Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Ren opened his eyes with difficulty…

Vision being initially blurry before focusing sufficiently to process his surroundings. He extended his hand toward Luna’s silhouette who was the first person he saw.

Reach being instinctive when recognizing a familiar presence providing a security anchor in a moment of extreme vulnerability. He wanted contact, confirmation this was real. Needed knowing he was safe and among friends rather than still trapped in darkness.

“Luna…” Voice hoarse but recognizably his. “Did I…?”

Had he hurt anyone while corrupted?

Luna was already almost reaching him. The distance between them being only meters. Her hand extended to take Ren’s. Maybe contact would be confirming he was really okay and the salvation had been successful.

Relief was visible in her expression. Fears she’d been hiding dissolving away because he was alive and human… Himself.

“You’re okay,” she said. A simple statement. But carrying the weight of ‘everything’ unsaid.

Just a few more steps. Just reach him and confirm through touch what her eyes could see. That he’d survived.

That the nightmare was over.

But before they managed to touch…

Five enormous stakes erupted from the ground around Ren with great speed.

The eruption propelled debris of earth and rocks in all directions. Projectiles being thrown with enough force obligating Luna to dodge, using a shadow jump at the last moment.

The skill deployed reflexively when recognizing that being hit by such large debris would cause serious damage. She vanished and reappeared several meters away. Safe but separated again.

Ren, still disoriented from the recent liberation from the corruption control, took considerably longer to react to the new threat.

He didn’t activate the spatial jump in time when normally it would’ve been his first response to the imminent danger.

The stakes closed around him with a specific movement coordination revealing they weren’t independent projections but components of a larger structure.

Not stakes at all.. But fingers of an enormous hand. Or more appropriately a ‘claw’, having emerged from the depths with the specific purpose of capturing a target it couldn’t permit escaping.

Five fingers… Each massive and tipped with something sharp. Each moving in a way suggesting intelligence directing them. “REN!” Luna screamed.

Her shadow lunged forward, jaws opening to bite the fingers. No damage…

It was the artifact that had been revived by the mutants in that last big attack.

Ancient technology being activated again to serve a purpose the civilization creating it probably hadn’t anticipated when its design was originally conceived.

Something so dangerous that an entire civilization had separated and built elaborate mechanisms to contain and suppress it. To ensure it could never threaten them again.

Ren tried escaping when he recognized he was about to be clasped.

He tried using his mana to manifest a spatial jump, extracting him from the trap. Should’ve activated instantly. Should’ve saved him like it had saved him dozens of times before.

But the claw canceled his mana.

Interference being obvious when every time he tried channeling energy, the artifact interrupted it in manner preventing appropriate rune formation.

Sparks generated between the enormous fingers each time he tried forcing the disappearance. Visible manifestation of conflict between Ren’s will and the suppression the artifact imposed.

Blue-white electrical discharge. Proof that his power was useless, that resistance was futile… That this was a cage designed to hold things far stronger than he was.

And not only was he trapped…

Dark energy began affecting him again from the palm of the hand. Corruption being reintroduced from this new source not depending on what had been eliminated from Ren’s system.

Again… He felt that connection he’d experienced last time when he’d been partially controlled. Recognizing a presence that wasn’t simply energy but something more having its own will and intention.

A will that desired to rewrite his own.

His eyes glowed intensely this time.

And the mutants that had been scattered around the arena began converging toward the center where Ren was trapped.

Movement being directed like he was some gathering point they needed to reach to complete a strange process that had been initiated. Not random… Responding to signals only they could perceive.

They came from all directions. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, every mutant still mobile. All abandoning whatever they’d been doing and now focused on a single objective.

Reach Ren and the artifact.

Larissa’s light and Luna’s darkness had stopped working in the claw’s vicinity.

Techniques that had been devastating to corruption moments ago now just fading. Canceled by field the artifact projected. Suppression zone where corruption was permitted but purification was denied.

Lin kicked one of the fingers with enormous force.

Fusion-enhanced strike that should’ve cracked the black metal. Should’ve damaged any structure. Should’ve at least created an opening for Ren. But didn’t… Didn’t even dent it. The powerful kick just produced a ringing sound like a dull bell being struck. For Lin it had felt too hard and heavy, like kicking a mountain.

And just after that hit a pulse pushed her backward.

“Ren!” Liora shouted from Lin’s arms with a voice carrying urgency and fighting against exhaustion still affecting her capacity to appropriately project.

“You must fight against the sensation of ‘freedom’, it’s completely false! The complete opposite!”

It was an advice coming from the understanding Liora had acquired during her own experience with corruption. Knowledge of how it seduced through attractive sensations hiding enormous cost.

How it promised power while delivering slavery. How it offered freedom while forging chains. How it made imprisonment feel like liberation.

But did he hear her? Could he hear anything anymore? From inside whatever was happening to him internally from corruption while externally the artifact held him captive?

She didn’t know… Could only hope her words had reached him. That some part of him was still listening. Still capable of resistance.

Most mutant beasts finally arrived at the arena’s center.

They circled around the claw containing Ren while his energy grew. Pressure being generated in a manner pushing the girls increasingly backward physically.

Not simply psychological intimidation but a tangible force making it difficult to maintaining their positions against the pulse. Like standing in a hurricane.

Each step toward Ren required effort. Each meter gained was immediately lost. Each attempt at approach was rebuffed by a field growing stronger as more mutants arrived, as more connections formed and as the process approached completion.