Chapter 1287: Taming the Old World - Compulsory Check - 2

Ren listened to the entire debriefing in quiet relief…

He was a bit sad but mostly thankful that the crisis he had been forced to miss by being in a different front had resolved itself with minimal casualties.

He wanted to believe Selphira's words, "they were necessary" and "not your fault".

But couldn't avoid wanting to be stronger to make even those unnecessary…

♢♢♢♢

The group finally descended into the excastle's hill in Yino housing the star array. Ren stepped forward and pressed his palms flat against the massive, metallic like surface of the dome, preparing to weave his surplus energy into the huge prison.

But the moment his ether connected with the structure, he paused.

Something was wrong with the tunnel timeline.

The accumulated buffer of 5 days they had painstakingly built up to trap the purple dragon had depleted more than the standard erosion rate normally justified, there were close to only 3 days left.

Ren focused his senses, probing the thick layers of reinforced wood, metal and rock sealing the entity's escape tunnel.

The side near the outer threshold was weirdly thin for just a bit longer than 1 and a half days. Like almost a full 2 had passed.

Only one answer…

The trapped entity was digging faster.

Ren furrowed his brow. He kept his hands pressed against the warm, vibrating metal, feeling the relentless, mechanical scraping echoing from deep within the earth. The rhythm had changed. The colossal machine trapped inside possessed more kinetic force than it had yesterday. It was pushing against the plates with a renewed vigor, gaining ground at a pace that defied his previous calculations.

He did not understand the sudden spike in output fully.

But first he pushed his mana forward anyway, fixing the tunneled rock, pushing the mutant back and packing dense layers of earth metal and wood back into the excavated tunnel, actively buying humanity half a day more time while his mind raced to find an answer.

Now he would make it go back from around 3.1 to around 3.6 days…

As he worked, a quiet, chilling theory took root in the back of his thoughts.

''Is it digging faster because Selthia obtained the Shadow Core?'

♢♢♢♢

Miles away, cloaked in the silence of her crystal chamber, Selthia was figuratively pacing.

She was anxious... But her unease no longer stemmed from the humiliating outcome of her three-front offensive. She had deployed a sprawling army, burned a ton of elite units, and in return, she had only managed to salvage the Shadow Core; a meager consolation prize for a day of staggering losses. The humans had successfully stolen two elemental rings, incinerated her vanguards, and dismantled her grand strategy.

Yet yesterday's failures no longer mattered. She was anxious about tomorrow.

She knew exactly what the humans were doing…

The moment they rested, the second their mana cores replenished, Ren would march his Vanguard straight toward the Light Dragon.

It was the final element left on the board.

If she lost that guardian, she would be left with absolutely zero elemental resistance against light. She would lack the required minimal armor to defend against her own inherent weakness.

And the thought of Ren moving before she was ready made her stomach twist into a tight knot.

However, despite the lingering fog of her usual indecision, she had already taken concrete steps to secure her future.

Around 11 hours ago, she had dispatched her surviving swarm. A massive contingent of one hundred thousand low-tier mutants, flanked by two hundred and fifty large predators and led by the towering shadow-dragon abomination, had been sent to the Platinum rings.

Their sole directive was to gorge on the different ambients ether and beasts, regenerate their missing mass, and rapidly breed to restore the sheer numerical volume her army had lost.

The remaining elite forces, the one hundred and fifty strongest Platinums she possessed, were sent to the elemental mountains.

Those dormant, mana volcanoes were the perfect production nests... The elite beasts were sealed inside and ordered to consume one another. She had initiated a hyper-concentrated cannibalization cycle designed to forcibly birth a new generation of apex predators.

She needed Diamond ranks… Ten, perhaps fifteen, depending on the exact yield of the sacrifice.

These newly forged titans, fighting alongside her shadow-dragon mutant, would provide her with the elite strike force she so desperately required last time. They were the key to claiming the Light Dragon before Ren could even mobilize his troops.

It was a dead sprint to the finish line.

The humans were currently resting, recovering their strength, and drafting a unified strategy to strike the final guardian. Meanwhile, Selthia sat alone in her crystal, actively breeding horrors in the dark, gathering the concentrated firepower necessary to steal the victory.

She raised her eyes, gazing toward the invisible outline of the capital city her father had once ruled. It was currently a battered fortress, its massive walls pulled inward, its outer districts reduced to rubble, filled with exhausted defenders sleeping the heavy sleep of the survivors.

And the Dragon just on top of her true body, so close yet so far…

A slow smile crept across her face. It was not a look of supreme confidence, but it was far from defeat.

"Rest," she murmured to the empty chamber. "Rest for as long as you desire… My friends are very fast eaters."

While the human Vanguard slept in their broken city, her monstrous machinery never stopped grinding. Her mountains burned with the sickening heat of cannibalization as Platinums devoured their kin to birth Diamond titans. Her sprawling troops in the outer rings absorbed the ambient energy required to elevate hundreds of high Gold mutants to the next tier.

And in the center of her ex-capital, her imprisoned master scraped away at its cage, digging faster and harder with every ounce of shadow ether that filtered into its shell.

Humanity's borrowed time was rapidly bleeding away.

And for the very first time in her life, the indecisive girl had finally formulated an offensive strategy entirely on her own.

'Only 5 more hours…'