Chapter 487: Chapter 487 - Taming the Inheritance ’Finally.’ The ’small’ World Mushroom, who still didn’t use the ridiculous name "Mooshito" for himself despite letting them call him that, felt a wave of relief as the massive door opened before them. He had been hurried, desperate to recover the connection that was gradually deteriorating. Despite having gained quite a few advantages lately, he was now slowly losing energy from Ren, who kept his core and information to be able to project himself in mana. The situation was more complex than any of the humans could imagine. But the resolution had turned out much better than expected. ’I never thought they would let me get down here without too many obstacles,’ he reflected while observing how the door finished opening. ’Everything has flowed so naturally, so many things have aligned...’ The series of events that had led him here... Perhaps they weren’t such bad luck after all. The irony... What had started as a catastrophic setback had somehow led to the most direct path to power and salvation he could have hoped for. Sometimes the worst circumstances created the best opportunities. ’And it was supposed to be bad luck,’ he thought bitterly about the unknown perpetrators. ’Someone destroyed our first heart of light.’ The sensation of that catastrophe’s effect on his network still filled him with frustration. Sure, there were still five other chambers scattered around the world, but that had been the one they had obtained first. He had connected quite strongly to it by absorbing the liquid energy and that of the soldiers during battle, so when they broke it, it profoundly affected the liquid core he had stored. The fungus reacted instantly, covering the area of pain. He had managed to create an emergency network with his roots to prevent the recovered liquid from escaping through the crack that had formed in his system. But that desperate effort had damaged the communication connection with Ren. ’If this continues, we’ll enter hibernation until the damage repairs itself,’ he told himself with growing anxiety. ’We would lose months. Maybe more...’ But he had managed to open the first door. Incredible! ’I thought I would have to transform my boy into the strongest warrior to be able to steal it,’ he admitted mentally, remembering the plans he had been gradually considering. ’But no, none of that was necessary.’ He observed the king who had guided them here, analyzing his power with senses that operated on levels humans couldn’t understand. The human was dangerous but weirdly relaxed. ’The second door is just being revealed to them but it’s already almost half way ready to be opened by him,’ he calculated, seeing the three elemental rings Dragarion already carried. Why they were all that important... perhaps they would realize upon entering... Upon descending the stairs that were revealed behind the door, they encountered a sight that left even the small world fungus breathless. An enormous chamber five hundred meters in diameter and height stretched before them, filled with crystals of all sizes. Some were small, others as massive as a baby’s head. They pulsed with energy of different densities, creating a symphony of light that would have been beautiful if it weren’t so overwhelmingly valuable. And in the center of the chamber, buried under the enormous saturation of crystals, separated by a transparent barrier that slightly distorted the view, was the command center. ’There it is,’ the fungus thought with satisfaction, immediately identifying his objective. In the command center, among other treasures that gleamed with tempting power, was exactly what he needed to overwrite the connection that had been damaged in a good part of his roots. The Jade Seed. The World Tree had a different root system from his own, but absorbing it into his own system would give his roots growth and regeneration that could best be described as "steroids". It wouldn’t just repair the damage; it would improve the system exponentially. The prospect was intoxicating. Not only would he regain what had been lost, but he would emerge stronger than before, with capabilities that exceeded his original design parameters. Without waiting to give explanations or ask permission, the small fungus launched himself to "swim" among the crystals. His small and squeezable form was perfect for navigating between the crystalline formations, sliding through spaces that would have been impossible for humans. The crystals responded to his presence with subtle changes in their luminosity, as if they recognized something familiar in its energy. There are other treasures, he noted while moving toward the center. Potions that could transform any common tamer into a double. An enormous golden crystal that pulsed with power that could feed the city. But none of that mattered to him right now. ’Only the seed must be mine without fail,’ he reminded himself with iron determination. His consciousness and Ren’s depended on reaching that objective, or they would have to sleep for a long time. Everything else was distractions, however tempting the enormous quantities of cultivation crystals might be. As he approached the command center, he could feel how the Jade Seed responded to his presence. It was as if it had been waiting for centuries for someone with the correct knowledge to develop it to come claim it. ’Soon,’ he thought, accelerating his movement through the crystals. ’Very soon everything will be well again.’ Behind him, he could hear the amazed voices of the humans as they processed the magnificence of what they had found. But his attention was completely focused ahead, on the salvation that gleamed with jade green light in the heart of the world’s second most secret chamber. The race against time before disappearing into hibernation continued, but finally he had a real chance to win right in front of him. ♢♢♢♢ When they entered the chamber, Julius’s first thought was that they had found a treasure chamber... Who knows how many years of savings by an entire civilization. The chamber was enormous, so wide they could fit the entire castle and have some space left over. Long stairs descended from where they stood to the depths, but most were completely drowned in high-density crystals that glowed with their own light. "The quantity is absurd," Julius murmured, his prince’s miserly mind like Arturo’s immediately went into calculating the economic implications. "With this wealth we could bring many more tamers to Gold... even to Platinum if we had the cultivation methods..." The concentrated mana here was enough to transform not just individuals, but the entire kingdom’s tamer development system. The potential was staggering. They weren’t looking at personal wealth but at the power to reshape civilization itself. With resources like this, the kingdom could leapfrog centuries of gradual development in mere decades. Dragarion observed with more experienced eyes, analyzing not just the wealth but the infrastructure. "Look at the mana flows," he pointed upward. They could see that the thicker flow entering through the upper part of the door they had arrived through actually came from another door and another source like the one that reached the castle above... The central one was thinner and probably fed the crystal generation systems and other mechanisms that made the chamber function. The other flow, much larger, disappeared into the upper part of another massive door. This one had seven slots for rings and a hole like the first one. "Seven rings," Dragarion murmured, understanding that his mission wasn’t complete. "And I only have three of those." Within the relatively transparent glow of the crystals, they could distinguish something in the chamber’s low center. Julius and the king looked at each other, recognizing the same conclusion. "Only this last ten meters of the staircase are free," Julius observed. "It seems the ten years that were left to open the door would have left this chamber a bit fuller," Dragarion reflected. "But we don’t know how much." The logic of having enough space for several hundred years made sense from a design perspective, but swimming among around crystals 500 meters deep wasn’t a very comfortable situation for children and the wounded. Julius summoned his Earth Wolverine, the massive beast materializing with a soft roar. At the same time, Dragarion created a wooden structure that extended from his hands like a living bridge. "Get on the carriage," he began to say, but stopped abruptly. "Wait... Do you feel alright?" he asked with genuine concern. "Its nothing for me but... We must be near Silver high or Gold low depth inside here. But the chamber’s base looks far, and the mana there could be equivalent to high Gold at 1000 meters depth. The children could get poisoned." Luna responded immediately, with the confidence of someone who had followed Ren’s method obsessively. "We’re Bronze Rank doubles," she explained. "We handle Silver well, and Gold will be heavy but we should be fine for a while." "Ren too," Liora added, pointing to the boy in the king’s arms. Dragarion then lifted them up, genuinely surprised that they were Bronze 2 at such a young age. ’Almost like the undercover guards,’ he thought to himself, ’who usually have the ceremony at eight or nine years old, with the risk of it failing...’ But he decided not to think much about it. It shouldn’t be the case for Sirius and Laura’s daughters, who had resources and their parents wouldn’t risk them like that... maybe there was just a faster new method... The boy, on the other hand... he didn’t know what kind of new genius noble he was dealing with. When he thought to ask, they had already reached the center and bottom with the help of Julius’s Wolverine. The beast had absorbed a large quantity of crystals in front of them to facilitate displacement, creating an unstable tunnel through the crystalline formation. Julius reached the central chamber and realized that his beast’s storage space had become almost completely full, and it hadn’t absorbed even ten percent of the available crystals. "This is obscene," he murmured, processing the scale of wealth surrounding them. But the funniest thing was that the fungus, being a surprisingly fast crystal swimmer, was already there with its mouth full...