He awoke to see a mighty mountain piercing a cloudy sky, a rich blizzard smothering him at every moment. But what caught him off-guard was the sheer cold. The freezing environment and blistering snowflakes crashing against him constantly.

Shivering, it was a first for him.

Shaking in the horrific weather, he steeled his mind and prepared to climb up the mountain, a perfectly stable albeit thin path circling around its perimeter to the peak. It was there he decided to take control.

Behind him lay nothingness, an endless spread of fog which seemed to extend out to infinity, leaving this mountain as the only thing in this space.

His mental space was limited, but this alone is enough for any dragon.

Travelling up a mountain is a slow and agonising thing, but still he suffered through the pain to head towards the top. On the way he licked up a small bit of snow on a whim… It tasted faintly of sweet berries. Not too surprised, he sighed over it and continued heading up.

Exhaustion seemingly disappeared, as his stamina allowed him to continuously climb as long as he willed. Time was only so much of a construct here, and he didn’t at all care about spending hours to reach the top.

Soon, he escaped the rocky base, hitting the point where increasingly thick snow blocked his path, requiring him to drag his body through it. Too loose to step on, he risked sinking into an inescapable hole if he walked across.

But still, hours after beginning, he could see the peak in sight.

Dominating one’s mental space is a requirement, many dragons taking either one or two trips to complete such a thing.

The mountain’s top featured thick, heavy snow as well as a sort of suppression which overlaid on his mind at all times. It pushed him down, literally, trying to bury him at all times. He had to take control; to possess his own mental space.

No dragon should be ruled by their own natural powers!

And so he walked, compacting the snow with every few steps and withstanding this mountain’s brutal pressure. Its size wasn’t that incredible though, especially when compared to any in the Evelard range.

After all, it took half a day for humans to ascend the real mountain range. And with his body, such an ascension needed double the time at least… To simplify the analogy, this mental space was small.

No one truly knew how long it truly took, but he rose further, ascending into the cloud layer as an impeccable cold froze him. No longer stinging, he felt the biting chill penetrate to his deepest parts and attempt to snap him in half.

Being so close, he couldn’t give up now. When did he give up in the face of objective survival?

He beat back the ants, then killed their queen. Took control of a winter’s hope tree. And acquired a divinity!

Not even a year old and he already garnered more achievements than those ten times his age!

He passed through the clouds, every step harder than the last as the building pressure tried harder to demolish him with every miniscule rise.

But it couldn’t kill him, and that mattered most. He put up with the pain, it having never been a great fear of his, that belonged solely to death. And taking that decisive step forward…

A blinding light filled his vision, and so he squinted and turned away. The pressure’s seemingly endless growth vanished like a snuffed candle, and he breathed freely. The torturous cold vanished, replaced with a chilly, but pleasant, wind. Finally adjusting to the light, he looked outwards.

The thick clouds rested just steps below him, going on as far as he could see. A small width of blue sky rested above the clouds, quickly darkening into a sullen night sky filled with a multitude of stars.

In front, a single star rested at the intersection of sky and space, the source of light which blinded him.

A great roar claimed his place. He would forever be above his mental space, and nothing could shake that. The roar went on for minutes, echoing off somewhere until it resonated with the world itself. His voice controlled it, and his mind possessed it.

The successful dragon found a somewhat flat patch of snow at the peak and curled himself into a tight ball. Resting and eventually drifting to sleep for escape.

Moments later, he awoke in his home once more. The remaining life essence within his stomach had disappeared, but his body remained almost the exact same size. Opening his eyes fully showed two Nexus prompts waiting for him to check on.

[First growth phase completed. Growth status changed to Youngling.

Mental space dominated, containing the unique modification of ‘Flavoured Snow’. Mental fortifications may be proceeded as usual]

Both messages were within expectation, although hearing the Nexus confirm that fortification could continue was a slight relief. He had worried that some sort of modification to the process might be necessary, and he was wholly incapable of doing such a thing.

Which meant… Everything was actually okay?

Admittedly some peculiarities, but overall things didn’t seem too bad. One initially overlooked thing was that the sugar-mana of his heart was actually weaker than ordinary mana of other dragons, but he didn’t really care about that. Defence stopped being a concern sometime around having his leg bitten off by a young wassat.

And so, he just had to start training in all regards.

In the meantime, he realised that the new organ had filled with aura again, and by activating its innate ability, he condensed it to a fluid like before. While tempted to test it out on a spell, he knew better than to waste it, handing this portion over to the spirit.

The aura contained by the web increased and his body tingled for a few seconds before resting again. It seemed that awakening the spirit required minimal aura, and in just a day he might have a fully functioning Auric spirit!

Additionally, the strange aura producing sack gained the name of auric sack… A painfully rudimentary name as he failed to think up anything better.

If there was ever a good reason as to not name himself, this became it. In truth, even he believed himself worthy of a name, having grown some self-confidence in his strength and potential. But… Maybe he should leave choosing a name to someone good at it.

Yes, that was for the best. Perhaps that sage and his niece could have picked something suitable, but no point in regretting things now.

Rather than thinking too much, he decided to eat a bit. While the last bit of growth was minimal, even just growing by a single week intensified his appetite by a great amount. In a single meal, he ate the entire adult wassat, taking about an hour to get through its entirety.

In this time, he found the Auric sack about half-full, and decided to leave it a while longer. In the meantime, he wanted to learn the empowerment process a bit better. The first step being none other than to learn the spell which created a replacement material!

This is the most basic empowerment spell, and designed to simply change a dragon’s fleshy heart to something far more attuned to mana as well as truly durable. It’s like how wizards must grow and transform their magical pathways to avoid destroying them while casting higher tier spells.

If the heart cannot withstand its flow of mana, one of the two has to break… And hopefully it’s the spell.

Fortunately, the simplest empowerment spell is similar to the one used to forcefully enter his own mental space, and just 40 minutes later he fully learnt it. This speed would only accelerate as his mental world grew stronger as well, granting him a photographic memory soon enough and covering the only problem when learning these spells.

As for casting, he completed it without a hitch after learning so many True spells. Mana release couldn’t have been easier.

And it failed.

This was unsurprising as he read the next section, finding out that the spell required him to select a tiny spot of his heart, and focus the spell’s mana into that point. It then consumed the original flesh, and transformed it into a mana hybrid of a similar element. For most this only accounted for fire dragons gaining fire element hearts, or water dragons having water elements…

But being made of ice-cream caused this elemental transformation to make his heart more like candy! Although it raised the question of how he could condense it near infinitely as the Nexus claimed.

Still, he completed the first use of the empowerment spell with ease. A new small crystal appeared in his heart, this one sporting a similarly faint brown colour like the rest. Without lingering, he confirmed its mana being no different from the others and knew the spell worked as intended.

That alone was all the proof he needed, and it allowed him to return focus onto more important parts.

Like converting the mostly full aura sack into a liquid for the spirit, with feeding only taking a few more seconds. And now, the thing he cared most about could begin, the reason he suffered for a few hours in his own mind of all places.

Still unable to find this so-called entrance to the mental space, another casting of the spell pushed him in straight away. He just had to remember to actually sleep later, the strange state was no replacement for that required action.

Now the lengthy process could begin, and the first goal was to plan in his head how large to build the thing. He could choose the whole mountain, but even with its small size it might take months to reach the beginner stage…

But for now he decided to just pick a point and start with hitting the initial stage.

The use of a mental space is simple. It allowed him to create a Mind palace, one form of mental improvement. In fact, it would be the most important thing he trained in the upcoming months. This realm represented his very mind, but more importantly it was a sort of periphery which must be penetrated to attack the consciousness behind it.

In that case, how does anyone protect their mind?

Well, you build fortifications, like how any ruler builds a castle and fortress to defend themselves. The Mind palace takes on this role, although having a mental space isn’t simply available to all creatures.

Most humans cannot awaken their mental space, instead relying on techniques to directly improve their consciousness’ defences. These are far easier to train in at the start, but have a wildly lower potential compared to building palaces in a mental space. As such, most powerhouses destroy these defences and open their mind palace to restart this long training method!

Those first few years leave them incredibly fragile, and they have to remain secluded to stay safe.

However, Mind palaces aren’t the end. Very powerful ones may be demolished to enhance one’s mental space into a mental world, where the development of this whole world represents their mind’s protection. He knew very little about these worlds though, and the book contained no further detail.

So, building the Mind palace is a priority, and the process is rather easy. Having control over the mental space, he walked back beneath the blizzard and found a suitable place to begin. Everything began with a single brick.

For the first time since entering, things in reality actually changed.

Mana within him churned, reacting to a call from deep within and flowing straight into his ice-cream brain. Inside the mental space, the faint link to his mana appeared right after gaining control and he knew precisely what to do. Sensing it enter his mental space, he witnessed it turn into a moldable substance with ease.

It only took a single thought to mould the mana into the shape of a brick, the size of which compared to the bricks human made. While no design is forced upon younglings, recommendations to use existing architecture for this building are greatly encouraged.

However, moulding the mana is easiest. From there he had to first choose the starting position… And then completely merge it with his mental space!

Form. Place. Actualise!

The three steps of palace building, simplified to an extreme. And it was the third step which took the longest, being several times that of the other two combined. Albeit not difficult in any way.

He called upon more mana and coated the brick in the substance, keeping it separate from the moulded brick. The surrounding mana began to compress the brick, shrinking it slightly as the force increased. In the process he began to feel weary.

But he held on, knowing the process to be nearing completion. The pressure remained stable, squeezing the brick in place…

And then it all clicked.