Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 518: Chapter 518 - Taming the Whole

The door wasn’t just unlocked, but completely wide open, letting organic veins enter from the earth from various angles. The massive doors of magical metal and crystal extended to the sides, revealing a passage that descended toward the tower’s deepest entrails.

The sight was both an invitation and a warning.

’There must be another core inside, as I expected,’ Dragarion thought.

He hurried forward, still feeling pain in every fiber of his body from the crystallization that diamond power had caused in his system.

But thanks to the potion he had received, he didn’t feel as bad as he could have, and the power he had left was still more than he himself as Platinum Rank could normally expel.

That’s why he didn’t feel intimidated by the purple veins and strange organic structures that plagued the place. On the contrary, he went about destroying some as he advanced, using small bursts of draconic power to clear his path.

Each vein he destroyed writhed like a wounded serpent, dripping a substance that hissed when it touched the ground. The organic structures pulsed with abyssal life, but they moved away from his presence as if recognizing a superior force.

The descent seemed like an eternal throat.

The stairway corridors curved, creating the sensation of descending through the entrails of some gigantic organism.

When he finally reached the bottom, he found himself with a view that was familiar yet completely alien.

The same tower he knew from his own kingdom extended downward, apparently suspended in the center of a crystal dome by several bridges radiating from its central structure.

But here, everything was opaque... corrupted.

Where in his kingdom the crystal was clear and bright, here it was dark and purple, pulsing with malevolent life that made the air itself feel heavy and viscous.

The corruption wasn’t just connected; it was completely integrated into the very structure of the place.

Dragarion advanced quickly across one of the bridges, his steps resonating on the corrupt crystal as he headed toward the tower’s center.

He could feel how abyssal power concentrated more densely with each meter he advanced. The very air seemed to thicken with malevolent intent.

When he entered the first central chamber, he had to make a conscious effort not to immediately throw up.

The main vein’s mana flow was being absorbed by what appeared to be an organic heart with a horrible mouth full of irregular teeth.

The thing pulsed, each beat sucking more energy from the vein and distributing it through a network of purple arteries that extended throughout the chamber.

The murals and walls were completely covered by more pulsing veins than he had seen outside.

Fortunately, the door to even deeper levels was closed, blocked by the lack of the third ring. At least there was a limit to how deep this corruption could go, and it was far from the power of the seven diamond dragons on this side.

He prepared to begin systematic destruction of the place, channeling draconic power that would make all the organic parts destroy themselves.

But then a reflection in the periphery of his vision caught his attention.

Where in his own tower there was a golden window that allowed direct communication, here there was a metallic purple surface that pulsed with its own life.

And on that surface, where only the crystal should have been, he could see something familiar.

The body of what had been Kassian was being slowly absorbed by the surface. Only a face remained, partially melted into the corrupt metal, his eyes still blinking with residual life but no real consciousness behind them.

And sitting casually to one side of this grotesque scene, as if she were meditating, was Selthia.

The girl opened her eyes and waved at him, her voice sounding exactly like that of any ten-year-old girl.

”Hello, King Dragarion!” she said cheerfully, as if they were meeting at a picnic instead of in the heart of a corrupted tower. ”I’m so glad to see you again.”

Dragarion looked at the girl with some pity and horror.

He knew her, of course. He had last seen her at an age very similar to what he had left Larissa before departing on his mission. A cheerful girl, full of potential, with her whole life ahead of her.

But now he could feel the energy within her, abyssal power that pulsed with each beat of her heart. She wasn’t a girl who had been corrupted; she was something that had embraced corruption so completely that one could no longer be separated from the other.

He went on guard, draconic power accumulating around him like armor of light.

But to his surprise, Selthia raised her arms in a sign of surrender.

”I’m not here to fight,” she declared, though her voice began to distort slightly, as if she were speaking through water. ”Just to leave a message. A negotiation, if you want to see it that way.”

”Negotiation?” Dragarion didn’t lower his guard. ”What kind?”

Selthia smiled, but the expression looked strange on her childish face when combined with the power she radiated.

”I’ll take my ’children’ elsewhere,” she explained, as if discussing the exchange of toys. ”We won’t bother you anymore. But you leave us this, the chamber that corresponds to us.”

The proposal was so absurd that Dragarion laughed, though the sound carried no humor.

”That’s all you want?” he asked with evident sarcasm. ”So that in nine years or less, when you accumulate more power, you come to fight us again for the last ring?”

Selthia tilted her head, considering the question with childish seriousness.

”This way there will be no more battles for now,” she admitted. ”But if you force us...” Her voice became completely different, resonating with harmonics that didn’t belong to any human throat. ”Then maybe all the abyssals under the gold layer will appear in Yano without pause until the last of them.”

The threat fell over the chamber like a stone in still water.

It wasn’t a bluff; it was a promise made with the certainty of someone who had the power to fulfill it.

Dragarion became angry, not just at the threat but at the casual way it had been delivered by someone who looked like a child.

He launched forward, draconic power concentrating in his hands with the intention of ending this conversation in the most direct way possible.

But Selthia disappeared.

She didn’t move quickly; she simply stopped being there. One moment she was sitting casually next to the crystal with Kassian’s face, and the next she had completely absorbed into one of the pulsing veins like it was liquid.

Then voices resonated throughout the chamber.

It wasn’t just Selthia’s voice. It was a chorus of abyssal whispers speaking in perfect union.

No one will survive if you choose violence, the voices promised. Maybe only the strongest, but surely that’s not the world you want... an empty world.

Dragarion sighed deeply, feeling the weight of every decision he had made to reach this moment.

The voices knew exactly where to attack, exactly what threat would make him hesitate.

But then he thought of something else. Something he himself had instilled in many.

He began to increase the draconic power, feeling how energy accumulated around him until the entire chamber was illuminated with a light that made the purple veins writhe in pain.

”My answer,” he declared with a voice that resonated like thunder, ”is no... In Yano we don’t negotiate with those who take children as hostages.”

The conviction in his voice was absolute. This was the line he would not cross, the compromise he would not make. Some evils could not be tolerated, regardless of the cost of opposing them.

The abyssal voices screamed in rage and terror when they realized their threats hadn’t worked and the light was increasing.