Ren activated the runes as the data told him and immediately reached into his mana-space and selected the Hydra to clone.

He couldn’t use the Mantis again, because it was already cloned.

The pedestal reacted...

A bright, blinding flash illuminated the outer chamber, and a brand-new crystal materialized directly above the stone surface. It looked structurally identical to the pristine core Lykea had shed from her system upon being trapped, but the color was different.

This new core was a deep, mesmerizing jade, heavily tinted with the radiant, blinding hue of the Hydra’s Light affinity. It was highly particular, completely distinguishable from a common, naturally occurring elemental crystal.

The advantage this pedestal offered Ren was astronomical.

His beast had been flawlessly cloned on-site, entirely bypassing the brutal sacrifice the ancient system normally demanded at the entrance. The system allowed the bypass directly because Sirius had finished the chamber challenge long ago.

Inside Ren’s mana-space, the actual Hydra remained perfectly intact. He got to keep his combat beast, and he still obtained the required elemental key. In essence, the ancient pedestal operated as a magical ’lost ticket printer’. It forcefully recreated the exact keys the system demanded, allowing Ren to operate entirely alone, or effortlessly bypass a lost sacrifice, provided he possessed a large enough roster of beasts to clone.

The vanguard guards who had curiously followed him out of the vault stared at the pedestal in absolute, stunned confusion. They had just watched Ren violate the fundamental laws of equivalent exchange, generating a priceless, high-tier core out of thin air without sacrificing a single thing.

Ignoring their gaping mouths, Ren immediately pivoted to the Darkness pedestal and repeated the exact same process, this time selecting his Wolverine.

Another blinding flash... Another flawless crystal.

Another priceless core, generated at absolutely zero cost.

Ren now had three of his beasts officially registered with the system. He held three extra, cloned cores in his power now.

Currently, his capacity maxed out at three crystals. But theoretically, if he managed to forcefully push his cultivation to an even higher tier, he could systematically clone enough beasts to open every single chamber and obtain absolute, supreme administrative permission entirely by himself.

Perhaps the ancient architect had designed it this way intentionally. Perhaps the logic dictated that by the time the entity was strong enough to clone seven distinct beasts alone, they were formidable enough to claim the prize.

Or perhaps it was designed to allow an entity with massive, external support, like Ren’s sprawling spore-network and loyal allies, to aggressively fast-track certain checkpoints ahead of schedule.

And as Ren sprinted back toward the vault, a heavy, deeply uncomfortable realization settled in his gut. The system’s logic tracked perfectly with the next goal. To slaughter a Diamond-tier Dragon, he was going to need a lot of help or have to reach that terrifying, god-like level of power by himself. And whatever apocalyptic nightmare was needed to open any next door that waited in the deepest, sealed chambers of the castle, after getting the 7 rings of those Dragons, would undoubtedly demand a quest far more complicated and agonizing than this.

But that was a problem for tomorrow.

Right now, a different, vastly more immediate detail demanded his attention. Looking closely at the jade tint of the cloned crystals had sparked a realization: his multi-elemental beasts possessed the unique capacity to act as wildcards.

The Hydra, the Wolverine, the Mantis, each of these complex anomalies could theoretically satisfy multiple elemental requirements depending on exactly how the ancient brain chose to read their complex signatures.

He had to test it immediately.

He charged back into the central vault.

The majority of the vanguard was still staring at him in baffled silence, completely confused as to why the boy was frantically running in and out of the room carrying crystals that should not exist.

Ren didn’t waste a single second trying to explain the impossible to them.

"What are you all waiting for?!" Ren shouted, waving them back to their assigned positions. "Get back to your nodes!"

While the confused tamers scrambled back, Ren rapidly slotted the Hydra and Wolverine clones into the empty Water and Fire sockets at the base of the brain.

They locked into place.

The system accepted them. Even though they had been specifically forged on the Light and Darkness pedestals outside, their multi-elemental jade nature allowed them to successfully trigger the Fire and Water pathways.

Instantly, Ren felt the flow of classified data surge with vastly more fluidity. It felt almost exactly like the humming, frictionless presence of his fungus network. The sprawling network within the crystal brain was rapidly filling with energy, eagerly responding to his inputs.

But there was still a noticeable, grinding interference. A specific bottleneck where the flow of data violently jammed.

Something was still missing.

Ren rapidly looked at the remaining empty socket... Wood. He needed the Wood core.

But because his cloned beasts were functioning as wildcards, the solution was incredibly flexible. He didn’t explicitly need a Wood core; he just needed one of the original, harvested cores from the Goldcrest ruin, either the pure Fire or the pure Water core. If he had one of those, he could physically swap one of his multi-elemental clones over to satisfy the Wood requirement.

He spun around and locked eyes with Selphira.

"If I get one of the cores from the Goldcrest ruin, I can activate this entire formation right now!" he declared.

Selphira didn’t question his logic. She evaluated the reality for exactly one second.

"Then we can afford to wait here a little longer," she stated smoothly.

With a flick of her wrist, she summoned a hyper-fast, messenger bird. She rapidly encoded the urgent request and sent it streaking toward the surface. She looked back at Ren. "Zhao is on border patrol near the Goldcrest rift. He will retrieve the cores and fly them down here. We won’t have to wait too long."

They didn’t have to wait long. It took exactly forty minutes.

However, for Ren, those forty minutes felt like an agonizing, grinding eternity.

Because for almost every single second of that wait, Lykea relentlessly hunted him around the perimeter of the cavernous room.

His aggressively youthful future mother-in-law had officially adopted him with an enthusiasm that was genuinely terrifying. She treated him as if the royal wedding had taken place a decade ago, fully embracing him as a consummate, deeply loved member of the immediate family.

She shadowed his every move as he paced nervously around the crystal brain. She bombarded him with rapid-fire questions, offered unsolicited, highly detailed commentary on his posture, and loudly narrated every single passing thought she had regarding him, Luna, and how absolutely insane it felt to basically time-travel into the future.