Shivering in place, the expanding sphere of cold covered his yellow scales in a layer of white snow and ice, an ignorable effect, but internally he turned rigid. His cold ice-cream body encountered something unbelievable, a temperature which actually froze him!

As the small jerks to stay warm inevitably slowed, he quickly became an ice-cream statue, completely unable to move or control himself. His mind raced to solve the problem before he died, the first idea being the simplest.

Push away all the icy mana around him and defrost as soon as possible. Pushing away such coldness worked pretty well, and he quickly began grabbing it with sheets of his own mana, something about it made it incredibly tough to move directly. As the air around him finally warmed, heat entered his body and reversed the freezing.

Focusing entirely on his head and throat, he soon shivered harder. From there wildly trying to create a small Fire. Just anything to undo this horrible cold and regain bodily control.

The crab’s position wasn’t great either, stunned rather heavily by the Mental shock. Even after 10 seconds it remained on the ground and only barely squirmed.

By the third try of casting Fire, he still failed at a simple 4 word spell of all things. But he didn’t despair yet.

The rigidness of his body diminished by the second, and he began taking long, deep breaths to control the shakiness of his words. His tries rose to five, then seven…

But he succeeded at eight! A middling fire appeared right in front of him and warmed up his shivering body straight away. His face felt as though it was aflame, but he didn’t care when compared to almost becoming a statue. As he turned around to defrost, he was finally able to take a deep breath. This fight didn’t allow for more waiting, this past half minute allowed his spirit to restore some aura, enough for him to evade this crab with.

Who knew how shocked it would be to see this killing move fail?

No other creature at his level on the mountain could have possibly survived this, even those icy elats stood no chance once such a power froze their brains and hearts.

And the downed crab only now started to come through, how his Mental shock rose to such power now surprised even him. Surely those points in magic hadn’t made that much of a difference?

It didn’t matter as he said, “merge.” The spirit enhanced his movements and allowed him to quickly begin casting another Helix blast, aiming for this patterned crab's annoying face. With it finally coming too and hearing the dragon’s words, its eyes snapped awake and the crab charged with dull, slow movements. Not to mention its patterns now pulsed dimly, likely due to using a full powered attack just before.

Was it arrogance? Or had the crab simply grown accustomed to finishing every battle in a single move?

No matter what, finally meeting an opponent who matched it only meant one ending. The Helix blast formed, its obsidian shell quickly gathering a keen edge, and the crab raised both arms to block. With two claws neither side doubted that it would endure such a move.

But he wouldn’t allow for it!

With his spirit, the dragon jumped over, striking the crab’s sides to knock away its legs. A small hop allowed him to land on top, the helical gathering of air creating a vortex aiming right for the two of them…

He used an aura-infused claw to hit the crab’s face while it solely focused on defending, stabbing into its eyes and twisting hard. It cried out, and a gooey substance coated his claws, but it was not enough. Jumping away at the last moment, he saw the vortex of air explode violently.

The crab fell over, knocked backwards from the intense blast smashing into its claws and penetrating right through one! But only its left claw, the other situated behind had been completely protected, as had its face.

This crab blocked an attack on par with a steel tier’s full power!

Only a single arm remained intact, both eyes had been eviscerated in a single move, and yet it stood alive. “Why are you so durable?” He didn’t really have time to converse much more though. Its body mutilated to such a degree, he guessed that a single Mental blast would kill it, unfortunately, he couldn’t use another Helix blast with its MP usage.

It tried to rush him, using the one intact claw to cut him in half, but being blind impacted the crab far too much. It could do nothing but poorly follow him audibly as a Mental blast finally hit it, killing the horribly durable thing.

If it knew how to use its powers even just slightly better, or hadn’t been idle while he injured those crabs at the start, it truly stood a chance of winning. But who asked it to be so prideful that it simply depended on one powerful move from the start?

[Killed level 19 Sea-freezing crab! Received 60% EXP]

That was an amazing kill!

Also, it showed that this crab was an evolved type of those river-freezing ones, so it should have an even stronger bloodline! Perhaps more like it existed on the mountain… He didn’t get much time to theorise its power though.

An explosion of mana grew from above him, and almost immediately a powerful aura began suppressing his body. Fear ran through his mind, and looking at the dead crab in front, he realised just how badly he screwed up. The unmerged spirit, still low on aura, did its best to greedily absorb the chunk he transferred earlier but needed more time. And while he looked at the corpse with great hopes, he knew when to give up.

Running to the exit, he didn’t even receive a chance to go far as a thick icy mist began collecting in the cave, he could feel the cold on touch and shivered instantly. If he saw the target he’d have used the soul lantern, but since he couldn’t…

Taking out a small statue, he held it in his mouth and inserted some mana. His body instantly stopped shivering; a burst of power exploded from the statue, carrying away all the icy mist just like that. But with this action came something else to worry about.

* * *

In a cave somewhat further away, the wyvern roused from his sleep as a sudden aura left him breathless. He immediately began coating himself in mana to oppose the suppression and shuddered from the sensation, how could such a powerful creature exist here?

It exceeded the crab as well! If it lived here then surely it’d have taken control years ago!

He immediately raced out, flying into the air and seeing many of his subordinates already fainting, completely unable to resist such power. Perhaps that crab actually… No! He refused to believe it advanced to mythril tier after so many years! It exhausted its limited potential so long ago, and even with the rising mana it should be impossible to advance much more.

His fears abated as an explosion of mana came from the mountain as well, this matching the crab he remembered quite well. Clearly just near the peak of gold tier, the current king was stronger than himself, but not by much. So what in the world created this frightening aura surpassing both of them?

Coming to a weak conclusion, the wyvern said, “The Sage? But they left weeks ago, why would they stay?” It simply didn’t make sense, and if this was the Sage, then why was that crab able to resist such aura…

Which meant it couldn’t be that Sage, and the crab clearly saw this! Supposedly, that dragon received the protection from the Sage back when this mountain’s dammed up mana finally released, so why couldn’t it have received a way to reproduce a Sage’s aura? As a thanks for helping such a powerful being as well!

Aura is one of the least expensive powers for anything to manufacture, and to a Sage it was like handing away scraps of undesirable meat!

Was there a chance of this being an actual Sage? Not in the slightest, because the crab’s mana only grew. And then it shouted to the whole mountain range, its voice blasting out over the frightening aura, “Who dares kill my child?!”

From what he knew, the crab’s children were all between bronze and steel tier in power, so what would a Sage gain by killing one?

This was his chance!

Flying over to the source of such an aura, the quantity of mana shielding his body rose to its limit as he found the set of caves on the mountain’s eastern face. However, it was so strong here that he simply couldn’t figure out the source.

But he didn’t have to worry about that, a small dragon clearly crawled out a tunnel, barely able to move under direct suppression from the sea-freezing crab. The fact this youngling could actually still move amazed him, but rather than help he simply flew in place and locked eyes with the dragon.

To receive the aid of a Sage meant something valuable existed in this strange, ice-cream dragon. And he wanted it!

On the other side of things, the youngling expected things to get better after utilising the Sage’s statue to expel the mist and run. He didn’t expect that the crab’s full power would suddenly descend onto the cave though, this time directly crushing him through sheer mana alone. Even with a merged spirit to boost his physical strength, slow walking was the best he managed to the cave’s entrance. Having to leave that sea-freezing crab’s body behind as well!

Then he saw the wyvern, and he vaguely sensed the source of powerful mana suppressing him quickly approach. When this statue’s aura ran out, there was no hope of escape.

So the dragon saw only one chance for survival.

“I humbly accept your request, please allow me to join your side. Just save me from this thing!” Panic grew in his voice as the source not only approached, but finally entered his mana sense.

It exceeded the wyvern! But more importantly, it actually matched that frightening girl, Raccelline. This creature was on par with a Sage’s family member, how could he ever hope to match it? Hoping to use the soul lantern before it killed him was too much of a gamble in every sense of the word.

The wyvern smiled strangely, and for a moment the youngling thought it planned on letting him die here. But it finally opened its mouth and roared out in Beasten to the creature above, then it approached him and released mana in a similar feature to the portion crushing his body.. Instantly, that pressure lessened and he felt movement become free once more.

“You made a wise choice today, young dragon. Climb on my back,” Saying a few words in draconic, the wyvern turned around and allowed him to jump on with ease. From there flapping away while more cries came from the mountain, he even heard some rumbling as though the whole mountain shook.

“What in the world is that?” He couldn’t help but ask, not holding high expectations of receiving an answer.

“This place’s current king. You came here without knowing that? What a silly child.” The wyvern laughed to itself at his obliviousness and near suicidal goals. If not for a sudden appearance, this dragon had close to no chance of survival.

He flew over to the western ridge of the range. Here, a large mountain had been excavated to a large cavern to house a wyvern of its size and a few subordinates. After landing nearby, the wyvern merely shook his head at the sight of those collapsed, seeing a few stronger ones finally trying to stand up as the dragon returned some sort of tool to its belt. While rather normal for a dragon to keep a dimensional storage tool… the design was a bit unusual. Still, he didn’t care enough to pry.

“From this point on, you are now one of mine. I believe you know very little of what’s going on, and they’ll explain it to you. For now, tell me about yourself. Your strengths, weaknesses, age, talent, anything of interest.” Even with such a gap in power between them, the wyvern clearly cared deeply about his potential, wishing to dig out everything.

Not that any dragon more than a month old is naive enough to do such a thing.