NABC Chapter 1078 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins
Chapter 1078 - Taming the Wall - True Ruins
Mayo touched down right behind Liora. Her face was a complex mask of relief and lingering shock, the expression of a tamer that can't be fun when she's still processing the sheer scale of the mission they had just survived.The sharp, rhythmic sound of destruction echoing from the upper stairs had ceased.
Lin emerged, followed closely by Shizu and the rest of their squad.
Lin stopped and met Ren's eyes. Her posture was impeccably straight. Her expression was cool, collected, radiating an aura of absolute control. To anyone else, she looked completely untouched by the battle.
But Ren knew her too well.
The exhaustion of using her own fusion was there, hidden in the small details. He saw it in the way she shifted a fraction more of her weight onto her left foot. He noticed the split-second delay between her eyes tracking the room and her mind formulating the words.
"The upper chambers are disabled," Lin stated, her voice crisp.
"Good," Ren replied.
He accepted the report with the exact same brevity she used to deliver it.
Ren let his gaze sweep over his assembled group. They were battered. Their breathing was heavy. They were undeniably tired.
But they weren't out of commission. They weren't broken, and they were nowhere near the state where pushing forward would be irresponsible.
Ren mentally sifted through the information Selphira had shared about the guardians…
In this specific branch of the ruins, they would be facing elemental constructs of wind and earth. He had a strong suspicion they wouldn't pack nearly the same catastrophic punch as the entities of light and darkness.
He also considered what he knew about the door systems distributed throughout these ruins. Then, he looked down at his hand.
Sirius's core rested heavily in his palm. Leaving it in its current, half-corrupted state for longer than necessary felt like a ticking clock.
He pushed his mana into it, attempting to continue the purification process manually. The resistance was immediate and viscous. Pulling the corrupted energy out and cycling pure wind mana back in was a grueling task without the door's ancient mechanisms to stabilize the crystal's form and without being inside it in energy form to absorb the stuff easier in him.
The corruption clung to the core, fighting back and not wanting to change from crystal to energy. It was going to be a slow, agonizingly complex process, one he would have to manage passively while they fought their way down.
If they decided to go down…
♢♢♢♢
"We keep moving," Ren finally announced.
No one raised an objection. Except for Mayo.
"Just one question," Mayo said. She used that specific, dry tone she reserved for when she already knew the answer, but needed it stated out loud for the official record. "If the lunatic with a sudden fixation on you decides to come back, is the plan really to let her trap us in a stairwell where we can barely fit one person at a time?"
Ren met her gaze. "If she does that, at least we know how to jump."
Mayo processed that. She weighed the tactical reality of teleporting out after being cornered by an ancient horror.
"Fine," she said. It was the firm conviction of someone who found the tactical response acceptable, if not entirely comforting. It was certainly a better alternative being able to jump than the non jumper people Orion strategy had not favored.
The group seamlessly reformed their ranks.
The stairwell leading down to the first true chamber waited for them.
The first chamber offered no resistance. It held only the key, a mechanism Ren dominated with a flick of his mana.
The first guardian waited in the second chamber. It was a Mid-Silver construct of swirling dust and sharp gusts. It died instantly.
Ren didn't even break stride. He fired a simple, condensed bolt of lightning from his palm. It was the kind of casual strike a tamer throws just to verify their mana circuits are responding correctly. The ozone crackled, the construct shattered into fine silt, and they moved on.
High-Silver in the fourth chamber. Two guardians… Also vaporized.
Chamber six held four Low-Gold beasts. Chamber eight threw eight Mid-Gold constructs at them.
The elemental guardians of wind and earth in these upper tiers simply weren't the kind of adversaries that demanded complex strategies for Ren. They only required the attacker to be present and swing hard. And for a vanguard team that had just survived a grueling descent through ten chambers of warped mutants, capped off by a standoff with Selthia herself, this was barely a warm-up.
Even running on depleted reserves, they carved through the sand and wind with ruthless efficiency.
Gold-rank beasts were no longer a threat to Ren.
What did demand his attention, however, were the pedestals.
After every cleared chamber, the ruins offered rewards. They were the exact same pedestals Sirius had undoubtedly found on his own descent. The same ones Orion's people had looted from the water and fire ruins. The same system Yino's explorers had triggered first.
The ruins rewarded forward momentum with whatever power they had left to give.
But the most critical prize, the one that had fundamentally defined the power disparity among the high command of the two cities for years, was waiting at the very bottom. According to Selphira's accounts, the double-contract potions would be there.
Ren mentally cataloged the potions. He calculated how many people could fundamentally change their lives if he pushed all the way to the end to secure them.
He glanced back at the six guards. He looked at Mayo.
These were people who had bled in every major battle over the past few years. They had followed him into the abyss. Yet, they were all still single-beast tamers. It had never been a lack of talent or loyalty holding them back; it was purely a lack of opportunity.
Priority always went to the strongest. The ones who could maximize the collective defense. It was a cold, necessary logic for survival.
But looking at his battered, resolute team, Ren decided that wasn't the only logic available to them anymore.
They kept descending.