Dragons already shortened events and ceremonies by a great deal, what might be an almost half-hour event to congratulate and thank a human was merely five minutes for them. It gave far too little time to draw ire and convince the others to reduce his reward.

“Head on through the teleportation array to collect your rewards, young dragon. I hope the dragonstone helps you on your journey… Whatever that may be with the Divine-blooded child.”

The First Elder finally concluded the short ceremony, and everyone headed back down the ramp they climbed just five minutes ago. However, Icy only began to worry more as the two elders who opposed him teleported away first. While the others left not long after, their immediate actions made him wonder if something bad would happen in the future.

And as a precaution, his eyes flashed white for a moment as he looked at the array once more. However, in the depths of those white, ghostly lights, a small iris of gold filled its centre, and because of that, Icy frowned when he saw the teleportation array this time round.

“Mala, Soul Network,” He spoke briefly in Baranot, to Adret and the adjoined dragon’s confusion, but the two did not receive a link like the six of the party did.

“What’s the matter? Is that elder planning to attack you?” Korridan spoke first on the network created by Mala, a far stronger form of Soul Link which overcame many of its issues. It effectively granted perfect, long-range communication between souls, but best of all, encrypted the messages depending on the caster’s ability.

His next words left them all frowning, but he possessed confidence from somewhere, “The teleportation array’s secondary, or maybe a Tertiary, effect was activated. I can’t tell where it teleports us, but it can’t be good. Can you set up Spatial Links?”

“Yes, but they fail at cross-dimensional distances.”

“Origin Force,” his two words raised Mala’s cheeks as she smirked. She pulled out a potion and drank it on the spot, casting the Adept true spell, Spatial Link, on each of them. It drained a troubling 30% of her MP on each cast.

Meanwhile, the golden spirit detached from Icy and poured its Origin Force into each one of the Spatial Links, although neither actually knew if these remained stable for cross-dimensional teleportation. But as they stood in front of the array which very well sent them to a dangerous land, none seemed all too worried.

“Are we really just going to teleport ourselves randomly? That First Elder could easily fix this,” Korridan questioned Icy, allowing him to take charge of this situation given the variety of problems in this place.

However, as Icy’s senses reported nothing which overwhelmed him, he saw this situation as a far better thing than it truly was.

“Told you being shipwrecked wasn’t all that bad,” Icy told a small joke as they entered the teleportation array, but noticed at the last second how the dragon that led them up did not go along with them.

Mala cut the Spatial Link to that outside dragon immediately, leaving just the seven to disappear into a flash of light.

…

Back on the platform, one elder remained. Just the First Elder, and he raised a claw before the guiding dragon stepped onto the array and teleported away themselves. His head shook over and over, but he just sighed at the end.

“Trusts us so little he would rather jump into an unknown teleporter than bring up such a matter, I lost far too many bets today. She’ll get my whole supply of Soulstones for a decade if this continues… Maybe it’s best to remove him. Such a young, spritely one acting as an annoying adult, to think he’s only about to turn six.”

His solemn blabbering came to an end, and the First Elder teleported away, last to leave. Just like the other four, he enjoyably anticipated how this dragon handled the dragonstone test.

No one ever claimed it was so easy to get.

* * *

When the light faded, Icy looked around to see that he stood in a desert of black sand. Close to volcanic in colour, but very clearly too dark for that. If anything, he compared it to the true darkness which some higher-level dark magic created, a blackness in the complete absence of light. He shook his head at the thoughts though, and immediately knew the Soul Network snapped on teleportation.

However, the enhanced Spatial Link remained, albeit in an exceptionally weak state. Not enough to initiate a teleportation through, but he used his Fabric Warper bloodline to carefully transfer a Soul Link through the channel, of course that connected to the caster of this Spatial Link.

And that meant Mala heard him as soon as the link attached, “I’ve arrived safely. Can you confirm everyone else is fine?”

“All six are intact. Only Jaren’s is strong enough to use as a teleportation node, but I can’t exactly tell what’s interfering with everyone else’s links,” her troubled voice came with a great number of random noises as she clicked her tongue.

And Icy finally took a look around to see what evoked that sort of response, he too followed up with his own sounds. But finally, it ended on a guttural exhausted breath as he realised just where he appeared, and what even happened. Furthermore, it didn’t take long for his Fabric Weaver bloodline to grope around the unfamiliar space to realise that it couldn’t tug on the dimensional fabric all that well.

This alone proved that he stepped into a different plane of existence, well, he already knew that.

The sky formed of navy blue, black, purple, and pink all made that awfully clear. The multiple colours came together like nebulas collided and mingled without any clear victor. The black spread like an infection through each colour, the pink and purple weaved into one another with tendrils piercing deep into the others’ regions. And then the navy blue… It took a serene approach and formed light wisps of colour amongst all the others, but it frightened him most.

Corresponding to the colours Icy saw, the realms merged together were as such: Reality, Nightmare, Terror, and Dream.

With this basic inspection, he sent another message along the Soul Link, “Mala, we’re in a collection of broken and merged dream realms. The space here is intrinsically chaotic, we should be fine as long as we stick to this layer of space, but do not teleport under any circumstance. Have everyone put on their soul and mental protective equipment.”

But when had she ever been that incapable that she needed Icy to tell her such basics? Mala replied, “Already done… Are you sure about the spatial instability?”

He couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to that one, the limitation of Fabric Warper appeared now that he entered a new realm. Only once he understood the differences in space could he manipulate it freely, and that took a fair bit of time.

Still, he told her rather unsuredly, “I don’t know how unstable space is for now but there has to be a reason the links all weakened so much. Just find Korridan as fast as possible, I don’t know if he can handle any attacks from the inhabitants.”

“Also, Icy, why did you give up the dragonstone? Shouldn’t you have collected it first?” She wondered about that, chances are they all did. But he held two reasons for such a thing, and the first came from what happened in that ceremony. All of them saw it well enough, so he skipped over it, but his preference came from elsewhere.

“It’s pretty rare that we get thrown into an unknown dimension without anyone watching. We needed a way to hide, and while this isn’t the safest place… It’s not life-threatening.”

But as Mala transferred that line of thought to the others, they collectively rolled their eyes, except for Adret. She frowned with something that straddled concern and confusion. She now failed to grasp even more where Icy’s distrust of the clan came from, she too saw how at least one of the elders wished to keep the dragonstone for some other progeny or talented individual, but such things happened all the time.

Let alone with dragons, didn’t that situation occur extremely often amongst humans too?

As for her source of concern, it came from the mission given to her by the clan. To grow close to Icy and become a link between them and this incredible dragon, she feared that he might endanger himself once more. A lopsided and almost incomprehensible thought pattern, truly sincere from her deepest emotions… But for all the wrong reasons.

But in a place like this, moonlight shone brightly and the denizens recoiled in fear. However, without knowledge on where Icy resided, she could be of no help.

The others all experience varying degrees of trouble. Korridan’s body actually resisted mental attacks to some degree, and with a speed far beyond the natives, he hardly worried unless a Mithril rank attacked him. Jaren’s arrows could create psychic combinations, so he just kept wary and always attacked first from a distance. Darak suffered most as he possessed rather low prowess on his own, at least he never worried about any permanent damage.

And Raccelline. That girl just… She did whatever. If her sword fell, a head always accompanied it. If she teleported, another native bit the dust.

She was a ridiculous child who treated mithril tier beasts as toys. Nothing in this stitched realm scared her, except the literal appearances of some abominations formed of nightmares. And even they died without much luck. So what if her Mind and Soul shattered in one attack?

She killed them all first.

…

But Icy’s case stood out a bit. Firstly, he chuffed up with knowledge of everyone’s relative safety and withdrew several vials of cherry-red fluid with small luminescent grains of sand within. However, on close inspection, these luminescent grains appeared and disappeared regularly within the substance, and rather than sand, he called it moon dust.

“Adret at least has some value. Even if she’s too naive to learn properly,” he sighed at the thought of her and downed the vials of substance one after another.

[Consumed Shattered lunar brilliance dragon bloodline! Assimilation Progress 1%

Consumed Shattered lunar brilliance dragon bloodline! Assimilation Progress 20%

Consumed Shattered lunar brilliance dragon bloodline! Assimilation Progress 99%]

It took months of extraction with his third soul armament to reach this stage, and only as he downed the fifth vail, of six in total, did he finally obtain that sweet burn that he purposely avoided for months now. Came and went, he stretched his neck halfway through in boredom, and he completed the assimilation without a whimper, moan, groan, or spell.

Unfortunately, even at this stage, her bloodline was just too weak. What could he expect of a mithril tier dragon though? It was already great that it reached this degree. She possessed a rather impressive Extreme+ rank bloodline.

Ten more years and no doubt she hit Legendary+, but he expected to shoot past that in a fraction of the time.

As soon as the weak waves of exhaustion washed over him, Icy took several deep breaths and rethought his plans. In the end, the young adult waited things out in a reasonable manner. At first, he wanted to walk it off while the assimilation occurred, but clearly, this bloodline still overpowered him a bit. In the meantime…

Some worms dug out from the black sand, more like wrinkled eels on close appearance and at Gold rank. Not the easiest dream-realm beings to deal with, but he just descended his Intermediate Mind palace and killed them all with spells. The suppression completely destroyed their ability to react, and the single wide-range psychic spell killed them all with ease.

“At least they were all weak. If a lord suddenly appeared…” Icy’s mind wandered to something he considered the distant past.

Back on a snowy mountain range where he saw the sky transform a strange pink and panicked in realisation at the time, how he very almost died against a single Gold rank much like the eels in front of him. How even that wyvern, with his Adept Mind palace, took damage from the dying strikes of a maddened lord. A far stronger soul than usual, and by disregarding defence, he lashed out with everything to form attacks which threatened even something objectively stronger.

Icy insured his palace’s safety by killing everything in one hit, and on sight where possible. Dream-realm beings possessed the special ability to directly damage palaces, and permanently destroy sections, but…

He pulled over the several dead eels and looked at their translucent, half-corporeal bodies. Within each, the hearts pounded weakly as destroyed minds slowly killed their bodies. He cut out every last heart, just the eight he obtained right now barely helped in the future construction. In fact, this stuff only really helped when it came to the creation of bricks and furniture. For an array it might barely increase his speed by 10%, but every little bit helps with this stuff.

“Where to go though? Straight to Mala or… How about I try out that new sight spell? Finally replaced Sky Sight, so it would be a shame to never use it,” he spoke aloud to himself as the weakness came to an end. Half in hopes that anyone closer than expected heard him, but also hungry for more dream-realm beings to pop up.

[Shattered lunar brilliance dragon assimilated! 4 new bloodline directions potentially available]

Now actually finished, he stored the bodies and last vial of Adret’s bloodline essence. A lengthy Draconic spell came from his lips, even when compressed he only got it down to 108 words, but as an Adept true spell he truly valued it. It functioned almost the same as Third Eye, that extremely simple sight spell he learnt long ago.

But this one could move well over a thousand miles away before the signal weakened slightly. With a higher Magic stat he believed that an effective range of two or three thousand wasn’t far off, and also, if he sacrificed the quality a bit he could still easily see some things over five thousand kilometres away.

That distance easily covered several large countries, and while perhaps a bit lacking, this incredulous range earned the spell its name, Continental Sight.

He created the invisible orb which would become his new eye, and quickly formed an array in the black sand. A layer of it compressed into sandstone-like substance, which he then engraved an array into and filled with a metal alloy. A process which took just minutes as he created an astoundingly simple defensive array to protect his Mind against the natives of this realm.

Now… What could he possibly find of interest nearby?

“No… What? That’s too fast! Was I teleported here specifically… But… Maybe elsewhere?” In not even a minute his excited face within the array transformed into grave concern as the invisible orb connected to his Mind flew at incredible speeds. In seconds it crossed kilometres of deserts, but nothing else appeared.

Nothing, except for a stoic, lively tree sat in a crisp, sparkling oasis.

An oasis just minutes away.