Back home, he piled up the food liberally, and prepared for the considerable feast he’d eat the next morning as his body grew some more. The two remaining corpses from his experiments would have normally been a couple weeks worth of food when eaten at a fair pace, but just three days of rapid growth completely reduced such bodies to no more than bones!

Even then, he’d eaten half the chipmunk’s skeleton by now.

Before sleeping, he spent some more time inside his Mind palace, decorating the new building even more to make it a truly livable environment.

For once, he actually made a door. It used a dark, wooden material, with faint but noticeable grains which added to the appearance. It wasn’t too large, although he guessed that a human should be capable of walking through without much issue. The almost chestnut-coloured door was affixed to the wall with two specially-made black hinges with silvery screws. This provided little actual defence, but it truly felt like a ‘traditional’ house.

“I could try elven or vampiric architecture someday. Supposedly royal designs are nice across all species as well.” He’d only glanced through a book on advanced design for Mind palaces, but a lot of it recommended a dragon to travel and discover how such races built palaces and castles in the real world, and base designs off that.

Of course, some simplified forms were included, but none of them held any unique charms.

He didn’t place a lock on the door either, although technically there was a thick deadbolt akin to an iron bar. Anything capable of tearing this door from its hinges would likely crack or shatter the bricks as well, so he saw no reason to further reinforce the door at the moment.

A matter for the future.

Internally, he completed a second landing to store more equipment, but he came to realise that he’d probably just cover it in even more bookshelves. In which case, outright removing the floor made more sense. But given how annoying destruction is in a Mind palace, or at least precise destruction, he chose to keep the floor space. There are uses to these sorts of things, but whether or not he made them is a different matter.

For example, a mana-driven fireplace which staved off mind-freezing attacks. Such innate spells are common for psychic beasts in colder climates, the Evelard range was just a decade behind in development of such things.

Alternatively, more floor space means he could engrave more arrays into the building, perhaps transforming the second floor into some sort of meditation room to aid in his mind’s recovery after a gruelling telekinetic venture or withstanding a horrendous attack.

There are quite a few things that can be done with a Mind palace, it was just a matter of him actually reading into it.

Besides his setup for several lights along this building’s walls, he also began creation on rows of bookshelves to line all the sides. On the lower floor, he left space for a fireplace as well; there were other uses for such things besides the mind-freezing attacks.

The new space stored a few hundred books by his estimate, which was still only a fraction of his inherited memories, but enough to keep an eye on all his critical notes and information.

Finishing this second building worked in his favour as his mind theoretically blocked weaker Apprentice true psychic spells, but it clearly hadn’t actually risen his palace to that level. Without a doubt, something was missing, and he knew about this for quite a while.

It wasn’t enough to just have a big building at this level. Most took one of two ways to reach the next degree of power.

Either reinforce the whole structure, or engrave arrays into all the walls.

The latter is wildly more flexible, but from his month-long foray into arrays he understood how far he was from building such a thing. This method is mostly taken by humans who reinforced their mind directly, then built their Mind palace through the destruction of that ‘mind’. Years or decades of knowledge made such a method incalculably easy.

A year-old dragon lacked that sort of experience.

So, he took the most common route for additional protection.

Expanding all four corners of the building to form pillars, from there he created rods lengthways across the walls as a form of rebar. These were the same black metal that the torches and hinges used, and lastly, filled the space between the metal rods with more bricks. It should be known that the setting process in this condition takes almost twice the time and effort than making a normal wall as a compressive force can only be applied from three sides at once.

Whereas, when building the wall he had access to five sides at most times, the massive loss in surface area greatly increased difficulty.

But, it was either this or he spent a year learning more about arrays.

Oh, he also had to reinforce the roof, but that was far easier as it required less structure than the walls. It’d take a week or two, at most.

But for today, he finished making rows of bookshelves for both floors and went to sleep shortly after. There wasn’t any real need to put off rest any longer, and all that mattered was an attempt to strike whilst the iron was hot. A gap between these hunts resulted in far too much danger on his part… But he still had no way to compete against any well-rounded steel tiers.

Most matched his speed, and exceeded his defences. Even Lightning Ring only gravely damaged, not killed, that glass cannon moth! An Apprentice true spell which approached the very limit of its tier when including his bloodline.

Of course, with a boost from the spirit, he knew killing even the rattlesnake would be a breeze.

Before he fretted over it more, he curled up and said, “I’ll worry about it tomorrow.” It was not hard to fall asleep, it rarely had been.

* * *

The next afternoon, he spent time learning a few more attacks which he believed would help restrain and immobilise the two other beasts. As food was still a requirement, he expected them to hunt together, but instead a nearby bronze tier’s position was threatened unless they gathered some food for the two who hid beneath the canopy. Refusal meant they’d have to travel to another node tree and somehow receive a similar closeness to that node tree, which was far too risky in the eyes of mana beasts.

Of course, it was just food collection in the end. The husky with fluffy white fur saw no problem with the requirement and left post-haste.

But, this left the dragon with a bigger issue. How to sneak up on two beasts from so far away… And he came up with an idea after quite a bit of waiting. Specifically when he thought back to the Explosive seal which he’d never found a good use for.

Wind Guillotine is another seal-forming spell, and it effectively took Wind Blade but did everything with far more force. This Apprentice true spell was a short 35 words, and he condensed it down into just 15 from there, but with each cast only taking 5% of his MP…

Well, it was a good thing he had mana sense.

The massive minefield he aimed to build was brutal to navigate, but he didn’t depend on that alone. Force Mine is a simply named spell which blasted Telekinetic force all around and flung anything caught in a random direction, well random unless specified. This combination would likely push the enemies further into his field of traps, and occupy their mental capacity as he gunned them down with spells.

Notably lightning and psychic spells.

As much as he’d like to say anything about the fight being tough… It went smoothly because he still overestimated how strong the minds of these beasts were.

In particular, the psychic spell he used to initially draw them over was Psychic Warbow, named due to its incredible range of at least half a kilometre. This made it a breeze for him to fire at them constantly from behind the minefield itself! And with every attack clearly doing some high degree of damage, they couldn’t bear to hide and hoped all the attacks missed.

At first, they hid behind terrain in hopes that it blocked further spells, with the long-range attacks finally slowing down after the 10th one missed. By the 13th he already stopped casting the spells at length, and merely let off one more as they finally approached the regions filled with his traps.

Hopefully it gave off the impression that he was running low on mana.

“So you’re the one who killed our brother!” The beetle shouted out when it finally caught sight of a standout blue-scaled lizard, with an evident innate psychic spell they immediately decided to rush forwards and kill it before any more attacks could be made. At the very least, they knew this lizard’s release of mana matched a steel tier’s and couldn’t be faked.

They argued that the only reason it refused to run was due to some form of confidence. Few intelligent beasts are stupid enough to stand their ground whilst low on mana, so either the lizard bluffed or its physical body was no less impressive than the beetle’s.

In the former case, a combined attack would deal with it easily… But for the latter it’d be a far harder battle. Either way, fighting while it’d exhausted a portion of its mana was undoubtedly the best option between equals!

When they first approached, it was already too late.

Each triggered a Force mine, the effect flung them forward, this initial row of the seals was specially formed to push the targets inwards. Of course, it would fail if they chose to approach from the sides, but that simply made no sense.

Everyone here was a beast without the slightest ounce of spellcasting knowledge, in the twos’ eyes at least.

Unfortunately, the moment they entered the minefield, any chance of escape whittled down to nothing. Unavoidable Lightning Rings burnt their bodies and left literal holes from such temperatures. Wind Guillotines made deep cuts into their body and legs. It was a wonder they were even alive a minute into the battle.

And finally. As their minds were weakened from the earlier attacks and the battle which left them bleeding… A single psychic bomb knocked them unconscious, whereupon the dragon made its final blows.

[Killed Level 22 Digger Wirling! Received 13% EXP

Killed Level 23 Champion beetle (Ice)! Received 19% EXP]

Three had been killed; two remained.

* * *

But for now he had to vanish, immediately cutting the mental link to every seal nearby and ignoring the vast spread of elemental energies all around. With such quantities, anyone who came by might even believe a group of beasts attacked…

Of course, he didn’t doubt that those lords were so stupid.

One of those who worked to kill him is an unfortunate circumstance… But all three of them? Of literal hundreds of steel tiers that could have died randomly…

So few died on a day to day basis, it didn’t even take a day for the butterfly to panic, rushing over to the roc and wyvern to confirm things. Needless to say, all three of them arrived at the supposed battleground and cast several spells to confirm the rough weights of all those who fought from various imprints, as well as elemental distributions to guess if it were possible for a single steel tier to possibly cast so many spells.

On its own, a beast capable of using psychic, lightning, and wind element innate spells would be a force to be reckoned with. But from what some beasts claimed, the opponent was merely a blue-scaled lizard of some sort.

“Check those ruins now. I want to see that rose!” The roc gave out an order first, clearly less panicked than the other two who verifiably lost their shit.

Whilst the wyvern was normally cool-headed, he felt a bit of a noose wrapped around his neck at the thought of that Sage finding out about the plan. Meanwhile, other lords still didn’t know exactly why the wyvern had given up such a powerful ally so soon. But since a dragon would outgrow them all soon enough, the existence of the ruin as well as its protection made it a perfect way to shove its death onto hubris.

After all, what sort of youngling wouldn’t drool at the sight of a master tier resource?

But now… Now they had a problem.

The three beasts personally travelled to the ruins with one subordinate each, sending them all in, and saw their sullen faces as all three steel tiers returned. But even then, some hope remained in that perhaps they were merely sad over another beast looting the ruins instead! The lords only promised to help dismantle all the protections once the current king died…

Kav spoke to his lord, the wyvern, with a heavy gulp, “It’s all gone. The dragon… It took everything.”

“You said! He touched the rose, did he not?” The wyvern’s rage was palpable, and its voice echoed within their minds like a furious thunderstorm. They knew that just one wrong word might mean their end.

“Not just everything, but the rose as well. And now…” said one of the roc’s subordinates who joined the original venture. A black bear who by far took up the most space in that group, but now his confidence had descended well below the wyvern’s. And so, the bear continued talking in its grim growls, “He’s coming for our heads. Isn’t he?”

None of them truly had to answer the question, but they knew how to overcome it. That dragon, whilst capable of killing steel tiers with weak minds or through surprise attacks, could never best them in an upfront duel. Let alone if they grouped up and stayed in close range to their lords. It was an easy way to lure out the opponent, by now the wyvern no longer cared if it became directly implicated.

Too bad that a group of humans began their ascension of the mountain that very night.