“We’re finally here now! That’s the capital of Remelo there, see the castle?” Darak pointed out the city with an exquisite castle built right into its centre, finally visible just sticking over the horizon.

“We’ll be able to see the dragon. That’s good,” Raccelline replied tiredly, the past three months slightly blurred together at some point and she forgot which events happened on what days. Although, she hadn’t paid much attention to the trip as a whole when she tried to figure out just what to even do.

Did she go back to help her dad?

Find her uncle and have him help?

Could the dragon become strong enough to help her soon?

While still a child, she’d learnt several times what any ordinary child her age would be capable of. This meant little for her emotional development though, which was no different from a young girl whose life revolved around her father and friends. She often reminisced about her comfy life in the capital, but came to accept that she couldn’t live that way for quite a while.

Adapting to a bad situation isn’t the hard part, it was pushing forward to a way out of it that most failed at.

But with more than a fair bit of luck, she met a group of adventurers with their own desires but fair morals who wanted to take part in her goal. It wasn’t a case of pure charity to help the empire, but at the same time, they recognised that someone had to perform this job. The dangers representative of the eternals were so great that even lowly people like them were in serious danger. And after three months, the whole group began to cherish their time with Raccelline even more, after all, they were a bunch of adults who’d grown relatively broody after months in places of danger and near-death.

“The Evelard range is still a few days away, but we can stock up on some resources here. Helps if no one knows that we’re climbing up the mountain.” Korridan made a fair point about their immediate plans, and the group continued towards the capital. Things were… different, here.

Unlike the chaos caused by price fluctuations closer to the capital, these last few weeks had been several times easier to pass through. The commoners seemed to have no idea how bad things were northward, and close to no gossip about the missing emperor penetrated to these places. However, even a small bribe to any merchant who solidly claimed to have visited a place up north could relay such information, and from that they knew someone wanted to behave as though no such information existed!

It took Mala hiding their voices through a Silence spell, as well as making their whole group invisible, for that merchant to talk. Supposedly, those who spoke of these matters received horrible fines, taxes, or simply vanished in the worst of cases.

Not to mention, in these kingdoms, the price of being indebted due to such a process is generally some form of forced labour.

While merchants tried to speak out about such treatment, especially as they clamped down on news from the empire, it didn’t matter. As a safety net, Raccelline and the group remained tacit in this suppression and simply stayed out of the guards’ ways during their whole trip. Which wasn’t too hard so long as they acted as adventurers from the south, which Darak helped with as he spent many years in that region before their meeting.

In a couple days they’d begin the final leg of this journey, and they truly hoped this wait for the dragon had been worthwhile.

However, even now, none of the group actually clarified with Raccelline how old this dragon truly was. But at this point, it seemed that the reveal would have to wait until both finally met.

* * *

Unsatisfyingly dull.

The dragon crazily consumed sap from a variety of mana gatherer trees until their mana flows began to show weakness, dozens of times over, but no one cared! None of the lords sent a follower to inquire about his form, and none of those supposed to be guarding the trees even cared!

“Why are they ignoring me? A beast with no support comes up and knocks out several of their subordinates… But no one’s bothered to kill me! Since when were they so passive?” He’d said this after a few days of this as well, even today a ball of life essence on par with a plum in size awaited his sleep. Even then, this amounted to only 10 days of growth. And that meant he’d increased in size by about a quarter of a metre in the past few days, but given that he’s supposed to actually thicken up to about double his current height and weight…

Length meant nothing for this growth phase. He was looking at weeks of collection at this rate, which left two poor options.

Continue mass collection from the mana gatherer trees. Or risk attacks on node trees for their far more bountiful sap. Well, given his lack of suicidal intentions, he chose to suck up the situation and accepted how things worked out. The more time those lords gave him, the stronger he’d grow, with this growth providing a great catalyst for it all.

Already, his max MP grew by about 10%, and it would only continue to rise along with his heart and body. He admitted that the loss of an extra 80% MP was a huge deficit in this evolution. As insane as the concept of ‘bringing’ natural disasters was, it really limited how many Intermediate true spells his body could cast.

Not to mention it constricted his upper limit even more! That Array Mutilation spell became completely impossible to cast since evolving, thankfully he no longer required it.

“I should take back some of a steel tier or two though. Almost out of food and all.” He quickly cast Sky Sight Barrier to take a look around, curiously probing about for anything nearby. Overall, he found three possible targets, but one stood out.

Another lone sea-freezing crab, this one’s patterns were noticeably weaker than the others he saw over the last week, but it unmistakably exuded power equal to a steel tier. Unfortunately, it met a monstrous opponent who used spells capable of injuring weaker gold tiers.

Those injuries would be tiny flesh wounds, yes.

But it’s better than no damage at all. Either way, such damage meant that he killed the crab in just two spells from the moment their eyes locked. And as he sliced through their legs with a Plasma Arc at first, he finished it off with a Lava Spear to the face, but wondered just how much damage an equally powerful wind or lightning spell would do at this level. Destruction magic was also boosted, but there aren’t any Intermediate true spells which contained the properties of ‘destruction’.

“There is that mimicry, but it differs from destruction magic way too much. I suppose it is possible that destruction is too vague in the description though, maybe it doesn’t specify great languages for that reason,” he argued to himself over the specifics but still didn’t bother writing the 97 word spell into his Mind palace just yet.

It still required more mana than he currently possessed, but he knew he could cast it by the time the growth phase neared completion. Then… he’d have a spell which supposedly shattered a body into its most primal and constitutive elements.

Supposedly, a small configuration of this spell allowed you to create small diamonds from the remains of a body, although dragons held no use for such trivial gemstones.

Non-magical diamonds, or any rock really, are truly a preference amongst the animalistic races and vanity-driven individuals. But any gemstone which held mana? Their values are to be expected, but their uses are even more so. Either way, he wanted to know even more if the power of that spell would be doubled or not.

Such reconstitutive spells are given the designations of ‘utility’ type spells.

These aren’t a real grouping, if it wasn’t already clear.

However, as the lords completely ignored him for whatever reason, it left him free to gather weeks worth of growth in the past few days. Unfortunately, he’d be hard-pressed to ever repeat this process ever again. Things like the Stratnum fruit given to him by the Sage weren’t common in most regions, and the few where they did grow in larger numbers generally presented quite a few dangers in the mithril tier and above. Similar to how this mountain range would look a century down the line.

But as he dropped off the crab corpse into his abode beneath the cave where this all started, he wondered what else he could get away with.

Perhaps sneakily draw away one of the steel tiers he wanted and kill them?

“But how do I draw them away? The only thing they care about are their positions… maybe they leave to hunt or gather food?” He came up with a slight idea, and decided to test it out on one of the weaker steel tiers who attacked him.

The three who stayed together were perhaps the best targets. Unless insanely cautious, there was little reason for them to hunt together, and so, he set off to their tree for the rest of the day until one finally woke up from their sleeping position to head for food. He knew this precisely as a spell allowed him to amplify any noises in a specific direction, to which he pointed towards the three beneath that node tree. With that, he stood up from behind the snow bank he’d chosen to hide behind, and tailed that beast.

Today’s hunt required the unknown moth to find a proper meal for the three, although he realised partway through his stakeout that all three might actually hunt for themselves. Fortunately, they actually seemed to have some loyalty and friendliness to one another, which led to a collective effort between them.

As the lone moth wandered off, he followed at a large distance to avoid it sending smells or wind currents due to fast movements. Obviously, he completely negated his footsteps’ sounds, but that alone was never enough against a steel tier.

When it came to gold tiers, even the slightest inconsistencies in mana might be noticed too. With every tier, the dangers of following behind only grow in number.

At some point, the minute gravitational fluctuations through a moving body alone might be sensed. May the gods forbid that you followed something acclimated to fate itself and casually felt that it was ‘time’ for you to make your appearance. Dragons gave more than a few warnings for older children to follow… Not that they helped in most cases as things grew far too complex at higher levels to always be wary of every possible situation. Still, that would matter far down the line.

The moth’s pathway and caution clearly weren’t that high though, as he approached close enough that it entered his mana sight. From here it was easy to distinguish every action clearly, and he simply watched until as it found a bronze tier rabbit only a bit smaller than himself. In fact, he was probably equal in size a week or two ago.

To kill it, he prepared a high-powered Apprentice true spell which received the boost of his new bloodline. The result of which neared some weaker Intermediate spells at the least, and if he wanted to be extremely careful, then a boost from the spirit would only absolutely decimate this bug.

From the hunt, he saw that it initiated combat by activating some sort of innate ability in its wings to leave that rabbit confused and in a trance. From there, another ability formed a ball of venom in its mouth which fired off like a bolt spell, drenching the sizable rabbit.

On impact, he saw fur melt away as the poison corroded through with ease. The rabbit barely lasted a few seconds as veins all over its body constricted to the point where blood failed to escape its half-skinless body. It was incredibly eerie, but the moth casually activated another innate ability in its head to pick up the corpse with a form of Telekinesis. In just half a minute he gleaned three such abilities, but who knew how many more it might have.

His first goal in combat absolutely had to be restraint. To which he actually had a great method!

Mana built up in his throat, and at the same time, a single leap allowed him to appear beside the occupied moth. With its mind already weighed down with a corpse, it barely cut off the spell as a wave of dark brown mist sprayed all over it. Into every little orifice, nook, and cranny, its back wasn’t free either, as somehow the sheer volume of fluid allowed it to build up so much on his front that it slipped down the moth’s back before setting.

Suddenly, every flap of its wings became dozens of times harder and it fell down without any ability to resist in the moment. On instinct it attempted to remove the sticky substance through mana, like any normal steel tier assumed to do, but scraping off portions required far more work than it had time for, and as the fluid completely sealed off sight and hearing… The moth couldn’t distinguish where its enemy currently stood, not that it mattered a few seconds later.

The dragon completed its spell standing near to the deafened moth, and outputted the last stream of mana required to complete this cast.

A long snake of lightning appeared from the spell’s casting point and formed a ring around the moth’s grounded body, parallel to the ground in orientation. And then, the ring split into twenty equal sections, each of which transformed into individual spikes of lightning. They pointed inwards, a ring of jittering blades mere inches away from the target.

And they all jammed inwards at the same time.

Powerful current sent spasms through the bug’s body, but even worse was the temperature. As lightning streamed through its body, its scales, carapace, and blood all burned, boiled, or broke. Such a fragile form couldn’t withstand the spell, and with half its body left a smouldered mess, the moth stood on its last few breaths.

Without a single shred of mercy, the dragon produced a lava spear and popped its head like a grape.

[Killed level 22 Snalow moth! Received 18% EXP]

“That’s one. Thirteen to go.” He collected the moth and rabbit’s corpses for dinner, with the vanilla essence completely cleared up to avoid any easy links back to himself. Additionally, he cast some ice magic spells as a way to better mask the use of things like Lava Spear and that new spell, Lightning Ring. This didn’t completely hide his spellcasting though, and he considered learning some new ones which better wiped out elemental traces.

And while he said thirteen more. In his mind, only four more real targets remained.

The other two beneath that node tree. A troublesome rattlesnake… And a problematic wyvern.

Problematic indeed.