Two days passed, with his jaw hitting the snow several times while using the Sky sight barrier.

At one point, he saw for himself the wyvern dive bombing a location and creating a shower of snow in that place, although he had no clue what it tried to kill. Another time the roc released a literal shower of feathers and from the glimpses seen it cut through snow like a hot blade.

Occasionally, they cast spells as well, mostly creating tornados or massive fireballs which he feared would incinerate him in seconds…

Of course, this all sounded horrendous, but the sparsity of it all meant that very little damage actually occurred.

Perhaps they killed a hundred creatures across the whole mountain range during this, although he estimated closer to five hundred. No matter which, it barely mattered when compared to the situation as a whole. If anything, he feared for his life slightly less!

Besides all that, he made a serious effort on his Mind palace. No longer a large square platform, it now had two small layers of bricks around its edges. He’d finally started on building a wall!

However, each single layer for the wall required 74 bricks, but after just five layers it would be higher than his body. From there he didn’t plan on going too far with this initial building. It just needed to house this youngling body and remain accessible into adulthood, he’d also need to worry about how to use the space inside the single building. Some bookcases to record information were obviously a good idea, but the complexity of real furniture in a mental space is a whole new level.

Besides this, his other primary focus was eating and gathering resources to complete assimilations. In particular, he gathered enough earth-frost carrots and snowy field roots to complete their bloodlines, and munched on them throughout the day as snacks to rush their assimilations.

Not that either actually mattered, in fact being so weak that his legs only tingled a bit during it all.

[Assimilated Earth-frost carrots! 1 new bloodline direction potentially available

Assimilated Snowy-field roots! 1 new bloodline direction potentially available]

And while the bear blood was disgusting as every other creature, he still managed to get through most of it these past couple days. Only half a pot remained at this point and he’d eaten three of the beast’s massive limbs. Its bloodline energy clearly exceeded the stormfrost wolf as well, each piece of meat taking around 5 seconds to break down. But the surprising part was the assimilation speed!

[Consumed Rampage bear bloodline! Assimilation progress 86%]

Just one more day and he’d easily finish this assimilation, granting him some more powerful choices in his next evolution.

The nicer news was progress on the solar-death shrooms, of which he ate five every day as his limit. In theory he could withstand the voices to a slight degree, but then he’d have to deal with such things annoying him for hours and driving him mad.

[Consumed Solar-death shrooms! Assimilation progress 40%]

The experience he earned was amazing as well, although he had to wonder how much of an outlier consuming such mushrooms made him. Normal dragons could do so as well… But what about creatures on this mountain?

On the topic of the shrooms as well, they gave him an entire level. Right after that though, the experience given dropped to just 5%. He believed it was just a matter of time until he both assimilated it and achieved another level now. It wasn’t long now until he achieved that important goal of level 20.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus II

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Auric spiritual Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

18

EXP

2%

Unallocated Stat Points: 11

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

3

Growth

15

Magic

20

Mutation Rate

5

Additionally, on the night of consuming more sap he awoke to see the ball of life essence vanish like usual. He fully expected such a thing, the essence being retained by his body as a form of healing or emergency nutrients. The exact nature of life essence is a strange thing, as it acted like some sort of multi-purpose energy. But as it matched the description in books he no longer worried about this.

At the very least it didn’t cause him to grow rapidly and desire copious quantities of food.

Lastly, he began eating a few coniferous eternity ferns every night to both help himself sleep and assimilate its bloodline. And while it greatly helped him fall asleep, clearly its effects reduced with his growth as it took at least three full ferns every night to feel any sense of tiredness. The rate of assimilation was nothing to scoff at though.

[Consumed Coniferous eternity fern! Assimilation progress 30%]

But all of this seems rather sparse for two full days, and that’s because he also worked on creating over 300 more mana-sugar crystals in his heart. By now a small chunk of ice-cream had become these crystals, storing several fold the previous quantity of mana!

Relative to the ice-cream that is… He still needed to form a few thousand more crystals to even increase his max MP by 1%. This was a case of his Pure mana evolution granting a ridiculous store of mana, even without the Nexus bonus to aid it. His slow but steady progress meant something at the least, and combined with the learning of another Apprentice true spell, what wasn’t there to be happy about?

This spell was called Voltaic burst, formed of 26 words, and could actually be utilised in two ways depending on how he cast it.

In its normal form, the spell simply accumulated a powerful bolt of lightning which stunned a figure temporarily. Unable to control their muscles, it left even bronze tier beasts a spasming mess on the floor for several seconds!

But then came its other effect by simply focusing the mana he sent out to rest on his scales, to instead modify them temporarily with a coating of lightning, releasing the moment he impacted another creature!

While this sounded useless in the past, that all changed with his Auric spirit.

He was the faster one now!

He dictated when it would be used!

And in battle, that just meant another major tool for him to use. An analogy for this spell is akin to having a movable seal, something which ignored the greatest weakness of seal spells in general. And while in theory he could place an Explosive seal on himself to detonate when an enemy neared…

Did he even have to explain how poor of an idea that was?

But having stayed holed up for a few days now, he’d grown bored enough of just sitting around and wanted to do something besides running to collect solar-death shrooms. Things returned to usual at the node tree as well, the crane clearly more vigilant at all times but little beyond that.

Today’s usage of the Sky sight barrier showed nothing of interest, and he made a quick trip to collect the mushrooms as usual. He ate three at once, then stored two more to consume over the day’s course. The patch of shrooms may have been reduced to their final few, but he still had a large root network to complete this assimilation.

As for the next goal, he’d grab another crystal-frilled lizard corpse. Having found their nest in the past couple days, he breezed through the process. First, a casting of Voltaic burst on his scales and a couple roars helped draw the lizards out.

With his spirit merged as well, it could not have been easier to stun one and kill the other with a Mental blast utilising 20% of his MP. After storing the corpse, he left without another look. It did not take long to head home and teleport inside, where he dumped the corpse and some more eternity ferns he picked up.

He had other plans today as well.

* * *

A path of ice stuck to the side of the winter’s hope tree, the mana flow within somewhat weakened but not mattering in the slightest as it would recover by daybreak. Instead, the youngling looked up the mountain side and merged with his spirit once more, investigating the smooth, snowy incline and thinking up how to climb such a thing.

[Consumed Winter’s hope tree! Assimilation progress 99%]

His business finished at the tree, there was nothing holding him back.

So he jumped.

The snow below him compressed instantly, and he already began flying upwards, moving towards the mountain with every moment while still rising upwards. Then came the collision.

With his spirit, a strong claw sunk into the snow and resisted falling. It took a bit of positioning, but he found a way to kick off with both hind legs to fling himself up the mountain while staying near the surface. It worked perfectly to climb, and before long he’d already reached a halfway point from the tree below and the cloudy layer high above.

Not that he intended to go all the way to the peak. Instead, he cast Third eye and used it to find the small holes leading into the mountain. Just as his memory served, several of them existed around this height on the mountain.

And while he said small, these tunnels were easily the size of moderate caves! Just the first one he found could fit a few adult humans walking side by side. And to a youngling this size was more than spacious enough. But rather than enter deeply, he cast a Controlled light spell and sent it in alongside the Third eye.

His mana sense showed some points of interest not too far in, but the snaking nature of this tunnel made it hard to tell what it was. And while it penetrated stone excellently, the same could not be said for his mana sight, which only passed through a few metres of the dense substance before reverting to his usual ability to tell apart sources of mana. However, the Third eye spell turned a few corners to meet a surprised bunch of crabs!

They ranged in size from a beetle all the way to some equalling him!

With snow white shells and a strange icy, blue blade in between their pincers, he was willing to bet they’d hurt if touched. Most of them simply scurried about in the cave or walked off to another exit, only a few larger ones remained completely still. But as none of them presented dangerous mana levels, he simply saw some worthy of being his targets.

At least, to stay on this mountain they had to hold some useful bloodlines. Bigger is often better, right?

Crawling inside with the Controlled light, he quickly saw the crabs as they saw him. They did not hesitate to snip their claws and charge him at first glance, the sheer hostility a surprise to him. But for invading their home he expected nothing less.

His spirit helped push away some smaller ones, and he made a controlled leap to get away from some larger crabs, all while avoiding the ceiling and walls. He didn’t want to spend too long in this small pocket, especially since a stronger crab might come by!

So, without waiting, he cast Helix blast. Whilst darting around the group of crabs their slow, clunky movements made it easy to anticipate every attack and he could even play with them if not for being in such a rush.

But finally, the spell was completed. He saw Helix blast form a core of some dense metal, then coat it in a black, glass-like material. While he did not know the metal, the black glass was a magically enhanced obsidian…

And then came the dual streams of air building up to a great vortex right behind the large bullet of metal and earth. And finally, it released with an explosive rush of air. Whistling through the cave like a trebuchet shot simply moments from crashing besides him. But he was not the target here…

The crabs had absolutely no chance of dodging.

His target, the largest of the bunch, took the Helix blast to its face. He saw the large sharpened mass penetrate right through and even exit the back of the crab. A few hiding behind this stronger one stood no chance as the attack smashed into the cave’s white rock walls. The effect was disastrous, as thousands of small obsidian shards fragmented throughout the cave. Many of which sliced through parts of softer shells or penetrated into the crabs’ fleshier parts.

He finished off a few of the small crabs while they screeched and nipped at the air in pain, then stored them in his belt. The rest fled for their lives if they still retained sight. Seeing the strongest amongst them killed so effortlessly naturally sent them running.

But the big guy, he looked delicious at first glance. Licking up some of its leaking blood, he looked at the Nexus prompts with some small expectations.

[Killed River-freezing crabs! Received 8% EXP

Consumed River-freezing crab! Assimilation progress 0%]

Well, given that it wasn’t already 1%, he now had some hopes of these crabs having a useful bloodline. At least, the blood taking about a second to disappear reinforced that idea.

Multiple uses of Snap chill closed up the massive hole bored through the crab and stopped its blood leaking. Then, with Telekinesis to carry the large crab back home, he realised it was a breeze to carry compared to the bear. Although, he wasn’t sure how much of that was due to weight or in fact his Mind palace growing so much. Either way, he had a lot of good food to look forward to.