Chapter 1326 - Taming the Old World - 51.5 hours

Chapter 1326: Chapter 1326 - Taming the Old World - 51.5 hours

Ren pulled his hand away from the warm metal of the dome, the exhaustion finally catching up to him, and cast his mana perception over the beast pooling energy inside one last time.

He measured the volatile currents with compulsive exactness, running the final calculus in his head.

"Slightly more than fifty hours," Ren said at last, letting out a slow breath. "That is my best estimate for how long it will take that parasite’s energy to reach the critical point."

"I concur with that reading, though prudence dictates we should act by hour forty-nine just to guarantee we stay ahead of the curve," Selphira noted. She had been analyzing the energy currents using her own methods, and Wei gave a firm nod beside her, confirming the timeline through the mushrooms’ sensory network.

Suddenly, Theodore bolted upright on Finch’s shoulder...

The small rodent began waving its front paws in exaggerated, frantic gestures, squeaking directly into the accountant’s ear with the dramatic panic and aggrandized stance of an elite auditor who had just spotted a misplaced decimal point on a final ledger.

Finch let out a long sigh, took the tiny notebook from its little paws, consulted the scribbles, and rolled his eyes toward the sky.

"Theodore says it is not fifty hours," Finch announced flatly. "It is exactly fifty-one and a half hours. According to his specific calculations taken from the same net we are now using, which are, and I quote, ’the only precise mathematics taking place in this entire amateur operation’."

He leveled a deadpan stare at the mouse on his shoulder. "Those are his words, for the record... Since I have the utmost respect for amateur mathematicians!"

Ren could not stop a tired half-smile from touching his lips. "Fifty-one and a half, then. Thank you, Theodore. That gives us a much more precise window to work with."

The mouse offered a crisp, deeply satisfied little bow from its perch.

????

Before wrapping up the session in the vault, Ren handed the Fire Ring back to Liora.

"It is yours again," he said, pressing the artifact into her palm. "Keep it safe until I actually need it to rebuild the array with a plan you three can accept."

Liora accepted the artifact without a single word of protest, slipping it back onto her finger as Ren turned to address the rest of the command staff.

"Alright, our work down here is done for the day, so we are shifting immediately to the next phase: the turrets." Ren stretched his back, his joints popping loudly in the quiet ghost city. "I am currently running on fumes. I have kept just enough ether to stay upright and assist with the finer runic details, so I am not going to be able to build the turret grid myself... So I am going to have to give you all a crash course right now."

He pointed toward the containment dome, and then gestured upward, indicating the new, heavily compressed perimeter of the capital on the surface.

"We need to connect a fresh line of heavy defense towers directly to the subterranean mana veins flowing beneath Yino and Yano’s castles. Because our defensive perimeter is so compressed right now, tapping those lines is actually a viable strategy. When the walls were extended, the veins ran too far from the wall to bridge easily; today, they are practically right under our feet."

Ren gave Taro a subtle nod. The young earth Tamer immediately stepped forward and executed a maneuver that made half the tamers present jump.

The stone floor directly adjacent to the dome suddenly shifted. He did not disturb the prison itself, which remained perfectly still, but he pulled back a massive slab of bedrock located right outside the sealed unbreakable ruins of the old castle. The earth parted like a giant mouth, revealing thick, gnarled wooden roots plunging deep into the subterranean soil.

"Do you all see this?" Ren asked, pointing down into the opening. "This is the foundational root system of the original defensive adamantium tower. The wood is still perfectly grafted into the deep ley line that feeds the castle crystal system some thousands of meters below. The tower is now the dome and it does not move because it is currently funneling every drop of its harvested energy into reinforcing the prison’s lifespan and feeding the active nodes..."

"...However, the physical conduit connecting it to the vein is still very much alive. You can use this structure as a blueprint. This is exactly how you splice a weaponized tower into an active mana current. I want you to replicate this architecture all around the dome surface here and the inner wall in Yano."

Wei practically dove toward the opening, his eyes wide with scholarly fascination as he studied the huge root down to its intricate splice. Julius and Selphira stepped up beside him, utilizing their respective mastery over earth and water to analyze exactly how the wooden roots intertwined with the subterranean flow without disrupting it.

Once the mechanics were clear, Ren divided the labor.

Every Tamer with an affinity for earth or wood was tasked with constructing the physical towers and splicing their roots into the deep veins. The rest of the Vanguard was assigned to material procurement. They were ordered to form 20 plus soldiers hunting packs anchored by the elite dual-contract Tamers, fly out into the plains, and strike Selthia’s dispersed horde.

They needed to harvest dense Platinum-tier materials for the tower plating, actively robbing the Witch of her compounding growth while securing the exact resources required to fortify their walls.

The exhausted defenders of the capital were not getting a moment of rest.

After surviving a brutal, multi-front war against primordial dragons, suffering through hours of relentless combat, bleeding themselves dry, and barely managing a half-recovery, anyone who could still stand was being drafted for a grueling double shift.

There was no truce, no ceasefire, and no time to sleep. Miles away in the deep wilderness, Selthia’s sprawling army was already breeding, multiplying, and draining the outer Platinum rings dry as they prepared for the final, apocalyptic push.

????

The following morning...

Selthia was thoroughly annoyed, and the source of her headache was the mangled yet agile moving ugly corpse of the Light Guardian.

Or, more accurately, what that corpse had become...

The grotesque, luminescent fungal abomination Ren had unleashed in the south simply refused to die. The towering puppet of light was actively hunting down her corrupted packs with a terrifying, single-minded obsession she could neither comprehend nor command.