Removing Argent soul after a bit of thought was an easy choice in the end. He didn’t want to risk finding out what the bloodline considered ‘evil’. Not to mention it wasn’t even the best soul empowering bloodline of the lot.

But after that came the problems. And he had to make a simple choice in the end.

A spatial or soul related bloodline?

It should be pointed out as well, that Soul body Ice-cream, which he ignored, only integrated his soul with his body to improve its defences. Overall, it provided little increase in power.

But for the more important topic at hand, he had to deeply consider what mattered most. Obviously, while Dimension hopping in general is an amazing ability to gain, it heavily depended on the number of small worlds he came across. Such a thing is almost entirely random and he’d need extremely powerful spells to search for them manually.

Given that just a single world could grant him several Advanced bloodlines though, it couldn’t be ignored.

World veiler was good, he didn’t deny that. And its manipulation of space would similarly allow him to locate such entry points to small worlds, but without that innate ability, he couldn’t actually get inside them. Meanwhile, while evasion worked in battle, sometimes it wouldn’t be enough.

In those cases being able to hide could save his life, like when the sea-freezing crab wanted to kill him.

Actually… If such a being walked past him whilst hidden, could he not surprise them with a beam from the soul lantern? Could he single-handedly deal with the strongest enemies on this mountain with this ability?

[40 seconds]

He liked the idea of building up his soul, but the amount of time and effort it required on top of enhancing his mind was too great. The only other bloodline he really cared about was the Sun-moon draconic palace, but the Nexus didn’t include whether it grew with him!

It might, but no one could guarantee it.

And anyway, if there was ever a problem he needed solving, it was how to survive one of the big shots trying to kill him. This even extended to slightly smaller enemies, like whatever owned the southern node tree, not to mention that anaconda to the north. But if he could run, hide, and strike when they weren’t prepared…

“I select World veiler Ice-cream!” Either way, he’d get another evolution in a while, and that one would include the wyvern’s bloodline!

And so, another evolution began. His scales detached to form another egg, and once wrapped up, began the mind-numbing and nauseating sensation he abhorred every single time it occurred. It whisked and blended his body and mind to a pulp before some power, bloodline energy to be exact, processed the mush of his body into a new, greater form.

Of course, the Nexus guiding this process is what stopped it taking hours or days.

Just fifteen minutes later he merged with the spirit and shattered the shell with ease, his scales regrew soon after.

“There’s no innate ability… So how exactly does this work? Status please.” Using his mana sense, he looked about at his surroundings with no changes occurring. At the same time, he ensured the evolution went as planned.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus II

Beginner’s Mind palace

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

World veiler Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

20

EXP

11%

Unallocated Stat Points: 7

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

3

Growth

15

Magic

30

Mutation Rate

5

It absolutely worked, that meant discovering the method to use it.

The first thing which came to mind was how he first discovered the mana manipulation offered to him by the Pure mana bloodline. It simply required him to look at a region, and think up a force affecting the mana there.

Then he could use his mana sight, or sense, to tell how it was manipulated to further adjust the force. He started by repeating that attempt, taking a look at the area around him and thinking of the space in that place moving.

Almost instantly, the mana at that place moved away from him, as willed, but his guess worked. He knew that something beneath the mana moved an incredibly small amount, and instead of focusing on the mana on it, he tried to pull at that thing, that space itself. Akin to a carpet stuck to the floor, he had to pull more and more at an exponential rate for every bit he was able to detach.

It soon became unbearable and he was forced to let go, just barely feeling that strange fabric quickly form back into place as though nothing happened.

Obviously, moving space itself isn’t easy, and he never expected it to be. But he knew how to utilise this bloodline, more than he claimed for the Draconic palace at first. Still, if covering himself with space required a strong mind, then simply expanding the Mind palace would help there.

The problem then became that supposed covering by the world itself, and how exactly it worked.

The first idea which came to mind was that it automatically activated once completely covered, but such a thing couldn’t be so easy. The world is not so benevolent as to allow others to use its powers for free, which meant a price existed.

This could be as cheap as mana, to some sort of mental power. At least, he held both in spades. A mental space is absolutely stuffed with mental power, and his high magic power meant that its limits were exceptional.

Instead, he believed the world required mana. In which case, this new bloodline provided a boost to his max MP for a reason!

But for now he trained the ability. Learning how to separate the control of mana and space to a higher degree. In the meantime, he thought of what to do with the mana gatherer trees, more specifically how to treat the lynx and boar who previously tried to kill him. If he removed them, it wouldn’t achieve much, as two slightly weaker bronze tiers took their place, and their bloodlines were at most Magical+ in rank. Instead… He could force them to take a test for their lives, one which benefited him no matter how they fared.

As he grasped a solid direction for this new skill, he decided to finally deal with them. Surprisingly the two never ran off, staying by their trees but shivering in fear whenever he came across them.

Nothing ties owners to a mana gatherer tree though, it honestly surprised him that both stayed after losing back then. But if they were so willing, he’d naturally have a pair of experiments. A quick run over with the energetic golden spirit merged, alongside some minor stumbles, saw the boar as his first target.

It immediately looked away and did its best to display as little arrogance as possible. Amazing what happened to its bloodthirsty and fearsome demeanour just a week ago!

Ignoring its attitude, he told it, “Follow me.”

Its black hooves glowed with a faint white light and he watched it effortlessly charge across the snow, the ability explained how it kept up with him in the fight at least. In a straight line, its maximum speed even compared to his own, and in a few minutes the pair traversed to another tree.

The infection here matched every other tree to a tee, with the seeping veil fungus’ thick veins extending up the brown oak’s bark to the thick branches high above providing suitable canopy. However, the ‘usual’ colouration of leaves still struck him as odd. It was supposed to be summertime in the third world soon, and yet these trees acted as though fall had just started.

A littering of dried out leaves replaced the usual green layering. Not to say the myriad of fall colours did not compliment the usually depressing white backdrop of this mountain. If anything, the most colouration he ever saw were patches of yellow snow…

If only that were a joke.

Once at the lynx’s tree, it copied what he saw the boar do just minutes ago. Lower its body to seem as small as possible before its eyes darted away in an attempt to get the dragon to ignore it.

Why the hell were they still here if his mere appearance frightened them so?

But this close, he was able to see the tufts of fluffy hair all over the lynx’s body, also better seeing its thin yet scarily sharp white claws. Its dilated pupils practically pouted to be released, and if it weren’t for the attempted attack on his life the matter could’ve been dropped right now.

But if the two were so intent on staying…

“I’ll give you two a chance,” he spoke to them in Beasten, shaking his head at the two cowardly animals and casting a Sword wind. The two noticed the spell but didn’t dare react, and instead only shivered at his voice.

However, as the compressed spell was cast, no attack rained down on the two, instead slicing through a significant third of the dragon’s tail and dropping the sweet food to the floor.

“The two of you will eat half of this every day for the next three days. Whether or not you get to stay depends on whether or not you can evolve in the next week. Understood?” The two clearly knew what his words meant with their eyes gone wide, but they also knew how extreme his desires were. How could they just decide to evolve like that?

It was already a miracle that the two already evolved once due to the surge of mana, yet now the dragon wanted them to do it again?

Yet, did they even have a right to refuse?

The idea of running away still hadn’t occurred to them, whether due to the beasts’ stupidity or simply that they lacked complete intelligence. Either way, the two inevitably huffed in agreement, and a second Sword wind sliced the section of ice-cream tail in half for each to eat.

“You two may go about your days as normal. Remember. Seven days.” He left only after confirming that both beasts completely devoured his tail, and saw the contented appearances on both faces from eating the delicious ice-cream.

A few minutes after separating he couldn’t help but think back and laugh, it might have been the most manipulative thing he’d ever done! “Thankfully they were too stupid to ask what exactly they had to do to survive. Now I hope they stay the full week…”

Nothing else particularly mattered in the few upcoming days either.

He rather casually spent the day either learning to cover himself in space, transform his heart, and began production on a new, larger building in his Mind palace. Just the one no longer met his requirements.

Ah, and he also finally managed to make a crude torch frame. The torch itself is actually the easy part as well, since a way to cheat out fire naturally existed, it only came with the minor downside of slightly decreasing his MP regen.

Anyway, that little bit didn’t help compared to light. He cast Lesser flame and manually applied mana as usual. Once he allowed the flame to appear in the torch holder, he covered it in mana and set the flame in space.

And that was it! A permanent light added to this small building, the decrease to his MP regen was only really noticeable so long as he didn’t drop below 50%. The massive boost from those whirlpools still utterly outclassed his natural regeneration. Additionally, he knew how to mimic them, but only in the vaguest theoretical sense. Obviously, his passive mana control allowed him to copy the effect of sucking mana in, but creating such self-sustaining ones was impossible. He’d have to manually maintain the whirlpools, and that also meant the usage of a spell to actually see parts of his body.

Maybe it could happen one day… But for this week he took things rather easy. He already fed the two beasts enough ice-cream to ensure a mutation if they evolved… So all that mattered was an anxious wait.

Of course, not for him that is. The two necks on his chopping block were the ones unable to sleep in the end.