5 years passed before the Dragon King had successfully comprehended the Metal affinity, now all he had to do was absorb the Metal Essence from the crystals, something he could now do.

Whether it was Metals, Flames or Water etc, it was impossible to absorb their respective elemental essences without having the corresponding comprehension or affinity. If you only had the comprehension, you gained the affinity, if you had the affinity, you gained more power.

It was that simple.

And now, the Dragon King was gifted with the opportunity to gain a second affinity. Naturally he accepted it with open arms, absorbing the Metal Essence with no hesitation. As for the magical energy inside the crystals? It was impossible to obtain without special methods.

After that, a few years passed where the Dragon King sparred with his fellow brethren and tempered his killing intent using the lives of other species, mostly the slaves. It was cruel but such was the law of the Beasts.

Eventually, the Dragon King broke through and became a Stage 1 Spirit Beast. But when he did so, grand changes took place.

The goal of the Spirit Beast stage was to enhance your soul or to the best of your ability. All... Well, most living things had souls, but the souls of beasts before the Spirit Beast stage were just so useless that you might as well ignore it completely.

Their souls were just so incapable of capability that thoughts eluded them and their instincts controlled their every action. Of course, there were special cases and talented races but the majority of Beasts were like this.

But everything changed when you became a Spirit Beast. You gained the same soul power that the Enlightened had (Gaining the average ‘enlightened species’ intelligence at Stage 9), you gained the spirit sense ability and you gained the ability to converse telepathically.

These were all great boons that the Enlightened Species were denied when they entered realm 2 (Mana Refinement).

More importantly, in every Realm breakthrough that a Beast went through, they gained the chance to…

Evolve!

If they were talented enough, they had the ability to encode their comprehensions and affinities that they gained throughout their lives into their very DNA. This not only made their skills as smooth as breathing, it made those skills stronger and more engineered for them. For example, for a Dragon that became a Fire Dragon, his flames were no longer just flames. They were now ‘Dragon Flames’.

But Most importantly, their offspring would be born with their abilities with the more powerful ones being locked until they had the power to use them.

As it stands, races like the Dragons would always evolve each realm breakthrough, they were just that talented, it is what it is.

And that is exactly what the Dragon King was going through.

Black scales were shed as the Dragon King roared in agony, his teeth and claws shattered like glass and his horns along with his tail-spike were reduced to powder, his eyes bled and gallons of blood leaked out of his mouth. Cleary, something had gone wrong with his organs.

When the reverse scale was suddenly but ruthlessly torn from the Dragon King, his roaring stopped and his shaking stilled, he seemed to have calmed down?

But if you looked closer, the King… seemed a little strange?

He was crazily twitching like a fish out of water and his eyes were extremely unfocused, rapidly looking in every direction like a deranged mental patient.

Just as it seemed that it couldn’t get any worse, disgusting amounts of impurities started to slowly seep out of his pores, indicating that… he was undergoing Anatomy Refinement?!

.

.

.

Mmm… it looked quite painful...

And indeed it was. The reverse scale of a Dragon was simultaneously their toughness defence and biggest weak point. Whenever this defence was breached, it would cause unholy amounts of pain.

But soon, things began to look up for the Dragon King. I mean~ could it still be called an evolution if all it did was bully you?

The Dragon King began to grow and suddenly roared with rage as he looked up at the skies. What? Did he want to ‘burn the heavens’ or ‘go against fate if fate goes against him’? Maybe he was thinking of ‘breaking through the firmament and covering the World with his wings’?

Who knew what this lizard was thinking.

But soon, as the 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯 𝘒𝘪𝘯𝘨 continued to roar, the most beautiful of scales began to develop all over his body. They were an alluring magenta colour that tantalized the eyes, their faint transparency akin to that of Crystals and their twinkling lights reminiscent of the stars.

It was like his scales had been forged from the Magic Crystals that he had been studying for the past 5 years.

His claws, horns and tail-spike regrew and they were also crystal-like, but these a deep violet colour with a strangely enchanting but menacing light that periodically pulsed like a beating heart. The pressure they emitted was as if it was threatening to cause laceration just by looking at it.

Naturally, his teeth were not left out, thankfully they weren’t also purple but the regular white, but the reflective lustre they had were not normal at all. Each and every tooth was like that of a blade's edge.

Looking at all these features, one would almost think that his eyes would take on the same appearance, but they did not.

His eyes were fairly normal, a white sclera and whatnot, but that’s where the normality of it ended. His iris was actually a ridiculous purple that seemed to be made from blazing flames and the fact that there were no pupils made them look like 2 purples suns, making anyone that looked into them feel intimidated.

“ROOOOAARRRRRR!!!”

Orange flames erupted around the Dragon King’s body, burning all the impurities as he simultaneously roared with flames erupting from his mouth, there was obvious excitement and pride on his face, filled with glee at his accomplishments and you couldn’t blame him.

Looking at the crystal-like scales that covered the Dragon from head to toe, one couldn’t help but be awed.

It seems that his 5 year seclusion was not in vain, he did not comprehend the Metal Element per say, but the more elusive Crystal Element. This was a branch element of Metal that was extremely hard to understand and something that was rare to see even in Law Worlds.

It was much rarer than comprehending the element of Ice which was the branch element of Water so the fact that this Dragon King could obtain it was the best indicator of his seemingly rising talent.

As for why he had obviously entered the Anatomy Refinement. This wasn’t actually unexpected, in fact, if he didn’t enter Anatomy Refinement, that meant that something had definitely gone wrong.

Most races that had something like the Earth element or the Metal element would undergo Anatomy Refinement when they evolved for the first time. This was because the severe damage that they suffered and (sometimes) recovered from when reforging their bodies with that element as a base was just too savage.

Especially those of the scaled races like Dragons. Their entire scales were shredded including their reverse scale just so that they could become Earth or Metal etc scales.

They would naturally benefit from surviving such an ordeal.

“ROOAAAARRRRRR!!!” “ROOAAAARRRRRR!!!” “ROOAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!”

A sudden pandemonium of noises erupted as each Dragon rose into the air, flying around their King as they roared their zealous praises and congratulations.

‘HAIL! HAIL! ALL HAIL THE KING!!!’