Healing in the lunar realm probably stood as the best time either of them had these last few months. Entirely true for Adret who finally lost her poor composure in exchange for complete relaxation, able to dismiss any and all responsibilities for just a short while. He’d seen this behaviour often between elves and humans, being able to enjoy the time of a child under the care of a parent. For dragons it was undoubtedly a luxury, and while he’d like to relax, the surmounting walls only grew higher by the day. Their shadows remained the same, but he approached without any way to stop…

Just like a new storm flickering on his horizon. Not highly threatening, but he learnt his lesson after the last storm, this wasn’t a foe he couldn’t defeat on his own.

It appeared a day ago, but he hid it from Adret, giving her the time to show a kinder side usually unseen around him. The minor shifts in his mental state all appeared before the planar will though, and it saw through his distress and worries in just a few hours… Or perhaps it noticed after mere minutes but gave him time to process the emotions himself. It was thoughtful like that in almost all cases.

Unwilling to let him go through such things alone, it eventually reached out, “What new problem has plagued you, young dragon?” Akevorax almost answered out of habit, but lowered his head in case Adret overheard anything, then distracting himself with the form of address used by the planar will.

Few still referred to young adult dragons, any past their 3rd growth phase, in this regard. Mostly because they already earned their names, it was usually impossible for a dragon to reach this point and not reach gold tier.

Who was he kidding trying to distract himself with these thoughts?

He could barely even sense this storm as well, and the way it cut in and out reminded him more of an undersupplied array. Since Adret still rested in a calmness, he sighed and flew away towards the realm’s destroyed portion.

On the journey over he was able to say aloud, “I will be attacked sometime in the future, by an enemy significantly stronger than myself, but it is hard to say when or if we may even return before that occurs.

“I have not seen any intrusions or unsavoury figures outside my boundaries, how have you determined this attack?”

“One of my bloodlines lightly attunes me to fate… I think. I have a sense of any who intend to directly attack, providing they are significantly stronger. It doesn’t make much sense, I apologise.”

“That is a tough problem. Although, it seems your concern is whether she will face danger?”

“I have means to react, and win, against cornem tiers. Especially so after obtaining some goods from that dragon’s lab.”

“Amusingly selfless. There is one thing I know will help, even if you possess a method.” The resounding words ended with undulations of space nearby, it seemed to be signalling him and a quick diversion flew him over to the point. To his senses, the grid representing this place expanded and shrunk periodically, space itself stretched and retracted so casually. Surprisingly, the planar will performed this without causing any additional gravitational attraction towards that point too!

As he hovered just a few metres away, the undulating point vanished as a crystalline object took its place. Some sort of purple pumpkin seed, and in its presence he noticed the micro-oscillations of space completely calmed down. Eye of Truth glanced over it for a moment to reveal hundreds of thousands of great runes, impressive at first sight, but closer in, his next observation noted them as repetitions of the same five runes. If he of all dragons failed to recognise this object, then all his studies on planes deserved to be ignored.

“Yes, this will help immensely… Is it fine to hand one over while you’re in such a state?” He asked apprehensively, even a bit suspicious of this goodwill. It wasn’t damaging to take the seed under normal circumstances, in fact most realms handed out a couple every year, but after the destruction caused by void, it would be wrong to just take this.

He’d still obviously take it. This might end in another potential death, but with Adret’s permanent demise.

“Take it. My only wounds are the voices who were lost by the flames’ ravaging, this realm is no less stable than before.” Its little confirmation sealed every bit of care he held on to, and after, the seed disappeared into his ring like everything else. Though, he did have to place it a fair distance from anything with spatial elements… While small, a chance of his ring blowing up existed.

“Thank you for the crystal boundary, I will make sure to take the head of that enemy,” his voice filled with confidence. This object single-handedly changed the end result of his attacker immensely.

No longer could they just run away through blank space, far away and able to lick their wounds with vengeance. The crystal boundary formed by realms firstly did the obvious effect of creating a near-impenetrable crystal wall in all directions, even through all five spatial fields! Yet, this wall wasn’t even the appealing effect!

It also ‘solidified’ all spatial dimensions and fields within, making all forms of teleportation impossible for quite a few hours. His cornem tier opponent’s greatest power over him, their faster and near-instant teleportation, no longer worked!

Ignore all that if a supreme tier came, but a weak storm couldn’t relate to something of that calibre. Akevorax travelled to see the huge chunks of planet completely evaporated by a small release of void flames, only now grasping the scale on which a fraction of a planet meant.

On approach, wide ravines and randomly placed tunnels littered the forested, grey ground below. These easily reached a kilometre deep with fifty to sixty metres of width at their widest points, and yet only expanded in both depth and size on approach…

And then there was just a pit. Left or right, no horizon in sight for either, there was just a pit.

Kilometres down sat the planet’s outer core, superheated molten substances at that lowest depths. He kind of expected the rest of the mantle’s magma to flow out and form a lake of the stuff, but thankfully some creatures reacted hastily and secured the intact parts to maintain the planet’s composition, for now at least. Endless kilometres of nothing appeared as he went forward, even the air in this place was thinner as supreme tiers knew that allowing free diffusion only harmed those who survived on the intact parts.

An hour of leisurely flight, travelling thousands of kilometres overhead, still showed nothing at all.

He completely destroyed everything here…

“I see why you hate them.” His voice reached the planar will, believing that he spoke of Alkuthuzen, but truly this went to the Nexus. In the past it was so easy to write off the damage of Exeters as minor spatial destruction, but all it took was a tiny bit of that power and it stripped away something like a third of a planet.

If that had been a fullpower voidflame, he admitted that the lunar realm probably wouldn’t have made it. And Akevorax wasn’t even one who greatly respected life, or held back from killing often, but accidentally killing tens of millions wasn’t desirable.

After long enough, he made his way back to Adret and prepared arrays for whatever battle awaited. Native supreme tiers meant that he could hand over materials and have arrays with great runes engraved too, but he only created two of these movable array plates due to cost. One of them greatly enhanced the sealing array used long ago on the demon elf progenitor, and the other created a barrier strong enough to withstand several cornem tier attacks or even the detonation of one.

…

It was soon time to leave, and while Adret held some inclination to remain, she still decided to return as well. Both dragons rocketed towards a small sub-realm barely 250,000 kilometres away from their home. Three days till they travelled once more and made it safely home…

The distant storm rapidly surged towards Akevorax.

It was unknown where they waited, but this foe only moved once they disappeared into this sub-realm. Perhaps some sort of monitoring array was set up on planes close to the main universe?

But this was still quite far out… He didn’t have time to think about that stuff. In terms of environment, it wasn’t highly ideal with an ocean of water below, though it didn’t matter as most combat would occur mid-air.

His arrays didn’t require placing for once, and given the storm’s approach speed, he orderly said, “Something is coming to attack us. Hide in this.” The array dropped onto the still ocean below. Adret tried to catch it with psychic power, but instead fell herself as the metal plate’s weight instantly overburdened her. Once stabilised, by letting go of the array, she dropped down to stand on the incredibly dense metal which easily floated on water. Tendrils of azure mana flew down into points of the array, and once completely lit up, he could be free of most concerns.

As it came online, he didn’t hesitate to rip open an exit to the sub-realm and throw another metal plate outside, activating it in the process. A simpler spatial monitoring often used while Adret recuperated.

For about a day now, he debated an option to himself, and this last confirmation decided the final choice.

Back in the lunar realm, he already prepared by consuming vials of blood essence, but ensured he stayed far beneath the evolution requirement. Amazingly, even after 30 test tubes, he hadn’t reached the degree of bloodline energy as seen by his last evolution. Most of these vials contained the essence of cornem tiers, to think that Mythic rank bloodlines only provided slightly more than a Legendary+ rank dragon.

That was a fallacy; something he clarified after further research. But not while something threatened his life.

Purposefully pushing himself towards an evolution, the ‘distance’ of the oncoming storm shortened constantly and he grew more certain of time until its arrival. “About an hour, a bit more than expected… I should be strong enough to survive it.”

This unknown foe clearly didn’t want to alert anyone of an attack, otherwise why would they hide so far away from the lunar realm? And why mask their existence in almost every important way?

Unfortunately, they clearly failed to properly maintain whatever hid their fate. It heavily reinforced his guesses that the eternals sent out another. No one else knew enough about his abilities to prepare this well. It still bugged him that their array failed to properly mask all connection to fate, even as the source approached, he noticed that it would randomly appear then disappear. All they had to do was make this array properly and he stood no chance!

Back on topic anyway.

White crystal shards appeared around him one after another, the surface smooth and polished like milky white jade cut open, and the freezing essence concentrated to such a point that all water moisture around him froze and fell instantly. A downdraft formed as the cooled air rushed down to the ocean surface, creating a cycle of convection in a matter of seconds. His confidence in this wasn’t that great in all honesty, but intense cold fended off the drawbacks.

He swallowed the fragments one after another, accelerating his stomach at 20-fold speed for the next minute.

It was time to make use of the glacial wyrm king, a name with its own overwhelming connotations. This was not a glacial wyrm who achieved the namesake of ‘king’ through the Nexus, but rather received this title as an inherent part of its species… In other words, this wyrm actually transformed itself into a wyrm king.

[Consumed Glacial wyrm king bloodline! Assimilation progress 24%]

Every single ‘king’ variant of a species was a monster few of the same tier dared attack, and a childish Akevorax so long ago never realised how serious its bone shards in the Evelard range were.

“So… half a million ice-related great runes do this little damage?” He said while watching the crystal bones rapidly shrink. Previously worried that the vestiges of explosive great runes would counter these new ones, and explained why he waited so long to assimilate it, but now at a mere 10,000 runes, they were swept away by the torrent of cold. He shrugged off this influx with divinity alone.

These runes didn’t even survive long inside him. Thousands of them disappeared every minute, almost equalling out the rate at which they seeped out of these bones.

[Consumed Glacial wyrm king bloodline! Assimilation progress 82%]

Just a few more pieces in his stomach and he could rush an evolution with 30 minutes left on the clock. It wasn’t a tough process to repeat the consumption of these runes… But he actually stopped his divinity this time round.

Roughly 200,000 runes accumulated in his body, freezing large sections of ice cream solid, but that all reversed as soon as the final number appeared.

[Consumed Glacial wyrm king bloodline! Assimilation progress 100%]

Violent coughs broke the tension, Akevorax found his stomach trembling and squirming, the ice cream lining flipped between frozen solid and runny goo several times a second. Gagging followed, and strong heaving forced the remaining white fragments. No amount of willpower kept them down either, it was like his body took control. A weave of mana still contained them within, offsetting the heat he barely felt now.

He might have continued if the Auric Spirit hadn’t sent him a rushed message, ‘Let out. Fast.’

Given its natural ability to sense danger, he followed its suggestion and pulled the four pieces out. His stomach immediately melted once more. Amusingly, the heat wasn’t all that bad though.

All his joy vanished after a single pass through, and an ugly grimace took over. Akevorax felt it necessity to say to himself, “What the fuck… I was in over my head again, but it’s manageable. I think.”

All across his body, sections of ice cream were frozen solid and recoloured to white crystal. Mutative strength like no other completely dominated his defences. Sure, he hadn’t actually assimilated many more cornem tier bloodlines… but most Mythic rank types went down fine with some pocket watch usage. He could even assimilate Mythic+ ones with the help of grade 1 materials nullifying the heat. Once more he underestimated the widened gap between these higher tiers. As the mutagenic outflow onto his candy crystals increased, he fought back by accelerating the draconic endurance everywhere else, but even with a 10-fold boost in speed, it only barely won over the wyrm king bloodline.

He wasn’t finished with it yet! A second acceleration instead slowed down the dominating bloodline, allowing him to halve its speed in exchange for all the spare mana in his body.

Regions of smooth white gemstone slowly disappeared as the transformation reversed, though he ignored the mana cost to repair and replace these recovered portions. All his mana barely equated to one minute of acceleration effects, and the spells he developed long ago to slow these down stripped away in the presence of great runes.

Considerations back within the lunar realm revealed a solution. A set of methods relying almost entirely on the Auric Spirit… It waited for his words. Akevorax, without any other choice, finally said, “Merge and suppress the regions necessary.”

A golden crown appeared atop his head, and combined with his body and divinity, the spirit took full control for the first time. Engraved runes around the thick crown’s sections lit up with a powerful golden infusion, but strangely the entire object still appeared quite dim. Outside the visible spectrum, a tiny range of light, no light of any sort shined from this crown besides that from its golden lettering.

Since when was pure Origin Force golden?