The conversation explaining the situation went about as one would expect, no one was exactly happy to see the results of what happened. However, it wasn’t all too bad as they could go find Jaren and Rebecca later on and see how things were.

In an absolute worst case scenario, the pair decided to leave the group and just live their lives. Of course that assumed the abnormalities in Rebecca weren’t anything serious and they didn’t have to clean up whatever mess she created, but those odds seemed rather low given the new Mind’s reaction. It would just end up being a pain.

Though that didn’t exactly excuse Akevorax for what he did. And that was the whole reason he even wanted to completely cut off all ties, after helping them track down Rebecca that is.

Mala shot that down pretty fast though, as did Korridan when he finally got a word in. While Akevorax royally screwed up, it wasn’t like he ever held bad intentions, just that he went about an undesirable means to justify the end. To further this he even placed extremely strict requirements on any created Mind, such that the final product ought to have been perfect… In theory at least.

The group inevitably moved on from the topic, albeit temporarily, as Mala brought up something else, “Now that all of that’s out of the way. What’s this about the threat growing larger again?”

“I think that was purely because I lost Jaren,” Akevorax replied, troubled by the same thoughts of his mistake.

“And the size?”

“About the same as its original size. I don’t understand how just this loss was equal to a rather powerful evolution.” Akevorax thought back to the moment he evolved, and how he sensed the far off storm slightly shrinking. It hadn’t been much, but it caused the size to wane ever so slightly below what the progenitor dealt him. Furthermore, his stronger soul actually resisted whatever effects this bloodline had on him… Or maybe it was his True Will?

Something helped at least, and that let him sleep soundly without a constant fear of death.

For now, he just prepared the battlegrounds as usual. At the same time, he’d spend some time alone with the Resurrection array to tinker with the golem bodies in his Mind palace. It became more and more clear that the closer he built these bodies akin to a real one, the better a Soul and Mind acclimated. Rock and metal cannot replace flesh so easily though, it now became apparent why so many humans hit a wall at mithril tier in their lives.

A weak Mind and Soul cannot support the structure of an elemental body, and this made sense given some simpler differences between dragons and humans.

Notably, low-level humans didn’t have perfect control over mana, even once drawn into the bodies and stored within. It required either a constant effort or intermittent session to forcibly stop mana leakage. Those at Basic and Bronze rank definitely encountered this, but as their strength increased, it became impossible for mana to leak. The indescribable power of a body composed entirely of magical elements hardly compared to a little bit of mana floating about, likewise, in what world could a mind born for flesh possibly desire a body of stone?

But creating flesh within the mental space was impossible unless he built it up from an atomic level. A process easier said than done.

“How can I trick it into thinking the golem body is made of flesh… What senses can it possibly have? It can’t have any though, I never built any in–” Akevorax cut off his own voice there, sitting in silence for a few seconds as he played with the thought for a little while.

In retrospect, it made sense that a living being didn’t want to stay in a tomb. Why he thought a conscious Mind would desire the golem body completely went over his head, but adding some sort of feedback from various senses were easy.

If he couldn’t make a body of flesh, he could just make it feel alive.

These sorts of arrays required very little effort to make as well, simply observing the environment and processing information. Two miniaturised arrays in the golem’s head granted sight in a forward focused direction, then another pair picked up sounds on either side and allowed it to create a spatial mapping from that. A fancier way of just knowing what direction a sound came from, but Akevorax had to process that information to supply a finished output in advance.

He decided to skip smell and taste for now, the two senses were far more complex to integrate properly. Lastly, he created a simplistic temperature and touch sense through the use of weakly interacting sensors all over the golem’s body. In case it increased productivity, he placed several-fold more sensors on its hands, somewhat in line with a human’s body.

These didn’t even account for other senses a person might intuitively utilise all the time, like accountancy for their limbs. He’d likely have to include that, somehow, if the golem’s hand-eye coordination interfered with actual work.

And that’s indeed how he spent the better part of 6 hours as the storm constantly approached.

Only to then use another 4 hours focused on fine-tuning as the trial failed thrice over. Failure, of course meant the Minds died once more, but with every case the situation improved drastically. One thing he realised was that the body very quickly rejected itself due to the lack of a mouth, an easy fix…

But then that meant he had to let it speak, this also helped, but also that limb issue was actually there. As it never truly understood where its legs were, it moved them too far at times and fell over.

Akevorax raised his complaints as another round of fixes came about, “Why the hell is it so finicky? They normally just happily inhabit a body…”

He was so close to his goal. While he couldn’t forcibly control a Mind, it worked all the same if they ‘willingly’ slaved away to build this palace. Not that anyone was going to miss these assassins. Just days… A few days and he’d have a whole army of golems ready to create a giant mountain spanning wall. It might take time to obtain an Adept mind palace, but all adult dragons achieve such a thing easily; the Master palace was a real hurdle which took decades to achieve through normal means. Just like how it took ages for anyone to advance past a Formed Soul.

Too bad he didn’t have the time for any of this. Rather just one to two days left till something arrived.

And with some priorities set straight, he decided the best measure was to level up the whole group by hunting stronger mithril tiers together.

In fact, the absolute weakest master tiers, those above level 80 but below 85, were so weak that they too fell easily. Without any significant upgrades over the strongest mithril tiers, they all easily reached similar levels after that time.

Akevorax and Korridan at level 83, Mala at 82, and Darak at 81. The huge rise alone gave everyone a huge quantity of points. And at the forefront, as normal, was Akevorax with a considerable total of 48 allocatable stat points. He just so happened to currently have 105 in Magic too. There wasn’t even a single instance of hesitation to improve his damage output as he told the Nexus, “45 points into Magic. 2 into Agility.”

Leaving his new stats a bit more impressive, for once having a noticeable change.

Name

Akevorax (Icy)

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus III

Magic Primary III

Spellcaster 4

Maestro’s Touch

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Origin Conquering Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

83

EXP

27%

Unallocated Stat Points: 1

Strength

0

Luck

13

Agility

50

Growth

20

Magic

150

Mutation Rate

15

One of these days he’d finally acquire better titles from the Nexus… But not yet. Technically the second stat to reach 75 points is given a title very similar to the ‘Primary’ variant, albeit slightly weaker to make up for the fact it's not a specialisation.

And maybe one day he’d finally get more, usable, titles. The next Mind palace title actually held great versatility, as did the results for obtaining a crystal body. Thinking about it, he was meant to have a title related to his soul improvements…

“Nexus, are the modifications to my soul titles finally finished?” He asked about this matter months ago, completely forgetting about every notion involved because the Nexus said it would ‘take an annoyingly long time’, but somehow it still hadn’t managed that after months?

[You still don’t realise how complex your soul is? This is the third time, your mutation is intrinsic and we’re not given resources to just wildly recalibrate an entire title to fit your very unique case]

He rolled his eyes in response though, “How hard could it truly be to create a little enhancement around my soul?”

[When your soul shouldn’t physically exist; very hard]

Well. He didn’t have a comeback for that. Some of his own studies into souls only brought up how insane the existence of a soul mutation on an unawakened soul tends to be, how he survived it couldn’t be answered. On a slightly positive note as well, he managed to find out where exactly that black crystal vanished after digging into his body. The thing somehow shrunk into a tiny, crystal seed and entered his soul with ease.

He couldn’t even find the seed itself as the Nexus informed him of that after the fact, rather, Akevorax realised that deep within his soul, some of the white orbs of providence changed to black. While he didn’t know what exactly this meant, the fact that the crystal only reacted to him after so many years implied that his soul held a special aspect.

Two aspects, to be precise.

The obvious one were his soul armaments, all of them technically called providences.

And the second ought to be his mutation. Which meant that this crystal required a soul to contain a ‘concept’ merged into it. What that meant, not even the Nexus could answer.

…

The day of the storm arrived shortly though. And it was today that Akevorax realised how it completely came to a standstill so long as he quietly sat still within the Dragonlands. The whole group silently put up with this for a whole day before calling it quits and slowly shuffling into the selected sub-realm where they built the giant array. One specialised in killing or restraining master tiers or Starlite ranks, no matter the species or pathway it would guarantee their body’s destruction.

Why did they leave when given a perfectly fair way to stay safely in the Dragonlands?

Because Akevorax made a mistake. The storm appeared to come to a standstill on that last day, but it clearly edged closer and closer with every single minute. At a rate so imperceivable slow that it’d take days to reach him, but the implication frightened him more than anything. These foes were willing to not only send, what he presumed to be, a Starlite rank assassin, but then let them die in the Dragonlands if it ensured his death. It was a miracle they somehow nurtured such a loyal tool so far.

And they’d gladly let that tool go in exchange for his life!

Of course he’d go use the damn array to kill this danger. At least, he didn’t see a reason to drag in the elders for this menial matter. He built an array for this exact purpose, was he just not gonna use it now?

And so the time came, the group of now five waited beneath a barrier in the sub-realm. Akevorax quietly watched the storm, soon to appear, and sure enough an obvious tear in space went noticed by most of them instantly. Only Darak failed to sense it with his limited spatial sense.

And from above came…

Not the eternals’ assassin?

Instead a wyvern with its thick bone spikes shot out of nowhere and quickly re-oriented itself in the air above to divebomb their group. Their confusion couldn’t be mistaken, but neither of the two spellcasters just let the opponent strike freely. Mala activated the array, and the restraining process began.

A pretty light show if you will.