Back home, the youngling put quite a bit of effort into finally breaking the extraordinarily tough bone. Eventually settling for roasting it before smashing it, the burnt bone being so much more fragile. From there he waited for it to cool before tasting.

[Consumed Aurora reindeer bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]

Well, that was merely the first tiny bone shard. Before long he completely devoured this one large bone and found an interesting but depressing figure.

[Consumed Aurora reindeer bloodline! Assimilation progress 2%]

This creature might not have some insanely powerful Advanced tier bloodline, but it wasn’t absolutely worthless. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t be sure on its exact tier from this alone. But at the very least, hoping he could find more Aurora reindeer meant gathering another useful bloodline.

Eating this bone and its marrow did little in the way of sustenance though, so he quickly made up for it by skinning the crystal-frilled lizard and throwing its diced body and organs into a large pot for cooking. As usual he threw away the guts, dead set on dumping them outside in the evening.

Leaving the bones to one side, he noticed that some parts of them actually featured a similar blue shine similar to their scales. The transformation from regular bone to something greater is rather important for most species, and perhaps the rise in mana naturally began this change. Especially since these lizards lacked the intelligence and methods to do this on their own after all.

Cooking the meat took a while but by the end he confirmed all the tough meat had become supple and settled for a slightly chewy texture. All that remained was to dig in and drink its blood.

The lizard blood didn’t appeal to him in the slightest, a not-so shocking fact. But still he cleaned up the smaller pot filled with blood with the help of some ice-cream to help swallow it all.

[Consumed Crystal-frilled lizard bloodline! Assimilation progress 30%]

But now came the full meal!

Telekinesis helped pull it out piece by piece and cool it down on a slab of ice, before long he was shovelling chunks of meat into his mouth without end. Most tasted alright with the usual seasoning of field roots he used, and before long he’d made his way through the full lizard’s body.

[Consumed Crystal-frilled lizard bloodline! Assimilation progress 55%]

Even with the skeleton he didn’t hope for more than 70% assimilation… Which meant he absolutely needed a second corpse. However, a different matter to consider was that most of the meat and blood broke down in just moments after entering his stomach. Clearly quicker than the stormfrost wolf’s body, he didn’t hold much hope for this bloodline.

Out of options regarding both the reindeer and these lizards, he really needed to think about finding proper sources of remains.

One thing worth checking out were other winter’s hope trees, although he felt himself forced into dismissal after hearing the wyvern’s words today. If it began gathering followers, then why not all the others as well? What if that crane already assigned those who bowed down to the various trees… In fact, did his position at his tree even exist anymore?

That wouldn’t do. He absolutely needed the sap for now.

However, before rushing off to do something dangerous, he wanted to grasp the spirit’s powers better. Whether merged or unmerged, he needed to be capable of fighting with it, especially to enhance his spells.

The easiest place to start was doing what he knew well, casting simple spells like Ice bolt and having the Auric spirit enhance each one. It didn’t take long to realise that aura’s strange properties meant that enhancement was far from simple.

Ice bolt failed to enhance. As did Earth bolt.

But both Wind blade and Fire bolt succeeded without a hitch!

Some more casting showed that Mental shock succeeded, as did Great flame bolt, but Glacier crush and Snow blade storm both failed.

And Explosive bolt failing practically summarised how the enhancement worked.

Aura could only be attached to non-solid spells, and in fact, he quickly learnt Water blade just to test this theory! The 8 word spell barely took ten minutes to memorise, although he actually cast it on his second attempt at pronunciation.

Without a hitch, his spirit enhanced the Water blade, and he further refined his understanding of the ability.

The enhancement only applied to non-physical, liquid, or gaseous attacks. Radiant burst actually improved as well, although he didn’t notice a change in power. Either the released aura had another effect, or on some spells it simply did nothing! That required further testing, and possibly on every individual spell.

Just to prove how weird it was, he attempted an enhancement on Darkness, the spell which created a region of light absorbing fog. He didn’t notice any effect directly, but testing it out on a critter showed the thing suddenly cowering in fear before fainting seconds later.

It reminded him of what happens if you expose weak creatures to the pressure of aura. And he understood how the fog worked.

This enhancement ability was amazing!

He spent the better part of 6 hours making it through all the hypotheses and experiments, but a rough idea of this ability formed in his mind. Additionally, he didn’t actually have to release aura for the enhancement to occur, the spirit merely used its own internal buffer. Although, currently it could barely enhance five Beginner true spells before growing exhausted and retreating. But just a single enhanced Great flame bolt produced damage on par with weaker Apprentice true spells, the ability to jump part of a tier was an amazing feat for anyone used to spellcasting.

So… What would happen if he further boosted this power with more points in Magic?

Or he could use some Strength to better make use of the merged spirit's drastic power.

So many choices, but so few points.

He chose to clear his mind with a walk and learning how to run with the spirit merged, at the same time planning to dig up anything worthy of intrigue. If he couldn’t even escape with his best physical form, how could he hope to survive the upcoming dangers?

After leaving, his eyes looked around to pick a choice of venturing. Obviously the battlefield still held those corpses at the very bottom, as well as the Elder guard bones… Although those would probably all kill him. Everything was either too strong or too weak to fit his requirements… What a depressing moment.

Well, he still had the winter’s hope tree as well as a few plants in this place. Also, he could give the battlefield one more look for other plants deeper under the snow!

That seemed to be the quickest option, and he could try out climbing using the spirit in that huge hole. Killing two birds with one stone naturally made more sense, and he began walking over. “Merge,” he said aloud and pushed himself forward gently.

Flying through the air with a leap, he timed his legs to kick off just as he touched the ground…

But he missed.

A second of tumbling came to an end, and he picked himself off the snow and tried again. His foot hit the ground, but skidded on contact and caused him to trip. Another tumble stopped his momentum and forced him to restart. This happened several more times, although he did take a second step by the eighth try. Too bad he failed trying to perform the third and tumbled again.

By this point, even with the constant failures, he felt that the speed and timing of it all made a lot more sense. In fact, he realised that improving his Mind palace was the fastest way of adapting as he’d be able to react better.

Anyway, the constant rushing forward already reached the battlefield, and he saw the spirit only slightly weakened by the constant attempts. Likely due to each step being rather weak, unlike a full powered jump or attacking with aura.

Realising he should learn a slow fall spell later on, he decided to descend the slightly slanted hole by sliding there. His body helped slow the descent, and then it became a matter of just checking for any plants far underground, or even bones he’d never seen before.

And he did actually find a new plant! To reach it, he simply dug his way over with Water control, chucking removed snow into the giant hole.

But this came with its own downside when he swallowed a piece of the small spherical fruit..

[Consumed Spirit-blitz pome! Received 3% EXP

Consumed Spirit-blitz pome! Assimilation progress 0%]

That sounded good… until he found the world spinning and a grievous headache suddenly assaulted his mind. Quickly casting the spell to enter his mental space, he received a horrible shock as bright white bolts descended from the clouds above all around him!

Drawing on as much mana as he could, the mouldable power quickly transformed into a dome of the substance all over him, helping to block the barrage of lightning from damaging his mind. Every so often he had to disperse the mana and replace it with a new layer, but just this defended the storm well enough. After some rounds it dissipated and simply left him in the usual snowy mental space.

Leaving did not take long, and he returned to the small tunnel used to reach the small fruit. With just a few chunks having been eaten, he looked at the rest in trepidation.

It had to be good for such an effect. And given that he easily defended it, the bloodline’s power shouldn’t kill him. He debated collecting some more.

Even the simplest building could defend against eating this fruit, but he remained days from such a goal. It worked amazingly at training him to defend mental attacks, and on that basis, he quickly found the four more in his mana sense and dug them all up.

That was one place down, now to try out the others.

Merging with the spirit once more, he easily jumped halfway up the tunnel in a single leap, then ensured he did not fall back down as the aura-clad claws dug deep into the snow wall. A second leap reached the surface where he began travelling to the node tree. Just like trying to reach the battlefield, he focused heavily on learning how to control the merged spirit, learning how to keep a rhythm while stepping forward and reacting to obstacles as they came up.

Repeating the same motions only worked on flat, solid ground. With this snowy field covered in bumps or mounds, he had to rise higher on some occasions to avoid colliding with anything, but this came with the problem of wildly changing the timing to hit the next step.

Still, he felt mostly confident on flat surfaces already. Repeating the same actions over and over is easy for anyone in the end, but every little mound sent him spiralling to the side.

He wondered if it was truly a problem with practice or if his mind wasn’t good enough.

Not that he really thought about it while his face slammed into another pile of snow.

And the time after that…

But that no longer mattered. He focused on the improvements he made! By the time he approached the node tree it was no longer a tumble dropping his speed but rather a controlled roll. Controlled in the sense that he purposely leaned into it beforehand, perhaps not the best methodology as it admitted a failed attempt before even hitting the ground.

Either way, just jumping one step at a time proved to work well enough as it multiplied his base speed by tens of times over! In just a few minutes he made the long walk to the node tree and already set off towards another random direction.

However, he was barely a minute’s walk from the node tree when he noticed a mass of mana not too far underground. This mass was so close that he saw the objects just by standing above them!

It was a set of animal corpses, five of them in total. From his mana sight, three of them had been picked dry, left with just bones, but the other two actually contained a substantial quantity of meat.

While he doubted that they provided an assimilation, the fact that none of the bodies froze proved a higher quality of their bloodlines.

Too bad that all five were different creatures. If the same, he’d have dug it up immediately, knowing that he’d absolutely assimilate it, but with the current information he saw it as little more than a source of food and bloodline energy. Marking the spot, he moved on to find other things. He also guessed the origin of these corpses, that these were the beasts who failed to beat the gorilla who ruled not too long ago.

But more than five attacked that gorilla, and it left him confused as to where the rest were. More importantly, that gorilla no longer stayed at the node tree… So what did the crane do with the former lord?

Not bothering to stay on the topic, a quick merging with the spirit took him far out of the crane’s senses just seconds later. In the process, he tripped over a mound of snow again, but now adapted to the annoyance of rolling so much that even the dizziness encountered had reduced.

Over the course of the day spent leaping around, he came across two things worth digging up.

Two out of several hundred that is.

The first were a few skeleton sets belonging to bison, likely being part of a larger group that ascended the mountain for whatever reason. Regardless of what happened, the skeletons of a few adults and children remained in this spot. Unless they held an amazing bloodline he expected to fully assimilate them.

As for the second thing, it was a strange mass growth of fungi which actually popped out of the snow!

While not actually a plant, he finally found something which grew above the heavy blanket of snow placed here constantly! Normally plants would have grown to show off some foliage over two months ago with the end of winter, but the heavy blizzard caused by his parents greatly delayed their growth, with many still painfully growing upwards.

Like the ice-mind berries which normally reached surface level around this time of year.

The mushrooms, with bright yellow caps and a dark grey stalk, stood out immensely in the snow. His first fear was a great toxicity within them, and as a result did not dare eat one even with his body being immensely resistant to poisons. Digging a small hovel to curl up into, then covering it in a layer of snow, he spent ten minutes trying to find the specific fungus in a huge book on them. It detailed several hundreds of toxic ones, but even after skimming through every single one there was no mention of this type.

So, he took a look at some other books on fungi, eventually finding a record in a book titled ‘Elementally Charged Fungi and their quirks’, and its name very obviously hinted to this thing’s nature.

Some more research found an exact replica of what he saw, being a type of edible fungus which could not be consumed by dragons weak to either light or dark elements. However, every other type of dragon would be fine, so long as they consumed the fungus at a slow rate.

Charging one’s body with too many elements is often dangerous, and this specific fungus was called a solar-death shroom. The spores only activated in spots where enough souls were destroyed, and then required heavy sunlight to grow properly. Knowing it was safe, he decided to taste one to see if it contained a bloodline.

[Consumed Solar-death shroom! Received 2% EXP

Consumed Solar-death shroom! Assimilation progress 0%]

It did. And he wanted all of it.