Seeing the arrival of sap come to a halt, he jammed the dagger into the tree a bit more to loosen its side a bit more, more sap flowed to form a consistent line down the trunk. With his tongue below, it didn’t take long before he had a mouthful of the stuff.

[Consumed Winter’s hope tree! Assimilation progress 7%]

Once more its silvery white portion rapidly vanished, and all he found was a larger golden ball in his stomach. However, things around the tree turned for the worse.

Hundreds of leaves suddenly fell, utterly lifeless based on sight alone, and mana sense told him that the tree’s mana flow slowed down. If he continued the tree would undoubtedly die quickly, although it was far from this critical point.

Still, he’d rather not draw attention to himself. Something at the node tree might take note of the weakening mana flow, and that spelt a quick death in his book. Licking up the last of the leaked sap, he cast a Snap chill to seal off the exit. As it created a layer of ice, it should help a tree like this recover quicker as well.

For now he wanted to see to what extent the small golden pearl inside him encouraged growth. If just a few hours worth, then he may as well give up after assimilating the tree.

Sitting beneath its leaves, he found another book to read and rested to his heart’s content. This specific book went over the known history of an empire by the name of Sramluum, created by a race of underground human hybrids who possessed the features of certain insects. While possessing bloodlines, they more often made use of the alternate system of warriors and wizards.

The book itself was more informative than anything, and as a small spoiler it ended with the Sramluum empire being destroyed and sending all the hybrids back underground regardless of whether it seemed ‘humane’ or not. Now what took its place was known as the Empire of Covenants, as well as several smaller nations all around.

And while not entirely clear, these were all human-filled lands. Of the possible places his parents left him, this empire and its surroundings remained one of the best guesses so far. He just wished that the hunter corpses had any proper identification after being burnt to a crisp.

One thing that every draconic book loved to throw around was how much of a joke the morals of other races were, but being dragons meant they never truly cared about any of it. At first the jabs were funny, but with it happening in every book written about other races…

It really grew grating, he wanted information to actually understand a bit about this world, why not compile a joke book if it mattered so much!

Aside from that, he didn’t know many specifics about his possible location. Of the several continents he couldn’t narrow down anything besides that they had to possess human dominant nations.

Furthermore, he had yet to find the term Kandir, which drastically reduced his ability to narrow things down. This one lead may as well be his only connection to the outside world!

He inevitably came to the book’s end and looked at the tree with more detail once again. The mana within remained sluggish compared to its original, but the scab of ice he placed already dropped off to reveal a smooth silver bark once more.

Feeling quite peckish, he headed home with that golden droplet still within, yet to shrink in any noticeable way. If time alone could not break down the substance, he would have to read up on magic to digest it in the future.

While travelling home he also picked up a few branches of ice-mind berries to complete its bloodline, and grabbed any snowy field roots as well. While he only found one of the latter, its size made it suitable for at least two weeks of meaty meals.

And on the side, his tail regrew just a couple hours after resting under the tree. Within the expected time frame in his opinion.

Once inside he repeated that morning’s meal but adding some crushed field root on the meat for extra flavour. After breaking off his tail again, he began tucking into the half-finished pot of blood, gulping it down without hesitation. The taste of ice-cream between mouthfuls helped make things bearable.

But after finishing his tail he had to suffer drinking raw blood. It took a while, but he found a rhythm to keep it down in as few breaths as possible, doing his absolute best to avoid its vivid taste was of greatest importance.

[Consumed Stormfrost lord wolf bloodline! Assimilation progress 6%]

Following which, he ate the final Ice-mind berries required for its assimilation. Seeing the value slowly tick over to 100% and the process begin. The heat, while nice, reminded him of those first assimilations with absolutely regular beasts. And even the slight weakness was nothing much, he even felt enough strength to continue walking about and even cast spells!

The weakness passed and everything returned to usual.

“So much for being extremely powerful,” he said, used to commenting on most things for his own amusement.

[Assimilated Ice-mind berry bloodline! 1 new bloodline potentially available]

And the rewards turned out even more lacklustre. He wondered if this was a case of plants having less useful features to a dragon, or simply a matter of growing strong enough that none of them helped. He could test such things by consuming the bloodlines of completely new creatures in other places!

If the weakest ones also provided no bloodlines then clearly it came down to relative strength.

For the rest of the evening he simply went over several spells to ensure everything activated as expected. Additionally, with the problem of almost failing to kill that wolf, he believed that a better fire spell was of absolute importance.

Or rather, he needed some proper way to remove armour and for that he knew of two ways. Part of him found an intense draw to just going with ‘big flames’, which, in fairness, the various spell books really made sound amazing.

Yes, he wasn’t at all biased. Even while being made of ice-cream…

But he admitted the far easier method was to utilise a corrosive spell, there being several types for this purpose. One was technically a water spell called Acid splash, a very simple name which performed exactly as expected. The other was a dark spell called Weakened Degeneration, and technically many humans classed it as necromancy.

However, dragons didn’t care about ‘taboos’ so much. What else could be expected of his race?

Whilst Degeneration was an Intermediate true spell, this weakened form had been kindly transformed into a 17 word spell by a dark element dragon. And while acid certainly possessed far more usefulness…

Degeneration possessed the ability to sap ‘power’ from practically anything. Necromancy hadn’t become taboo amongst humans for no reason after all.

Also, for the fun of it he selected a light spell called Radiant burst to replace his old blinding spell. While unlikely, he might one day meet an enemy immune to his stunning spells, in which case he’d need it. But the other reason for learning was because he really just needed an excuse to keep up with vocabulary.

If he one day saw a very useful light element spell, the prospect of learning 50 words is a lot easier than 100, as anyone with fundamentals in maths might be capable of telling you.

Sarcasm aside, he got to learning Weakened Degeneration until sleep took hold.

Only once his eyes closed, and mind drifted, did the golden pearls within collapse into a liquid and spread throughout his body. At an incredible rate, his body grew a few inches longer in the next hour! Then his head grew larger, along with body, claws, lungs, stomach, and finally the most important organ saved for last.

His dragon heart increased in size by just a smidge.

But just this increase amounted to almost a full week of growth with the Nexus’ boost! If repeated thirty more times, he’d finish his growth phase instantly. But after the golden orbs completely enhanced him, the night remained quiet.

At least, nothing of note on the mountain happened.

* * *

Things in town below had changed for the better, a previous blockage indirectly caused by nobles had finally come to an end as investigations closed. No longer did anyone fear that the dragon caused such injuries as they received small rumours which said someone amongst the nobles betrayed the group.

Without any unbearable risk left, hunters by the dozen prepared to head up the mountain for their own chance of obtaining a rare dragon body.

Even if just a hatchling, the chance to bathe in and consume dragon blood remained a valuable change to them all. Most groups contained just one or two Bronze ranked leaders! This was still more than enough for a normal hatchling.

But within the capital where tensions were rising, the Bachlar and Augusticus families had no idea how to feel about the results of their blood magic tests. They spent well over a month purposely cycling false information about the dragon’s danger, using an empty mountain to gather clues on their childrens’ deaths, but was this the result?

The blood of a dozen guards mixed with their children and no evidence of their survival or death!

Not just that, but no remains of the two Bronze ranks had turned up yet! So no one could confirm what even killed them. By analysing the cause of death, they would know which side betrayed whom, setting up blame easily.

So this lack of information may have infuriated the two nobles most. At the same time it only decisively wedged them even further apart, suspicion growing even more!

Someone also revealed that the Bachlar family provided their prodigal child with a Mid-rank magical tool, not surprising on its own given his talent, but instead worsening the case due to its effects.

A wand which could cast a Lava spear spell up to 10 times a day! This was a Beginner true spell bordering the Apprentice tier as well!

But so far, the king himself hadn’t made a noise about the recent situation, treating everything between the two nobles as hot air. On one hand the two preferred this, it allowed them to continue in private, but it also meant that no real force was currently arbitrating their spat. They had to carefully navigate the problem without growing too emotional when making a decision, because the moment either side went too far without proof… They better be right or a noble family would vanish.

In reality though, the king in question hadn’t intervened because other matters drew away his attention.

Like the fact someone assassinated the wife of a duke just weeks ago. But what made this even worse were the signs pointing to the royal family having done so!

It turned into the ridiculous case of his own daughter being responsible!

Indeed… No one powerful in the kingdom even held a single smidge of attention to the sleeping dragon on a mountain high above.

* * *

When waking up in the morning, he completed the routine of eating some wolf meat, and drinking its blood with the help of his own tail… Except, in the middle of eating he wondered to himself if it was slightly larger.

It took a lot longer than he was proud of to admit, as he only checked after that realisation, but the golden pearls only activated once he went to sleep. And they absolutely did a sufficient job of pushing him through the growth stage at incredible speed, he just had to avoid taking too much from the winter's hope tree or risk facing a backlash.

Hoping that a single night allowed it to fully heal, he drank down as much blood as possible while eating his tail. Not even hesitating to set off immediately to check on its condition. Alas, reality is often the most disappointing.

While his attack from yesterday appeared fully healed, the same could not be said for its mana flow. Appearing almost entirely the same as moments after drinking its sap, he simply saw no point in sticking around today and left just twenty minutes after arriving. Much to the elk’s confusion. It couldn't truly understand why a powerful being similar to itself wouldn’t try to stay by the tree at all times..

But it did not linger, and instead remained silent as he walked off. With such a result on the tree’s recovery, he made it to the battlefield to once more to look around for giant bones, this time forming a goal of assimilating the Warborne bloodline.

Learning Weakened Degeneration might have been the only other task available to him at the moment, and between more spellcasting or digging he knew the preferred option.

Casting Lesser flame, he continued digging through the battlefield as usual. A vast set of underground tunnels now covered the empty land and moving underground in the region could not have been easier. Although, he realised that perhaps sticking only to the outer reaches was a mistake on its own.

When he first arrived, all the best bones existed further in, by similar logic they should also exist underneath those places.

Using a Third eye to check the extent of the safe zones, he eventually settled on a region with somewhere between one to two white petals. Enough for some useful bones to be left far beneath.

Closer to the surface, he found a couple Warborne giant bones, but continued digging further down with ample expectations. On his second spiral pathway down, bulbs of cry-cotton came about again, but of little use to him this time. And while there may have been more balls of Elder guard bones below, he saw no point in searching them out.

But compared it to the previous time spent digging? Nothing actually changed, he just melted snow and ate bones this time round. Even then, plants showed up far more than any desirable bone, making his progress neither large nor small.

[Consumed Warborne Kandir giant bloodline! Assimilation progress 36%

Consumed Spiritcaller Kandir giant bloodline! Assimilation progress 10%]

And then he went back home, eating a regular serving of stormfrost wolf before finally getting some sleep. Because what hatchling in their right mind doesn’t try to sleep regularly?