Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

Chapter 964 - Taming Stress - 2

They settled him onto the floor of the interior space, and Ren held on to all three of them with what remained of what he had, which was very little, his face saying in silence everything he hadnʼt been able to say in words.

Something the girls had already understood: there was no way a body and a mind pushed so hard until arriving in that state had anything to be ashamed of…

It was impossible to believe Selthia, to believe anything negative about him, when the evidence of how hard he had been pushing was right there in his face, in the weight of him, in the way he had been fighting to hold on a few more minutes just to check that everyone else was alright.

The girls watched him go quiet.

And in their look there was not even a small doubt.

♢♢♢♢

Some time passed before any of the three spoke.

Larissa was first.

”Heʼs carrying too much.” She didnʼt say it as an accusation, she said it with the meticulousness of someone arriving at a diagnosis they would have preferred not to have to make after much deliberation. ”And heʼs fighting forces that are…” she searched for the right word, found it, set it in place, ”...intrinsically different from anything any of us understood, at least before this.”

She gestured toward the horizon of the interior space.

The networks Selthia had left behind when she dissolved hadnʼt fully disappeared. They extended toward the edges of the space like the outer structure of something enormous waiting just past the libraryʼs limits, branching threads of corrupted energy that seemed to reach endlessly into the dark beyond the walls, showing clearly how far the influence had spread before it was pushed back. The map of what really was the true body of the ʼgirlʼ that had been here.

”It seems the corruption isnʼt only the strange beasts we see outside,” Larissa continued. ”Itʼs something deeper. Something that works affecting the mana of the world at a more fundamental level.” A pause. ”And he was dealing with that from the inside, at the same time he was dealing with everything he could from the outside.”

Liora was watching the networks with an expression that mixed the exhaustion from before with something closer to a new worry and active concern. Not the kind that needed to spiral into catastrophizing the quiet since she was indeed that tired, but the focused kind of worry that was already looking for where to apply itself.

”Thatʼs what made him vulnerable in the first place,” she said. ”The load… Not the corruptionʼs strength alone.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the muscles near Renʼs shoulder, he was sleeping with the heaviness of someone who had fallen more than drifted, the dead weight of total collapse. ”We have to reduce it. That load... Or this is likely going to keep happening.”

Luna still had her head against his chest, her ear over the place where his heartbeat was easiest to find. Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing in particular, with the expression she got when she was thinking things she hadnʼt decided to say yet, the internal machinery still running, sorting and filtering and deciding what came out and what didnʼt.

”Itʼs my fault,” she finally uttered with a soft voice.

The other two looked at her.

”Iʼve put too much on him.” A broken voice but with no drama in it. Just the unguarded quality Lunaʼs voice had when sheʼd resolved to be honest without armor. ”Iʼve placed too much hope in him solving things that are mine, without actually seeing what it cost him. Things about my family. Situations that…” she exhaled slowly, ”...I assumed someone like Ren could handle, because he was so assertive after the dance and always handled everything easily. Without making sure if he really could. Without offering him anything in return except more weight.”

 Liora tilted slightly toward her.

”Then tell us more. Not just the surface.”

Luna looked up.

”Everything you feel,” Larissa specified. ”Whatever youʼve been carrying too. So we can distribute it. Thereʼs no point in either of you carrying things alone when weʼre here too.”

Luna looked at Liora, who nodded without saying anything.

Then she looked at Ren sleeping.

And she spoke.

Not with detours. Not with the usual filters she used to regulate how much of herself she showed at any given time. She talked about what her motherʼs crystal actually meant to her, the real weight of it, not the version she depicted when she needed to explain it but didnʼt have the heart to let go of her tears for the full truth. The full fearful mind of the girl that had been trapped inside that castle. The uncles who used the sad result of that day as leverage, who had been using it lately for long enough that the leverage had become the shape of every conversation she had with them. How long she had been the only stable point in a family that was coming apart from too many directions at once, and how she had stopped noticing the cost of being that point because you stop noticing what you always carry.

She talked about her father. About the particular weight of an absence that had no explanation attached to it… he had simply stopped being there one day, and the not-knowing had a mass to it that she had spent a long time pretending was something smaller than it was.

She said all of it.

Without measuring her sulk face or grimaces.

 She didnʼt notice, while she was talking, that Renʼs hand, which had been completely still for several seconds, closed slightly. Not enough to look intentional. Just the involuntary movement of someone sleeping deeply who is still processing, somewhere in a lower layer, what reaches them from outside.

Liora noticed.

She didnʼt say anything.

Somewhere beneath the exhaustion that was pressing everything else flat, something tied itself into a knot. Not a thought with words attached to it yet. Just a certainty, quiet and solid, the kind that doesnʼt need to announce itself, that when his eyes were able to open again, there was going to be a list. Long and complicated… With parts that were going to require more than he currently had available.

But available or not, they were going to get fixed.

 All of them.