Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 542: Chapter 542 – Taming the Fourth Year: Isolation – Emptiness

The sudden absence of agony was so dramatic it almost caused him a different kind of shock. For the first time in what felt like hours, he could think clearly.

But the silence in his mind, where the fungus’s voice had always been a constant presence, was deafening. For the first time in years, he was truly alone in his own consciousness.

Julius immediately noticed the change.

“Are you okay?” he shouted while launching another devastating attack toward the giant chimera.

“Yes,” Ren replied, though his voice sounded hollow.

The giant creature became enraged when it realized its sonic pulse no longer had effect. Its multiple heads roared with frustration, and it began preparing for a more direct attack.

But just as it launched toward them, reinforcements arrived. The bird had managed to reach the surface through the tunnel Julius had left without being eliminated by any beast.

Ren’s guard girls emerged from the upper tunnels, bringing with them Selphira and a dozen soldiers specialized in underground combat.

Selphira assessed the situation in seconds and helped Julius keep the beasts at bay.

♢♢♢♢

“Retreat!” Selphira ordered when they realized after a while that they were in a very similar situation to what they had experienced in Yino’s chamber that day.

As long as small chimeras kept arriving, reaching the large one would be impossible, and from the numbers they could sense in the vicinity, these monsters hadn’t wasted time during the past few years.

Selphira led the retreat, beginning to create massive ice structures that blocked the chimeras’ advance. “We can’t keep fighting on their terrain!”

The escape was slow but coordinated. Earth soldiers also worked to seal tunnels behind them and around the ice reinforcing structures to make them difficult to navigate.

But the monsters followed them, a tide of changing forms that constantly adapted to overcome every obstacle they put in their path.

Finally, at 300 meters depth, dozens more soldiers joined, and they managed to create a combined barrier of reinforced rock, living mineral, and ice strong enough to temporarily stop the advance.

They used tunnels from new excavations to move and reinforce the structure over a considerable area, creating a defensive line that could last long enough to organize a more comprehensive response.

♢♢♢♢

The following days were chaos of citywide military coordination.

A joint effort was organized involving thousands of guards, soldiers specialized in earth manipulation, and even civilian volunteers with Silver Rank or higher beasts. The underground barrier was reinforced until it became a true fortress, with multiple defensive layers and early warning systems, like a wall but plate-shaped and beneath the city.

The common wall between the two cities ended up providing two-thirds of its military population for the effort, but the tens of thousands of mutant beasts were successfully contained.

During all this time, Ren moved as if in a dream. The absence of his fungus left him feeling as if he had lost a crucial sense. The voices and sensations that had accompanied him for just over three years had disappeared, replaced by a silence that was almost physically painful.

He didn’t know if the encystment was permanent or temporary. He didn’t know if he would ever again hear the voice that had been his most constant companion during the most formative years of his life.

All he knew was that the sacrifice had been necessary only because of his faults.

♢♢♢♢

The loss wasn’t just devastating for Ren’s depression… It was also devastating for his power.

He could no longer sense mana flow with the same intensity as before. Patterns that had once been as clear as written words were now barely whispers in the distance.

All the knowledge that had been at the reach of his thoughts, the instant comprehensions about beasts and cultivation techniques, the perceptions that had made him a ’prodigy’… everything had disappeared.

He only had what he had consciously learned, what he had memorized and practiced until it became a personal knowledge.

The rings’ power had been completely blocked as well. Without his fungus to facilitate connections, the relics were simply ornamental objects that no one could see in their depths. The bonuses from his main beast along with the rings, which had provided 380% increases in almost all his characteristics and the additional 50% in elemental control from the seed, had evaporated.

He also couldn’t fuse with the ease he had developed during recent years. Now he was limited to the basic techniques he had taught others, methods that required conscious concentration and much more significant energy expenditure.

Partial fusion, which had allowed him to manifest specific powers without the cost of complete transformation, was now completely impossible.

In theory, he was at half his previous power. In reality, he was even weaker, because he had also lost the synergy between his abilities, the subtle connections that had made his techniques more effective than the simple sum of their parts.

He could only depend on his hydra and wolverine. Nothing more.

Paradoxically to his new emotional state, the emotional intensity he had been experiencing for months had also disappeared. The negative emotions that had been consuming him, the anger that had emerged during the confrontation with Leopold, or the arrogance that had led him to take unnecessary risks… everything had faded along with the power.

Now he had less clarity in his senses but more in his internal thoughts. His feelings and sensations were less intense and tangled, as if a filter that had been distorting his emotional perception had been removed.

Despite this new mental clarity, Ren felt a constant knot in his throat and an overwhelming urge to scream, to cry, to do anything that could alleviate the emptiness he felt in his mind.

He felt completely alone.

It wasn’t because he didn’t have friends or because they didn’t support him. In fact, he found himself in his room surrounded by people who cared about him: Min, Taro, Liu, Lin, Zhao, Yang, Wei, classmates, the girls and even some of the guards had come to check on his condition. But the lack of the small friend who had whispered constant companionship was too abrupt and cruel.

It was like having lost a limb he had never fully valued until it disappeared.

The realization hit him with force that was almost physical: he didn’t know what he had until he lost it. His relationship with his beast had been less warm than it should have been. He owed too much to the small fungus and had always treated it with some apathy.

He realized too late how much that constant presence had really meant.

He hated himself for it too.

“Hey,” Min tried to break the heavy silence that had fallen over the room, “the ’little centimeter’ is probably just sleeping. You know, like… like when frogs hibernate in winter.”

The effect was the opposite of intended.

Ren visibly tensed, remembering how his fungus had always complained when they called it that. The creature had had a terrible complex about its size, and each rank only made it grow one centimeter: 7 cm at Silver 1, 8 cm at Silver 2. The measurements it had achieved were a constant source of anger when they mocked it and found it funny.

“Don’t call it that,” Ren murmured, his voice loaded with sadness that made everyone in the room feel uncomfortable.

Min scratched his head, clearly regretful.

“Sorry, I… didn’t think…”

“Min is an idiot,” Liu declared dryly, earning a nod from Taro.

Liu addressed Ren more carefully.

“Surely finishing cultivation will help you understand what happened. You already know the requirements to reach Gold, don’t you?”

Ren sighed deeply, considering the words.

“You might be right,” he murmured, though his voice suggested he didn’t want to inject much hope into it.

Taro, noticing that Ren seemed less angry than moments before, decided to carefully change the subject to something that worried them all.

“What’s going to happen with the chimeras you talked about?” he asked with visible fear. “Do you think the barrier will be sufficient to contain them?”