Once he left the battlefield, it was a simple walk back home. Of course, he avoided the anaconda entirely as it might lash out at him as everyone had been distracted by the battle.

And once home, he immediately set his sights on the few dead snakes he picked up.

Cutting out their poison sacks took a few minutes, and he simply swallowed them whole. Thinking about injecting himself or some other strange thing was rather idiotic in the end. He lacked blood for most venoms to work through anyway!

And so, he hoped the effects of their venom transferred over to his innate ability through whatever magic allowed his body to work in the first place. But to test he needed to find out the properties of these snakes’ venoms. This proved easy with the Nexus directly providing their names while assimilating them.

[Consumed Greenfang glacial snake! Assimilation progress 2%

Consumed Boltskin snake…

Consumed Leaping frost cobra…]

He knew from this alone all three beasts contained too little mass for assimilation. And going out of his way to gather one more snake of each kind was simply not worth the trouble. He didn’t need it enough anyway, and settled for just the bloodline energy stored within their bodies. Eating all three snakes only barely filled him up in the end, but his spirit still clearly needed some more aura.

As for the venoms, he had no clue if they worked either. Nothing significant happened since ingesting them, and only a test could clarify which effects shone through. To state them in order:

Body freezing at bite site, Muscle freezing and contractions, and Temperature lowering.

The first of the three was the worst on a mountain like this as most things resisted freezing venoms very well. It truly was a toxin used to deal with weaker but faster enemies. The other two did not disappoint.

The muscular contractions acted whether or not freezing took place. Once frozen, the constant contractions caused mass tearing and rapid degradation of a creature’s body. Meanwhile, simply lowering something’s temperature stiffened their bodies and made everything in general far harder.

Few creatures possessed the ability to move and digest food at freezing temperatures.

With that all sorted at least, he moved on to more important matters. Namely the fact that he’d been stopped from acquiring his breath attack just hours before the event! He bet just a hundred more crystals would have done it, and now he felt a solid drive to actually acquire it.

His power in battle barely matched an injured steel tier, in which case he needed to raise that bar a lot. Firstly, he needed some Apprentice true spells which dealt noticeable damage! Relying on an aura infused Sword wind would not always be possible, and in those times he lost any hope of killing his opponent.

Dodging a Helix blast is far from the toughest thing. He could reasonably do it without the spirit!

For now, he noticed three spells of sufficient power with clear compressions. The first was Water cluster bomb, a 31 word spell he could reduce to 22 words already. The second called Lava spear did exactly as described and used just 29 words, but he could already bring it down to 16 words!

And the last, a surprise even to him, was Psyche sever, a 39 word spell he just barely reduced to 24 words at first sight.

It goes without saying, Psyche sever caused the most damage, as well as holding the hidden property of separating one’s mind from their mental space! However, this only occured on the condition that they survived the attack and it actually caused damage to their mind.

And in about five minutes of personal discussion over their qualities, he inevitably chose to learn all of them! But started with lava spear due to simplicity.

Right now he wanted a non-solid Apprentice true spell, something which could be enhanced with aura unlike Helix blast. After all, while a disproportionately strong spell, he truly lacked uses for it, as aura raised a spell’s damage up by at least half a spell tier.

Although, as expected, a 29 word spell only took an hour to learn. Of course, he realised that he’d forgotten some older words learnt in the past in the process. Specifically due to coming across one word which he learnt, only to see moments later that it appeared in Explosive seal… One spell he learnt but never used.

That hour not only granted him a new weapon which greatly helped in actually dealing damage to steel tiers, but also enough time to fully refill the spirit’s aura reserves.

But with time at hand, he sat down to begin crystal production. There wasn’t any easy way to put it, but this process was a massive bore.

He spoke a spell, decided its casting location, and repeated it.

Hundreds upon hundreds of times…

It was somewhere close to two hours later when something finally changed. An anti-climatic one as he simply felt some strange modification to his throat naturally occur, the back of his mouth and lower down his gullet breaking down and reforming with the help of copious mana.

In fact, he wouldn’t have even noticed the change if not for the constant tickling and pain he felt throughout. And obviously, once it finished, the Nexus provided its own information.

[Acquired Innate ability ‘Vanilla breath’]

That didn’t sound very good. Couldn’t it have been something a bit more threatening? Like molten chocolate sludge? Or at least something aura-infused for some sort of suppression effect?

Only able to sigh, he walked a fair distance away and found a relatively hidden rock wall to test it on. He’d rather not keep a coating of vanilla whatever near his home, the sweetness would draw all manner of creatures. On that note, he still didn’t know how this vanilla attack came out, not checking the Nexus, as his memories already informed him that all breath attacks came with the same description.

Maybe it actually was a sort of molten spray, but he held low hopes.

Mana flew into his throat and gullet, quickly being sucked up like every innate ability he’d used thus far. His mouth opened, and a rising gust began to push out of his mouth, the same breath carrying whatever suddenly emitted from the back of his mouth. And he saw… A brown mist?

The moment it escaped, all it took was a light breeze for the powerful scent of vanilla to enter his nose. It overpowered his senses completely, and for a few moments all he smelled was that sickly, sweet vanilla.

But even with faint gusts, it flew through the air like some sort of force carried it forward even after escaping his mouth, quickly leading it to the stone to which he intended to attack. The brown mist instantly began to adhere to the surface, creating a quickly thickening film over the span of a few seconds.

Left utterly confused, he waited until the breath attack ended and swept away the remaining mist with a Wind spell. Moving over to touch the brown coating, he immediately touched it and felt a near solid sludge. Rubbing with his claw only barely caused it to stir, and scooping some off proved a mistake.

A long, sticky line of vanilla sludge ran between his claw and the wall, somehow attaching itself to him with no intention to let go. In the end only by separating it with mana could it remove the trail of vanilla.

Licking a bit which fell off, he realised it indeed tasted of vanilla, but in such a sweet manner that he gagged. This sort of thing might be edible if mixed into large batches of sweet mixtures.

Yet he produced so much with a single breath… And its stickiness was rather crazy, easily several that of the winter’s hope sap. If something got coated in this stuff, then who knew if it would be capable of moving.

If a human in armour got coated on the other hand…

His confused face transformed into a devilish grin. This breath, while strange and unique, was amazing in his opinion. And this was merely a basic form, who knew how it might transform when his heart completely transformed to crystal?

The future of this ability seemed bright, and the wall of vanilla served as a reminder. For namesake, he called the brown stuff ‘syrup’ as well, making this a syrup breath.

He also only took a few seconds to come to a realisation of its uses in cooking… Or trading.

Surely such strong, sweet vanilla flavouring was desirable to patisseries all across the world? A spoonful of this syrup would be excellent for most such dishes, and no one ever had to know a dragon chucked it out with his breath attack.

Indeed, this could support whatever lifestyle he desired in the Empire of man, should he go there in the future.

The value of goods had always been on his mind, he didn’t know why such economics intrigued him, although it seemed to be a keen sense shared by many dragons. Treasure hordes of rare and valuable objects are normal for most dragons, and it seemed he was no different. Not that he truly cared, it felt quite pleasant to be intrigued by things in this way.

Returning home with the test completed, he spent a little while barrelling up the leopard’s blood and skinned its body. However, he did not throw away its guts, instead cleaning and storing them. This time he could not be sure if its whole body was enough for assimilation, and while he hoped, it proved far more resourceful to simply save every last piece.

Fat, bone, tendons, cartilage, skin and all the usual stuff he ate.

All of them mattered here, and the bloodline of a steel tier beast might not compare to the lunar-clipped butterfly, but it absolutely filled him with energy towards the next evolution.

Figuratively and literally that is!

And he didn’t forget about the experience killing the beast gave him, a sizable but surprising 119%. Enough for a whole level, but for a steel tier he felt a bit cheated. It was just a couple levels higher, even if its combat power should be several times his own at its peak.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus II

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Draconic palace Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

20

EXP

6%

Unallocated Stat Points: 17

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

3

Growth

15

Magic

20

Mutation Rate

5

Of course, this overlooked the fact that prior to about a month ago, creatures which gave substantial experience were rather rare. And killing dozens of bronze tier beasts for a couple levels is… ill-advised to say the least. Not to mention, not everyone possessed the ability to so easily locate hundreds of mana-rich plants every day. As such, most creatures took weeks or months to gather the plants for a level.

And at the leopard’s level, what sort of safe-to-eat plants gave more than 1% of its experience requirements?

With this level he now had to pick between the selection of titles available to him. The Nexus didn’t really make it clear that a second one was even available unless one looked closely at the title section itself… So which did he reasonably pick?

The Spellcaster titles weren’t bad by any means, but he didn’t like them in the slightest. Although, he was just stalling, in full knowledge of what second title he wanted. It did not take long for him to select Beginner’s Mind palace. If he came across a better title he’d gladly replace it, but the ability to ease the production of walls, roofs, and anything not on the ground, eased the building process as a whole. It would be a long time till he hit level 40 for the third title as well.

With that sorted, the dragon focused on his plan for suppressing the various tree owners without killing them. First to dominate them through raw power and skill, then switching to his mental space if they refused thereafter.

And any who went too far and threatened his life?

They could just die.