The razor-sharp blade went straight for the man's throat. The steady hand guiding it marched with purpose, aiming for the left side of the neck, deliberate and true to its purpose. Roy finished shaving with an appreciating expression on his face. The face looking back from the mirror was dignified and tidy.

After more than a year in the cave, the man felt something change inside him. Not too long ago, after breaking the steel plate something happened. He kept improving, but he wasn't satisfied with his pace anymore. He also understood why. The boost he got from the limit break last time had him soaring through the various materials he used as training tools.

Ebony as a material was harder than some of the more ductile steel, but that wasn't the only indicator of a substance's capabilities. Metals in general were more malleable, less prone to breaking, and more prone to bending. This wasn't a problem when you could rip through a one-meter cube of bronze, and iron proved to be brittle enough to just crumble after a month of trials.

Steel was a whole different matter. His punches weren't sharp enough to just shear the material, and the bent sheet in front of him just refused to give way. That's why after some time of persistent punching he decided to take a much-needed break.

He refused to simply sit around and read or scour the internet mindlessly, preoccupied with reaching a harmonic state once again. For sure that would have taken some time of fiddling with books, but the possibility was still there. So the man decided to not only explore the limits of his body but also take care of it as if he was already back into civilized society.

The first few times were pretty rough, the bird's nest of his beard and hairs proving to be an untameable mess. After some practice runs, which left him in a pretty sorry state, he decided to just shave off his white mane and the results surprised him. In just a few days the hair on his head grew to a more manageable length, and the tutorials he watched on youtube were enough to make himself presentable.

The beard proved to be an altogether different matter, its majesty too much for the professor to just shear it off, so after more practice, he got to the point of maintaining a good shovel form while shaving his neck more unruly hairs. The mirror spoke for himself, the image of a well-maintained man in his sixties now more similar to one of a male model in his forties, apart from the silver colors.

He searched for a book on that matter alone, as it was quite baffling to him. His body was back to his prime age and more toned than ever, and the imperfections on his face didn't tell the story of a long life, more that of a troubled one. His hair instead were those of a Garnier representative in his fading years.

The answer was simple and clean: he still thought of himself as a grandfather, and his mind made sure to represent that in some form. From how much he worked on his body he had a clear understanding of his physical capabilities, and as such his brain couldn't simply let him stagnate, but remembering him of how old he actually was quite easier: a ripped Santa Claus, just like those older men his twins loved to gush about when they were younger.

The man's smile got wider thinking about his daughters, lovely and assertive girls they were. It seemed like their influence on him was still strong, and the thought of being able to remember them with such clarity filled him with joy.

The wondering state lasted for a while, as Roy rinsed his face and prepared himself for the next step of his practice. He had gotten a good hold of almost all languages he found, but the guttural, primordial nature of the draconic tongue meant he needed a visual representation of how his mouth and throat moved while he spoke it.

Taking out the big tome he had gotten out of the library, The Dragon Tongue, he opened it with mirth, going over the alphabet once more. He took a big breath and released it.

A gravely roar filled the cave, stone and crushed bones resounding in the distance. The mirror cracked and the lake rippled, while a round forcefield spread out from the man position. He winced while looking at the mirror. He messed up his vowels again.

On the plane hovering around Iliria, two men stood watching the scene with rapt attention. Abaddon was enjoying his bucket of caramelized popcorn when the man opened his mouth. He waved his hand a brilliant barrier appeared around the two. The blonde dragon on his left side watched as the old professor spoke.

His hand full of chocolate chips stopped in mid-air, resuming its voyage towards the humanoid deity after a few seconds. After quickly wiping his hand, covered in crumbs of delicious enjoyment, the Davon turned towards his father with a blank expression.

"Dad, please, tell me he didn't just say " The cat is on the table" on the primal language of creation and dominion".

Abaddon, his mouth half full of toasted heavenliness waved his hand again as the barrier fell down.

"Well, he didn't persay say that. He butchered the pronunciation, and the vowels just weren't right, y'know ?"

Davon's jaw dropped, his mind racing to comprehend the words that left his father's mouth. After everything caught up, he managed to utter.

"Just fucking how? He doesn't have an ounce of magical power inside him, and he isn't even conscious of what he is doing! He spoke my language! MINE! I'm not even sure how I weave my words of power, and he just goes and utters insanity on a cosmic scale like it's a child exercise!"

The primordial slurped something from a Starbucks cup and looked at his son with an amused expression.

"Well, he asked the library for the Dragon tongue, not the dragon tongue, so the Dragon tongue he got. As you are the first of your kind and the only one who managed to fully ascend you should be aware that your feats are all recorded there.

Davon looked again at the screen an expression of confusion, contempt, and disgust on his face.

"Lucky son of a thousand fathers."

The father gave an amused chuckle, and patting the younger god back he said.

"Not to mention the ambient magic in that cavern is so thick even a horse could summon something if he uttered something so powerful"

Another sip of what seemed a vanilla pumpkin macchiato.

"When he breaches the cave he won't' be able to use it as freely. Let him enjoy his time as an all-powerful talent."

Looking at the sky, Davon uttered something under his breath, a resigned expression on his face.

Abaddon's expression twisted into disapproval and flicked the back of his son's head.

"Ouch! Dad what the fuck!"

"No swearing at my place, young man"

The thousands years old creature looked at the era's old being.

"You do it all the time!"

The primordial gave his son a smirk.

"Yeah but that's my place. Now hush off, he is doing something crazy again"

After his somewhat unfruitful improvements during the last stretch of his training, Roy was starting to get discouraged. He knew he had all the time in the world, but he didn't want to use ALL the time in the world to get out of his crucible. Gradually his training started to yield fewer and fewer results, so he decided he needed to have a brainstorming session.

After failing at the Dragon language again, his break took a whole new form of laziness. He just sat in his huge bed watching everything that came to his mind. After consuming all kinds of content, he stumbled upon something. Something that he never had the chance to really explore, as his progeny took much after their parents, and used to stay clear of the medium.

Anime. He started by searching for an old song that he really liked called the Weight of My Pride, and stumbled upon something called an AVM. The images were colorful and the view count was high, so he watched as two boxers beat each other up in impossible manners while old chords accompanied the whole thing. Rarely he enjoyed something so much.

So he did what anyone with an obsession would do, and made a concerted effort to look for as much of those anime as possible. And lo and behold, something called Dragonball came up and after a week of binging men of unrealistic proportions performing incredible stunts and breaking shit with their superpowers, he watched how Vegeta, a small guy with a narcissistic personality and an inferiority complex managed to break his limits.

Standing up as if struck by lightning, the professor didn't even notice how the bed feet just gave way under the powerful pressure. He rushed towards his notebook, prickled his finger with the pen, and started to furiously write something.

A few moments later, a gigantic rush of power rocked the cavern and a giant metal sphere materialized over his training field. The letters on the ball read Roy Corp. and the machine stood on four stubby feet. A door could be seen on one of its sides.

The man walked toward the entrance and pressed his hand on a digitalized rectangle on itìs side. With a hissing sound, the interior of the sphere was revealed. He walked towards a computer in the center of the room, and with trembling hands set some parameters. He pressed enter on the command panel, and suddenly he had trouble standing up.

A huge grin spread on the man's mouth. The way forward was clear again.

Isabelle was running for her life. She absentmindedly tough that her life consisted of a whole lot of running for her life lately.

A giant dinosaur creature was chasing her, and by the sound of its massive legs, the creature was getting closer and closer.

The young girl just kept going, striding with a purpose towards a not-so-distant cliffside. The heavy steps were getting too near for comfort, but the girl ignored them until she felt the air displace behind her and a warm, putrid breath tickling her neck. Without even faltering she jumped, her figure enveloped in motes of light.

A moment later the creature bit down on the shining figure in midair, finding no purchase.

Confused for a moment the giant T-rex cocked its head and sniffed the air. Finding the trail once again, it resumed the chase, while Isabelle's form could be seen still running in the distance.

The girl last blink had been expended, but her mind still wasn't focused on the chase. Too much had happened during the last year for her to even consider this stupid dinosaur a problem. Her life went from being perfect to shambles in just a moment, but that wasn't what hurt the most.

Reaching the cliffside had proven to be a closer call than she would've thought, but finally, she was free to move on to the next step of the hunt.

She wasn't the one being hunted. Going inside a small crack in the rocks, she grabbed the makeshift spears already inside the cave and turned. The creature preyed using its nose and knew where she was. Trying to get its massive head inside the crevice proved to be quite a bad idea, as Isabelle stabbed the giant snout in front of her without missing a beat.

The creature recoiled, the spear now wedged inside his oversized nostril. A thin thread of light connected the primitive weapon to the girl inside the cave.

She remembered what the giant humanoid with antlers said before unceremoniously dumping her into the wastelands.

"A precocious child is what I receive after asking for a mighty warrior. One attuned with light, with healing. You would have served well during the last war, but healing is not something I want for my champion. I will gift you something, for that is the pact, but know that going forward, you will receive nothing more from me, as we arent' connected by destiny"

"Alas, the younglings need time to hone their craft, and Raila is no better than us when we started. Next time, victory will be mine. "

At the time she had been confused, scared, and disoriented. She only understood that she was being discarded because of her talent. Bit by bit, her memories started coming back together, the lights near her, the room of the castle, and the goddess talking to herself in the planetarium.

She remembered her brother, connected to her in ways her world couldn't explain, and loneliness was all she could think about for a while. The god gift, now she understood, was a hack in every and all aspect.

He even gave her some time to get accustomed to her new powers, and some time free from worldly problems, like the giant creature now chasing her. His scent accompanied her for a month, keeping the creatures of the wastelands away.

During that time she discovered a status window, like in the game she played with her twin, like in the stories she read in her bedroom before going to university.

In her world, she was gifted, top class in her field, a rising star of the medical field an elite athlete, and an all-around prodigy.

After the protection waned, she quickly discovered what she was on Pygmalion.

A snack, two quick bites for the small creatures and one for the bigger ones.

Focusing on the tether between her and the monster, she snorted. A healer she was, but she had to kill to survive, to improve. To level.

And kill she did, for healing wasn't always used for good.

Sending a pulse of magic through the connection, the wound on exhibit a of Jurassic park started to bubble up. A tumor the size of a child's head sprouted for the wound, closing around the spear. The creature, confused by the absence of pain, his field of vision unable to spot the spear charged once again.

Isabelle eyes went wide, as luck clearly wasn't on her side. The T-rex head bumped on the rocks once again, but the spear managed to make its way into the crevice, almost skewering her backed up by the twelve-ton monster.

Dodging the shaft, she punched it, tearing into the tumor a bit.

Pain once again wrecked the small-brained creature and getting the memo, Rexi retracted his huge head, backing away from the fissure, trying to find a way to get to his pesky meal.

The tether was unbroken.

Isabelle kept feeding magic into It, as the tumor kept growing. The creature started to feel something weighting down its snout. After a while, the creature gave out a powerful, scared roar. Its fine-tuned nose stopped feeding it information. The dinosaur laid down, blind to the world.

The tumor on its nose was bigger than a cow now, finally making its way into the creature's field of view. Eventually understanding the wrongness of the situation, it tried to get up, only to stumble to the ground, its balance messed up by the giant mass on its front side.

Isabelle left the cave, her expression blank, a black obsidian blade in her hand. She neared the downed creature, her eyes void of emotion. Another frog to dissect, one that could have eaten her whole. One that didn't realize that the difference between being an apex predator and being a pitiful prey is as fine as a strand of silk.

The tumor kept growing, and once it was big enough to engulf the mouth of the dinosaur, Isabelle and her blade started their gorey work. Cutting into the tumor, ignoring the muffled cries of pain coming from under her, she uncovered a spot to plunge the knife in.

A giant eye locked into her own, confusion, pain, and despair wafting from it in waves. The black blade was the last thing the creature saw.

Congratulations Blessed Isabelle Taylor Killed a Carnage Saurus! For killing a creature more than 200 hundred levels higher than yourself Massive additional experience is granted!

The title Big Game hunter evolves into Giant Slayer! Awarded for killing something more than 20 times your size!

Grants heavy additional damages when hunting anything bigger than yourself.

The title The Higher The Better III evolves into The Higher The Better V!

Grants higher mental clarity, higher damages, and no stats suppression when fighting something 300 hundred levels over yourself. Effects start to fall off against enemy 350 levels above you.

The girl looked at the prompt with glee. The beast she just slew was one she stalked for the better part of a month, and one of the overlords of this region. It was also the only one stupid enough for her plan to work on, granting her much higher chances to survive from this point forward. And survive she would, for she had a clear objective in mind.

Isabelle wanted to get back with her brother. Their connection, as strained as it was, still held. That meant that somewhere, he was alive and kicking, probably in a similar situation to hers.

He was also a prodigy in his own right, one that chose a sport and became the best at it. At 18 he was Olympic level in 4 disciplines, but he never shone as bright as when he discovered his passion for cold weaponry.

He often joked he was born during the wrong time period, usually after decimating his competition at some of the medieval fencing tournaments he went to.

Making way to her shelter, she thought about the next steps she would take. First was the forest, then came the marsh and then the mountains. But she needed to consolidate her gains and some rest was the first priority at the moment.

Thinking about the future, a smirk made way to her bloodied face. The god made a mistake.

They would pay for splitting them apart.