Obviously, the more he thought about the power absorption the less amazing it seemed in his eyes. And the original fire it lit dulled greatly once he remembered how many similar bloodlines there are… And most of them utterly failed to stand out in the long run. The blood absorbing one he mentioned to the wyvern is great at lower levels, but few beasts grow past gold tier with it alone.

Not to mention, he already had a consistent stream of evolutions. Why did he need another way to grow stronger?

As long as he evolved he’d become one of the strongest! Was he really this greedy? Since when was he unsatisfied with his rapid rise in power?

“I choose Draconic palace Ice-cream! That wyvern’s bloodline better be good.” He didn’t get to finish the thought as his body curled up into an egg once more and the scales separated into an egg shell.

And so it came, the tumultuous shaking and stirring of an evolution. The rapid onset of nausea, a constant sickening which never vanished, and that horrid breathlessness. It reminded him of the demi-god’s aura all over again, but it went on so much longer and after minutes of the sensation…

It released its grip on him, as always. His lungs rapidly filled with air and he merged with the spirit, directly shattering the shell and quickly growing a new set of scales.

How could he have endured five of these and it only grew worse?

Minor problems aside, he checked the Nexus to see that brand new bloodline. A nice marker of his growth, and proof the decision to focus this much on bloodlines had not been in vain.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus II

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Draconic palace Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

18

EXP

80%

Unallocated Stat Points: 11

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

3

Growth

15

Magic

20

Mutation Rate

5

Thinking about it for a few moments, he wanted complete surety of success when suppressing these lords. And quickly said, “10 points into Magic.” Now, he hoped that only the toughest of bronze tier beasts could shrug off a spell from him, not even that crab should be capable of withstanding his Helix blast now!

A dead crab admittedly, but if he settled for imperfections it would undoubtedly come back to bite him.

From his current perspective, his mind felt no different to before. And even after casting the spell to check his mental space, things all looked the same. The oddity reached the point where he asked the Nexus to see if it was some quirk related to his bloodline. But he received no response, clearly the fault lied in his mental space itself…

Or maybe he just lacked any of that so-called will of a True dragon. In which case he just wasted an evolution like that, having received nothing besides the ability to build his palace a bit faster.

While nice, he felt dispirited about it when he could have taken the Blood focused path to forever be able to hunt lords for possible enhancements.

Even if only one in ten lords gave anything in return, it was something!

Still upset, he decided to just learn Sword wind, complete today's mission, and find some more eternity ferns to munch on. If he had to stay depressed all day, then forcing himself to sleep sounded like an ideal end to it.

He learnt the spell in just half an hour, taking longer than expected due to his mind waning every now and then in thought. But once memorised, he simply tried using it a few times and saw the blade of green light slice through the air, a torrent of wind rushing past him after casting. It felt powerful… Now he hoped it actually met those expectations. And he had a target to test it on already.

Once merged with the spirit, he finally felt the massive reduction in ability near instantly. When the Nexus claimed to give a 45% bonus to everything, it really meant absolutely everything.

The power he outputted with a step, the resistance as he flew through the air, the flexibility of his body, every single sense, the speed at which he recovered and controlled mana, even the rate at which he utilised aura! Everything suddenly reduced and it felt horrendous.

Now only slightly more powerful than prior to the spirit’s improvement, he wished he picked one of the Auric bloodlines even more. The chance they raised his aura production and storage also existed! But now he just had a tiny aura sack which required him to undergo a growth phase to enlarge.

Re-adapting to his far slower spirit did not take long though, its speed now roughly matching what he trained with previously. All that remained was fighting that reindeer, he already located some eternity ferns buried slightly underground on the way.

Once at the tree, he made the way things work extremely clear. Shouting out in Beasten, “I have come on behalf of my leader, the wyvern. Will you take his side?” It had taken a while to ensure the sentence made sense, but it seemed correct when translated.

Some smaller critters scattered almost immediately, whether by telling his body held a lot of mana or simply due to the aggression he outputted, and what remained was a small clearing opposite the reindeer. It had woken immediately from his entrance, and his words clearly hadn’t pleased it.

Standing up, it replied to him, “Another one? I told you, I have no interest in taking sides!”

“This is not a request. I have come to make you bow to him.” Seeing the reindeer’s desire to resist, he pulled out a wisp of gaseous aura and released it, immediately sending the surroundings into a breathless situation. Many of the smaller beasts nearby simply ran off in fear or directly collapsed, although the reindeer easily resisted it.

“Must I kill you like the last one?”

“I may say the same.” The reindeer’s eyes narrowed with that, and the two immediately prepared to fight. He intended to show off the difference from the start, not jumping around to injure it or anything like that. One near-fatal wound to make it choose between death or submission… he naturally preferred the former with its bulky frame.

Now having stood up, the reindeer’s antlers bathed its surroundings in a bright white light and he prepared for some sort of snow-based attack, instead he was met with a semi-corporeal image of a moon appearing above the reindeer. And almost immediately, the merged spirit’s senses began firing crazily, warning him greatly about the moon.

He wouldn’t dare risk whatever this move was, definitely being the combination of the light element and other things.

Casting Sword wind, he kept a close eye on the reindeer and continuously jumped back and forth, but nothing seemed to reduce the screaming danger on his mind.

There was only one option.

Destroy the antlers and ruin that spell, immediately pushing him to merge the Sword wind with aura and strike immediately. If that failed, he planned on casting Frost shell and enhancing it to block part of this attack. Then he either created a Sky sight barrier or simply ran to safety.

None of that happened though.

The reindeer did not attack even as he finished casting Sword wind, even seemingly sneering at him for trying to use the spell. Its confidence exceeded his immensely, even as the spirit momentarily left his body to enhance the spell in mid-air, once finished, it remerged with his body.

As the spell quickly completed, he saw a slash of green appear at the reindeer’s side, and for some reason its eyes went wide with surprise. The slash immediately cut through its antlers leaving a small cut about halfway through the white bone.

Expecting the creature to grow enraged… he instead met with the moon quickly fading, and a burst of mana exploded from the damaged antler!

[killed level 18 Moonlight reindeer! Received 22% EXP]

A bloody mess soaked the surroundings as the large chunk of the reindeer’s head was caught in the blast. It died just like that.

If just that much of an injury could kill it, why mock him and even take the hit? Was it stupid?

Without any better answers, he’d rather it grew really cocky from some powerful ability it awakened or evolved into, in a way like the sea-freezing crab but even more dependent on that one thing.

His job was to make it understand that a couple of good abilities meant nothing in front of something absolutely stronger, but instead just one spell broke whatever made the reindeer so confident and instantly killed it. Now he had to explain this problem to the wyvern, an annoyance in itself. How would he explain the use of aura to empower a spell like this?

Perhaps he could claim it was more of a hard-fought battle… Then fake a Helix blast successfully destroying part of an antler before killing it.

Hiding the explosion was simply too complicated for him, and even if he tried, the damage remained. And if he wanted to hide things a bit, he realised that wounding the corpse a bit more was important.

So, without even checking the Nexus, he began casting a few more regular Sword winds and other normal spells for him.

A voltaic burst, a Mental shock, even some Snow blade storms. Finally, he aimed a Helix blast to the undamaged tops of the reindeer’s antlers and watched it slam into the bone. The obsidian tip cracked due to resistance, blasting chips of the glassy rock all over, but at a fair distance he watched casually. When the Helix blast fell, he noticed a messily drilled hole through the bone, as well as massive cracks extending up and down.

Hopefully this made the idea of a spell failure more believable. All the conflicting spells had their own elemental properties, and while indistinguishable to him, someone with a finer mana sense should be able to identify most of the elements.

Not that he couldn’t, it was that he failed to estimate their exact power, something the wyvern should be more than capable of.

But before taking the corpse, he quickly licked up some blood to test the bloodline strength and saw it took a bit over a second to completely vanish. Slightly less bloodline energy than the wolf, but far less than the wyvern. Still, what decided the power of this bloodline was his assimilation speed.

[Consumed Moonlight reindeer bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]

Water control helped gather all the blood which he easily stored in the belt before Pronounced telekinesis helped carry it back home. Merging with the spirit greatly sped up the process, and he realised that his evolution came with another minimal benefit. The heightened mental defences allowed him to accelerate the corpse far more, matching half his max speed when merged with the spirit!

A quick detour to the wyvern explained the accident, and after looking at the cracked antlers came to an obvious conclusion. Although… it also noticed the relatively fresh cut towards the base of the antlers.

The powerful air elements surrounding it also contained another power it couldn’t be sure of, and he wondered if that was the real attack used to kill this reindeer or if it recently battled with something else and won.

Either way, from the dragon’s description it knew that whatever moon image it summoned was no simple ability. This creature likely held the ability to enter the steel tier soon… An unfortunate loss, although who knew if it would ever become truly loyal?

Rather than ponder, he could award some of the promising bronze tier beasts shared control of this tree. The condition of full ownership was the same for all other mana gatherer trees, either beat them completely or enter steel tier.

Node trees belonged to those like the anaconda, elites with potential to reach gold tier instead. And right now, a few such elites were squirming to fight over this next node tree, although since none beat the anaconda they’d have to share it at first until a truly superior one appeared. If they reached that higher tier, then thousands of creatures on this mountain would be at their beck and call.

Their leader already made it clear how more intelligent beasts would appear, and over time they too could have subordinates to perform tasks. But for that future to come about, their side had to win this.

The jealousy many felt towards the dragon still remained, albeit for entirely different reasons after understanding things better this past week.

The small lizard, relative to them at least, held potential even above their leader! Even without a node tree and piles of mana-rich resources, it would reach gold tier, and even somewhere above that, through age alone!

Anyone would feel jealous of such natural talent, and even the rather strange ice-cream body didn’t put them off in the slightest. Unfortunately, eating a beast with high potential doesn’t raise one’s own. Not that the wyvern would tell them such a thing anyway.

Back in his cave, the dragon began cutting up the reindeer and preparing to cook it. Without his utensils it became far harder, but finding a way to roast meat isn’t the toughest thing in the world. Today really hadn’t gone as planned, but at least he had another bloodline to assimilate.

Besides, now he could complete the first building of his Mind palace.

Way better to start late than never!