As the world itself seemed to shake, bursts of power flew up through the ground and sent violent expulsions of snow upwards without rhyme or reason. If not bad enough, accompanying those bursts of snow were plumes of mana so powerful they extended into the higher sky and burst apart clouds with ease.

Without hesitation, the Sage created a barrier around all three and watched the chaos unravelling. His face remained stuck on a look of disgust at the abundant mana entering this mountain all of a sudden.

All of this kept in place by a single divine relic, something he thought he understood well enough, being a Sage and all.

As for the dragon’s thoughts… looking at its ice-cream body, he couldn’t help but wonder if it needed to be moved somewhere else. Unlike a normal mountain filled with mana, this place would become a ground zero for war between several top creatures.

As the barrier provided sufficient protection from bursts of mana and the shaking environment, he asked, “I can move you to a safe mountain range elsewhere, if you’d like.”

But he met with a response straight away, “Not yet… Can I ask for two small things instead?” With a nod the dragon immediately listed two items, neither of which proved difficult to provide.

A re-usable magical weapon activated with mana, one which specifically performed soul attacks. A smart decision in the Sage’s opinion as few non-spiritual creatures had those sorts of defences amongst the lower levels.

Its second request was identification to the Ancient empire of man, providing him with full immunity within the border. Effectively, he’d become a citizen of the human empire and protected just like any other within their lands. This was the dragon’s security, his way out if things on the mountain turned south.

Figuratively, that is. The empire was actually north-east of the Evelard range.

Neither of the two are hard to acquire for a Sage though, and he achieved both of them at this very moment.

Taking out two relevant objects, he introduced them to the dragon hastily. The first being a strange lantern on a chain, the candle holder replaced with an octahedron, its tips extended like a diamond. Every side was a green-tinted glass pane with a thin metal cage holding the structure together. Of it all, only one of the triangular faces opened to reveal an empty space within.

“This is a soul lantern, I could never find much use for it. It’s a mid-rank Supreme tool, and at full power can kill Mythril rank warriors or Mature rank wizards, but it requires souls to power. It may be activated to release either a single beam containing a tenth of its max power, or create a long-lasting light which burns the souls of anything nearby. Does it fit your requirements?” He introduced the item with sufficient fervour to draw the dragon immediately.

How powerful were humans of that strength?

Naturally, they matched mythril tier beasts, and those are easily comparable to normal, fully grown dragons!

Just this thing alone might be enough to kill the thing lurking further inside the battlefield, and soul harvesting wasn’t that tough to him. It just meant killing… a lot of creatures.

He first asked, “How many souls are required to fill it up? Souls from unintelligent creatures around level 5.” From the moment he asked it, the obvious answer could not be pretty.

“1000 souls. It decreases to 250 for those around level 15.” In other words, if he killed 50 human hunters on the mountain it would have enough of a charge to deal with any dire threats in the near future. And in fairness… It wasn't the worst idea. Alternatively, was it too cruel to slaughter hundreds of small beasts just to have a few powerful attacks?

Well, if he went after bugs, then he wouldn’t feel that bad about it. There was no shortage of these things even in such an environment. With such logic, he didn’t think it too hard for this weapon to see use a few times. After thinking it through well enough, he believed a weapon of this calibre to be more than useful even including its downsides.

Also, it would continue to be useful as he grew stronger!

The second item appeared as a small statue, an armoured man standing on a flat surface, likely for stability. Made of a dark coppery metal, he wondered what position this statue represented. With the armoured man standing casually, his sword leaning over his shoulder, it was an interesting pose to say the least.

Rather than pride, power, or reverence to an empire… It held a freeing attitude like no one could ever tie down the armoured man.

“This statue represents my status as a Sage, within the empire, simply showing it will grant you the identity of my subordinate. It is unlikely other nations know what this one represents though. Additionally, it contains part of my aura and can be released for five minutes. After which it takes a week to recover and use again,” he spoke of the item so casually but the dragon knew the importance of such an item could not be understated.

Perhaps it was cheap to produce, but the identity of a Sage’s subordinate in any land, on any world, is incredible! If he couldn’t stay on the mountain, then hiding until he reached the empire would be a perfectly easy plan to execute.

And the full aura of a sage would scare anything trying to kill him, perhaps being the only surefire method of escaping against high-level beasts. Against a human, it held far less promise, as some might see through the item’s nature.

However, seeing the two items he almost agreed before a single thought realised that carrying such things wasn’t so easy. “You wouldn’t be able to throw in any low-rank dimensional storages… Right?” He felt a bit cheap for asking for such a thing, but not much else could be done.

The man shook his head and replied, “I don’t carry those around.” Looking over to his niece, it wouldn’t hurt for her to bridge the gap made earlier. Asking her out loud, “Raccelline, do you have any small storage tools, like the necklace your mother gave you?”

“For the dragon?” Her voice remained quiet while asking, almost like she feared either hearing those words. At the same time, her uncle was lost as to why that became her primary concern, but confirmed it regardless, perhaps she still felt guilty over the incident with his tail. She then retrieved a belt from her own dimensional storage and waved it around while saying, “Sofia gave me this, but it didn’t go with any of my clothes! You can have it instead, dragon.”

Looking at the belt, it was a black leather with some sort of fabric attached to the back and sides. Along with silver studs down the middle, it was no wonder this design didn’t fit even the young girl’s sense of fashion. Even a child can tell black leather doesn’t work with bright dresses!

She slowly approached and wrapped the belt around his waist, jumping back a few steps when he shifted even if he was the one truly frightened. But it did not take long before she tightened it properly and secured the clasp.

Thinking about it… Was it disrespectful to allow the niece of a Sage to dress him? These sorts of things never really occurred to him, given he never wore clothes and all.

Still, he said to Raccelline in her tongue, “Thank you for the help.” Looking at the Sage who seemed bemused by the dragon actually speaking like this, and so he followed up, “Thank you, Sage, my Baranot is still poor. I hope to visit one day.” Using simple, short sentences, he did his best to converse with the man.

What he did not expect was the Sage casting a spell, and overlaying it to his throat. Roars escaped his mouth, one after another, and the dragon just barely understood what was being said. “I can bring you along. This place is… dangerous now. My draconic has never been good.”

Looking around, the explosions and eruptions of mana finally quelled, a ring of clouds now forming all around the mountain range much to his dismay. Such a sight would naturally draw attention, and the surrounding mana felt unbelievable for once.

Just the mere air now exceeded the mana density below the winter’s hope tree! Everything would begin evolving crazily, although that secretly worked into his benefit. If more things evolved, he’d have more bloodlines to absorb.

This time using the mental link, he replied quite sure of himself, “I’d prefer to stay. If things become too tough, I’ll make the journey.” There was no need for anyone to stay around now, and the Sage flew away faster than he could see. Even the flash of light following their trail vanished over the horizon just seconds later.

And once more, he was alone, standing within the remnant barrier. As shown by the Sage it was designed to be easy to leave but hard to break into, letting him wait out the ending of this apocalyptic seeming event. He finally decided to check that new title he received, not forgetting about it all this time.

[Divine essence: Release a minutia of divinity over time, this has no attacking capabilities and only presents your status]

A good title for a new demigod who constantly needed to show off their powers to earn respect from the masses, but why would he need it?

As he sat in the barrier, those knocked unconscious by the demigod’s power only now began to reawaken from the environment literally shifting around them, avalanches running down the mountain constantly and mana exploding to levels unheard of for an insignificant place like this. In theory, things should’ve been fine inside the barrier whilst waiting things out… But from the figures flying towards the mountain he knew otherwise.

From all directions he saw nine figures, some frighteningly huge while others barely seemed larger than an adult human… although on approach he realised that not a single one actually stood on two legs.

Two of the beings were somewhat recognisable, with larger leathery wings and scales from head-to-toe… He almost mistook them as dragons for a few moments.

No, these were wyverns.

Unlike most four legged beasts, a wyvern only has two at the back of their large bodies. Instead, to make walking possible, their wings each provided a support which acted as front legs, this appendage was in fact a spike-like extrusion of bone connected to the joint. Many older wyverns even sharpened these extrusions to create devastating weapons.

Some other differences between them and dragons also existed, for example possessing wings at birth and lacking a sort of breath attack in most cases.

Three of the others approaching were giant birds, their sizes varied but neither appeared weak from size alone. The largest sported feathered wings on par with the wyverns, the smallest flew the fastest amongst all the nine figures, yet even its size did not appear small as it approached.

Furthermore, he couldn’t actually see if any creatures were being blocked by the largest mountain in this place. Let alone nine, there might be twelve or thirteen approaching…

And they all gathered onto the battlefield.

He didn’t have any choice but to hunker down and hide within the barrier, hoping some way to escape remained. But no matter what, the first two giants landed down at the same time, staring at one another first before looking over to the barrier right beside a giant pit.

One of the two was the incredibly fast bird, some sort of cross between a kestrel and crane, it roughly matched the stormfrost lord in size but the mana within it utterly crushed any comparison. At the very least it was stronger than that girl, and since she could have killed him instantly, the odds were absolutely not in his favour.

The other creature, ironically, was a wolf. This one wasn’t actually that large, being about half the bird’s size, but its mana absolutely compared! With a fur of pure white, what stood out was the third eye on its forehead, just from sight alone his mind felt vulnerable in its presence. This was likely a glacier wolf which unlocked that rare path of magic, and it just continued to grow higher and higher.

However, neither of the two took action, especially against the young dragon in a barrier which exceeded them. The wolf already noticed its power as the barrier completely nullified any psychic attacks thrown towards it, and in those seconds of confrontation a total of thirteen gargantuan beasts finally touched down.

Not a single human entered this place, how many would dare fight these monstrous beings?

The wyverns touched down last, looking around and appearing confident in their strength compared to everything else. One spoke out first, “It seems we missed whatever laid here, but this place appears useful. Who is willing to challenge me for it?”

“Shut up already, you wyverns really are the dumb cousins. The moment we fight we’ll have to deal with the humans nearby… But I agree this is useful.” Unsurprisingly, someone saw their words as utter nonsense. The largest bird, a roc, took action to negotiate.

“Before that, why is this hatchling here?”

“It’s a Sage’s barrier, they likely obtained the item.” The roc looked down at the little dragon but didn’t take particular notice of it, although… Was its body actually made of ice-cream with wafer scales? It found the small creature quaint, but dismissed it having any power in this future struggle.

At most it would simply live on the mountain for the foreseeable conflict before leaving.

“The traditional method then?” One of the creature’s he hadn’t seen properly spoke up here. With two giant wings of thin blue scales, this was a massive butterfly unlike anything ordinary. Its two drooping antennas felt the surroundings to tell who was here, and transmitting audible sounds all around.

Unfortunately, the dragon couldn’t understand a single word any of them spoke. These beasts all used the same language, but he only knew draconic and a bit of the ancient human language, Baranot. Humans possessed hundreds of languages between them, but only three stood out and became standards.

No one opposed the butterfly's words , although the wyverns snorted a bit, annoyed that they couldn’t dominate through pure strength alone once more. Although… It wasn’t even a matter of fact if they could win, most wyvern are just annoyingly arrogant against anyone not obviously stronger.

“Before we begin, does everyone have a suitable representative?” Once more the roc took control and moderated things, preparing the playing field for everyone in the upcoming years.

Out of the group, only the wolf spoke up though, “I lack a candidate. However, I sense some brethren on this mountain, I will provide protection for the cubs until this ends.”

No one raised a fuss over this, knowing evolved glacier wolves in general protected other packs when possible. Every single one knew the rarity of their evolution and maximised the chances for more to appear, it was the main reason such a race existed in every arctic environment.

“On the next full moon, the Rite of Possession will begin!

Every beast flew off immediately, even the wolf floating simply through psychic power. Just as they arrived, everyone had already left, the dragon having absolutely no clue what just happened.

However, he knew those beasts all reached an agreement on something. A foreboding warned him of the future ahead, but at the same time he knew some chances remained. A hatchling wasn’t worth hunting for those beasts… But that wouldn't stop things like the hunters from appearing.

With the small golden orb rolling around his stomach, things didn’t actually seem that bad.

Chaos brewed and he felt ready for its arrival.