Another month had passed since the most recent near-death encounter by Akevorax, and since then the differences between a Legendary bloodline and this new tier only rose higher and higher. His mistake from the very start came from the assumption that a single tier higher meant the same danger as it had in the past.

With the combination of his spell, Undying Body, and the pocket watch’s effect, he could survive a 7 direction bloodline with minimal damage. And so, given his evolution since the last one, it obviously meant that even this bloodline from a cornem tier only boiled him alive somewhat…

Oh how wrong he’d been.

None of his current powers possessed the means to hold off an influx of great runes into his body, especially not a bloodline which contained it. Thankfully, his draconic endurance possessed a far stronger ability when it came to fending off foreign bloodlines. He couldn’t be sure if this effect naturally developed through trial and error or if his body gained some intelligent response method. Either one still helped immensely when combined with his other methods.

If not for these situations which built up over the years, he’d simply have died under that bloodline’s effect.

However, on this day, he completed the third of his major accomplishments.

The first, unsurprisingly, was the collection of enough blood essence for every single master tier bloodline he aimed to assimilate.

The second came down to his search for a quiet, unknown sub-realm which he could use as a test site of True Necromancy. All that remained was to modify the array which teleported there in such a way that it reported a completely different destination. At some point in that month, he deeply considered if these actions all culminated into something deeply untrustworthy. However, as he hadn’t even started, it was easy to act like nothing wrong happened. And thus, the murky emotions settled far below what he showed on the serene surface.

And, probably most relevant, was how he finally hit 25% of the way to development of his Inner Creation.

Thousands of sections formed a thick node of vessels that extended rightwards from his heart towards the wings. The largest blood vessels formed a clear arrangement of pathways for blood to efficiently traverse towards an organ, and as one zoomed in they saw the uncountable offshoots which then directly fed cells oxygen.

It took so much time that he finally understood just how slow and menial the process of training was for most other races. How humans potentially spent years in a process of learning and repetition to build up an elemental deposition and reach evolution requirements.

Additionally, he didn’t spend any further time on non-trivial philosophy or mathematics. His limitations in ability made the research of further higher concepts a pain like no other, and so he truly couldn’t explain or properly research further results. From the moment he finished that battle against Lostradus, he just knew how some of those dimensions worked. The observation of reality was a far better method of comprehension than reverse-engineered equations or hopeless scrounging in a pitch-dark room.

Nothing explained how this happened. It just had.

He put those thoughts aside for today. With all twenty sub-realms recorded and stable coordinates within their dimensions confirmed, Akevorax set up the first teleportation array which allowed the group to return from any of the sub-realms as needed. It would pain them all if a convenient return path wasn’t always available.

This initial teleporter connected to the linking device with a simple connection of mana, and once registered, he simply positioned it in a static position of dimensional space and recorded the values as necessary. So long as a teleportation array with his mana tried to open a gate to that point, the device automatically connected it into the network for convenient transportation. As for the device in question…

It appeared as a dark purple and navy blue crystal obelisk of about 2 metres tall. The creator gave it a thick base which extended beyond the obelisk as well as a pyramidal top.

The former crystal constituted a major portion of this structure whilst the latter crystal barely made up a tenth of it. On simpler observation, whilst the purple was in fact a highly refined spatial element crystal, the blue ‘crystal’ was in fact a metal alloy which allowed for the object’s functionality. If explained in simpler terms, it was a giant bowl for capturing the teleportation signal combined with the actual thing which did all the heavy lifting.

As for the teleportation arrays, Akevorax just needed to use a master tier alloy made primarily from mithril tier metals. The creation went swimmingly as well, but there was a question on how Akevorax even entered a sub-realm for the first time.

Obviously, he teleported in.

* * *

In the stone citadel deep underground, a fresh-faced advisor dashed up the high staircase towards their emperor’s chamber. Whilst technically there was no rush, he hardly wished to keep the eternal at the top waiting any longer.

Especially as the previous advisor fell from grace not long ago, the loss of a phoenix’s heart flame for little to no return still stung.

And right now he took on a host of jobs with minimal training or time for adaptation. The armies prepared for war, allies and connections cemented themselves with the various leaders going so far as to sign contracts with their souls as collateral. The hundreds of spies left aboveground constantly reported binders of information which required the intelligence department to filter and document everything. But what frustrated him most was just a single mission left over…

Kill that damn dragon.

At the top step, he knocked diligently but the door already opened as he touched the ornately carved stone. He’d visited this room multiple times now since his ascension to this role, but still its stifling darkness choked him. It somehow pervaded through matter and mana, as though all concept of light vanished from the universe and all that remained was a still blackness to infinity. Something so much scarier than void as you could never escape the endless dark.

Still, with his Mithril rank body the advisor sustained their breaths and said, “I have checked in with the Great Bearers and a few Great Sages for options regarding the dragon… These are all their anecdotes.”

“Then speak,” Muthzud, their emperor, replied.

“Manus’ eyes cover the whole underground world, they are relentless and endless… Unless we can draw away his consciousness, it is impossible to send out anything above Starlite rank. If I may, we noticed some spatial anomalies from unused sub-realms which the dragon seems to be accessing these past few days. Would a few Starlites be enough?”

“No, if we send something stronger then it must be overwhelming. If he gets away, we will lose all chances for years,” the emperor responded with a strange urge of concern. If the advisor did not know better, he might have thought this Primordius rank feared a tiny dragon.

Certainly, his potential was something that scared anyone.

For a six-year-old to possess such power completely broke many expectations, but the troublesome part was their future if he sided with the humans as an adult. Befriended by the only heir to the throne, the empire would easily dominate the continent with the help of a dragon strong enough to become a clan lord.

“Even so, your highness, he still does not display any ability to use the divinity voluntarily… If we struck now he wouldn’t be able to use the same tactics that beat the progenitor. Especially with multiple–” His pleading voice cut off as unseen goosebumps flourished all over. The darkness around his neck condensed to a sharp ring of blades placed against his skin, if it closed ever so slightly, he’d instantly lose his head.

A wave of invisible power filled the room and forced him down to one knee, completely at his lord’s mercy. Muthzud, less than amused, said, “Quiet. You have no clue what it means for a dragon to access their True Will, do you? And there’s still the problem of how he detected that demon elf… We will move the body to our deepest prison, if he wants it back, then they may walk into a trap for it.”

Already, the advisor knew ‘it’ referred to that golden statue formed from the human emperor’s body. If no one came for it, they could easily execute the man when he escaped the crystalline prison, but if they did come…

“Perhaps we can help with your problem, that is, for a fair price,” from the room’s side came an unexpected voice. One that none of the two recognised.

The field of darkness which enveloped this space suddenly receded as a flash of light tried to flood inside, however, the emperor wasn’t so weak and reached a stalemate with the light. Instantly, a third of the room lit up as though under the effect of a sunny day but the other two thirds remained an endless, chilly abyss.

From the figure who stepped out, golden runes covered their body from head to toe and flowed about more akin to a liquid coating. That insanely recognisable language not only glowed endlessly, able to push back a portion of the darkness, but their true effect allowed anything within to phase right past all forms of magical senses… It was no wonder this unknown being appeared within the room without anyone noticing.

An older figure, and whilst the hair on their head greyed slightly, an excellent vitality still spread out from their creaky bones. With a wizard’s robe and in a few pieces of simple but mana-flushed jewellery, what gave away their appearance was intensely pale-brown skin.

That of an elf.

“And why would that benefit you? You’d really throw away your neutrality just for a little deal?” Muthzud’s voice spoke not with aggression or ridicule, but rather a hint of laughter as though the stars aligned for a wondrous joke.

“That dragon must die. And the girl too, but it’s hardly a priority,” the elven Great Sage replied matter-of-factly.

“It will be good to work with you.”

“Likewise.”

* * *

Akevorax sat transfixed at the creation in front of him. The 21st teleportation array he’d created in the past week now, and all that remained was to link it with his relay of teleporters all over the place. Mala kept him updated on the maths most of the time though, he just rearranged the runes as necessary and activated the Trigger with mana. With her co-ordinates confirmed, the lit up array flashed with a bright white light and quickly powered down. But for the twentieth time, this process worked.

He finally set up the whole set of teleportation arrays!

Best of all, whilst passing through the relay sub-realms, he came across an almost barren land. The sort of place populated by a few hard-skinned bugs underground as the lack of a light source or staple water source resulted in the blighted landscape.

Perfect for doing… questionable experiments.

In fact, Akevorax already set up an array to block the psychic fluctuations created by the creation of a Mind. All that remained was the array itself, for which he managed to create a suitable metal which alloyed reasonably well for it. In particular, this alloy came out as a grey-ish orange like a sort of faded copper, but he gladly used it for the joint effectivity it held in mana, psychic elements, and soul power.

Whilst the three all existed rather happily in a body, they didn’t tend to merge or occupy arrays with one another perfectly. In the first place, psychic elements or soul power didn’t just float around the body freely.

However, the dragons’ library truly held every bit of knowledge one might need.

The whole process did require an array, as most rituals tended to, but compared to the other things Akevorax created in the past, it was child’s play. A four layer array, with one layer dedicated as a Base for energy and information management. The other three used the various energies as necessary to scan or reconstruct the missing components.

Obviously, their Triggers all connected to the dedicated Base array. But it caught him off guard a bit when he saw how the connections of various Base components actually worked in practice.

To explain why, it was best to compare to the array demanded by his soul. Whilst made of a crazy number of layers, the element injecting was all controlled by that singular Base layer, and while all the lower arrays connected to it, none of them actually interconnected. In a way, this sort of nest structure appeared most often as too many connected layers created conflicts and a whole manner of transfer issues.

Obviously, as the three parts of a living being exist in a co-existence, the array layers also matched this. But it definitely tripped him up for a few minutes.

“Mind palaces just make everything too easy to learn… Not really though,” Akevorax bit his tongue as thoughts of Draconis came flooding back to him. Every single word required more thought and effort to use than his first Beginner true spell.

No reason adult dragons said that it was tougher than learning 50 words… They meant 50 words as a hatchling!

“I have enough souls for this, and I gathered flesh too. There’s nothing else, right?” He spoke without much concern for his surroundings and flipped through the book on true necromancy in the barren, sandy sub-realm. Nothing here posed a threat to him though.

He recalled the 5% extra content to purchase from the Nexus, but wanted to hold it off to see just how much of a difference it could make. If it fixed up the method, then the chances of defects likely decreased substantially, something which worked against him as he wished to create addled drones from this process. He set up the array precisely as required, and a quick test also revealed how all three powers flowed through without any collisions or instabilities. The spell required for this process was merely an Intermediate true spell, which allowed Akevorax to recreate its effects with an array.

Obviously, the books in the ruins all used Beasten, and that meant the spellcasting came in the rings and runes used by almost every race except dragons.

This array, funnily enough, only created a special barrier capable of entrapping a Soul and Mind below mithril tier. Akevorax just powered it up a bit such that the elven assassin remained alive and well even after he extracted the two parts.

Was there anything else…

Nope!