A few weeks had passed on the mountain as a far larger hatchling slowly made his way through all the human bodies. His wafer scales also grew significantly in this time, but remained just as tightly interlocked as before.

It took several days for each one, but he absorbed five of the six unique bloodlines. Unfortunately, the Bronze ranked warriors did not provide anything exceptional to his dismay, only something on par with the Mutated glacier wolf! While powerful, his own improvements meant that he actually stayed awake throughout, just barely that is.

[Assimilated Bronze swordsman bloodline! 1 new bloodline direction potentially available

Assimilated Bronze hammer wielder bloodline! 2 new…

Assimilated Trapper bloodline! 3 new…

Assimilated Archer bloodline! 2 new…]

His improvements came nowhere close to completely removing the tiredness caused by assimilation, as for each of the two stronger bodies he had to take a nap afterwards. But for all the rest, he assimilated them smoothly.

And these bloodlines didn’t even render him completely immobile! While weak he could still barely move around.

He did far more than just devour some human bodies though. Combined with the learning process containing several True spells, he quickly formed a collection which dominated this side of the mountain. A result almost entirely owed to his bloodline granting adept control over his mouth and tongue especially.

Imagine if he had to wait several months just to pronounce some of those harder words!

Glacier crush, Snow blade storm, Water control, Mental blast, Mental shock, Rapid camouflage, and Momentous rampage. A large list, and while most appeared rather obvious, the specifics did matter.

Glacier crush created a far larger glacier which appeared above his target, while easy to dodge its damage was no different from a boulder landing on you. Combined with a strong downwards force on top of gravity’s acceleration, once it fell he doubted that many creatures could dodge it.

For Snow blade storm, it achieved an identical result to Wind blade storm, but used surrounding snow to form small blades. While more akin to ice, the fact this spell used snow as a condition granted it the specific name.

Meanwhile, Mental blast was an extremely rudimentary psychic spell but actually grew stronger simply by applying more mana. Compared to most draconic spells, adjustable ones like this were rather rare. Mental shock did exactly as expected though, providing an alternate way to stun creatures by overloading their mind with a psychic attack. This did minimal damage just like Stun.

Rapid camouflage modified his scales to blend in with the background, but came with the cost of having poor detail and not changing anything besides appearance. And Momentous rampage was another scale reinforcement which increased their mass purely through mana, used by dragons who wished to charge through something and needed that extra weight in the last moment.

While still going through the final corpse, being a Spearman, he began learning Ice coat. A scale reinforcement for fire resistance, but pushed it back this far because learning attacks and utility spells came first. And yet, he refused to touch any Beginner fire spells as a single mistake could melt him in seconds.

But even before fully learning Ice coat, he already consumed enough of the Spearman!

[Assimilated Spearman bloodline! 1 new bloodline direction potentially available]

Which meant… there was no need to continue eating the bodies. Not to say he disposed of them like the wizards. Each of these warriors had thick, albeit tough, flesh which provided more than enough sustenance for him. Additionally, those two empty storerooms absolutely needed some food.

On that note, he kept them frozen for future meals.

For the first time in over a week he took a step outside the underground home, staying tucked up inside for the most part this last month. Using Water control, he quickly uncovered his tunnel and then provided a new layer of snow to cover things up once more. Now came to meet some plans he held for a long-time coming.

He was somewhat confident in taking a spot underneath the winter's hope tree now, and consuming its sap to quickly assimilate the bloodline, but the importance of such a thing was miniscule. With the Third eye spell he first wanted to investigate that poppy field, testing to see if anything of real danger existed at its strongest parts.

Additionally, Rapid camouflage at least reduced his detection by a slight bit. Not that powerful creatures used their eyes very often, but any security was better than none.

On the way there he came across another snow wassat and chose to use it as a test dummy, starting off with Mental shock for its stunning effects. Most psychic attacks travelled through most common materials with ease, soul attacks being no different as well.

Unsurprisingly, the wassat suddenly snapped awake, and tried to shake wildly in the snow. The narrow hollow restricted it greatly and its spasms did nothing but fill the already tight space. Eventually it fell unconscious and just laid there…

He didn’t think Mental shock alone would do that. Additionally, that True spell only required a measly 10% MP. It seemed that regular wildlife no longer posed a threat on the mountain, and few basic humans could do better. A single Mental blast then killed the wassat before he even had time to use other spells, this spell taking 15% of his MP at a minimum.

[Killed level 5 Adolescent Snow wassat! Received <1% EXP]

Now at level 10, even this creature which almost killed him meant little to nothing.

Eventually reaching the same stretch of snowy land covering a field of poppies, he moved forward at a slow pace until the stronger versions with white lines began appearing.

Furthermore, he did find a book detailing these poppies, a species called Blood Purification poppies. Like the basic plant itself, they thrived in battlefields as bones provided ample nutrients for their growth.

But these poppies specifically also required ample bloodlines, with stronger types allowing a poppy to ‘purify’ itself to have white petals. All of this was recorded solely due to poppies who underwent a full purification process being excellent alchemic materials. More specifically, they created medicines which could remove mutations and misguided evolutions!

Kind of useless to him, but having access to valuables is important for trading.

After wandering a small depth into the field, he recovered the mana from spell testing and cast Third eye to float far ahead of him. Anything dangerous enough would notice the small, mana-emitting orb far faster than the small yellow dragon a distance away.

On that note, he also realised just how much the wafer scales stood out in such an environment. Perhaps learning Rapid camouflage was the right choice for an entirely different reason.

Anyway, the orb formed as usual and he pushed it to float far ahead of him, some light inspection clarifying that nothing dangerous lived a bit further ahead. This allowed him to walk forward and the process repeated a few times over. Throughout the steps he occasionally came across more bones, nails, and teeth.

While the number of mongrel bones which survived was astoundingly small, he quickly found several from the scarlet hoof horses.

[Consumed Scarlet hoof horse bloodline! Assimilation progress 43%]

At such a speed he expected to complete the assimilation rather soon, but he knew better than to do this in the wild. The last bone would be carried home and consumed in safety. Besides that, he also ate some Ice-mind berries and found a couple Earth-frost carrots for a high and mighty 2% experience.

[Consumed Ice-mind berry! Assimilation progress 55%

Consumed Earth-frost carrot! Assimilation progress 12%]

But before greedily consuming more and more, he wanted to first check for anything dangerous deep within the area. To complete this, he compared the magical power of poppies beneath him and at every noticeable increment sent the Third eye as far as possible.

Along the way he checked the state of poppies below him, seeing the white striped petals turn to a full white, and growing warier as most now showed three or four of such petals. The mountain was only so large, this situation had to end soon.

A Third eye scouted ahead once more, and he took its sight during these moments. Scouring the surface for anything strange, he once more only saw a blank field. But just then, in the corner of his vision…

His connection to the Third eye broke. Recoiling from the sudden attack, he quickly looked in its direction but saw nothing. Shuffling away as the light reflected in a strange manner to show a flash of white move across the snow’s surface for just a moment before burrowing underneath.

The creature made no entrance or exit whilst burrowing as well. It was good as invisible.

Without any hesitation, he used Jump seals to move away rapidly, the poppies nearby quickly turning back to their striped counterparts. He had no clue what resided in that place, but without a surefire way to sense nor avoid it, he was against taking such risks.

In the corner of his vision before the connection broke, only one thing appeared. A large mouth wrapping around the Third eye faster than he could manoeuvre it. Undoubtedly it broke on impact, but the sight of something swallowing him caused that recoil.

Fortunately, the thing didn’t seem to follow him this far out. Indicating it either stuck to a small space or did not notice him.

“I’ll test this place to see if it’s safe here first. Then collect giant bones if it is.” He immediately figured out a plan, but appeared somewhat apprehensive about it still. His fears of becoming food remained as strong as ever.

Fortunately, he quickly realised the creature was unbelievably… stupid? Perhaps just utterly blind. It only attacked sources of mana located at the place with completely purified poppies. Nothing could lure it outside that place as well.

Firing Flame and Ice bolts over in the direction did nothing, so he then thought about flying a Third eye over there and using his physical body to see what attacked it.

In his attempt, a white flash simply jumped out of the snow and swallowed the orb instantly before disappearing back under once more. This repeated several times, but he only gained a bit of information.

This thing was massive. As in so thick that it could compare to the winter's hope tree, but more importantly its length left him reeling. While incredibly fast, he only saw parts of its body due to its natural camouflage making detail so hard to see, but even under these effects it took several seconds for its full body to jump out of the snow and back under. Nonetheless, he wondered how deep the snow in this place was to allow such a massive creature easy travel in the area.

Every test rejuvenated his confidence, and after an hour of trying to get a better look he gave up with solid reasoning that it only attacked things within the purified poppy region.

If even a single petal had not been purified the thing refused to move into that space, thus being limited to a small zone at the very back of the battlefield. Also, he noted that a cliff existed near this point, although he doubted any ability to throw this thing off it.

On the plus side, he figured that any remains in that spot had been consumed by the giant creature many years ago. Until he became strong enough to kill it, he refused to go anywhere near the place.

So, he slowly gathered various bones to further bloodline assimilations during the day. A usual thing for him by now, and obviously a particular focus was scrounging around for scarlet hoof bones. He ate a sizable quantity over the course of the day, but by sunset he’d stuffed himself thrice on the bones with dismay of making limited progress stuffing his heart as well.

[Consumed Scarlet hoof horse bloodline! Assimilation progress 65%]

With at least one more day he could expect to fill out this bloodline, and hopefully make progress on his second Nexus quest. Additionally, besides the constant stream of horse bones, he occasionally found chunks of bone from Kandir giants. The type he found revealed that the physical versions were far more common.

[Consumed Warborne Kandir giant bloodline! Assimilation progress 12%]

Following the long day’s search, and confirmation of safety, he retreated to his tunnel and made a small helping of meat to enjoy something slightly better tasting. Human meat of course, it was the type most convenient to cut up at the moment.

But with the quick meal he relaxed and went to sleep at ease.

That didn’t make the land above so quiet though. Unbeknownst to him, a quiet group of travellers walked through the hypothermic night air and entered his cave.