Unable to finish assimilating this wolf’s bloodline, he changed his plan to simply finishing the store of blood and enjoying some of the meat in the coming future. But for the next two days, he focused on consuming the Monk while learning more spells. Radiant burst accidentally blinded him on his first casting attempt though…

What was even going through his mind? Of course the blinding flash of light blinds dragons. He just thought that closing his eyes would be enough to withstand the power of the spell, that guess was horribly wrong.

This also confirmed a throwaway point in the book describing the Nexus as well, whereupon the prompts and statuses are objects which appear in the real world. But if someone is temporarily blinded it can’t be seen, disproving the idea that it was ‘just in anyone’s head’.

The exception being blind individuals, where for some reason the Nexus made an exception to them and in fact mentally transmitted the information. It’s obvious as to why… But at the same time, why does it happen?

Finally feeling a bit more confident in defence, he learnt two more fire spells, Explosive seal and Great flame bolt. They featured 14 and 19 words, respectively. The length of Great flame bolt may be surprising given that it simply expanded on the Flame bolt spell, but such magic is never so simple.

In order of introduction, Explosive seal contained the blast of an Explosive bolt but without any shrapnel, instead directly blowing up anything which stepped within a certain radius, approximately half a metre, of the seal.

But Great flame bolt? Well, first try to grasp its power. Begin by taking the sheer quantity of flames in a Cone of fire and create a stable projectile which holds the compressed energy until contact is made.

This spell could melt regular steel on impact! Hot is merely an understatement as it could easily burn away a Bronze ranked warrior’s skin and muscle. With these two spells he believed that hunting anything at the winter’s hope trees sat just beyond his grasp.

All he required was a sufficient method to escape if things turned south…

As he travelled to the winter's hope tree later that night he couldn’t avoid being happy over the rate of improvement he enjoyed. Today progressed his growth by a significant degree and he was close to halfway through that Monk’s bloodline assimilation. Also, to avoid growing bored of the same meat, he swapped between it and the wolf once every couple meals.

[Consumed Monk bloodline! Assimilation progress 48%]

* * *

No humans wandered through the lightly lit night this time though, the recently passed new moon meant that only a faint ounce of moonlight reached them. But that just made staying at the tree even easier as he could quietly penetrate the trunk and lapped up his usual portion of sap.

Once drinking enough and casting Snap chill, a look at the Nexus showed his current progress.

[Consumed Winter’s hope tree! Assimilation progress 25%]

And after checking that no problems remained, he picked up the dagger and began to set off with the cloak of darkness.

“Wow! It is the dragon! Uncle, How’d you know he’d be here?” The voice of a young girl woke up many creatures around the tree, but she clearly wasn’t bothered and instead pointed towards him in the faint light.

Hearing the voice, he spun around to look at its source while vaguely understanding her words. A young child and older human walked towards him, only their silhouettes visible in the low light. Somehow that man guessed he would return here… In retrospect, the way of knowing wasn’t some secret. Being found like this entirely fell on his own baseless confidence, and in the future he had to exercise further caution.

And while he would have ran given an ordinary situation… This time he remained in place from both shock and fear.

The more apparent reason was this young girl’s mana, the concentration of which didn’t feel all that inferior to the winter’s hope tree. It wasn’t the level of power that amazed him though, but rather that a child of such age reached it.

A human child of all things!

But the scariest thing was this girl’s uncle, who already threw out a small ball of light so that everyone could see one another. Although, he believed the two humans could see perfectly fine in the weak moonlight. It didn’t really matter though, as this man didn’t appear in his mana sense…

He had yet to find a single thing which outright hid from this sense, and he instantly knew escape to be a pointless idea given the girl’s power. Who knew how strong her uncle could possibly be!

The combination of a young girl in pigtails walking around in a blue dress, with her bald uncle in a thin jacket and some sort of wool tabard, was undoubtedly the weirdest thing about this sight. But in no way was it nonsensical with this degree of power.

The man ignored the girl’s question and focused his gaze on the hatchling’s, calmly saying,“We don’t need your body, young dragon. Can you understand me?” But as the dragon didn’t respond apart from backing away, he simply presumed it to be the case of a language barrier. Before doing anything else, he turned to the girl for a second to reply with, “I have yet to see any other simple sources of life essence, Raccelline.”

The dragon knew the man wanted to communicate, but had absolutely no clue what to say or do. His small step back in trepidation unfortunately became lost in translation, but he also confirmed how the pair found him. It precisely fit his own guess.

With his niece now standing to the side, looking between the dragon and tree repeatedly, the man prepared another spell. No signs of rings or mana reactions appeared, instead the young dragon suddenly felt a heavy mental weight stick to his mind and refused to let go.

“Can you understand me now?” The bald uncle’s voice blurted out in his mind, catching him off-guard but not to the degree of surprising him. Nodding to reply, he received a follow-up right after. “To talk you just have to think of what you wish to tell me and imagine it moving along that link.”

This magic worked in a charmingly simple way, and after locating the mental connection he did as told to reply, “Like this?”

“Yes. Do not mind my niece, her father required that I fulfil a promise to spend more time with her.” To see such a powerful human retain emotions almost depressed him, mostly from growing jealous that his race simply couldn’t adhere to such things. The man didn’t linger on his contorting face though, and Raccelline was speaking to herself about seeds or something.

“Great human, is there something I can help you with? I don’t believe any of the materials here are suited for your level,” with an air of caution invoked, he finally replied, and no longer appearing as childish. Delicate matters had to be handled well or he risked an unbearable backfire.

“Let’s move from here, no need to bother the other beasts.” Walking in relative silence, aside from some mumbling from the girl following, he simply couldn’t understand what about him interested the man.

Well, he knew of one thing. But even his body couldn’t be of that much interest to a person of his calibre. No one could ever learn of his assimilations though.

After moving a distance from the tree, the floating light above being their only light, he began communicating once more with the dragon. “I won’t take up much time. You see, I’ve spent the past few years trying to find the divine relic of an extinct species with little luck. My strength is too little to find it magically, but searching by hand takes too much time.”

“In other words, you primarily rely on asking locals… Why would you choose this weak mountain though?” It made sense that he of all things on the mountain received this question… But also why him at the same time? And why now? There were stronger things here, especially at the node tree, or perhaps on the higher mountains.

“I presumed that something interesting remained here for dragons to leave an egg. Was I wrong?” He didn’t seem to be asking the hatchling, rather considering the fault of this logic. It seems that no one thought that a dragon was left here for being too weak!

He decided to move the conversation along, then asking, “Can you describe this species?” While those rune-covered bones were powerful even so long after death, he did not believe they could be divine relics. As such he thought bringing up the items a waste of time, would he also mention the remains of a wyrm king and lonesome yeti in the meantime?

Additionally, the man clearly picked up on the dragon’s phrasing, guessing that it knew of something powerful in the area. But he did not react, how many times over the last few months had he heard of some incredible object that turned out either mediocre or just average?

“A race of giants who focused their efforts on strengthening in bloodshed or reinforcing themselves with souls. I unfortunately lack their titles, but they were giants of a mountain kingdom called Kandir. Most adults were several times the size of humans and…” The list of identifiable traits and culture went on for another two minutes at the least. He didn’t really pay attention to it as only the physical features mattered.

Gathering up the words to explain his findings, a loud crack suddenly sounded out and he turned around with anger, feeling a familiar burst of pain, albeit faint. Behind his back, Raccelline snapped off a portion of his tail, dipping her finger in the ice-cream to taste it.

“Uncle! It’s made of ice-cream, can we take it back?” She didn’t truly seem to understand what just happened, and just continued eating it. Her guardian on the other hand rubbed his forehead at her actions.

He said aloud, “You don’t break off your pets’ legs to take a look, do you?”

While she didn’t appear to take notice of his words, her eyes moved away from him. Remaining silent while eating some more, she quickly realised that what she did was wrong. “But it’s made of ice-cream…”

“And you can already have all the ice-cream you want at home. Why do you need to make a child suffer for it?” Her blank face turned to a frown and began pouting a bit, looking to the floor while just playing with the wafer scales.

“Sorry…” She practically whispered, even with his relatively astute hearing it was almost blocked out by a light breeze. Still, just because she realised her mistake didn’t mean he was happy for being taken as food!

The man spoke to him now, at the same time rubbing the girl’s head to further calm her down. “My apologies, she’s still adapting to the outside world. I hope that wound doesn’t hurt too much at the least.” Flipping his other hand over to its palm side, a large green strawberry appeared. However, just moments later he caught sight of a green glow from within, not to mention the copious mana contained as well. “I don’t carry many sources of life essence for hatchlings, but this should help you.”

The man placed the small, glowing strawberry on the floor in front of him, and he cast Telekinesis to cut off a small sliver with the dagger he carried around, eating that bit first to test the plant’s effect on him as well as the Nexus’ response.

The thin piece broke down near instantly and increased the golden ball within him by a small but noticeable amount. At the very least it grew 10% larger!

[Consumed Stratnum fruit! Assimilation progress 0%

Consumed Stratnum fruit! Received 3% EXP]

Assimilation progress was expected… but this was a bit too much experience was it not?

Without hesitation he cut it into swallowable chunks and made quick work of the fruit, seeing his experience rise without stopping, the final result surprising. Meanwhile, assimilation only hit 1% after the whole fruit broke down.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Pure mana Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

16

EXP

78%

Unallocated Stat Points: 15

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

3

Growth

15

Magic

10

Mutation Rate

5

He gained a level and a half from a single fruit!

At the same time, he wondered how powerful of a place this sort of thing grew in. Not only did it provide a boatload of experience, the golden ball in his belly was now at least four times larger! This had to be a month's growth at the very least.

“Already consumed it? A hatchling normally needs a week to digest this thing, but I suppose you’re special for surviving this long. It seems you know something about my matter then.” Evidently, they saw everything related to his rapid digestion of the fruit, but by moving on immediately he figured the man held no intention to delve deeper.

While rapid consumption of food is strange, calling it rare or powerful is a joke.

He realised that this might actually be a perfect moment to have someone else clean up his problems, and decided to just tell this man about the battlefield. “I found the giants you spoke of, but also some with Elder guard bloodline. As well as some powerful bones covered in runes.”

“Tell me about the runes. Anything you know personally or inherited, please.” He knew the man believed his draconic memories to hold some sort of key, but that simply wasn’t the case.

“I can’t draw them. But they possessed the ability to manipulate mana around them and retained some sort of will, trying to control my body at the time.” Trying to think up any further details without revealing his advanced bloodline, there wasn’t time to as the man cut his thoughts short.

The slightly slouched back straightened with a crack, his face losing its friendliness as an oppressive aura covered the entire mountain, at its very core he felt every flow of mana nearby move in a very specific movement with this one man as the source. But… He wasn’t actually controlling anything. Not even the smallest drop of mana came from this man in the process, dominating an entire mountain through existence alone.

Just his mere natural aura forced everything in well over a mile into submission. Mana and nature, beast and man.

Animals ran in fear to escape the oppression. And while many hunters slept through it, those who stayed awake for night watch sensed it suffocating them. Without exception forcing them to retreat into caves and hiding as pressure bore down on their minds.

He said a single sentence to the hatchling.

“Take me there.”