As it turned out, breaking the incredibly tough corpse into tiny bits did not make it any easier to eat. Years of withering transformed the muscular flesh into a fibrous stone which refused to crack under all forces, he could either use another Master true spell to deal with it or cast an Adept true spell several times over.

It surely didn’t need any explanation on why he chose the latter route. In the end, Akevorax shattered a whole corpse down to tiny chunks and ate everything regardless of taste or appearance. Unfortunately, he underestimated the corpse to a huge degree.

Unlike the wyrm skull, the prymite shell contained all mana within its tightly condensed space to an overwhelming degree. This mana didn’t just float about though. It infused the bodies which remained on guard for years on end to keep them almost as tough as the original giants when alive! It was only because they died and the body stopped self-regulation that they even weakened somewhat… But that meant Akevorax’s body effectively had to consume a ton of material equal to a starlite tier ore.

Not even a fleshy body… literal ore.

As the first few stomachfuls slowly dissolved, he put the corpse away and finally left the mountain range.

Very little remained in this place by now, but his Elder eyes were able to see through the landscape at several points to find master or cornem tier bodies buried deep underground. Whether encased in ice, rock, or metal, these bodies died long ago and remained lost to time as the mana of this place dwindled. At best he could extract a bloodline or two from these corpses, but given how degraded they became after countless years, he could tell at a glance that they weren’t anywhere near as preserved.

Even the bones in the battlefield only survived so long because few beasts willingly entered that area, not to mention it was so far underground that nothing reached far down enough.

Akevorax’s leave was entirely calculated as well, since the Nexus offered a precise measurement of the assimilation rate, and confirmed that each stomachful of desiccated flesh provided 4% progress, even if it took hours every time. And since the volume of flesh alone easily doubled his physical body, when full-sized, he never worried about running out. The giants were over 10 metres tall for god’s sake! No way he required more than a single corpse for an assimilation.

[Consumed Conquering Juggernaut Kandir giants bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]

And as always, Akevorax turned off the once per second notifications… There was no way the Nexus didn’t do it intentionally at this point. It knew he never once liked them. But he also wanted to see how long it'd be willing to keep on doing so.

Oh woe was this dragon.

* * *

Not so funnily, in another mountain range to the north east, was a rather excessive situation. Why excessive?

“I’m telling you, we should kill those bastard dragons! Attack their homes and kill that little twerp for ruining everything!”

“Why are you still rejecting this? All of us are in agreement, lord! I can head over right now and kill him before his cowardly elders can even react! So what if I die!?”

“Agreed! And we can use his dragonstone to make up for all our losses these years!”

In this mountain range with sharp and jagged peaks, with vertical cliffs at every corner and almost no safe hoods to rest at, stood the home of the third worlds’ wyverns. This terrain, almost intraversable by foot, was perfect for a species who excelled purely at flight and air-based combat. The mountains naturally provided a perfect base to house thousands of wyverns, and in time simply garnered the name Wyvern’s Mountain by the humans.

Even though it was technically a collection of mountains.

As for the arguments right now, a bunch of wyverns with varying scale colours and sizes sat in distinct locations within a cave. Right above each wyvern was a large hole to fly out of if necessary, although a main exit also existed for visitors.

But at the very back, at a spot which lacked any space to fly out of, sat the clan’s lord. An ageing wyvern as shown by his discoloured red scales and a greyed mane which lost its sleek appearance in age. However, this age did not diminish the supreme tier power he possessed, and that power grew tired of the bickering elders amongst him. Somehow they behaved no different from the overly arrogant children half the time, it was a wonder how they even survived for so long.

Did no one teach them to swallow their pride?

He finally spoke up as they all directed that arrogance to him, filled with an unfounded surety that they could kill this dragon in their very home! The hoarse voice speaking in Beasten, “I have no intention to ruin our foundation to kill one measly dragon, besides, the dragonstone is not even close to the value of that place 20 years from now.”

“But we cannot let this matter go! He killed one of our own and committed insubordination– NO! TREACHERY!!” Riled up by the thought, the wyvern released a roar of anger that such an action took place.

“You fools… Try to figure out how he discovered the progenitor first. Then we’ll go after him. I have no intention to let him live. Stop trying to make this a racial conflict,” the lord spoke as he looked down on all of them. Rather than intelligent wyverns, it was like he saw a bunch of idiots.

But he somewhat agreed, gnashing his teeth at the thought of their losses caused by that single dragon.

He spoke a single further sentence to close off this matter, “The misshapen dragon, Akevorax, will die. Do not doubt me again.” With this conclusion, none of the wyverns dared raise further complaints, even if they still wished to kill some dragons as a way to appease years of annoyance.

Actually, it had been quite lucky they even came across the mishap in the first place. After a master tier roc came across him in the Evelard range, a truly mind-boggling occurrence, they quickly let information slip to the wyverns as a way to rekindle that trouble they originally held towards that unknown dragon.

Why did the roc clan do this?

Well, they had everything to gain if it started a war between the two reptilian races. They not only won the Evelard range, but also stood a possibility of weakening two of their greatest foes!

A win-win situation in their books.

* * *

The trip back to the Dragonlands lasted another half day, but on the way, Akevorax picked up the fruit and cake as promised to the group. It turned out to be quite hard to fly down to a farm and talk to a cowering human, who could’ve imagined why since he only shrunk himself down to a couple metres.

Still, it was easy to pay for a box of freshly picked berries, these would have been transported to a nearby city by wagon and sold to a middleman or business. He didn’t really care for the economics of produce.

None of that dealt with the real issue though…

“You didn’t say anything!” Akevorax couldn’t do anything as the young girl held his neck and shook vigorously, even with the cake, she hadn’t calmed down in the slightest. Not to mention no one dared step in and help, more than willing to let him take the brunt of Raccelline’s tantrum. The complaints continued on and on for a fair while as well, she clearly wasn’t happy that he just vanished for a week with only a brief mention of the matter.

“I didn’t know where you were! How could I have told you?”

“Don’t lie! If you wanted to find me it would have taken a few minutes!” She stamped her foot and shook the cave slightly, fortunately, this force didn’t transmit further outwards as arrays throughout the mountain dispersed the energy or completely nullified it.

“Well, it was just meant to be a day at first… Then it grew longer and longer.”

He refused to look her in the eyes at this point, more than cognisant that she was right and unwilling to admit it. The hell she wrought would last days at the least. The back and forth went on for a while longer too, but eventually, someone interrupted it.

Mala spoke out, “So, was the plan to stay here until we can actually survive, or will we be doing something else?”

“Even if we stay here, we have to go buy materials for our next evolutions. Also, I still need a huge quantity of elemental energy to absorb,” Korridan threw a hat into the ring as well with a shared conundrum.

Mala didn’t need much more, same for Darak, but the warriors of the group didn’t share that sentiment. Jaren required a selection of wind, space, and light elements in vast quantities to absorb too. Meanwhile, Raccelline just needed to fight more and learn more abilities to be ready in any combat situation, additionally, her rapid memorisation of spellcasting meant she’d be able to cast some basic spells very soon.

And amongst the whole group too, a rather wasteful expenditure of mental space strengthening potions allowed each of them to reform their Minds and move on to Mind palaces. So far they all achieved Basic tier with ease, with Mala and Darak the only two at Beginner Mind palace.

Akevorax already considered this whole matter though, and gave an answer to their worries immediately after, “Given that I’m just an evolution or two away from master tier, I was thinking we can spend a couple more months here. There’s more than enough stuff in the library useful to us all, and I’ll have gathered enough bloodlines. Then we start going across unowned sub-realms to gather resources.”

No one raised any complaints with that train of thought, although Jaren did have an additional question to ask, “Would it be productive for all of us to go to the same sub-realms? Just Akevorax or Mala alone would be able to scour those realms.”

“Yes… It might be a waste of time for all of us to go then,” Akevorax responded but didn’t have any immediate solutions to the realistic problem.

Korridan immediately suggested one though. As he said, “We can separate into small groups?”

And after just a few minutes of conversation, they all came to an agreement on how they’d separate. Mala with Korridan, Jaren with Darak, and Raccelline with Akevorax, the final group only came about as none of the other four felt confident in protecting her if push came to shove. Whereas, Akevorax could output some power on the low-end of master tier, enough to hold off a foe and potentially teleport away.

With that settled, he now returned to the central mountain as a final smidge remained. Nothing too bad this time… For him at least.

As Akevorax approached the available teleportation array, changing it to access the vaults which stored grade 1 and 0 items, a dragon immediately teleported down to meet him, asking, “Are you here to collect your grade 1 item? There’s no need to get our attention like this.”

It was a casual and simple statement, but incorrect in pretty much every way.

“I believe I was promised six grade 0 items. I’m here to collect them,” Akevorax replied blatantly with a hint of condescension in his voice. Acting as though it was a matter of fact and far from a bluff.

If he could, then why not try and loot some good things from those vaults?