While analysing the frog’s appearance and mana, he came up with two effective attacks.

The first obviously being a Mental blast, something universally effective on these creatures who had yet to improve their minds. But at the same time he couldn’t ensure keeping the frog alive through that. It required carefully picking an amount of mana which left it unconscious, yet alive, something he felt inexperienced doing.

In which case he saw the second option as a very hard hit on the head. With mana quite a bit weaker than his own, it was nothing like trying to fight the stormfrost wolf from back then. And there’s be no stupid announcement of battle this time round.

Even if it felt necessary at the time, it almost killed him!

Approaching the tree, he roared out in Beasten with, “Leave!” before immediately starting a cast of Mental shock. By the time the frog reacted to an intruder, and finally looked at him with off-putting red eyes, he’d already cast the spell and sent it slumping on the floor in a mess.

But that wasn’t enough.

With the frog temporarily down, he began casting Voltaic burst, aiming to leave the frog spasming on the floor for minutes to come!

It took a bit over 6 seconds for him to cast a spell like it, and without the spirit to aid in evasion, he really had to push for it to be possible. But just by attacking without any introduction he’d won so easily! And as the projectile form of Voltaic burst struck the frog, its already blank mind didn’t even sense its body losing control.

Now all that came was immobilisation, and for that he chose to withdraw the sword in his dimensional storage and remove its limbs. A simple Flame bolt on each then sealed off the blood vessels and he made the frog a breeze to take home.

“Glacier crush won’t kill it… right?” Unsure of the damage, there was little else he could do but hope it only knocked out the large frog. Already in a rather horrible situation, he just continued and began casting the spell. To minimise the damage a bit, he only cast it a short distance above the frog’s head.

A crack tore out, making even him wince. A quick look saw the frog’s head bleeding with parts of its skull sticking out as well, the damage already seemed rather bad…

But it survived! And with that he cast Snap chill on the wound and the bleeding mostly stopped by the ice. He only did this as the frog appeared rather cold naturally, and sub zero temperatures should be trivial for it.

All that remained was hauling the unconscious, and potentially brain-damaged, thing back home. And to the anaconda as proof of this job’s completion, even then he only intended to pass by before heading off immediately. Although reality proved a bit different.

“Excellent, leave the body and I’ll speak up about a promotion for you.” The snake's tongue flicked the air subtly, using the sensitive organ to already have a small taste of the frog. But this simply wouldn’t happen.

“My hunt, and it is alive. I do not need your words.” Still learning Beasten, he could tell the words got through by the anaconda’s sneering. But with Pronounced telekinesis still holding onto the barely squirming body, he had no intention of letting it go. He’d fight if necessary.

The spell also allowed him to purposely hold the body a distance away in case the oversized snake attacked, and seeing its eyes focus on him, the dragon immediately used a few Jump seals to back away. Making an enemy didn’t matter when compared to earning evolved body parts. And as soon as his Auric spirit improved, he wouldn’t have to fear that snake as much anyway.

A steel tier beast? Dangerous, but alone not enough to kill him.

Against expectations, the snake didn’t attack. With a venomous glare it watched him leave before curling up around the tree once more. He didn’t know what it thought, but preparing some ways to kill it wouldn’t hurt.

Once back inside the cave, he placed the greatly injured frog behind bars and checked on its mana and insides. Its heart pumped without issue, and its spasming had stopped long ago. Now he just hoped to continue feeding it until an evolution occurred. But just to make sure it had eaten some ice-cream in advance, he cut off his tail and fed the frog bits of its innards. Fully insuring this situation, he just hoped it was a guaranteed matter of an evolution forcing a mutation.

What if he actually just got very lucky with the queen and it merely passed a one in ten chance to be mutated?

He’d probably just cry about it and go on to capture many more beasts, but how would it work for better evolutions? He’d have to capture gold tier beasts? What about mithril?

His fears multiplied, and all he could do was feed the frog and keep it alive.

With nothing happening for a few hours, the dragon only remained in his cave and studied. The frog came too and squirmed for a while in rage, but after exhausting its energy realised that escape without any limbs was impossible. Rather interestingly, he saw the little burnt stumps slowly healing and even extending, but at this rate it needed days to fully heal.

A non-threat overall.

And with regular feeding of ice-cream and meat, he could only wait until something changed.

* * *

Sometime that evening, a small pony travelled to the wyvern’s cave. Being intelligent and knowledgeable in Beasten made it a perfect messenger, and today it carried a response from the anaconda to their leader. Its only oddity was a large dorsal fin along the back of its neck, used both to maintain balance in snow and as an acute sensing organ for wind and smell.

Once greeting its leader and stating the origin, the pony gave its message. “The creature sent to deal with the frog has failed and directly refused orders.” A short one, but such actions weren’t treated lightly in delicate times.

Yet the wyvern just scoffed at that notion, knowing better than any the power of that dragon. If it could kill a sea-freezing crab at the peak of bronze tier, then how could a frog weaker than it win in battle? It simply didn’t make sense.

Not to mention, if the dragon performed a sneak attack then many of its Beginner true spells could kill the frog instantly. He didn’t know if the anaconda was lying, but something clearly happened over there. Thinking a bit more, he also hadn’t asked if the dragon wanted to kill the frog… perhaps it had some uses for a living creature and hid it?

Regardless, he dismissed the anaconda’s claims and made the pony return with a standard message. It sided with no one, and simply confirmed that he heard its report.

And with that, the night’s matter came to an end.

If possible he didn’t want to have two subordinates fight… But in what world would he give up having a dragon on his side?

Returning to sleep, he continued the slow process of building his Mind palace. After a few decades he finally built up a rather luxurious manor to stay in, but even this failed to give off the splendour of a palace. With greater aspirations, he knew that many years of work remained.

* * *

The next morning, the youngling strangely awoke to a golden sheen all over his scales pulsing brightly. Sensing its call for aura, he woke up near-instantly and began condensing the sack into a liquid. But that feeding was merely a drop in a massive bucket, leading him to burn through every bit of mana available to produce and condense it rapidly.

With each sackful of aura devouring 20% of his MP, and the spirit seeming more and more bottomless by the minute, he’d already given it 10 doses of aura to no avail!

Every time he dropped below 40%, there was no choice but to wait until he recovered, and that turned out to be taking longer than imagined. His MP recovery always looked so fast, being able to refill it in a few minutes, but now every single second felt like eternity.

The glowing spirit needed more and more, devouring the 20th sack of aura as fast as the first.

The side-effect of assimilating strong bloodlines with his young body grew clearer by the second. Without this insane MP regen he’d never be able to support such a thing, but he just about did.

And finally, after a solid half hour of constantly draining his MP for aura… the spirit suddenly stopped accepting anymore at the 50th sackful. The bright caramel glow on his wafer scales dimmed, and the spirit finally settled.

Awoken once more, he felt the bursting power within at a completely new level. Just how strong…

His body really wasn’t designed to handle such bloodlines. Not yet at least. But the improvement of the Auric spirit brightened his day so much, things not only going well but to such a degree. He hoped it soon followed up with the frog evolving, but who knew when it would occur given the wyvern claimed it to be ‘soon’.

“How does it feel?” The spirit with its basic intelligence understood his words, but could not formulate a proper response. Its memories were limited to its master’s, and explaining the power it felt was impossible.

So it replied somewhat generically, imprinting words onto his mind as usual. “Everything is stronger,” an obvious thing, but to its master this meant enough.

One of his greatest fears had been something restraining the spirit due to his weak body, and reducing his overall combat power in the end. But this didn’t seem to be an issue. And first he wanted to see how it fought on its own.

Outside, he sent the spirit out of his body and saw its body had a sort of polished shine, its golden brown colour had deepened, along with the light it radiated growing somewhat stronger. The sweet smell emitting from it also strengthened, but he didn’t comment on it.

“Can you carry me and fly?” This idea occurred to him over the days while the spirit improved, and he felt like an idiot for never considering it in the past. Running was great and all, but if his spirit could lift part of that bear corpse it could absolutely hold him up!

It replied, “I would harm you during it.” Flexing its auric claws, he didn’t want to test how easily they sliced through him. Not to mention even just the slightest mistake whilst holding him would result in a horrible crunch. The idea should be reserved until the spirit trained its control more.

Just like how he better understood how to run and move while merged with it.

Walking to the left, he said, “Leave it, there’s a small boulder here you can try attacking.” It didn’t take long for him to reach it on his own, and from there stood a fair distance away as the spirit rushed in for an attack.

Without even unfurling its wings, a single leap forward propelled it to the rock, with a single swipe simply to test its power the results were devastating. The claws glided through the rock like water, cutting deep instantly, but the residual aura behind this attack only deepened the damage. Like a greatsword smashed into the boulder, the fine claw marks were replaced with a smashing damage which directly shattered a portion of the rock into tiny chunks.

The spirit's power decreased seriously from that high-power move, but he refused to believe any bronze tier beast survived such an attack. Its power actually matched Helix blast, the only downside being a serious lack of penetration!

But in exchange, it even cut through rock with ease. The payoffs were immense.

Some more testing soon left the remaining boulder as a pile of dust and pebbles, and he was more than satisfied at every part of the Auric spirit being capable of destruction.

Its wings sliced through rock while flying, and its teeth crunched them into fine dust like chewing on chalk. An aura-powered stomp could crumble rock easily, and its sudden bursts of speed were only somewhat followable due to the improvements to his Mind palace.

He was just about to test the merging when a serious burst of mana popped out of his cave, and he realised immediately what just happened. Stepping into the cave, he saw the frog wrapped up in a ball formed of its own skin. And when it burst out, he’d be ready for the fight.

A moment of truth awaited him, and potentially a new improvement to his body.