Chapter 576: Chapter 576 - Taming the Fourth Year: Journey - 14

The guards, being dual tamers with a Gold rank beast, easily eliminated the first dozens of creatures.

Their powerful attacks tore through the Silver rank beasts like target practice.

But Julius could see that, just as had happened with the Golden Noses when they were overwhelmed by numbers and displaced despite their superior power, even the most powerful guards would eventually be pushed back by the insane quantity of enemies.

Their techniques were flawless, their teamwork perfect, but flesh and mana reserves had limits that numbers could exploit.

Despite Sirius launching attacks from the flanks, eliminating and dispersing many of the creatures as he advanced toward the Gold 3 ring, he couldn’t spend too much energy on the task.

The mutants had reached this point from Gold 3 after all. The quantity of creatures lost in the two forests populated by stronger beasts must have been enormous, yet despite those losses, the flow remained overwhelming. It spoke to their true numbers... an endless tide that could afford massive casualties and continue advancing.

Julius quickly returned his attention to Ren, who was watching the battle with a perplexed expression that mixed confusion with growing understanding.

"Now we really must go to the city," Julius declared firmly. "There’s nothing you can do if they’re not following you, is there?"

The initial motive for the operation with his friends had already failed. Sirius seemed to have left the range of the supposed seal that Ren had heard mentioned in that secret meeting. So perhaps it would be better to surrender what couldn’t be changed and return now to protect the city that housed his parents.

Although it pained him not to have been able to prevent the situation that saddened Luna, maybe protecting her in the city was already a better use of his time and energy. The letter in his pocket pressed against his chest like a huge weight.

Ren seemed about to accept, though he was still clearly confused by his apparent ability to hear the beasts but unable to use it for anything practical...

The connection he felt was real, but it offered no control, no influence.

And they weren’t seeking him specifically, that much was evident.

’Maybe if I found the big one from that day...’ he thought, remembering the one that had seemed to have higher hierarchy, that had attacked and controlled the smaller ones during their previous encounter. ’Julius saw it too so...’

But when he stopped wandering mentally and was about to ask Julius about his deduction of where the larger creature might be, a strange sensation swept through him.

The feeling was like tuning into a distant radio frequency, suddenly clear signals emerged from the background static of his consciousness.

"Julius!" he shouted suddenly, his voice cutting through the sound of distant battle. "We have to go back, but not to the city!"

"What do you mean?"

"We have to go to the area between the Bronze and Iron rings of Goldcrest territory, near where I used to live," Ren pointed back but angled to the right, his hand trembling slightly with the urgency of what he was sensing. "I’m feeling the same signals, the same ’voices’ that I sense here."

Julius immediately understood the implications. If Ren was correct, it meant there were also mutants coming from that direction, probably heading toward defenseless civilian populations from a much closer ring.

The area Ren mentioned was quite far away. Even at his Qilin’s maximum speed, they would take time to arrive. They might reach there too late to make any difference, arriving only to witness the aftermath of a massacre.

"Alright," Julius decided, directing the Qilin toward the new direction. The choice felt like stepping off a cliff, but sometimes leadership meant acting on incomplete information and hoping for the best. "I’ll also send a warning message while we advance."

He summoned one of his fastest messenger beasts, a small falcon specialized in long-distance flight. Julius quickly wrote several messages about the emergency, his handwriting cramped but legible despite the urgency.

"Go to the main city," he ordered the falcon while tying the messages to its legs. "Hopefully they can evacuate any settlements in the path in time. Warn about the mutant invasion from two different directions."

The falcon disappeared immediately into the distance, becoming a speck against the sky in seconds. Julius watched it go, knowing that those small scrolls might be the only warning that stood between thousands of civilians and annihilation.

While they raced toward Goldcrest territory, Ren touched the letter in his pocket again. The energy of his core had stabilized noticeably since Sirius’s purification. For the first time in what felt like a long time, he felt truly in control, but this new stability came accompanied by disturbing doubts about his apparent connection with the mutants.

"Julius," he spoke over the wind that whipped past them as the Qilin reached incredible speeds, "do you think it’s possible that I caused this somehow?"

Julius considered the question carefully while maintaining both the Qilin and the Wolverine at maximum speed. The diplomatic part of his mind wanted to offer reassurance, but his commitment to honesty with Ren wouldn’t allow comfortable lies.

"I don’t have enough information to answer that," he admitted with frankness. "But what I do know is that, whatever the connection, you’re now the only person who can detect their movements. That makes you our best hope for saving civilian lives."

Ren nodded, though guilt continued gnawing at his stomach like a living thing.

And the letter in his pocket seemed to weigh more than it should... should he read it because Sirius had left it with him? Or should he ask Luna first?

Time was their enemy now, and every minute that passed could mean more lives lost.

♢♢♢♢

After nearly an hour of rapid travel, they were finally close. Julius had pushed the celestial beast to speeds he reserved for true emergencies, the creature’s hooves barely touching the ground as it flew across the landscape in bounds that covered miles with each leap.

A messenger falcon intercepted them as they crossed into what had been Goldcrest territory. Julius extended his arm to allow the bird to land, immediately noticing that it carried multiple responses to his earlier messages.

"What do they say?" Ren asked while Julius rapidly read through the reports, his eyes scanning the cramped handwriting.

"They received the information," Julius summarized, though his expression remained tense as he continued reading. "Selphira and Victor worked together to block the inner entrance to the city with a massive combined wall of ice and reinforced minerals in time."

Ren felt a moment of relief wash over him, his parents were safe behind those defenses, along with thousands of other civilians. But Julius continued reading with a furrowed brow that suggested the news wasn’t entirely positive.

"But to defend the entire city properly, they couldn’t cover the area inhabited by all the outskirt dwellers. They evacuated them deeper into the city in a massive aid effort."

"How did the people react?" Ren asked, remembering the social tensions between his former social stratum and the city dwellers. The integration had always been uneasy, marked by prejudice and economic disparity that could explode back under stress.

"Surprisingly well," Julius seemed genuinely relieved by this point. "The changes that your information has brought about apparently reduced resistance to helping refugees from the outskirts. There weren’t as many discrimination problems as we would have expected a few years ago."

The Qilin finally landed when they reached the zone Ren had identified as the source of the strange signals. The landscape had changed considerably since the last time he had been here, but something immediately familiar caught his attention.

"Julius," Ren murmured, studying the surroundings with growing certainty as memories flooded back, "this is the zone where the cave that helped me cultivate differently was located... a ruin. It’s a cave where I already came three times with my fungus."