How little happened in two years could be ascribed partially to the group’s far more quiet attitude in all this time, but more importantly, it came down to the fact that they didn’t actually do anything spectacular.

When a dragon came to the pillar, taking away a cage filled with dead elves, it not only created a furious uproar, but many began to question if the elves in power did something to anger the dragons. After all, while the continent was powerful enough to hold off this magical species, the numbers that a single adult dragon can kill are insane. Towns vanishing in mere minutes would be a bit slow by most calculations of a dragon’s speed and destructive power.

Fortunately, some good diplomacy cleared things up exceptionally fast. Both sides claimed that some elf may have forced a dragon under their control, and then made use of this to loot special places around the continent normally only accessible to dragons. As dragon pillars are generally unknown to the public, the statement went brilliantly. Anyone who tried to repeat this would receive a horrible shock as the pillar struck them dead as it noticed an enslaved or controlled dragon on entry.

That dragon who came by also tried to look through the city of Fragheim to find the kin responsible for all this, but as numerous arrays blocked off all sight, they left soon enough.

No information about the demons was made public, for obvious reasons. Also, no doubt the demons themselves already knew their cover had been blown and now needed to hide.

That female dragon actually revealed the location and identity of those in charge too… And that city had been razed to the ground, figuratively, whilst searching for demon elves. They captured hundreds successfully, targeting their headquarters about a year and a half after the situation began. Several dragons pushed to begin a slaughter sooner, but they eventually found their voices stifled from elders at supreme tier that wanted to make those demon elves believe their ruse went undiscovered.

By attacking when they grew lax once more, a far more brilliant destruction took place. Unfortunately, it became well-known that quite a few leaders escaped through strange means.

But worst of all, the elf at the very top enjoyed the craft of chimerism, forming ungodly beasts from the corpses and parts of anything possible. With almost 5000 of these chimaeras as well, most kept in hibernation, the damage caused by their release was unfathomable.

Great sages moved to contain them, but only got to about 2000 in time, the rest escaped throughout the continent with stealth-related innate abilities. With gold and mithril tier strength the most common, they’d already killed around 75000 elves in the past 6 months. Even now, a few hundred chimaeras remained, the most intelligent that evaded pursuit and capture with ease…

Anyway, this stuff didn’t bother Icy and the group in the slightest.

Fragheim took care of them as usual, and they’d built a rather solid reputation with the Mature wizards who controlled the magic towers of this city. It was no surprise that a few of them recognised Icy as a dragon. But also guessing that he unveiled the demon threat, they showed no desire to harm him, only simple goodwill.

Besides, wizards of their talents gained far more by befriending a dragon over killing and harvesting one. In exchange for simple favours over the years, Icy gladly shared a few Adept true spells which relied on the ring casting system.

These favours namely included aid in gathering certain resources for everyone to better transform their bodies physically. Not to mention finding a skilled alchemist to transform the fragmented dragon heart into a tonic for their three warriors.

Even that broken mess of a heart provided enough material for eight potions, although two were handed over to pay the alchemist for his work. A rather stingy man all round, but he refused to take money in this case, deeming it utterly worthless compared to alchemical resources.

This allowed all of the five adults to drink one, and the results turned out better than Icy and Mala expected. Perhaps due to the source being a blood-element dragon, the tonic mutated their hearts somewhat to be capable of transformation in a method similar to a dragon’s. Some testing on Mala’s part revealed the actual composition differed, and it seemed that a unique method of transformation was required. She spearheaded that research over the course of a year.

This also marked her very first completed research study as a wizard, and the spell used for the transformation process required three different structures just to build. Learning it was impossible for most ordinary Sapling wizards, but Icy’s learning in that year filled in the gaps.

He learnt how to create arrays to a somewhat capable degree. Right now, the arrays he created at most matched Adept true spells in effects, but they couldn’t be considered robust or mana-efficient. Those two categories are where he fell short, and why they were merely ‘somewhat capable’ considering how impressive such arrays are.

It was enough to cast the spell created by Mala and begin the transformation process on everyone’s hearts. The speed roughly matched Icy’s and could only be sped up by an improved array. As for the exact effects, Mala predicted a rather considerable increase in max MP for everyone, albeit a reduced effect for her due to an already mana-dense body.

No doubt, Korridan, Jaren, and Rebecca sat on the upper end of an expected 75% increase once completed. Further transformations remained in the realm of possibility, but no one knew for certain yet.

There were far more details to go over, dozens more in fact, like that Icy evolved 5 more times in those two years. But to go through them all at once would be a barrage of figures and details forgotten in due time, besides, as most of these evolutions focused on developing existing bloodlines, there were very few additional powers. Also the fact that almost all of the Nexus bonuses he acquired were of the temporary type. With so many improvements, even the group themselves often forgot who learned and achieved what in the past two years.

And then there was everyone’s favourite little monster, who experienced three more birthdays on this new continent. Actually, the group often took trips away from Fragheim for celebrations, but the most notable were Raccelline’s birthday and a special day in mid-summer, which the group tagged as ‘Remembrance day’.

They missed a formal celebration last year on the island, due to everything which happened, but on that day, four of the adults simply remembered those who they’d lost in their lives. Raccelline also joined in, having lost her mother even if she didn’t know the woman.

Icy and Rebecca stood respectfully, while the latter lost some friends over the years, it hardly compared to the five who lost family.

Raccelline already began learning spellcasting and could execute a small variety of actual skills at this point. As far as talent went, she simply didn’t register as human, yet, the Exeter bloodline remained hidden within the Nexus. At the very least, a human’s body consumed bloodline energy during puberty, and she wouldn’t evolve until 13 at the youngest. For boys, most can’t evolve until 15 due to beginning puberty later.

It only pleased the group as she had lots of time to try and obtain the most insane evolution possible, hopefully advancing her already ridiculous bloodline to even further heights.

Whether or not she even possessed the ability to evolve was another matter, as there existed a chance that the bloodline merely absorbed all her bloodline energy to enter an awakened state, and no one understood what that implied, but it excited the two magic fanatics to extreme lengths. Icy purposely learnt Adept true spells for bloodline analysis and found ways to cheat such that he used more mana than his max MP.

You could probably guess that not a single spell garnered any results. Most of them actually collapsed when trying to analyse her bloodline. It left the two spellcasters hysterical for the better part of an hour.

And so…

On this day, 2 years 1 month and 3 days after killing the demon Frellsae, the group of seven began to pack their stuff and announced their departure to the city. In just a day or two, they’d leave, with the reason for staying even this long, being rather troublesome.

All the city’s Mature wizards pulled them into frivolous meetings to say farewell, glad to have met a generous dragon like Icy. After almost two, of which Icy’s identity became revealed a month after the main incident, they knew that most dragons rarely gave out information so easily. Even fewer travelled with humans and treated them like equals.

The guards, their captains, and even the city lord said their farewells too, and the last of them even tried to pull their group into a small, private feast. They refused due to a sheer difference in status and race, for humans to receive such grace might give a questionable opinion to other lords and nobles.

No one wanted to create trouble for the rather enthusiastic lord, though, he offered to have the group teleported anywhere within a 2000 kilometre range to ease their future journey. That was the limit he could offer as the city’s arrays struggled with further distance, and the group accepted this generous and objectively useful gift.

Who wouldn’t want to shorten their journey?

“It’s really been so peaceful here… Just like our lives before this happened,” Korridan mulled things over once more with a glass of wine in his left arm. His other remained merely a stub, the wound steeped in Scourge power that they restrained partially. Regretfully, Icy chose to not take any of that demon dragon’s bloodlines out of fear of side effects.

In that first evolution, he completely ignored any bloodlines from any of the demonified elves.

But the man adapted to losing an arm rather well, and some time ago, they commissioned an enchanter to cover the right arm from a suit of armour in telekinetic runes. The result on a full set is that a wizard easily controlled the whole armour from a range. Alternatively, Korridan wore it whenever he pleased and still retained some way to have two arms.

Not a perfect solution, and he often spent free time without it as the additional strap which attached it to his body was uncomfortable.

“You’re doing this again? I don’t think our lives back then were this peaceful though… I thought about it since you mentioned it last time. But back then, we struggled along to slowly grow, it was peaceful because we took no risks. You agree?” Of everyone to sit down, it was, in fact, Jaren. A cynic he may be, it did not disallow him from a serious attitude.

“Of course I do. This would’ve been a death sentence back then,” Korridan replied, shrugging his right shoulder with clear indication. But he moved past the point soon enough and returned to what actually bothered him, “The Eternals still haven’t attacked. The southern alliance swallowed around 50 nations in the past two years, and the empire seems to have endless hostiles on its doorstep. The emperor’s silence hasn’t helped…”

In the past year, he took to heart Icy’s judgement on his talent and actually tried to keep up with war and politics as much as Mala did.

It didn’t have any profound effect of granting him some sort of ridiculous military insight; what he did gain was the ability to become profoundly anxious at seemingly ordinary bad news.

Once more, not even a joke.

“But the dragons intervening did slow those wars down. Having to check every country for demons… You’d never think they’re so overbearing by the way he acts. Also, why’s Icy been on edge for the past couple months?”

“Why else? The kid’s trying to pick a real name for himself and we’ve all been calling him ‘Icy’ for the past 4 years.” Korridan laughed at the fact, although a bit surprised that Jaren didn’t know about that yet. Then again, aside from confiding in Mala and himself, Icy only pouted and paced all day long.

Just like he did right now. For hours on end sometimes, it proved a real distraction from his array-learning time or any of the other, more important things he ought to be doing.

The dragon in question, mumbled constantly whilst pacing strangely seriously in the garden. If you listened closely, he switched between Elvish, Baranot, and Draconic constantly. “Demon Deathbringer? No… Worldly Judgement? That’s just not true… Ice Storm of the End? Well that only sounds nice when translated, what dragon would call themselves Icryfinndalanasta?”

He’d been doing this for two weeks now and came no closer to choosing a name.

Ignoring the fact that Raccelline still had a problem of saying, “Icy is a good name though.” To which he could only scream internally as to not hurt her feelings.

You’d think at 11 she’d have a bit more class when it came to names…

But nope, not in the slightest.