Bachlar didn’t believe it. Not even the dukes were so luxurious to send Steel ranks for such missions, who wanted them dead to this extent?

“Just a regular Knife wielder, although I did undergo a small body strengthening process,” his smile told a different story though. What sort of treatment could grant someone a reaction speed on par with Bronze ranks?

Bachlar didn’t stop there though, pointing the wand once more and firing before they approached. A hidden blade suddenly flew out though, stabbing his shoulder for a momentary distraction. The shock factor worked but he suffered far worse injuries in duels before, another spearhead of magma formed and struck Jeremiah’s arm.

He’d just barely avoided having his chest caved in, although a person of his level would normally have a melon sized hole through them instead. His arm, broken and aflame, was of far too little importance compared to killing Bachlar. Charging forward, he almost reached the Lesser wizard with a knife tucked into his belt prepared to finish the mission.

Jeremiah’s eyes opened wide as he pushed his body sideways, crashing into the wall and barely avoiding the sword just inches from beheading him. Reaching up, he felt a deep cut on the side of his neck, without something to clot or heal it he had a minute at most.

The Bronze swordsman stood between him and Bachlar, the occasional red and black wisp appearing from their body. “Soul burning? And I thought better of you.” He sneered to Bachlar, recognising such a famous skill at first glance.

But in truth the wizard was no less surprised, only his guard clarifying the matter. “I learnt this of my own will. If I’m to die in battle, it is best to drag down an enemy with me.” With the life in his eyes fading with every moment, he charged forward to meet Jeremiah.

There was simply no contest. A toughened Knife wielder against a Swordsman near Steel rank produced an obvious outcome. Jeremiah barely saw the first slash before receiving a cut across his chest and a weighty punch to his guts. A slam of the sword’s pommel downed him, leaving Jeremiah to this dying man’s mercy.

But just before he could make the finishing blow, a fiery lance struck his back, the swordsman only able to look back at the last moment to see his master decapitated and the other assailant grinning. The wand pointed to his falling body and activated once more, his last sight was a blinding light…

As for the other two guards that survived? They barely had the energy to stand and hold a weapon, it only took a simple action from the two of them to kill the remainder and become the sole survivors of this group.

With everyone dealt with, the companion walked closer and rolled his eyes. “I didn’t expect you to suddenly act there. Give me the signal next time.”

“It was nothing serious Hansen, we need to dispose of all this stuff though,” Jeremiah replied. The camp and bodies would prove an issue, blood already began freezing to the cave’s floor. The two rummaged through the two wizard’s robes, the inside pockets holding several items even though they appeared empty.

Every senior student of the academy possessed such robes, finely crafted with dimensional storage as any wizard inevitably needs. Both Bachlar and Augisticus stored copious amounts of potions in preparation for this trip.

“Let’s just burn it all. Hang on, count the kills first. Nexus, battle report.” The two both pulled out their statuses and quickly ignored the ant kills. Two Swordsman, a Bronze swordsman, a Bronze hammer wielder… and one Lesser wizard.

“Looks like someone tried to be sneaky. That just won’t do. Burn her.” Pointing to Augusticus, she realised her acting was pointless by now. A broken hand did its best to cover her wound in a clotting powder, and a healing potion only barely stopped the intense bleeding of her heart.

Not that she really had any chance of recovery, the meagre attempt only extended her suffering before death. But now she truly stood no chance. Hansen pointed the wand supplied with the small fragment of mana it required, and another spear formed. In no more than a second it pierced through Augusticus.

She whimpered slightly as the weighty spell burned and bored a hole through her abdomen, but died just moments later. The two confirmed the results and set the camp ablaze.

“It’s too bad she failed to acquire the dragon heart, but it doesn’t matter for Sir Tolin. He’ll be quite happy with two magical tools,” Jeremiah’s expression revealed far more anguish than he stated though.

Like the cold blizzard outside was a light summer trickle, they walked outside and began their descent down the mountain. Eventually the bodies would be found, and possibly linked back to their source… But at that point they didn’t care.

Besides, there was always a possibility of wild beasts devouring those bodies.

* * *

The uncontrolled fires quickly burnt through most of the camp, but without management also meant the cave cooled down and snuffed out those flames. It was no more than 10 minutes after the sudden betrayal that a patient hatchling popped upwards to see the mana of both the river of ants and every human was gone.

At first suspicious, he moved further up only to see that mana within the cave was chaotic, so much so that seeing inside wasn’t possible. Believing it to be a side effect of the battle, he simply waited things out to see the overall situation above. The endless silence burgened his curiosity, just as his concerns resolved that with an adequate safety.

Slowly, the image of his cave above resolved, turning from a mess of mana flowing around to some concentrated spots which he recognised as crystals in the cave’s walls. And then came the images…

“They’re all dead!” He spoke aloud with no restraints, completely forgetting the situation as he clearly sensed 14 bodies from here. No doubt the rest were just a bit further out!

After waiting just a little longer, he confirmed that everyone was dead, and most of the tents were reduced to a pile of scraps and ashes. Telling apart the corpses was no different than simply guessing although one thing stood out from two of the corpses.

The two Bronze ranks immediately caught his gaze, just the mana contained within their flesh being several times the others nearby. As a dragon he immediately sliced a piece off with an Ice bolt, the cracked skin all over required some defrosting to remove though, but once he finally got the piece in his stomach the Nexus prompt was more than clear.

[Consumed Bronze swordsman bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]

The loss of experience saddened him, but the variety of bloodlines all around him more than made up for such an insignificant loss! Bronze rank warriors were extremely powerful as well, so the side effects of consuming their bloodline couldn’t be that much worse than the mutated glacier wolf.

But first he wanted to clean up the cave, the entirety was covered in dust, ash, and remained smelling like crap. Not to mention the corner those ants all came up from… The situation actually made him feel disgusted.

The seemingly endless count of bodies formed a complete layer between him and the snow walls. Who knew how far the minced collection of internals and fluids had seeped as well, the prospect of cleaning everything sounded like a pipe dream.

For now he took the easy way out and just used Telekinesis to throw things off the cliff outside his cave. Of the camp’s remaining supplies, primarily food, medicine, and metal utensils, he slowly moved the food and medicine to his abode below. As for utensils, a sharp metal knife took some effort to remove from its handle, but he finally had a suitable weapon for Telekinesis.

Not to mention the collection of swords from everyone else.

The warhammer’s weight made it too impractical, and while the Bronze swordsman weapon contained a huge quantity of mana, it was likely just some slightly magical metal included for durability. As for those two hunters from before, he couldn’t find their magical swords for some reason but admitted that using such large weapons was beyond him for a while.

All that remained was stockpiling this gracious gift of food!

His immediate concern were those who might come after these two wizards, from the girl’s robe and unknown tool he figured that she had some important identity, the specifics completely unknown to him, but it was very common for humans to search for their own kin. In that regard he decided to expand the underground abode even more.

Additionally, he would assimilate every bloodline as fast as possible before chucking the human bodies away. A few off the cliff, a couple left out in the wilderness, and probably even one left near the winter’s hope tree!

Only by spreading out the bodies could his cave evade suspicions for being their site of death. Or more accurately, site of murder.

How could he not realise that something stabbed through several of those bodies? No way those Ice ants did such a thing. But as a dragon he never once cared for the politics of humans. Instead he only cared if they brought him gifts and bloodlines!

A quick taste test revealed that among the 18 bodies he found just six unique bloodlines. Just six! Why were 10 of the people here Swordsmen?

Regardless, this gave him access to Basic wizard, Bronze swordsman, Bronze hammer wielder, spearman, trapper, and archer. He was surprised to see the trapper and archer were the two who almost captured him ages ago! Only recognisable due to their very specific boots over the guards’ uniform style.

As for why he could not acquire the Swordsman bloodline, it was once more related to bloodlines being too similar. While only consuming the lower rank bodies would provide that bloodline, after consuming enough of the Bronze swordsman’s body it would simply overwrite the former!

This effect happened for every single ranked warrior class, and even applies to wizards! A Steel swordsman’s bloodline would replace Bronze, and so on. However, given that dozens of warrior bloodlines existed he wasn’t truly concerned. Upgrading a bloodline by a single rank required far less material, according to some logic at least. When asked, the Nexus gave a standard reply for anything it didn’t know.

[Insufficient data to calculate]

Additionally, it seemed that Basic wizard was the technical term for the wizards’ current bloodline. Why humans used Lesser wizard instead was a confusing matter on its own, and he disregarded it later as being too unimportant.

Now came the fun part, cutting up the bodies and moving them for storage!

Alright, not actually that fun, but necessary no matter how much it annoyed him. With a metal blade this process finally became easy, aside from the arms which required a lot of work to finally dislocate and cut off. The same happened to each leg as well, and eventually the other bodies he actually wanted. Ten of them in total.

What happened to the rest?

Well, over the course of a day he used Telekinesis to slowly drag three of them to the tree root and just left them there. Another two went over the cliff straight away, whether they fell to the bottom or snagged on something midway wasn’t his problem.

And then the last four were left in the cave to be dealt with tomorrow. His reasoning was awfully simple, that being how ants tore the skin of these unlucky bunch to shreds. He planned on just pushing them far away and melting them a bit for any nearby predators to take, leaving it till later out of laziness.

It took the better part of a whole day, still in light snow as the blizzard only ended to a degree, but his home felt cleaner once more and he received a massive stockpile of food!

One matter remained though, an almost excessively important one at that. He looked into the corner of the cave once more, quickly seeing an offshoot from the tunnel which extended outwards to a recognisable place. To those troublesome insects he retaliated against but was simply too weak to deal with himself.

The ice ant nest. It was time to kill the queen.