Chapter 1094 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins - Fair Deals
Chapter 1094: Chapter 1094 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins - Fair Deals
Ren stood in the dimming light, looking at his options.
Their situation was still on a razor’s edge. But if making a deal meant he didn’t have to permanently shatter his own core to push her off...
He didn’t rush his answer. He let the silence stretch, the non deliberate quiet of a man actually making a heavy decision, not just pausing for dramatic effect.
Finally, he acted. He channeled a sliver of mana and summoned Mayo out of the Wolverine’s spatial storage.
She materialized on the stone floor, a bit confused.
"Wait, you won’t give your favorite maid to the enemy, right?!"
Her arms were still wrapped fiercely around the massive, silver egg, clutching it to her chest.
"Give the egg to her," Ren ordered quietly, not in the mood for her joke. He jutted his chin with a serious face toward the enormous, black claw resting at the bottom of the stairs. The artifact was waiting with the cold, unmoving patience of an appendage that knew time was on its side.
Mayo’s mouth opened to protest... She looked up, ready to argue the massive downsides of the order.
Then she saw Ren’s eyes. She saw the blood on his chin, the profound exhaustion carving lines into his face, and the grim absolute certainty in his gaze.
She closed her mouth... She swallowed hard, and moved while letting out a trembling sigh. It was the sound of a soldier realizing that whatever argument she had prepared simply didn’t matter anymore. The priority of their survival was written on that face.
Mayo stepped forward warily.
She walked slowly toward the towering, grotesque artifact. She didn’t look at it, she just kept her eyes glued to the stone floor to avoid cowering back and her face was twisted in a bitter grimace, the universal expression of someone surrendering a priceless treasure to the enemy and choosing to physically ignore the exact moment of the handoff.
She gently placed the silver egg into the open, corrupted palm of the claw.
"Get back inside," Ren instructed promptly.
Mayo didn’t hesitate to flee... She scrambled backward, and Ren pulled her back into the Wolverine’s spatial hold.
Ren turned his glare back to the stairwell. "Now get out of the way, Selthia."
"Y-yes, yes," Selthia cooed softly. "B-but..."
Ren’s eyes narrowed into lethal slits.
"T-the egg as a free pass was the price when you all had full mana and hadn’t tried to pull a fast one on me," Selthia pointed out, her voice dripping with sudden, venomous practicality. "You are in a much worse position now than you were five minutes ago." She let a one-second pause hang in the air. "I want something else now..."
Ren’s instincts flared. His muscles coiled, ready to launch himself at the claw and rip the egg back before the artifact could retract with it. The golden light in his core instinctively surged to life, ready to burn all corruption again.
"Wait, wait!" Selthia’s voice snapped through the cavern. For the very first time, there was genuine, panicked urgency lacing her words. "The prisoners! I just want the prisoners you were going to leave behind anyway!"
Ren’s eyes shifted slowly toward the center of the chamber.
Seven bodies lay trembling on the cold stone. They were the prisoners, the unofficial sacrifices from the Astor and Jin families. They were entirely immobilized, their wrists and ankles clamped in the heavy, unyielding mineral restraints crafted by Selphira and Julius. Thick gags choked off their voices, reducing their desperate pleas to frantic, muffled whimpers.
"It’s only fair, you know. For the sake of respect and justice and all those just things," Selthia’s voice echoed from the pulsing meat on the walls. Her tone was terrifyingly light. "You guys were the ones who jumped without listening to me, right? So, this is fair. Really, really fair." A wet, sickening sound rippled through the cavern as the artifacts shifted. "Just give me this, and I’ll let you walk away... I promise!"
A few feet away, Sirius had finally managed to push himself to his feet.
He swayed slightly, his posture lacking the rigid, imposing perfection it usually held when his mana reserves were full. But his eyes were sharp. He stared down at the squirming prisoners, running the exact same grim, tactical calculation that was currently freezing the blood in Ren’s veins.
They both knew what this meant. Handing over living, breathing humans to the ancient entity Dragarion had imprisoned in the crystal was a catastrophic mistake. These weren’t mindless, corrupted beasts. These were human pawns. Agents that could operate entirely outside the crystallized domain, monstrous network Selthia controlled.
They maybe could even change their face with Sethia’s shenanigans and walk into cities... They could bypass wards.
It was a terrible idea even if there was no other choice.
Sirius knew it.
Ren knew it.
But as Ren looked from the hostages to the exhausted, corrupted future father-in-law beside him, the brutal math of their survival gave no other choice.
Ren gave a single, tight nod.
The prisoners went feral with panic. Their muffled screams spiked into shrieks of absolute, blinding terror as they thrashed violently against the stone floor.
It didn’t matter...
From the walls, Selthia let out a sigh.
The sound carried a completely different texture than her previous laughter. The sadistic, calculated edge was gone. It was replaced by a deep, genuine satisfaction, the sound of a starving creature finally being handed a meal.
"Well then," Selthia said. Her voice was brisker now, the tone of someone who had already moved on to the next item on her agenda. "I’m going to have the claws move down into the seventh chamber to clear out the stairwell for you."
Ren didn’t move a muscle, he just watched.
Four massive claws were currently wedged into the narrow staircase. Given the sheer, colossal scale of the artifacts, four was the absolute physical limit the shaft could hold. If Selthia only moved two of them down into the chamber and left the other four clogging the path, the situation wouldn’t be resolved; the trap would just be displaced without the wind resistance from before and with now 2 claws to fight inside.
But he decided to trust and waited.