Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 673

Chapter 673: Chapter 673 - Taming the Fifth Year: Descent

POV Mantis, shortly before seeing the first door...

The hole was vast.

Bigger than any natural structure should be. The walls descended in an irregular spiral, perhaps formed by that enormous flow of mutant beasts.

Carved by their corruption, shaped by their violence.

Between those walls, emerging like deadly tentacles... The roots of the golden sprouts.

Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, interwoven in a network so dense that light from above barely penetrated beyond the first dozen meters.

Like a web waiting for prey.

The Mantis knew it couldn’t truly die, so without fear it deployed its wings completely and let itself fall.

Confidence was easy to have when being a projection, not a life.

Controlling its descent with minimal adjustments, its mirror surfaces reflected the surrounding roots until it became indistinguishable from them.

The nearest roots soon seemed to notice something.

Air displacement... An anomaly in the pattern.

But then it activated Mimic.

Its body began to undulate.

Not randomly, but with the exact pattern of roots when they moved searching for prey. The same rhythm, the same frequency, the same pressure against the air.

For the vibration-based detection system, the Mantis wasn’t falling prey anymore... It was just another root moving in the network.

Nothing worth investigating.

So it descended deeper... And the mana changed.

From Gold 3 at the surface. Now here, underground, the concentration was different. The mana from above had difficulty penetrating compacted rock and earth.

The one coming from below... that one was more ’solid’. But its distribution didn’t reach here, starting many meters down.

So the amount reached Gold 2 fast.

Then Gold 1.

The pressure diminished gradually. The Mantis’s projected form stabilized, its mana structure stopping the slight trembling it had inside its system.

The relief was like surfacing from deep water.

And finally... near Silver 3.

It touched the bottom.

Not with a crash, but with a soft landing that barely displaced accumulated dust. Its legs touched stone, and for the first time since beginning its descent...

Complete silence.

The kind that made you aware of your own existence.

The golden sprouts didn’t reach down here because the place had too little mana for them. Their roots hung above like a deadly ceiling, but the ground...

The ground was another thing’s territory.

A chamber opened before it. Natural in formation but clearly modified. Several tunnels branched in different directions, each disappearing into darkness that even the Mantis’s compound eyes had difficulty penetrating.

But only one mattered.

Because only one had carved walls.

The runes began subtly. Small marks near the entrance, as if whoever made them was testing, experimenting with the medium.

Then they grew.

More complex and elaborate. More... deliberate.

The Mantis moved toward that tunnel, each step measured. It was still territory of creatures sensitive to vibrations.

But upon crossing the carved tunnel’s threshold...

Something changed.

The structure was different. The walls showed no cracks or erosion. They were solid, insulated from the exterior by something more than simple stone.

Magic or engineering. Maybe both with a purpose built to last.

And the wild creatures...

There were no signs of them here.

No trace of burrows, no smell of nests or marked territories. It was as if this place were... repellent to wild life.

As if something in these walls displeased them or... scared them.

Maybe an ancient power or residual energy. Something that triggered instinctive avoidance.

The Mantis advanced deeper, and then it felt it.

Or rather, didn’t feel it. The mana pressure.

It had disappeared...

Almost completely.

At Silver 3, there should be constant environmental mana concentration. Not as much as in higher ranks, but present.

Always present.

But here...

The runes, were they absorbing the mana?

The question floated through the bond with Ren, who asked himself from kilometers away while pretending to pay attention to celebrations in the evaluation building.

But there was no time to investigate.

The Mantis continued, more cautious now. Its steps avoided directly touching the runes, staying in the spaces between them.

Careful when not knowing what touching them might trigger.

The tunnel expanded.

Gradually at first, then more dramatically.

And the runes grew in complexity with it.

They were no longer simple marks. They were art... Intricate patterns covering every centimeter of wall and ceiling.

Beauty and function combined, purpose disguised as decoration.

And they glowed with white light. Not golden like the spores Ren had activated, but dim, very dim. As if they were... dormant.

Did they need activation?

The question floated through the bond with Ren, who considered it from kilometers away while maintaining his social facade.

The runes were definitely designed to do something. But without power, without sufficient mana...

They were just beautiful marks on ancient stone.

Potential waiting for a catalyst, waiting for activation.

Then the tunnel turned.

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