NOVGO.NET Chapter 524 - Taming the Whole - Love and End
Chapter 524: Chapter 524 – Taming the Whole – Love and End
Ren began to glow, a jade and golden light that emanated from his center and extended toward his extremities.
He sighed deeply, preparing for what he knew would be the most intense experience of his life, and took the King’s hand.
His consciousness immediately connected with his fungus’s help. Irregular lines of jade and golden light thickened around his arms, creating patterns that looked like living roots made of pure energy.
The connection was both beautiful and terrifying.
Zhao, designated to bring the doubles carrying fragments of draconic power, began bringing them toward Ren one by one with his silent flight.
When Ren touched the first one, power flowed through him toward Dragarion in a current that made both of them illuminate.
The sensation was like channeling lightning, raw force that demanded perfect control to avoid being destroyed..
The first fragment made the King glow intensely and spit some blood, but he smiled through the pain.
“More,” he asked with a hoarse but determined voice. “Quickly!”
Zhao rotated the soldiers rapidly, and Dragarion glowed brighter with each transfer.
The irregular light roots around Ren became thicker and thicker, and the process became easier with each connection. Soon he could connect two at a time, then three at a time.
The progression was exponential, each successful transfer making the next one faster. But the cost was visible in both participants… Ren’s face grew pale while Dragarion’s body showed increasing crystallization.
Dragarion glowed brighter and brighter, his body becoming a beacon of light that competed with the brilliance of morning sun.
The mana roots got so big that they touched the ice tunnel and passed through it, emerging toward the main chamber where they began disintegrating abyssal beasts they touched.
Julius continued fighting to keep monsters from entering until the roots touched him too. Then he remained completely motionless, but beasts no longer approached near the tunnel. The pure light roots created a barrier no corrupt creature could cross.
The roots continued expanding, trying to fill every corner of the chamber with purifying light.
The King crystallized and spat more blood with each transfer, but continued enduring with a resolve that defied human limits.
Each fragment was agony, but he bore it with the stoicism of someone who understood that some prices were worth paying.
Larissa stood in a corner away from the light roots, watching her father and still crying silently.
Each drop of blood he shed was like a stab in her heart, but she remained firm in her decision.
Selphira and Sirius, seeing the roots approach, decided to release all their remaining power.
They blocked the chamber walls in a layer of ice that Sirius tried to cool further with his wind power. The temperature dropped so rapidly that the air itself seemed to crystallize.
Ravenspire and Bloodwyn couldn’t emerge completely and finally stopped, frozen in ice.
Yet the ice began cracking under pressure from opposing energies… but the largest pieces of Selphira and Sirius’s energy already traveled through Ren toward their final destination.
Ren’s network finally covered the entire chamber, but when the roots touched the heart in the center of the ceiling, it began beating frantically.
The reaction was immediate and violent. The organic heart pulsed with rhythms that spoke to panic.
Selthia emerged from the pulsing heart, and the light burned her eyes and immediately blinded her.
She screamed with multiple overlapping voices, and submerged again into the heart.
But the echo was heard throughout the chamber, and the annoyed voices asked: Where did this energy come from? How is this possible?!
Selthia traveled inside the tower and was about to exit through the crystal window to try a different attacking angle… when Ren finally connected the energy through the King and the crystal window with the entire corruption network.
♢♢♢♢
For a moment that felt eternal, Ren and Selthia looked at each other face to face due to the proximity of their consciousnesses.
Their minds had connected involuntarily.
In the new mental space…
Selthia immediately realized that Ren had a diamond Hydra like hers, and even more, she could see fragments of his memories.
She saw the purity of his human connections, the strength of his determination, and something else… Among everything… her parents’ love felt too different from hers, less tangled, less…
The contrast was injurious. Where her parental connections had been twisted by corruption and manipulation, his remained pure, unconditional, genuine.
Tears ran down the girl’s cheeks as her big eyes looked directly at Ren.
And the abyssal voices, taking advantage of the connection, suddenly discovered that Ren had all the necessary components to develop the dragon light in his body and beast.
Feeling deceived and betrayed, the voices became extremely enraged.
Purple energy was expelled from Selthia’s body and swirled in an enormous storm that filled the entire shared mental space.
The storm launched itself at Ren with murderous fury.
But Dragarion appeared in the mental space in front of him.
He wasn’t the crystallized and bleeding man from the physical world.
Here he was pure power, dressed in brilliant armor of diamond scales that reflected light in patterns of colors.
His radiance countered the corruption, creating a barrier between Ren and the forces trying to destroy him.
“Their network is too big!” the small fungus shouted desperately to Ren. “It reaches the ocean floor toward Yino and the end of the mountains in Yano! Underground it has lines as long as practically half the world… it has fed more than we expected!”
Ren could feel the vastness of what they faced.
The corruption had spread beyond their worst estimates.
“The energy we have is barely enough to fight as equals!” The fungus continued. “We can’t strike the network if your King can’t advance!”
Ren observed how the King held firm in the mental space but couldn’t advance against the purple storm.
It was a perfect stalemate, and outside, Dragarion’s lifespan was rapidly depleting.
Selthia was strangely quiet, still looking at him with enormously open eyes that contained both a child’s innocence and corruption’s malice.
“Love… love… love,” she murmured in a low voice.
A voice echoed through the mental space: “Ren… Ren… Ren… Ren…”
Selthia repeated it, her childish voice contrasting with the situation.
Then Ren heard it loud and clear in the physical world. It was Larissa’s voice, shouting desperately at him.
“REN!”
♢♢♢♢
“Ren! Please, don’t give my fragment to him!” the light roots were almost touching her. “Please! No! Please! Please!”
Larissa cried desperately and clearly regretted her decision seeing her father almost completely covered by crystal and bleeding even from his ears and eyes.
The reality of what she had asked Ren to do hit her with full force in front of her eyes.
Only the power Larissa had in her body remained, the last fragment of draconic energy that could break the stalemate.
Ren looked at her and began crying in silence too, stopping his hand and the network centimeters from the girl who screamed desperately… understanding the terrible weight of what he was about to do.
But then Dragarion’s voice resonated in his mind like his fungus’s always did: “You have a beautiful family in those memories… Help me now, Ren. I know you can solve it for Larissa afterwards. I entrust it to you.”
With his heart breaking, but with unbreakable resoluteness, Ren extended the roots and stole the power from Larissa, injecting it directly into Dragarion.
♢♢♢♢
Ren returned to the mental space and made a decision that would change everything.
“Your body isn’t ready,” the fungus warned him.
But Ren didn’t want to hear any of that.
He used his own power, the entire network, the rings, the jade seed. His body resonated with vestiges of dragons’ power and got filled with transparent green scales that gleamed with pure light.
The transformation was as agonizingly painful as beautiful.
Ren spat blood, but symbolically touched Dragarion on the back, transferring everything he had synergized in himself… Everything he had.
Selthia emerged from the trance with a distorted scream. “Love me!” Throwing herself toward the purple tornado where she merged again with the abyssal energies.
Ren desperately extended his free hand, but couldn’t reach her.
Dragarion finally glowed with more intense light and released an immense pulse that struck corruption like a shock wave.
The voices retreated and screamed in pain, a sound that made reality tremble within the mental network.
Selthia was also struck by the purifying wave, but corrupt energies fought not to disintegrate.
The voices cursed having to use their “encystment”… they expanded enormously, momentarily surpassing Dragarion’s energy wave, then violently imploded in Selthia’s core.
Selthia remained in fetal position at the center of the collapse, then completely crystallized into a dark purple crystal, sending a powerful energy wave that traveled through the entire network along with Dragarion’s purification pulse.
In the physical world, Dragarion’s body finished fully crystallizing, but in a white and pure crystal that radiated peace instead of corruption.
Larissa screamed one last time seeing Dragarion completely crystallized and fainted.
From the chamber, a powerful pulse crystallized all abyssal beasts into dark purple crystal, and the pulse traveled outward.
And in the distance, Leonel’s scream was heard, as if something fundamental had also changed in him.
The pulse continued expanding throughout the castle and beyond.