The power of a gold tier beast normally explodes during their elevation, mostly due to their bodies being incapable of controlling such power at first. But most learned quickly and suppressed such a thing.

This case stood out a bit as all its mana never actually left its body, in fact, as far as mana went, it was still a steel tier beast. But that didn’t matter to the two steel tiers who not only ran off, but collected their lord due to a potential competitor appearing. Therefore, whilst the young dragon did his best to push the giant elephant corpse about, he was not surprised to see a wyvern who had already flown over and landed nearby.

Just a few seconds later, the two steel tiers arrived as well. Neither could really fathom the sight, and remained speechless as their lord spoke. “Did you… How was it killed?”

“I used a magical tool to attack its soul. A waste of its power in my opinion… But I had no choice.” The two beasts behind looked away from their lord awkwardly, in the heat of battle they entirely forgot to take the dragon with them for safety.

There was no way he could run away from such a beast on his own.

Nonetheless, with the matter resolved, both beasts returned. It left the large wyvern to peer at the infection over the nearby node tree and pose a question to his subordinate. “How do I know you’ll remain loyal to me?”

From what the two mentioned, he knew the dragon’s power to equal weaker steel tiers already, only requiring a bit more elemental variation to be a powerhouse on their side.

It had just been a month, and its power almost rose by half a tier! Wouldn’t it be a real gold tier six months from now?

He even doubted that claim about its age.

As such, he had to ask this now, to know if the dragon would lie to his face or say something worth trusting. And he replied, “I’ll be leaving… Whether you win or lose.” It didn’t at all answer his question, and perhaps it was because the young dragon simply wanted to deflect and chose the obvious manner.

State that he didn’t care about the king's position. And in turn, stated his plans to remain a non-threat.

In the first place, it should’ve been obvious he wasn’t the slightest bit loyal. Not that either side took it personally, if the roles had been reversed, he too would never truly be loyal to a dragon. Why should he expect as much from a youngling who received attention from a Sage at such an age?

Accepting reality, he flew into the air and roared out in Beasten to anything nearby. “This dragon, my subordinate, is the owner of this node tree. Any attempts to take it from him are declarations of war against myself!” There was no question to follow up.

Every beast either accepted this new reality or left, and where they went might not be as good as this current home. It all depended on how this new owner behaved… And if any of them received a backlash from his requirements.

But with all the fighting over, the youngling really only wanted one thing. He cast Sword wind and cut through the elephant’s thick flesh, revealing very little fat and instead giant, powerful muscles.

Its blood tasted horrible, like almost every other beast’s, but still he drank it to see what sort of bloodlines he received.

[Consumed Mountain trampling elephant bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%

Consumed derivative World shaker elephant bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]

That certainly sounded powerful, and some of the draconic memories might even talk about such a species… Just which book would it be in?

The one literally titled ‘Legendary bloodlines - Famed existences’ made a great starting option. Although with a little over 800 pages, in total detailing 343 bloodlines, he lacked time to spend on it.

Instead, he filled his belly with blood while filling up dozens of stone barrels with the rest.

Did he ever mention how some of these things had way too much blood?

After around 50 of those barrels, he finally drained the elephant dry and got to cut off a slab of meat to roast. Given how he wasted so much of the lantern’s power, this legendary bloodline absolutely had to be worth it.

And so, when he finished all that meat he was able to finally see how it went. It had been a while since he ate his literal body weight in meat and blood, but damn did it feel great.

[Consumed Mountain trampling elephant bloodline! Assimilation progress 2%

Consumed derivative World shaker elephant bloodline! Assimilation progress 4%]

Interesting… How did that happen?

“Nexus, is the World shaker bloodline actually really weak?”

[No. The awakening and transformation process instantly consumed a huge portion of the beast’s life force to transform vast quantities of its body to the World shaker elephant’s. Therefore, around 75% of this body belongs to the derivative]

A… concise and explanatory answer from the Nexus? Was he dreaming?

But this opportunity couldn’t have been better. He no longer thought about acquiring the corpse the elephant’s derivative came from. Not when a far better option had been placed right in front of him. Since its death, the elephant’s black skin remained, but the previously moving gold swirls remained stationary, and now appeared as nothing more than fancy tattoos. He didn’t truly care so long as the body granted this bloodline.

And oh boy, did it contain a lot of bloodline energy.

Each mouthful of blood took several seconds to absorb. And the cubes of meat? At least 10 seconds for smaller ones, with the largest taking upwards of 15 seconds!

It contained more energy than even the butterfly corpse, and a momentary thought considered that this digestion time came from its gold tier body instead. After all, the kandir bones took a while to digest, and that was after countless years of rotting combined with portions of their energy being consumed by other creatures.

Unfortunately, he had no way to tell.

It did open up a brand new concern though. Would this assimilation just kill him?

In theory, he knew his current body barely survived bloodlines which offered 5 evolution options. They literally burnt him alive and without intervention, either from himself or the Nexus, killed him.

The lunar-clipped butterfly, which just gave that reindeer steel tier strength, was an Advanced+ bloodline. But this world shaker elephant bloodline directly rose a beast’s power by an entire damn tier! And this probably wasn’t even close to its limit.

No way, in any world, was this bloodline just the rank above Advanced+.

He’d die near instantly during assimilation, and so he needed to prepare. Reach 99% assimilation progress, then hold off until he evolved once more or completed his second growth phase.

Then he’d be safe.

Then there’d be nothing to fret over.

A strange ill-ease still floated through his mind though, a very weak sense that bad things would happen and he’d die a gruesome death. But it only took a few seconds for him to equate that to the seeping veil fungi’s influence.

It literally fed on creating nightmares and fear, but never did he expect it to be strong enough to pierce through his Mind palace.

Node trees shouldn’t ever be underestimated was his takeaway from this.

But besides that? He just waited the day out… Tomorrow he’d have a load of fun with those two.

* * *

Far off to the northwest, a council met in the Empire of Man. This meeting held three main topics, ordered in expected importance. This one discussed the matter of eternals found manipulating and encouraging nobles to conspire against their kingdoms.

But that wasn’t what earned it a place on this table. That alone could be handled by a far lower ranking group.

Instead, the nine humans all sighed over the matter.

Six Sages, and three Cornem warriors. Yet, not a single one knew of how to address the topic.

None of the nine appeared old, instead, they displayed their youthful exuberance like young men and women who’d never experienced the wears of time. They all wore rather similar robes, a silky white which shimmered due to the council room’s overhead windows.

Except for discernable hairstyles, their body shapes were relatively similar as well, both men and women muscular with focus on bodies streamlined for battle.

Of the group, one stood out as a bald Sage.

“Enough sighing, that means all of you. We address the second topic of your weekly forum, the large-scale purge of Eternals from all over the continent. Syrad, you were in charge of gathering this information from the rulers, what did they say?” The whole group turned to one man in particular, his short, jet black hair was identical to two other men at the table. However, with thicker brows and a sharper nose, along with elf-ish ears, it was easy enough to discern the three.

“Three of them set up honeypots using nobles who pretended to work against them. Four of them crushed the Eternals using pure force by crushing every dissenting noble… And 37 reported the use of a secret artifact used to locate and remove them.” The exasperated Sage, Syrad, was about to continue before a woman with her hair fashioned into a bun interrupted him.

“So, how many lied?” He clicked his tongue at her words. She wore very little make-up, as did most people at their level, with the exception of her blood-red lipstick. With a daintier nose, the stiff upper-lip she presented at most meetings seemed to have ingrained itself into her face over the years where she was looked down upon for her body.

Unfortunately, along with that face came an annoying attitude.

“If you let me continue, Minerva, you’d know I was moving right onto that.” He sent a glare to the scoffing woman and continued his report on the matter, “We have confirmations of 4 countries who possess such tools, and from informants, that number should be closer to 12. Which is up to 25 nations all over the continent who mysteriously resolved the Eternals’ plots.”

Of course, it wasn’t as though all the countries utterly lacked proper surveillance methods. Quite a number resolved the plots by themselves and without the need of any special tools, even sharing such methods with the empire. But these 25 stood out, and now they had to discuss precautions.

One of the few warriors spoke up, a man with a discernable appearance given his hefty beard and thick locks of ginger hair, both were braided with blue bands covered in runes. His facial hair absolutely clashed with his young appearance, but no one ever brought that up. “We can’t allow these nations to create problems, especially as the empire nears its third Great sage. I support just blacklisting anyone suspicious and performing stronger investigations when this matter ends.”

“Blacklist how?! Send an army over to crush them? All you’ll achieve is turning us into a public enemy. No, we need to carefully monitor the source of whoever handed over so many Eternals.” Syrad blasted back with, clearly misinterpreting their words to quell the point.

But it didn’t work in the slightest. And the other seven all took out various fluids to sip on…

It was a long and loud five minutes, but the conversation was able to regain its track soon after. Although, no one really came up with a solution which proved better than ‘just watch them more’.

Funny how many of their meetings ended in that.

* * *

The next day, an exhausted dragon woke up beside a giant elephant corpse and cooked a meal as usual. The large slab of meat combined with a barrel of blood completely satiated him, although he had to eat a bit of his tail to get through the whole barrel in the end.

But, now it was time to check on those two beasts, first travelling over to the lynx’s tree to see it lying beneath the verdant oak without a problem. When he approached, it stood up fearlessly, evidently happy about how this week ended.

His mana sight revealed some sort of change to its teeth, but there was no facial reaction on his end. Instead stating, “One moment, I want to get the two of you together. If he’s still at the tree that is.” The lynx understood why, and followed behind.

Around five minutes later, the two arrived to also see a boar quite chuff under its tree as well. Once more, his mana sight revealed a change, but this one far more drastic than the lynx’s.

Most of the boar’s body transformed into ice-cream! Only a few parts, namely major organs, remained as fleshy parts… And he struggled to fathom how such a mixture of food and flesh actually existed.

And it didn’t seem to be in pain either? Just what sort of monstrous creations was he making?

“Interesting, I didn’t think the two of you would actually evolve. But you exceeded my expectations.” The two beasts looked on to him, finally able to sigh in relief that they kept their lives.

Right as the two said that, he spoke in Draconic, much to their surprise, but neither were truly prepared as a lava spear appeared and impaled the boar’s head. It didn’t stand the slightest change as the sharp tip cut through flesh and bone, with the molten rock seeping into his brain and instantly killing the beast.

With a frightened face, close to crying, the lynx spoke in Beasten, “Why? We were successful!” The two only stayed because they actually met the dragon’s request to evolve, believing that it would only let them live if they gained these strange candy-related traits…

“I never said you’d live if you evolved.” The young dragon showed no emotion at the pouting beast. His spirit held it in place, and he cast Sword wind.