The Light Dragon devoured the chimeric creature whole...
But the golden mushroom beast was not truly defeated, nor was it digested. The myriad of stolen survival traits it had acquired during its long exile allowed it to survive inside the guardian's stomach.
It quietly extended its golden fungal threads throughout the host's body, silently siphoning the dragon's ambient energy and slowly metamorphosing over the years, without anyone, not even the guardian itself, realizing it was still alive.
That history explained everything…
It explained the horrific sight Ren had witnessed inside the chest cavity.
The golden hyphae suffocating the core.
The baffling ease with which the dragon had fallen, because the guardian had never been operating at its true peak; it had been secretly drained from the inside out for years.
It explained why the golden network felt so terrifyingly identical to the mycelium that had been woven through Ren's own 'rebirth' place.
