Sectioning off a portion of one’s Mind to a foreigner’s control was universally considered a poor decision. However, that didn’t mean people hadn’t tried in the past. Certainly, powerful wizards sometimes offered common labourers a chance for a better life if they gave up their space in reality and became a servant in their mental spaces.

However, the flaw came in the part where these commoners couldn’t provide the mental faculties required for mana manipulation. Akevorax fixed that by placing most of that effort onto the arrays drawn on the golem hands, whilst Tritheus undid the flaws to create perfect bricks.

The final process then required a worker to take a sheet of more gaseous mana and spread it over the brick, an alternate mode of arrays on their hands instead changed the ‘intent’ of force to set everything into place. In essence an identical process to something Akevorax could accomplish himself, but done in such a convoluted way due to nuances in it all. Automating this task, or outsourcing technically, saved so much time in the future.

And so, as he cut off a single claw of his consciousness given form, this portion of his ice cream body did not grow back. He willed it to stay disconnected from himself and fed it into the chest of the golem. The stone chest opened up and closed around the stone chest, the only remnant a single indent to indicate status.

“That marks your status from here on. You may sleep in the houses until your own home is ready,” he spoke without any preference in his voice. The last thing he needed was a tool which grew narcissistic or egotistical.

Stood up and now surveying the surroundings, Tritheus asked curiously, “This one understands. How many should the building house, master?”

“Enough room for eight beds. Any other questions?”

“None master… Although, I think that space will be enough to fit all eight, or should it be further out?” Tritheus pointed to a patch of snow not too far away from the platform. While it was slightly slanted upwards due to the mountain slope, that could easily be levelled off and given stairs. He could see the golem’s reason for apprehension as the other three buildings sat barely a minute away on foot.

Their worry immediately faded as Akevorax smiled at the proper question, it was far better than having a subordinate that let him screw up. He’d be far more annoyed if they purposely did something horribly inefficient and then wasted his time. Only with controlled emotions, he answered blankly, “That’s fine, Somewhere central for future buildings is preferable.”

Tritheus, now glad with the decision, immediately poured out another snake of condensed mana and got to work practising the authority given to him. Just like Akevorax learnt years ago, utilising mental powers took a fair bit of time… And he was a dragon with an awakened Mind back then. He couldn’t imagine how much practice it asked of this human with a disabled Mind.

Even if the resurrection technique created a Mind suitable for their original body, that being one at Mithril rank.

…

Back outside the internal space, he still had hundreds of vials of bloody concentrate all around. These were some dozens of bloodlines that never got their chance for assimilation. He often opened these vials of blood essence and analysed them with a selection of Adept true spells, very few Master true spells he found performed significantly better than these lower tier counterparts. And in general, he discovered conclusively that the reason he failed to consume more had nothing to do with incompatibilities, but rather a sort of resistance formed by his body.

The Nexus phrased it far better though, as it told him just a couple days ago.

[Your bloodline has assimilated so many draconic bloodlines that it adapted to common weaknesses and abilities of dragons. We didn’t know this was possible till now, but given that you had to assimilate over a thousand draconic bloodlines for it to take effect, we’ll put it under ‘ignorable concerns’. Additionally, it seems higher rank bloodlines are still easily absorbed]

Well… That didn’t technically answer why his body failed to assimilate more, but he inferred that naturally. It came down to a matter of saturation.

Except for some rarer elements, he pretty much consumed multiple of every common type at this stage. All of them culminated into his body gaining the mutation resistance that others were born with! If no fight between bloodlines began, how could he assimilate it?

By now, even the blood of a cornem tier dragons hardly took effect, and he realised that the Dragonlands was not a goose that laid endless golden eggs. Instead, it was a land stocked with gold, but eventually those stores ran dry. If he wanted more gold, he’d have to dig deeper and take it from the most dangerous sources.

Supreme tier dragons, literally untouchable existences that he already pissed off slightly after several failed extraction attempts.

From the doorway, Mala walked inside slightly and spoke unworried, “So, you’re finally back! The altar you requested was just set up, you don’t need to worry about materials, the elders just intend to harvest what remains after.”

“I don’t have anything else to do in the meantime, so I suppose we can head over in a few minutes,” Akevorax replied in deep thought, trying hard to remember if anything else required immediate attention. But as nothing came up, he decided to get everything over and done with, gathering the group of four inside the cave to head off to the central mountain.

Raccelline wasn't about at first, but she appeared no more than two seconds after receiving the message. Her ability to forcibly tunnel almost anywhere in the Dragonlands, in fractions of a second, was still ridiculous, even more so given how Korridan learnt the skill too and required at least two seconds just to activate it.

Mala, their wizard, took at least a second to gather such quantities of mana and tear space like that. Meanwhile, Darak unfortunately required similar times to Korridan as he rarely used mana. And as always, Icy couldn’t use such a skill as his body inherently failed to activate them.

It almost felt like prejudice from the universe itself given that dragons like Kalmiktar activated skills with ease.

Why was mud, crystal, or glass okay, but not ice cream!?

In the central mountain, he still received glares from the occasional master tier that noticed him, but his dying infamy quickly reduced the attention he brought. Although… This time the gaze of several cornem tier dragons and their True Wills made an appearance. The slight faux-ignorance on his face did nothing to block the radiative shame which emitted.

Ahead of him, a dragon teleported into a small sub-realm designed for combat, and Akevorax easily flipped the array connections before everyone walked on. The familiar flash of light carried them up top and the group already saw a pair of supreme tier dragons on the mountain’s platform, meanwhile, a new out-of-place altar had been placed down.

This altar used a type of black stone with grey mossy lines embedded into the surface. And whilst it radiated a power of nature, the stone itself revealed a state of grave death and decay. Furthermore, within the stone block beneath his feet sat a multi-layered array formed of some pale red metal alloy. The whiter components were some uninteresting metals used for flow moderation and alloy stability under pressure, but that red colour came from something important.

Needleflame ore, a combination of blood and fire elements, devilishly forced anyone who held it to bleed. Furthermore, once it touched blood, the metal sparked into a raging flame. Obviously, this metal lost its main effect once you formed a crystal body, but it possessed several other rather sneaky uses once refined into a metal ingot.

At which point many called it ‘flamberant’, derived from the type of sword, flamberge, funnily enough.

Flamberant, the metal mixed into this alloy, also powered its flames through bloodlines, without a need for blood. With an array which suppressed his bloodline as well, it all gave Akevorax a way to suppress his own collapse and redirect power if need be. All of this to stop his possible death under the dragonstone’s enhancement. Whilst the Nexus was right to say that it made no sense for him to die, that assumed proper protection and preparations to redirect the stone’s power if an empowerment might kill him. He poured roughly 50 streams of condensed mana into the array, charging it with his own mana as a security measure. Everything worked as intended, and from here he only held himself back.

A small triangular stone appeared in front of him, and once placed in his giant mouth was crushed to tiny bits with a single bite.

Such a logical method. Just consume the stone.

Creating a dragonstone came with quite a list of requirements and steps, most of which aren't worth going into detail, but it's useful to vaguely explain why only a handful of stones appeared during each generation.

Prior to production, some resources were switched around depending on what the clans held at the time, but a few core materials never changed. An important one was the stone itself, which soft of acted as a giant pill.

A mixture of dusts came into its creation. This a mixture of ground up soulstone, heartstone, ruten crystals, and crystallised starlight, all came together to form this grey mixture. Then, it underwent a year-long heating and cooling process, during repetition of this cycle, a litre of supreme tier dragon’s blood was added to the mix, per dragonstone. The resulting dust then remains beneath a stellar array in orbit around the sun, faced away to gather starlight. This is gathered over a period of 3 years, with more collector arrays added depending on the quantity of dragonstones produced.

Lastly, it required an infusion of mana… The exact amount was a bit shaky, but it generally came up in the range of five million times the stores of a regular supreme tier beast.

For scale, a supreme tier dragon has 2-3 times the mana over a normal creature of this tier, furthermore, to be an elder you would likely have 4-5 times that of a normal creatre at this level! Clan lords are anywhere from 8-100 times the amount though!

So, as it can be seen, the supreme tiers who quietly sat around in the dragonlands actually bothered to stay for two reasons. Firstly, they nurtured the next generation by providing resources for dragonstones. But they also just stayed because dragonslayers in the outside world were a massive nuisance and actually succeeded every now and then.

And who wanted to be the poor sod that died?

For the first few seconds as the dragonstone completely dissolved throughout Akevorax’s body, not a single change occurred. This was due to the stone fulfilling a natural requirement to align itself into an 18-point constellation, a consequence of using starlight. However, once the 18 nodes of grey formed throughout the dragon’s body, the immense power comparable to gods descended onto the mountain.

Space and time froze, cracking like a thin layer of ice in early winter. The world seemed to scream as air pulsated and exploded, the shockwaves barely contained as countless barriers around the central mountain all activated. And at its centre, 18 spots lit up brightly and formed its connections throughout Akevorax’s body. From head to tail, and across both stretched wings, the flowing starlight seeped out slowly, and the region of broken, turbulent space glistened with motes of light.

Internally, the situation was far better. The dragon’s blood and heartstone components worked fastest as the most active powers within, disseminating throughout the body of ice cream and spreading its influence furthest. However, this power clearly ignored his actual bloodline, as the magical information which determined his physical appearance and power was untouched by such essence.

Instead it focused on the deeper core of his existence. The basic genetics that all beings similarly contained and grew from, but more importantly, the draconic endurance which kept him alive till this very point.

And as soon as it placed its touch on the screen of life-saving power, the dragonstone melded into him completely. It became one with his draconic endurance and thickened this screen, from fragile glass it toughened and hardened, now free to relax slightly.

This enhancement hardly ended so soon though. From thickened glass, bulky and slow in effect, the mana within all 18 points burst outwards as a shockwave focused inwards. The power slammed into his scales, but for some reason rebounded back inwards. Meeting with the explosion of outwards power, it formed an implosion of pure mana!

His body exploded! Ice cream turned to mush and the crystal heart cracked to bits, yet his scales remained in perfect physical shape and only the supreme tiers outside noticed the colossal damage he sustained in that single action.

They grimaced, but only watched as his broken body rapidly repaired itself as mana instantly disappeared from the 18 points. In just a couple seconds, less than the time taken for further shockwaves to generate, everything already repaired itself to a prime state.

The process repeated, as the thin layer of power gained thickness once more, but under the implosion of mana condensed back down. Over and over, perhaps a dozen times where he completely broke down to something resembling a cocoon undergoing metamorphosis, yet he healed instantly every time. His body was a starved blackhole just for an instant as it devoured some of the endless mana within him.

Finally, whilst the layer of strange power which coated all his body remained exactly as thick as it began, the stress contained dropped to a tiny fraction of the original.

As it came to an end, he subtly noticed that the spare power sought to divert itself into his bloodline, but this was precisely the sort of action which might kill him at this time. Thus, with the help of the array below him, a red light shone and hundreds of tiny red needles shot through his body, each of them slowly draining off the rest of that blood-given power until only weak heartstone remained.

Rather than waste such a valuable object, he locked it within his crystal heart along with a small portion of the supreme tier dragon blood. These rare materials greatly helped in transformations, perhaps now he could actually reach the next level in a reasonable length of time.

Next came the soul enhancement, a swift and clean process as soulstone forced its way into the elemental heart about his soul and formed a giant wall all around. However, upon further notice this wall acted more like a lens, precisely as necessary for mana to enter frivolously and light up the wall of purple-grey crystal en masse, releasing motes of white and grey which fell onto the dented soul like snow. The wintery sight warmed him to the core as the layer of soul power thickened considerably over time, almost to the point where he reached the limit of a master tier soul.

Nonetheless, the process only half-finished, and he released a portion of dragon’s blood back into his body where it immediately entered this soulstone wall, tinting it a bloody red as beams of light now struck the little soul beneath. They fired through the wall of white with barbed tips, and the chains of mana rapidly formed as they descended deeper. Altogether, a hundred or so beams ripped deep within him to drag out the True Will and hold it in place.

A cruel method of enhancement, but necessary as next to no dragons actually accessed this portion of themselves at this stage. It was unnecessary though, as the True Will dragged out of his soul snapped the hundred chains with ease and even consumed the bloody-red barbed lights which struck it. At the same time receiving a shower of soul power tinted red as power similar to it in nature granted the faint figure a bit of firmness.

From a fading ghost, it now appeared more like a physical yet ghastly denizen of reality.

When it returned within, further beams of light struck the awakened providences within his soul and enhanced them, but he truly couldn’t understand how that part worked.

While he knew the dragonstone’s creation process, the method he found was a vague one filled with general steps. It missed out on the hundreds of unique and special arrays embedded into the stone itself and utilised in crafting.

With the Soul and Body finishing their enhancements, it now fell onto his Mind. A far less special process as waves of purple encapsulated the snowy mountain and quickly descended as beams of light once more.

The fog which limited the range within his mental space lifted away, revealing valleys and mountains further away, many of these without snow as well. In fact, it was clear that this created a complete ring of mountains all around the gigantic snowy one in its centre. Meanwhile, a deep valley slotted in between all this, one lone path the only access route up the mountain proper.

Besides a size enhancement, the bricks all gained a purple tint, as did the golden blood-shaped symbol on all his buildings.

For a short while, he continued to watch as subsidiary materials of the dragonstone merged with immense volumes of mana whilst inside his Body, but these only combined with various innate abilities or specific parts to enhance them overall. Only a single part of him was left completely untouched during this whole enhancement.

His bloodline. Anytime a part of the dragonstone attempted to empower or modify it, the array beneath him shot out those long, slim needles and drained whatever power required to stop that enhancement.

And like that, anything dangerous about the dragonstone enhancement came to an end. A grueling, torturous process which lasted 2 hours… And one where his insides literally blew up a dozen times.

One might question why the starlight was so important here, but he easily answered that with a single trait. The fact it was transparent.

Unlike Origin Force, everyone accepted starlight as the easiest transparent power, and thus its collection was vital in many enhancements like this. Besides, if he wanted to supplement the process, Akevorax needed at least a year to gather a similar quantity of Origin Force as these stones contained starlight, not to mention it held additional, unwanted effects which might ruin the dragonstones.

The process was over, and now came a period of time where he figured out the enhancement offered.

One thing he immediately noted was a clear observation.

If given a second chance to fight that Cornem ranked eternal… He actually stood a good chance of surviving. Not great odds mind you, but at least something higher than nothing.