According to the sprawling timeline he had just absorbed, the fragmented core of the Purple Dragon had spent countless years suspended in the void, completely inert, just waiting in the dark.

It had only descended upon the mortal world relatively recently, a few decades ago.

Did it awaken on its own, its internal clock finally ticking over? Or had it responded to a specific catalyst generated in the world during that exact timeframe?

Perhaps something fundamental in the world’s ether had shifted just enough to reactivate the core. Ren didn’t know what that trigger was. But if he meticulously analyzed the chronology of the last century, there might be a hidden piece of intelligence buried in the timeline.

Regardless of the why, the ultimate conclusion was glaringly obvious: Humanity absolutely could not afford to be the sacrificial cattle fed to a resurrecting purple god.

Ren had to systematically dismantle the cosmic horror’s advantage. He had to conquer this ancient system, ruin by ruin, heart by heart.

And if, at some point in the distant future, the actual Sun Dragon finally descended from the heavens and furiously scolded him for hijacking a divine system that didn’t belong to him?

Well... He would cross that apocalyptic bridge when he got to it.

Fortunately, the crystal supercomputer had forcefully injected him with vastly more than just a depressing mythological history lesson.

And the myth itself, Ren quickly reminded himself, could very well be a beautifully constructed lie. It could be pure, architectural propaganda. A strategic fiction hardcoded into the system by the desperate engineers to confuse any unauthorized operator, whether that was a rogue human like him, or the Purple Dragon itself, should it ever manage to hack into these archives, maybe end up feeling ashamed?

But a myth didn’t magically become absolute truth just because an ancient supercomputer delivered it with authority.

However, if he looked at it purely through the lens of crystal engineering, the underlying logic was flawless. If the elemental dragons desperately needed the Sun Dragon to gradually rebuild its strength after descending to earth, acquiring power through carefully gated and correct evolutionary stages, then sealing certain vaults and requiring highly specific elemental keys was exactly the kind of progressive, drip-fed system a master architect would design.

The staggered, hierarchical structure of the ruins. The brutal requirements that escalated with every single floor. The absolute necessity of either possessing overwhelming individual strength, or a massive, synchronized support network to breach the final doors.

It all perfectly mirrored a containment system designed to safely dose the power of a regenerating, infantile god.

Whether the mythological lore was historical fact or desperate fabrication, the magical engineering surrounding him was undeniably real.

And the truly invaluable spoils of this digital heist were three highly specific, actionable blueprints now burning brightly in his mind.

First: Advanced techniques for the molding and manipulation of raw crystal. Second: The architectural framework for a three-way fusion of lesser beasts, allowing a Tamer to forcefully synthesize a vastly more powerful hybrid.

And third: A set of radical, paradigm-shifting cultivation techniques that, if they functioned exactly the way Ren suspected they did, were going to violently rewrite the established laws of internal mana everyone in the kingdom followed and would fix a small problem he had.

Reviewing the sheer, fluid adaptability of the fusion techniques, Ren realized something profound. The biology of the dragons and their beast descendants was incredibly plastic. It was a malleable, highly reactive crystal-biological clay.

Ren frowned, a spark of deep frustration flashing in his eyes.

Why was human biology so fundamentally rigid?

Humans lacked any inherent variable forms. Their biological development was agonizingly slow and linear. They absolutely could not fuse with one another, and when compared to the explosive, rapid-fire evolutionary adaptability of even the weakest beasts, the human form felt painfully static.

He shook his head again, harder this time.

He was spiraling again... He was falling right back into the endless, philosophical rabbit holes that led absolutely nowhere. "Why everything" was a useless, infinite labyrinth of a question that produced zero actionable results on a battlefield. He possessed an entire ocean of new, world-altering information, but he also possessed a dangerous, chronic tendency to drown himself in the abstract mysteries he couldn’t immediately solve.

’First things first... Testing.’

Of the three revolutionary blueprints currently searing his brain, two were incredibly easy to practically verify right here in this chamber: the crystal molding, and the three-way beast fusion.

He would start with those.

♢♢♢♢

Ren was perfectly primed to begin testing his new crystalline theories, but he was immediately interrupted.

Wei’s frantic, manic curiosity had finally breached its absolute limits.

"What kind of data did it give you?!" Wei blurted out, completely incapable of holding his tongue for another second. He pointed a trembling, ink-stained finger at the colossal crystal formation. The frantic, scholarly energy had been bubbling inside him for the entire scene, and the dam had finally burst.

"The brain! What did it show you? Is it a historical archive? A mechanical manual? A set of architectural instructions? What is it?!"

Ren, who was just about to cycle his mana and physically test the new techniques, turned around to deliver a summary of the most critical intelligence.

But someone else answered much faster.

Lykea, who was still physically connected to the ancient system via the Light socket, immediately hijacked the conversation. She launched into a grand narration. She deployed her trademark, unstoppable talkativeness, but this time it was applied to a cosmic, mythological scale.

It was a beautiful, hyper-compressed epic about towering dragons, a savior sun, and apocalyptic cracks splitting the earth.

But it sounded vastly different from what Ren had witnessed. It was heavily embellished in some places, and wildly oversimplified in others. It carried the unmistakable, colorful flair of a woman who subconsciously filled in the historical gaps with her own vibrant imagination, entirely unaware she was doing it.

"And then the giant purple dragon came down AND CRACKED THE WORLD, WHICH WAS TERRIBLE! But it’s okay BECAUSE THE BIG SUN DRAGON CAME DOWN LIKE A MASSIVE, RADIANT HERO TO SAVE EVERYONE! And the seven little elemental dragons built this amazing cave system FOR US TO HIDE AND USE! IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL AND TRAGIC!"