinking clock, Selthia made the only tactical pivot available to her.

She ordered the hundred Platinums and the single Diamond currently harassing the capital to immediately march north. They were to reinforce the only front where she was still actively contesting a guardian, the only battlefield where she still held a realistic chance of victory.

If she could not crack the royal castle, she would concentrate her usable chips where there was still a prize on the table.

When Ren finally reached the capital, he would find himself pinned there. He would be forced to stay behind its walls to defend against the incoming siege ring of two hundred Platinums and six Diamonds marching from the south.

But she would just feint the attacks... Make him lose tons of time.