Asleep in an underwater cave, Akevorax spent a whole day on the prowl for master tiers but such actions quickly warned most to run away. Even if he wanted to chase, he was already slower than most master tiers outside of water. In this sort of environment, only a massive acceleration from his pocket watch closed the gap. Tunnels and closed spaces worked best in that case as the creature either tried to run away, a futile effort given his True Will, or they fought and failed to kill him instantly.

A day’s worth of constant watching and fighting tired him out eventually though. Fortunately, to find a safe space, he just shrunk down and wandered through underwater tunnels until he found an isolated pathway. With just one Earth Control spell, he moved enough stone to create a sizable aerated room.

It’s worth asking how come a whole day didn’t level him up enough given the number of master tiers around. A kill took mere minutes as well!

And that answer came down to the part where he ran away for almost ten hours straight…

Yes, it turned out that while nothing powerful ruled over this tropical region, that did not mean no beasts above master tier resided here. He learnt that firsthand as a purple-finned barracuda appeared with no warning, summoned a hundred water jets to finely slice his crystal body into tiny chunks, and charged with its almost five metre long body to swallow bits uncompromisingly. He escaped that sudden attack just barely as it hardly used any power in its charge.

Being even slower than bulky, flabby creatures like the catfish, he activated his pocket watch with a tenfold acceleration and ran like hell.

He flew upwards, out of the water at that time, but such a minor thing like that hardly stopped this fish. Streams of water shot upwards like cannonfire, each shot precise and sharp as a strange purple dust within the pressurised fluid cut through him like soft butter. And if he ever lowered himself too much, the fish leapt out of its natural habitat to spear him in mid-air.

If not for the simple fact that it lacked wings, he’d have given up and found another place to hunt.

Don’t get him wrong, it took hours to shake off that damn barracuda. Now he killed slowly, and only those beasts which gave usable amounts of experience points.

Name

Akevorax (Icy)

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus IV

Magic Primary III

Elemental Crystal Body

Formed Soul

Maestro’s Touch

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Conjunctured Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

99

EXP

33%

Unallocated Stat Points: 0

Strength

0

Luck

13

Agility

50

Growth

20

Magic

181

Mutation Rate

30

It was so close now, but this level truly separated those with and without great languages the most. Unintelligent beasts with Runic Bodies don’t just appear often either. Almost all of them learnt their runes through study. Obviously they had to be intelligent to achieve that…

And no such creature stupidly remained in these places where even the strongest cornem tiers were unintelligent fish!

The Runic Body’s completion indicated that the creature only required one more evolution to move up to that even greater power level. Even he agreed they should stay and hide; what came out of his mouth was something completely different. “There have to be at least a few here anyway… It takes so long to use Elemental Bodies now,” he grimaced at the consideration as he spoke. Not too long ago he killed a Level 97 ruby bellyfish only to earn a whopping 3% EXP. All the while, a spiteful barracuda and some other cornem tiers wandered about more often than not.

“Do I go to the Barritone Fossil then? I think that volcanic crag is closer though…” In his head, a near-perfect map of the third world appeared in full detail, and he indecisively compared the two next best locations to hunt Runic Bodies.

There was no doubt that the outburst of power from that cornem tier barracuda drew some attention, but very few bothered paying attention to these situations in the far seas. Especially in a place like the Trapolca Ocean where no one moderated such high-level creatures. The moment any Sage realised such a thing, they probably ignored it and went back to their studies or official duties.

Still, his Eye of Truth searched the wide placid area for long enough now. Besides, the area of this small ocean overwhelmingly exceeded his eye’s search range. Maybe within a few weeks he’d barely dig out every last corner of this place. In comparison, the Barritone Fossil became a sort of mutation ground as the almost 5 kilometre long corpse created countless master tiers every single year. Even tens of thousands of years after this peak supreme tier’s death, the ecosystem around its body grew vicious and bloodthirsty as numbers greatly outweighed food.

In time, unintelligent beasts simply used it as a slaughter ground for others. If he wanted to find any Runic Bodies, that place served the best chance.

Unless he wanted to spend ages in search of another insanely powerful bloodline like the Elders.

“But before I go… Those bunch are all still swimming about outside their nests. Even if it’s a lawless place, surely they’ve gathered something,” he told himself, the voice trying to uphold neutrality. Beams of light erupted from his eyes and smothered a rabid purple-finned barracuda in the distance. However, he failed to maintain those emotions soon enough. The weighty self-interest conquered.

A veil formed over his body straight away, mana supplied at large to ensure no part of his presence escaped. The wafer-patterned dragon shrunk down to barely a metre in length before diving into the underwater tunnels once more.

With his small size, the flows blocked by his body minimised immensely, additionally, it reduced the force he withstood. In this shrunken, hidden state, he slowly passed through tunnels bored through the dark blue stone, although it was all closer to black in this low light. Occasionally he came across large underground pockets filled with life. Either something strong laid in wait, or the weak gathered and ate some of the growing plants here.

Akevorax continued further down, slipping through cracks in the cavern floor to deeper regions and traversing tunnels so dark that every light source likely represented a patient predator. Anglerfishes disliked the relatively warm tropical waters here, but similar species which thrived here absolutely reproduced their hunting method.

He evaded every last one with ease until stepping into a cave covered in black and navy blue shells. Almost metallic, they shined with a polished surface only seen under the room’s barest light sources in the form of bioluminescent plant life and plankton.

“A corpse? Did it drop off food for later?” As he swam closer to a giant rainbow-scaled fish laid on the floor, its exact constitution grew ever clearer. Everything he discovered could have been easily realised with a single use of either Elder eyes. Still, he just stood agape at the huge fish as large as his full-sized body, cutting its ‘skin’ as he said, “A Runic Body. And the mana just barely crosses the threshold, I think.” With a second gulp, he threw the giant corpse into his storage ring and quickly moved over a corner of the cave decorated by a pile of glowing objects.

Some magical equipment, namely Low and Mid-rank treasure tools, but also a huge collection of magical plants. At least a few hundred grade 2 materials, and a handful of grade 1 types. Simple looks at the food presented an easy solution to his problem…

“I can just eat this stuff. Gods above, when did I get so stupid?” He continued to speak under his breath, what followed were more self-inflicted curses at his pure idiocy.

With the corpse in hand, and a pile of valuables by pure chance, he raced out of the dark shelled cave with a slow and steady pace. Every so often, the wide beam of light penetrated the landscape, but shut off immediately after, these weren’t just overtly visible to everything nearby. With full knowledge of all the cornem tiers at once, he made his way to the other homes whilst ensuring that none returned back home. Their tireless energy for a search paved his way to enter two more caves full of similar resources!

While he didn’t find random Runic Body corpses anymore, the stockpile of magical plants in each cave clearly indicated that the fish possessed some resource management skills. Enough to keep restoratives or valuables on hand, so their lack of intelligence purely came from a short end of the stick.

Only as he left the third nest, a cave with spongy grey moss grown on all its walls, did the situation take a nosedive. The beam of light swept out once more, and in the distance he saw a streak of purple dash through open spaces and swerve agilely through tunnels. For a few moments he just pondered in place and asked himself, “Is it going back to the–” And as his words cut off in realisation, he dropped the veil and just threw himself through the tunnels.

Anything to go upwards as fast as possible. But he barely ascended a few underground pockets before a rush of mana exploded in the distance…

And the streak of purple which zipped through the caves in a frantic search was adjoined by three more bursts of power. He took the warning as it came, activating the pocket watch with a 10-fold multiplier and just leaving as fast as the crystal wings moved him through water. The golden spirit merged into his body obviously accelerated him too, but on its own, it wasn’t even a quarter the barracuda’s speed. He simply stood no hope of escape if not for the pocket watch.

It required about 2 kilometres of traversal to reach him, but the twisting path required to reach these depths meant he had to travel a similar distance just to escape.

His wings blasted away water as he launched himself forward, at the same time saying aloud, “Siltuum.” The mental imagery supported his spell, and the ocean’s waters bent as he willed. With the imperative aid of the water itself, he swerved around bends and corners much like the creatures born and designed for movement in this place. Under the short acceleration, he maintained a speed about double the barracuda, and crossed half the distance already.

That was just three seconds in reality, and in that same time, that cornem tier not only noticed him but glistened with mana as its purple fins exploded with light. Sure, it was 1.5 kilometres away if it travelled through the tunnels…

But the actual distance between them barely even crossed half a kilometre! A short range to anything at their levels!

Outside of his control, the waters behind him no longer supported his movement and a wall of purple streams released their attacks like a firing squad. Hundreds of holes immediately appeared all throughout his body, chunks ripped and torn out from the force of that singular attack.

But rather than evade, block, or even suppress the dimension, he summoned the silver armour onto his back and watched it crack instantly. Just a single round of jet streams damaged its resplendent plates.

And in the second round, holes immediately appeared, perforating his body which only half healed in that split second. He ignored the damage though, escaping the deepest caves of the tropical waters and escaping to the large pockets of space hidden right below the ocean surface. From here it was a straight shot upwards. No twists, no turns, no manoeuvres. Just pure speed to escape.

Dimension Force immediately spread out from his position and the hundred jet streams which encircled him all of a sudden dispersed without any warning. The fish behind him still sped through the tunnels at a disgusting speed, albeit slowed as it too lost the support of water flows. He made it out of the hard part already, and thunderous wing beats sent shockwaves out in the ocean, nearly creating maelstroms on their own. But at this point he won!

This was no trick, or a cheap bait and switch. None of the master or cornem tiers below possessed the means to stop him now!

It took merely two more seconds for him to fly out of the watery prison and just one final wingbeat, barely even half a second in comparison, to launch himself an entire kilometre into the air from there. High above the ocean in absolute safety.

Below, he saw the purple-finned barracuda launch itself from the tepid ocean surface like a missile, but still fall back down long before it approached his height.

Soon after, thick girthy tentacles flew out of the water and speared upwards as they aimed for him. But the white Elder's eyes saw these in advance and he already launched upwards another couple kilometres in preparation, far enough such that the tentacles about two metres thick couldn’t reach him. Sixteen tentacles to be exact, most likely some sort of humongous octopus which resided deep within the caves.

He saw it long ago, but forgive him for not being able to tell the exact species on sight.

Akevorax guessed octopus over squids because the former featured eight tentacles most commonly. Then given how the count was double a normal octopus’, he assumed some sort of evolution which grew more of them. Whether right or wrong, he couldn’t care less.

“Let’s just eat,” he said with wings spread as gliders back towards the west. Meanwhile, hundreds of items poured out of the storage ring and he would just stare whilst saying, “That one. That. Yes. There’s another. I think that’s relatively worthless… Eh,” and so on. Of the grade 1 plants, he only selected eight with limited effects besides rapid mana recovery. As for grade 2 plants, he separated out a small hill which radiated mana just from such insane quantities. And so, first he tried a few of the weaker plants just to save on resources.

[Consumed Blue sprightly mudkelp! Received 2% EXP

Consumed Seasoned sporeshroom! Received 1% EXP

Consumed Bio-light immaterial seaweed! Received 3% EXP]

Of about ten different plants, those three garnered the greatest results with the total experience barely at 9%... If he consumed the whole pile he’d barely earn the level he hoped for. And with that note, he just swallowed one of the grade 1 plants instead.

[Consumed Bursting seafoam peach! Received 44% EXP]

…

That difference just wasn’t fair.

[Consumed Luscious pearl of the ocean floor! Received 36% EXP]

And that was it. The final object required for his 100th level, and a source for another general use training title. Needless to say he appreciated finally obtaining it. The sight of that round number on his status screen was greatly satisfying and relieving.

[Obtained title ‘Level Barrier Unlock’. Unlock Requisites: Reach Nexus Level 100]

[Level Barrier Unlock: Additive increase in training speed by 10% for all types of training. Training state determined by Nexus]

Name

Akevorax (Icy)

Title

Nexus Aid Bonus IV

Magic Primary III

Elemental Crystal Body

Maestro’s Touch

Formed Soul

Level Barrier Unlock

Species

Dragon

Bloodline

Conjunctured Ice-cream

HP

100%

MP

100%

Level

100

EXP

5%

Unallocated Stat Points: 3

Strength

0

Luck

13

Agility

50

Growth

20

Magic

181

Mutation Rate

30