He didn’t just spend a full week dedicated to force-feeding some beasts, that would be ridiculous.

No, instead he finally reached 95% of the way to the assimilation of the Spiritcaller bloodline, as well as 5% for the Divine phalanx bloodline. And today, as he ate his 6th bone for that bloodline, he felt an obligation to ask the Nexus about something, and said, “Has my Kandir divinity not increased from eating all these bones? Even if it’s just a fraction of a percent, surely the divinity didn’t just vanish.”

[No changes to Kandir divinity have been detected. Lost divinity vanished into your body, but has not changed anything in regards to assimilation. Please consume more for a better understanding of this situation]

A verbose response from the Nexus, but even he recognised how strange all this became.

One other thing he tried out was descending into the demigod’s chamber deep below and trying to eat the desiccated corpses which stood in a circle around their resting place. However, no matter how much he tried, nothing even damaged the mummified skin of such warriors. Nothing, until he tried to lift up the mithril tier blade he carried about and swung it clumsily, a tiny notch cut through a single toe, and he decided to give up there.

This corpse either matched the world-shaking elephant or completely exceeded it, in which case he knew of no way to survive assimilation in the short term. Maybe he could return in a few years and assimilate the bodies… But not in the next couple months. It might take days just to assimilate each stomachful, and when combined with how much he’d have to eat, he came to a better conclusion on the bodies. He might as well harvest the bones and have a blacksmith forge some armour for himself, no doubt the set would resist mithril tier weapons like his sword.

Additionally, it should be known that he didn’t use the official rankings of weapons due to a lack of experience. The sword he spoke of would technically be called some sort of ‘treasure tool’, with magical tools being the range of items below them.

However, he didn’t really care as he stayed in the mountain range alone most of the time.

What did matter was the assimilation right in front of him. Today, he collected a small pile of Spiritcaller bones, which he knew to be enough for an assimilation, one either at Advanced+ or Extreme as well, either of which were relatively desirable at the moment. But as well as that, it gave him an excellent chance to test out the new spell he learnt. Although, it’d be more accurate to say that he created it.

That’s right. Created a spell by mashing together the effects of three other spells and changing specific connectives between words such that it all flowed… More or less.

The spells he created ended up being 77 words, which he carefully condensed down to 54 words, but found that the spell destabilised and collapsed when he tried to further shorten its cast. A side-effect of his shoddy creation method. In reality, a proper spell should be formed from the ground up, but he took a shortcut in the same way you could technically build a house by stealing premade walls from other homes…

It worked. But to be honest, it was stupid as hell.

No one would be surprised if he told them that compressing this spell resulted in a collapse. But that didn’t make it impossible, and the spell technically achieved what he wanted.

From the 50 word Evolution reducer, a 110 word Power gelification, and the 62 word Elemental analysis, he formed his spell… One which searched out a specific bloodline and then applied a sort of ‘gelling’ effect to it.

This worked by taking the first and third spell to adequately seek out bloodline mutations and energies, respectively, then applying the gelification.

In other words, it did exactly as you expected.

He believed so at least. And since he also believed that the Spiritcaller bloodline wouldn’t kill him, it became his first test on this shoddy spell’s actual efficacy. Which also meant he quickly chewed on the pile of bones until his stomach filled to the brim, and he saw the constant prompts slowly tick upwards in percentage. From 95% it took a few minutes to hit 96%... And then it was just waiting. More, and more, and just the slightest bit more, until it happened.

[Consumed Spiritcaller Kandir giant bloodline! Assimilation progress 100%]

A frightening burst of heat erupted within him, but not enough to worry over. His face tensed up as he took a deep breath and cast the spell he created. Without any desire to fail, every single word came out even if he knew he could cast the slightly compressed version instead. As the fiery heat within grew ever greater, a slight concern ran through him, but he stuck to the spell, trying to maintain every breath and not whimper in pain. Just that would have ruined the casting process, and so, he reached the 60 word mark upon which the spell required mana to further maintain itself.

20% of his MP vanished in that instant, which sustained it long enough for him to reach 70 words and drop another 20%... Finally, he finished casting the spell and dropped down to a dangerously low 25% MP. Enough to stay conscious, but certainly, a quantity that left him woozy for ten seconds or so.

At the same time, he forced the remaining mana within him to stay still as the spell he cast reflected back onto him, making a cold force instantly sweep through his body, but clearly accumulated onto a dozen or so boiling hot nodes within.

Spots where the new bloodline fought to take over his body, and in the process released copious amounts of heat.

Unfortunately, his mana sight couldn’t see bloodline energy, but he certainly felt his whole body start to solidify, as though someone filled him with gelatine and thickened everything considerably. However, this also applied to the Spiritcaller’s bloodline energy, which powered the bloodline’s attempted takeover, something he assumed together with the Nexus but only now confirmed through this test.

As the situation went on for a minute, he worried that other side effects remained.

He could have tested this on a weaker bloodline first, but that undermined the spell’s purpose! A necessary component to this all was to ensure he better survived the assimilation of bloodlines far stronger than his own!

Finally, after a few minutes, his body thinned and returned control to him. But, he felt the hot spots flare up once more, but thankfully, a few seconds later, it came to an end, with a weakness sending him to the floor, but nothing which matched his previous experience with such powerful burning effects. When he assimilated the wyvern’s bloodline, it forced him to sleep without the slightest chance to stay awake… And while the Spiritcaller bloodline was weaker, it definitely wasn’t so weak as to only make standing a bit tough.

[Assimilated Spiritcaller Kandir giant bloodline! 5 new bloodline directions potentially available]

If he pushed himself, walking wasn’t even that troubling!

“Nexus, that worked, right?” He held confidence in his questionable spell as it wildly transformed the aftereffects of assimilation.

[Spell successfully reduced forced mutation rate, and a reduction in overall heat release was observed. However, it is flawed. Your bloodline energy was affected as well]

He nodded along, realising why his body stiffened during the process, and finally relaxed when the spell wore off. It appeared that not only was the spell imperfectly crafted, but his makeshift attempt to differentiate bloodline energies was a complete bust. The spell targeted all bloodline energy within him… And that reduced his own body’s ability to fight off the mutation.

But it wasn’t removed entirely, and that meant he could easily assimilate a stronger bloodline without fear of damage. By this theory, it was unlikely to save him from a bloodline that would’ve killed him without the spell, and in this regard, he saw a direction for improvement.

“If I include the bloodline search spell it should work as intended… But that raises it to almost 100 words, not to mention the mana cost.” He naturally already had a solution, but scrapped it days ago in favour of this shorter spell with lower costs. There was a reason those humans from so long ago failed to find him.

Good search spells are extremely expensive!

An Apprentice true spell to search for anomalous mana sources might be no better in range than his mana sense! Meanwhile, if they wanted to search over a whole mountain range, it’d require MP equal to a mithril tier’s pool at the least. A whole two levels above Apprentice true spells!

Bloodline search is a good way to search for any creatures, whether made of flesh or pure magical energies, but while the reduced scope made it cheaper, it wasn’t that cheap.

Well, he came to a conclusion that no Extreme+ level bloodline could kill him now, and when he asked the Nexus for the Spiritcaller’s level it was only Advanced+. Deciding it was very likely that he could survive the Elder guard assimilation, he changed to munching on their bones and watched the five beasts he captured and force-fed every day.

Besides the ice cream, he made sure to feed them a fair amount of mana-rich plants native to the battlefield.

Including some spirit-blitz pomes… It really quietened them up, and probably left one of them a vegetable. That or they became really good at biding their time in hopes of an escape. Not that he was stupid enough to give them the chance. For the moment any of them evolved, he learnt an Apprentice true spell which sealed a target in a type of barrier, one which allowed anyone outside to attack those within. Unless they evolved some anti-magic property, which are amongst the rarest in existence, it was impossible for any to escape.

And so, he waited and collected. Over the next few days he ate enough bones for the Elder guard bloodline to hit 20%, meanwhile, another two Divine phalanx bones allowed its bloodline to hit 7%. But once more, the divinity within both bones seemingly vanished into thin air according to the Nexus. It could even tell that the divinity had not been recalled by a god, so the unfound divinity naturally became of interest.

One theory that it generated was that the bloodline itself held onto its divinity, and only by assimilation could he acquire it. The divinity within a hundred bones equaled roughly 5% of the basic godhood, so the Kandir’s racial god hadn’t cheapened out in the creation of these warriors. Such a high-powered phalanx should’ve been equal to a horde of master tier beasts, yet they all died. Well, it made sense with the multiple cornem tier beasts here, and their supreme tier leader.

As well as that, he happened to find a perfect chance four days after he assimilated the Spiritcaller bloodline to nab another beast. This one was extremely strange… Since it was a sea-freezing crab. A steel tier one, of course, but still one of the crabs.

He didn’t know what happened, but the king clearly decided to start allowing crabs to move outwards as a way to kill beasts who dared to show loyalty to someone else, serving as a reminder for how great their force truly was. And boy did they over-achieve.

A single use of Sky Sight Barrier revealed hundreds of steel tier crabs moving across his side of the mountain range, and a single weaker one nearby became the perfect target.

He blinded it before cutting off all six of its legs with Plasma arcs, then force fed it a mushed spirit-blitz pome and cast Mental blast with 20% of his MP to send it out for the count.

Its body absolutely crushed that other sea-freezing crab which got him into this mess, but his spells no longer cared about the defence of weaker steel tiers. Only those in the middle of the power level could defend against this spell, and they still took minor injuries.

And like that, his cute little dungeon beneath the battlefield gained the sixth prisoner.

This time a beast that actually deserved the pain he inflicted on it… Probably. He did actually kill the crab’s kid first, so claiming moral ground didn’t exactly work. It received its first force-feeding of his body, and later on some mana-rich foods to hopefully push them towards an evolution even faster. It didn’t matter if he had to wait another week for any to evolve.

Time was on his side, for now, the king’s movements ensured that much. But for how long is an integral question.

Obtain more advanced body parts, kill those beasts who locked him away, and assimilate the last Kandir giant bloodlines. All to be done before he left.

Also! Fix his horrible, shoddy spell as well. Seriously, it couldn’t even be compressed to half its size! It was a miracle it even half-worked!