His Ice bolt spell continued forward, the tip immediately touching fur and to either make or break the moment.

Unimpeded, the fine edge cut open its skin, continuing through before lodging itself at least an inch within the tough body. At such depth there was no way the creature avoided an unstaunched bleeding!

He now felt safe enough to kill most creatures from a distance, only those with thicker skin or hides could ignore this blade. But other problems still remained!

What about bigger creatures where this little cut was nothing more than a nuisance, angering it further like the ants who took bits from his body? In such cases he would prefer to avoid the battles altogether.

His first thought jumped to sensing spells, ones which allowed his mind to gain a rough image of what laid further away in all directions. However, all the supposedly basic ones in the introductory book he read used nine to fifteen words, far beyond his current ability.

Another idea was to use another flame spell to ward off attackers. Wild beasts often run at the sight of fire, and it should hold back the weaker ones with no magical abilities. Flame bolt differed slightly from the other bolts as it actually had six words. While possible to learn he would need a couple days at the minimum.

Unsure of his future options, he tried skimming various Basic spells to see if any of the simpler ones could achieve what he needed. The collection of books still takes ages to look through, but two spells in particular stood out as being both useful and relatively easy to learn.

One was called Thermal vision, it temporarily modified his eyes to see the heat emitting by any object. The book itself stated it to be an effective means to find predators who may be hiding behind foliage or covered in mud. While it might remain useless against underground creatures, like the snow wassat, for animals like wolves or lynxes he believed it adequate.

The other spell was called Sonar, but its limitation was even clearer. Firstly, like a bat’s ultrasound it bounced off a nearby object, allowing him to hear how far things were…

A caveat was that his mind did not understand such things intrinsically. And comprehending what the various pitches and tones represented required periods of study and embedding it into reflexes. Not to mention by the time he fully adapted, way better sensing spells would be child's play for him.

On the other hand, a variation of the Sonar spell for attacking actually stunned some beasts with sensitive hearing extremely well. Just three words long, he considered learning it as well.

Thermal vision, a five word incantation, would not be fast to learn. The remaining snow wassat meat might only last a day as well, the young dragon already rationed food as to avoid hunger setting in too quickly.

He set a time limit in the end. Two days, no more, no less. If after that time he still failed to use Thermal vision he would head outside and see what possible foods appeared. As a dragon he could ingest almost any plant material or meat, only a few extremely toxic or elementally opposed items caused problems for his body.

Where on a mountainside like this would you find creatures of fire anyway?

* * *

For the first of those two days, not much happened as he practised speaking each word individually. While some of the syllables felt similar, a majority were new to his tongue. Not that he struggled as much now, having said various words thousands of times to perfect those few spells he knew.

No ants came today as well, leaving a pleasant surprise as he focused on spellcasting for hours on end. Sometimes the individual words drew on mana, but with his current regen and MP, none of it mattered.

By the second day’s end he successfully chained together four of the five words. In fact, he completed this feat just a few hours into the second day. The final word though… it constantly gave him problems.

For some reason the link between the fourth and fifth words did not allow for any delay, meaning no breaths could be taken. While a minor problem, he resolved it soon enough by moving a single breath to a midway point instead. The spells allowed many gaps for hatchlings to breathe.

But then the last word went wrong for some reason. Following the instructions in the book, it should automatically direct the spell to his eyes whereupon it completed itself for Thermal vision to activate. He could not understand what part of his pronunciation was wrong.

And that led him through an unfortunate series of hoops trying to see if the spell was wrong or his understanding of the language was mistaken at some point. His memories included a few lengthy books on draconic language rules, in cases where a dragon wished to teach someone else how to converse in their tongue.

But reading them was dull, uninteresting, and time-consuming to an ungodly degree.

The result was him giving up on the books and just randomly changing the pronunciation every single time in hopes he eventually struck upon the correct version. He could figure out the reasons for it later on.

But as the second day ended with little progress, he admitted the hard facts and now considered leaving. Did he uphold the promise to himself or continue trying until it worked?

He didn’t really need an answer. It was obvious he only wasted time and energy at this point, furthermore food was a far more important resource in his near future. But before he could risk heading off, the dragon tried practicing Ice bolt a few times just to ensure things went right.

The first few castings failed as he lost his footing, partially his fault as he did not practise the spell in over a day now. But soon enough the words returned and successfully created the shard of ice, flinging it away before shattering against the cave wall.

To avoid making further noise, he instead practised it leading out of the cave. One after another, he continued until only making mistakes in the casting process itself. After 10 Ice bolts in a row he felt a bit woozy, sitting down for forty minutes or so as his MP refilled to its maximum.

He did not need anything extremely valuable, just some meat or plants. If it sustained him for the next few days or weeks then it fit the bill. A simpler goal overall.

Doing something, and saying you’ll do it are two entirely different concepts though. The young dragon still feared other creatures like the snow wassat outside his cave. With only a faint difference in that he felt the minimal flow of mana in his direct surroundings, now outside he realised just how much denser it was in the cave.

At the very least a few times greater, but that only benefited him as anything magical out here stood out like a sore thumb. A few steps away from the cave he thought that he heard something shuffling about.

His body froze, eyeing the surroundings to their full extent and ready to cast a fire spell at the first sign of movement. But as nothing happened, he was able to continue forward ever so slightly.

A new layer of snow covered up the bloody spot taken by the wassat’s corpse, also hiding any scent of blood or meat in the air. Thankfully he decided to eat its frozen blood back then, pushing himself to an evolution even faster.

Still unsure of how to avoid more of the species, he could only move with extreme care. If at any point his foot fell through the snow it meant danger, and getting away with any means necessary was the answer.

He couldn’t be scared. Not now.

The faint trembling every time he placed a foot said otherwise.

The white snow field outside his cave was not as barren as he originally thought, on occasion he noticed what seemed to be hares darting about, catching sight of him and running instantly.

At one point he caught sight of a lone wolf roaming the area, while he had some confidence in protecting himself, fighting it was a waste of strength on top of being a needless danger. The wolf quietly stepped through the fields with a small furred creature in its mouth. From this distance he only caught sight of blood dripping onto the white ground.

But as the wolf left soon after his fears greatly reduced, allowing him to continue walking onwards in a slow manner at all times. He wondered how these wolves avoided the lurking dangers beneath this snow, and in time wanted to copy their method.

Nearby he noticed a light flow of mana rush beneath his feet. The flow moved slowly beneath him, apparently passing right by him. But he took no chances!

Without hesitation jumping forward in fear of something lurking below, but as a second such flow of mana moved by he found it to be some sort of constant cycle. Every ten seconds mana moved in that one direction, and in curiosity he decided to dig it up.

Being only a short distance underground, he was able to quickly pull off enough snow and saw it.

A set of four coiled thick tree roots with faint white light seeping through gaps in its curled structure. As mana flowed through the root, that white light brightened for just a few seconds before quickly dimming once more. What sort of plant was this?

The woody feeling of the root did not feel magical, more like just a normal tree which possessed some mana transferring capability. Or perhaps the thing sending this mana was a normal tree, but somehow enslaved by a magical one?

He knew far too little about wildlife and chose the most direct route of things, checking the less dangerous side. In which case he firmly believed whatever sent the mana to be weaker, therefore safer.

Perhaps some food was capable of growing there if a tree did as well. Not to mention he wanted to try assimilating a plant, what was there to lose?

Actually… don’t answer that. He knew very well what could be lost, and on the entire journey slowly followed the path of mana back to its source. At the very least he knew that the roots blocked anything from lurking beneath, granting a small safety.

During the somewhat lengthy walk, he quickly found out that most of the mountainside was quietly teeming with life if you looked carefully. Very few predators existed, the wassats and wolves seeming to be the only two big sources of them. But most things were just small critters like hares, squirrels, guinea pigs, and similarly furred creatures.

Insects were limited to those with Ice element bloodlines, as he easily found out by shifting a rock to reveal some sort of beetle. A single fire spell roasted it to death, and then he eventually crushed its thick shell to consume its innards. Negligible experience, but the other prompt pleased him.

[Consumed Frost-plated scarab beetle! Assimilation progress 2%]

It also tasted horrible, worse than the ants in his opinion. How exactly things willingly ate these bugs was a mystery, so bitter and sour in most cases, he barely swallowed them with the help of his body to sweeten things.

He was unable to break its shell though, perhaps the frost-plated part was very literal and gave it a noticeable defence for its size. Although his teeth still being ice-cream may be the problem as well…

On the way he did find some similar insects, but reminding himself of the taste was enough to stay away from them. Assimilating them would require tens or hundreds in worse scenarios anyway, going out of his way for a couple was wasting time and drawing attention in this place.

Not long after eating that beetle, he came across another strange thing with the mana flowing down below. To an almost invisible degree, he noticed that some of the mana was diverted at one point. The diversion wasn’t even that far from the main flow!

Out of curiosity, he only had to move a few steps and dig downwards to check what this thing was, not going straight for the end point in case something hostile resided there. Underneath the ground he saw a small green stem coated in ice crystals, the unbelievably fine stream of mana moved within it to whatever resided at the end.

And just by digging for a few more seconds, he found the thing in question.

A stunning lotus flower made of ice, so thin and delicate hidden below the cushioning snow above.

And he wanted to eat it so badly.