Without giving it a chance to approach, he cast a fire spell, creating the flame at the creature’s eye in hope of blinding it temporarily. The spell worked exactly as planned, the unintelligent creature just pouncing away in fear as its eye stung and clearly turned a bit cloudy.

It looked over at the fire, but instinctively returned to its true enemy which held the cave. It charged, claws ready to tear the thing to shreds.

But with the long wait, he long since prepared a new spell. This time casting Ice bolt towards its intact eye. But even having a clear sight of the blade forming in front, the beast only charged towards him with a complete disregard. It saw the sharp ice suddenly fly towards it, closing its eyes on impulse to such a thing.

But against such a sharp blade, its ordinary body was no better than dust, instantly wailing in pain as a sharp rod of ice inserted itself deep into its eye. It still charged forward though, unable to see in hopes it collided with the cave owner.

Enraged by the damage, it wanted to tear the things throat out. Kill it and take its rightful spot as the owner of this cave!

But it completely missed the dragon, diverting inadvertently as its eyes remained shut tight. Running deeper into the cave, it lost any chance of escape from that moment forth. A new flame erupted on its fur, hanging in mid-air and instantly singing its body as it ran past.

Then another flame appeared at its foot, the ferret stepping on the flame and squealing even more. While maintaining its footing, the thing continued forward and did not pay attention before smashing face first into a wall. Accidentally shoving the ice shard still extending from its eye.

What remained was a slaughter. He cast another Ice bolt, striking its feet to cut through the flesh and muscle, but being stopped by bone. Repeating the process, all four legs collapsed as all their muscles and tendons snapped, and so began the ferret’s end.

The only thing it could blame was ignorance. Having never truly fought against a creature with magical abilities, failing to grasp just how dangerous such a thing was. Fortunately the young hatchling was not one of the few beings on the mountain which enjoyed seeing its victims suffer extensively, but that did not mean it could escape alive.

Why would he let go of a free bloodline and meal?

An Ice bolt through the neck quickly left the ferret haemorrhaging, and in less than a minute it lay dead on the floor. Meanwhile, he read the Nexus’ prompt and quickly licked up the blood freezing in contact with such a cold floor. Like glass solidifying, it formed an air-tight connection between the two surfaces.

[Killed Level 5 Snow ferret! Obtained 67% EXP]

That first prompt felt strange to say the least. What was it with all the bloodlines in this place having snow in their name? But what really stood out was that level, especially since this ferret was physically strong to some degree. “How is this thing’s level only five?”

[Unintelligent creatures do not receive levels in an identical fashion. Instead we directly measure their power and grant a Level and roughly assigned stats for them]

Assigned stats meant a problem already. If he went up against a slightly high level creature then its defences would be far higher than expected. It urged him to hurry up and decide the allocation of his points. At least he earned another level from this ferret, not to mention its bloodline.

[Consumed Snow ferret! Assimilation Progress 52%]

Used to drinking blood, he managed to easily clean it up with the help of some sweeter ice-cream to remove the residual taste. He really needed to find a solution for this messy way of doing things. Eventually, he finished enough though, once more confirming that weaker bloodlines required far less material for complete assimilation.

[Assimilated Snow ferret bloodline! 1 new bloodline direction potentially available]

The results underwhelmed him, but it didn’t matter. Now to just figure out the best way to eat the large ferret, perhaps going for Telekinesis would pay off sooner than imagined?

For now he just left the corpse to freeze at the cave’s back. Additionally, he used Push to move the snow gibbon’s corpse back there as well. Now he just needed a way to clean all this mess as well, the blood-covered cave floor was far from a suitable living condition!

For now he went right back to finishing up the Telekinesis spell, from there he could bring his overall spell usage up to par. Why stop at just fire and ice element spells?

A spellcasting dragon naturally had their specialisation, but all of them excelled in every magical domain with few exceptions. Thinking about it, blood magic would be incomprehensibly powerful in his current form! One of the blood spells he read simply caused violent eruptions of blood to everything nearby, including the caster. Spells like that were perfect for him! Composed of almost 30 words, it firmly sat in the realm of True spells instead of incantations.

* * *

Learning Telekinesis went as expected, he made very little progress in the hours leading up to his sleep. Eating a couple pieces of the snake, he rested peacefully with a confirmation of no new beasts coming along to steal his home.

While he faintly dreamed that night, it was nothing close to the horror which happened early on. His memory faintly recalled something about running from a group of annoying bees which simply refused to stop chasing him.

And in the morning? Well, he ate the last of the snake and got to work. At first practicing saying the whole sentence one word at a time, he would speed up pronunciation every single time until a mana reaction occurred. From there he just sped things up, each time growing ever so slightly harder as he jumbled up the words.

But speaking was just speaking in the end. The desire for a proper limb alone encourages many hatchlings, throw in a bunch of incapabilities on top of that and you get the little hatchling here.

No more than a couple hours after waking up did he finally get to inciting a reaction outside his body! The mana moved on its own accord to form a spell, and he instantly felt a massive weight on his mind. It squeezed and crushed him, and as his focus dulled the force suddenly vanished.

“Nexus, status please,” he said, curious about the spell’s effects.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Weakly magical Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

90%

Level

4

EXP

40%

Unallocated Stat Points: 12

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

0

Growth

0

Magic

0

Mutation Rate

0

That… That was 10% of his MP just by casting it? How fast would it have drained if he continued using it? Was the spell even considered viable for hatchlings to use. Perhaps it really just existed as a precursor to better ones.

Of course, he overlooked that he was possibly the only hatchling to ever use this spell for simple cutting and pulling of corpses.

“Would placing points in magic reduce the cost of spells?”

[For some spells, yes. But for the majority it will only provide direct boosts to their output]

Which was a kindly worded rejection to him. In which case he would have to hurry up and evolve some more to increase his MP anytime soon. Unlike many other races who trained from birth, dragons and similar magical species required a special event in their first growth stages to reach that point.

And he was still a week or two away from growth even starting! Then it took several months, demanding larger portions of food, before finally reaching that event. It became clear that bloodlines and spells were his only reasonable source of power anytime soon.

But training had always been such a mediocre way to gain power over growth stages, especially the third one which transitioned one into an adult!

Now if only adulthood wasn’t 50 years away. Dragons truly have amazing lifespans… He growled cutely with the thought of it.

Rather than give up, he decided to test out the power of Telekinesis, at least hoping to move the ferret’s body. After a few mistakes in the casting process, he finally spoke all seven words correctly and felt the mass of pressure descend once more. An almost unbearable weight, like an elephant stepped down on his head and just barely held back from crushing it into a fine paste.

With open eyes he maintained eye contact with the ferret’s body, imagining it being pulled towards him. The weight suddenly increased, moving the ferret’s body while in this heavier form. But after a few seconds he gave up and relaxed, the weight leaving him and sending his exhausted body onto the ground.

15% mana remaining to pull the corpse about half a metre… Probably less in reality, but clearly the cost of maintaining the spell was far less than activating it. Which meant adjusting to the mental weight and finding out how to counter it.

And for once the books actually gave him solid advice. Telekinesis is a psychic spell, which somewhat made him regret not taking that psychic bloodline. But, more importantly, it also meant that the spell formed a mental link on activation, and the strength of one’s mind directly affected your ability to withstand links.

That culminated into a single point. “Nexus, place 5 points into Magic,” he was sure of this decision for days now. It just took this last step to finally convince him. With his title this should be a 30% boost to his magical power. Actually, his bloodline provided a small boost, making it 40%!

Without hesitation, he cast the spell once more and tested the changes. It took a few tries to correctly speak it again, his desire for the growth phase becoming evident.

A weight appeared once more, but recognisably weaker. While still horrific on his small mind, looking towards the corpse and pulling it were considerably easier, and after a few seconds he successfully dragged it all the way across the cave, having to give in from exhaustion at that stage.

The book did say that Magic power included his ability to resist mental attacks, and that naturally included the existence of psychic components in spells. While perhaps not an intended use, dragons wholly encouraged hatchlings to abuse it.

With some more practice he expected moving corpses to become a breeze, especially if his next bloodline gave more of a bonus to magic. Being weakly magical didn’t really give many direct effects besides the mana sensing. And while useful, most older dragons used spells to replicate this effect with ease.

Actually, most sensing spells were outright better and directly provided sight of everything in a bubble around oneself!

He also wanted to practise some sort of movement spell, unfortunately, he had to pick carefully here. The Nexus’ words did come back to him though, and a quick cast of Thermal vision ended with its failure at the final step once more. And he asked, “Did the Nexus notice why that casting failed?”

[Magic power too weak; No data recorded]

A fair attempt, but it still frustrated him. Some options fortunately existed, and as nice as the teleportation spells looked he showed some restraint. One option was a spell which compressed itself into a seal on cast, and when activated propelled him upwards. Called Jump, it did exactly as named.

The power of its effect scaled with magic power, like all spells, although it relied on the user to safely land right after. With a body composition of ice-cream, no part of him believed falling to be an issue.

Storing a jump, a powerful one at that, was likely his best way to quickly escape something chasing him. Not that it saved his life, but when paired with a Fire or Ice bolt the result could make a massive difference.

And dismissing all that, just having a way to jump was pretty good utilitywise. The five word spell did not seem too hard to learn overall, and he immediately jumped into learning it.