Immediately after leaving the ruins, the first thing he made sure to take care of was the entrance. Whilst the beasts left it wide open, he couldn’t allow the risk of something so casually entering once more. Some snow lazily covered the entrance, and overall, it appeared no different from the hills nearby.

Who knew how long this kept others in the dark, but no part of him believed the beasts would go and check on him. They clearly wanted to distance themselves from their role in his death, and acting as though they knew nothing about the ruins only aided that.

But now… Which should he go for first?

That rattlesnake, Kav, and Mor, were by far too powerful for him to kill without the lantern. In fact, even with it, he needed to kill them in the first move. In an actual fight, not only did he lose horribly, but few of his attacks could even harm them.

By far, the hardest to kill were those three. Therefore, he had to pick the other survivors first, and one came to mind instantly. He said to himself, “How about that one who attacked me? Yes, from what I know, he worked for the butterfly.” He had the first target, and used the spirit to head further north. Already inside their domain, he only had to locate them, but first created some distance from the ruins as a precaution.

Here, he maintained absolute vigilance and made sure no intelligent beasts saw him. At least, there were no bronze tiers in his mana sense, which meant a relative degree of safety for now.

Now came the problem.

There were actually three beasts in the direction of the attack, and whilst he guessed which one it was, the fact that everyone moved their mana at the time greatly troubled him. In fairness, he assumed that since the wyvern didn’t dare kill him, neither would they plot for the steel tiers to do so as well. Pretending that the Sage’s influence was so much greater actually worked out well for him…

Mostly.

“Three targets. A moth, a wirling, and a beetle… Who would have the greatest innate spells?” He thought back to them all, and knew that the spell used wasn’t weak. Compared to a 50 word spell, he guessed that either the beast was near the upper end of the steel tier or sacrificed defence for attack.

So it had to be the moth.

Wirlings are a type of worm which very easily travel through a certain type of material, this one clearly traversed snow given the mountain’s condition. The only differences from an average earthworm were, how their strong bodies could hold themselves up, and that their mouths opened up to a series of teeth, ready to blend a creature into a digestible mush.

From what he knew, the butterfly lord was predominantly an expert of ice, and its psychic powers shouldn’t be too powerful. But he also hadn’t truly seen its capabilities, simply listened to some rumours from steel tiers under the wyvern.

For now, he quietly wandered the outskirts of the region and controlled the mana which escaped his body to match that of a bronze tier.

This couldn’t overcome even the simplest scanning spells, but he refused to believe they were common.

So far, only very rare psychic-type beasts possessed them as passive abilities. And with that confidence, he wandered into the butterfly’s territory, but first stayed around mana gatherer trees. Every few hours, he switched between them, but after checking ten, it was clear that no steel tiers ever appeared out here.

He needed to go towards the node trees, but that also presented a danger.

“Well, I don’t really have a choice. I do have some scouting spells I can use in advance though.” Besides the Sky sight barrier, he learnt several more Apprentice true spells over the past couple days at various mana gatherer trees.

Overall, his utility improved once more, quite reminiscent of when he could easily grasp Beginner true spells, in fact.

First, he used Sky sight barrier to slowly approach a node tree and confirm what beasts resided there. If any showed the slightest sign of acknowledging his spell, he popped it and immediately left the vicinity. That only happened once though, when he accidentally approached the butterfly’s node tree specifically, but from what he saw, none of the beasts stayed there.

Eventually, he did locate them all, coincidentally gathered around a single node tree, clearly too weak to possess one themselves. This benefited him more than anything, but how exactly to kill them was an issue.

Of the spells he learnt, Plasma arc devastated those of an equal level. As did Earth swallow, and Tornado storm. Together, these spells killed most weaker steel tiers relatively fast, but the release of mana would gather eyes extraordinarily fast.

He thought to himself for a while, and came to a conclusion about this issue. In the end, he just needed to be faster, which had an obvious solution. “I need more agility… And speed boosting spells.” It’d been quite a while since he last checked his status as well, not to mention the number of spare points he possessed. Most beasts would have 10 points in agility by now. Faster ones around 25 points.

The downsides of his magic heavy investment became far clearer at this point, and so he made a drastic choice as a preparation against the upcoming chases.

First, he memorised a 55 word spell called Slipstream dynamism, a mouthful on its own.

It wasn’t without reason though, as this spell automatically created a slipstream around him at all times, and then effectively dragged him forward using the layer of compressed air around him. An almost ingenious method to greatly speed up steel tiers who lacked the ability to create a vacuum around themselves! The boost it gave actually increased as he moved faster, albeit at a decreasing rate.

There reached a point where an increase in speed stopped the spell from boosting him any faster, but that point is usually seen amongst gold tiers.

“Seven points into agility. That puts me at 10, but with the title, it’s actually 14… Not bad, but it doesn’t mean anything unless my speed actually exceeds them. What else can I even do to go faster?” He stared in the direction of the node tree and thought for the better part of a day. His Sky sight barrier made it easy to watch the three, and by the end of an hour spent daydreaming of revenge, he got an answer.

Evolve. It was as simple as that.

He was still too close to the wyvern and others though. For now, he needed to vanish entirely, and when he returned a week later…

The Blue storm bloodline wouldn’t disappoint. He knew that much. But to evolve he needed bloodline energy, which meant finding things to eat, and… Well, who’d stop him from killing some random steel tiers?

With the help of mana sense, it took no more than 20 minutes to come across a steel tier at one of the butterfly’s mana gatherer trees. And he did what any reasonable dragon would do in their position, cast a spell from beyond the target’s senses and instantly kill them. It wasn’t even that hard in all honesty, asleep and uncaring, they probably never expected anyone to be so ruthless as to kill a subordinate of the lords.

Before anything happened though, he covered himself in space and activated one of the Nexus bonuses for the World veiler bloodline. An astonishing 100% boost to the first attack whilst hidden inside the ability… What happens when you outright double an Apprentice true spell nearing the next level?

The beast finally woke up due to its body reacting to the sudden change in mana, but at the same time, a wave of bright light already blinded it and sliced right through its face. While not completely bisecting the beast… Anyone would agree that having your brain sliced in half is entirely lethal.

[Killed Level 21 Ice Ravager fox! Obtained 14% EXP]

All the beasts nearby stiffened at the sudden attack, left to stare in shock as a crystal-frilled lizard walked through the crowd whilst taunting time, and taking the corpse with ease in its jaws.

Name

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus II

Beginner’s Mind palace

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

World veiler Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

21

EXP

34%

Unallocated Stat Points: 3

Strength

0

Luck

0

Agility

10

Growth

15

Magic

30

Mutation Rate

5

A short distance away, the dragon wandered over to the place he stored the belt and ring to re-equip them. With the fox's body stored in the latter, he merged with the spirit and ran off to the western side of the mountain range, through this he knew an evolution should come up extremely soon.

After a full two hours of travel, he’d passed the central mountain once more and completely sat on the western side, unsure of where to go now. In truth, there was only one place which came to mind…

He removed a pile of snow from a seemingly random place and said, “I hope it’s still empty, it has been a while.” Water control shifted pile after pile, and his distress grew increasingly, until a rush of stale air hit his face. And he followed up with, “Seems lifeless enough. Perfect.” He walked into the tunnel and piled up snow to hide the entrance once more.

His home, once more.

As he continued down the pathway, he came across the storerooms with quite a bit of earth-frost carrots and snowy field roots. It’d been a while since he ate some meat, and their relatively good condition meant he could still use them.

“Ah right, I left these things here too,” when he looked about the storeroom, he was reminded of the spirit-blitz pomes that he dug out of the battlefield ages ago. At the time he worried about using them as they directly attacked his mental space, but with the advancements he’d completed, it seemed unlikely that even a whole fruit damaged a single brick or tile. In fact, he ate one on the spot with ease.

[Consumed Spirit-blitz pome! Assimilation progress 4%]

Not bad for a whole fruit this time round, and on further testing he found the power of those lightning strikes really didn’t do much damage.

At most, their power equaled a stronger Beginner true psychic spell. With the rain of lightning bolts ending after a minute as well, he really stopped fearing them, and ate the few fruits one after another.

Even though those didn’t fill him up in the slightest, with the mixture of sourness alongside sweetness, he took great pleasure in the different sustenance after a whole month. Living on ice cream isn’t bad in the slightest, but eventually, anyone would be revolted by the lack of variety. He managed though, and his reward was a seasoned slab of fox meat that awaited him. It sizzled as he cooked it as a large steak, with the blood and other components stored if he decided to complete the assimilation. The large piece of meat took a while to cook, but after half an hour it became time to eat…

He finally bit into it and tore it apart with the sharp row of teeth given to him.

Its juicy and tough structure made him work for it, but as he finally ripped a piece off, he chewed it finely and swallowed as any normal beast could do. Equalising the playing field truly felt great.

But halfway through eating, he got the expected prompt.

[Bloodline energy has reached an evolutionary threshold. Prepare for evolutionary measures to begin]

He looked down at the half-finished steak in his mitts, and decided to forgo preparations for just a few minutes. However, as a precaution, he did tell the Nexus, “Automatically remove the ice cream related evolutions, and everything from creatures below Rare+”

Off the top of his head, none of them actually mattered, and he quickly finished the steak. Each piece had to be munched down, and he’d barely finished the meal before the next message came up. It was time to make a choice.

[Evolution imminent. Your possible bloodline pathways are the following:

Worldly metamorphosis Ice-cream

Suppressive space Ice-cream

Mana world Ice-cream

Auric-refined Volatile mutant Ice-cream

Soul word…

Emulative true form…

Divine parody…

Esoteric existence…

Lightning garden…

Stormbringer…

Tidal rage…

Bolt raining…

Sky cataclysm…

Frigid water of boundlessness…

Please make a selection in 4 minutes, or a random pathway will be used]

It looked like it would be a pretty good set of choices overall.