Pure Origin Force surged through him with discernable power, never before had this strange element ever produced an effect while moving, but apparently with enough, that changed. He compared it to a block of lead pushed through his body. Exhausting weight crushing his body wherever it passed, yet still somehow fluid and ever-changing within, and in all this he got the better end of the deal.

All around, incessant pressure squashed the atmosphere flat. Air came to picturesque stillness as unprecedented aura negated all microscopic motions and collisions, ocean tides collapsed and flows beneath the surface dulled, just the crown’s activation completely suppressed all of nature around him.

Convective currents carried in a fair bit of heat constantly, and without their presence his temperature dropped considerably. However, even as a statue of ice cream at -200 Celsius, his Mind and Soul shrugged off the minor cold with ease. Both of them possessed great affinity with the ice and their ‘merged’ state ignored minor threats of coldness. Perhaps if he ground up a wyrm king bone, and inhaled the dust, he’d be suffering far more due to temperatures nearer to absolute zero.

Akevorax’s Mind focused solely on his stability in the air, right now the spirit carefully merged with his intact body and greatly enhanced it with the crown’s supply of Origin Force. The quantity contained within was astounding as he emptied hundreds of sackfuls as well as everything stored in his palace.

Best of all, he knew that it barely reached 1% of its maximum capacity. Which also meant right now it could only activate even less of its prowess… On its own. With a helping hand, the near-empty battery could use its tiny granules of power to great effect.

And then came the Dimension Force on top of that, a frustratingly dangerous game.

Ordinary mutagenic powers were a mix of green and whatever coloured element the power came from, unfortunately, pure bloodlines didn’t work like that. They took on a colour of red, precisely the same as his draconic endurance. His apprehension shouldn’t be hard to see.

A gold tier Auric Spirit lacked the extreme precision to separate the regions of coloured dimension, but this was still the safest alternate method.

Mana potions, purchased from a lunar realm city, disappeared into his stomach, every last drop important as his MP maintained a fine cycle. Once a minute he fully refilled it, then dumped 70% into two accelerations, careful to refill it and dynamically recover more if any regeneration drained significantly more. Heart and its MP relatively stable, everything shifted drastically as large portions of his Body grew in power from infusions of Origin Force.

Faint golden sparks filled the sea of red, making the endurance and assimilated bloodline indistinguishable from colour alone. Not a single flicker of gold appeared on the wyrm king’s side and everything immediately shifted into his favour.

From a slow dissolution of white creamy gemstones, the mutated bones wore away as wave after wave of power smashed into it. Force weathered away this overstaying guest.

However, stopping the transformation itself and beating back the bloodline were two different things. The endurance pushed its foe into a more condensed state, and like an army giving up far-away locations to better defend its core, they very soon entered a stalemate once more. Except his side constantly demanded energy while this bloodline merely existed… If his crown ran dry, then he’d be waving goodbye to a safe assimilation. Worst-case scenarios didn’t worry him here. The looming battle did that already, every minute counted, as well as all the resources.

Suddenly, that core of wyrm king’s bloodline froze in place, completely rendered still and all the heat in his body rapidly building up. What remained outside this core was merely 20% of the bloodline. He witnessed a forceful slaughter as his endurance cut away every last bone fragment and subdued these unprotected pieces.

From seconds to minutes, the suppressed portion of bloodline shrunk repeatedly. Dimension Force whisked away throughout, already half of it dispersed. His spirit applied several times the quantity he used to ensure the supreme tier bloodline never broke through its control, something wholly necessary even if it ate through his tiny stores so quickly.

Things as a whole went according to plan; ignore the costs being several times what he hoped.

Knowledge of great runes led him to assume this instinctive bloodline gathered its power when threatened, and spread it out to mutate efficiently. Barely 30% of the original remained unsuppressed now, and into his fifth minute of assimilation, he didn’t even need the pocket watch and spirit to continue.

Both remained active for two minutes more, obviously. Why wouldn’t he end this as soon as possible?

At just 5% of its original quantity, the spirit pulled away from the crown and his Dimension Force, no longer capable of suppressing it without accidentally including the draconic endurance. Cut down to mere scraps, crippled and slowed, the last traces of bloodline completely broke down and waited inactively to be used. A trace of phoenix fire landed atop his own battered body too, fighting the highly-resisted cold and fulfilling the energy costs of regeneration.

Damage faded as the remnant glacial great runes also dispersed, Akevorax left in thought about his series of decisions. Especially towards the end. He criticised himself and said, “Maybe I should have just drank it…”

Referring to an anti-mutative potion he purchased for some grade 1 metals and plants, the problem came from its damage. One might imagine dropping bombs on the enemy worked wonderfully, but then they realise it becomes a hindrance if your own soldiers are nearby. These potions worked precisely in that manner, able to target the mutative bloodline, but due to wide-range methods, it often harmed the user too. Many medicines worked like this.

He actually bought five different anti-mutative potions for sufficient preparations. Completely unnecessary, since just taking two of them temporarily ruined his magical abilities, but part of him saw a method in upgrading the bloodline suppressant spell to work on these high tier creatures.

[Assimilated Glacial wyrm king bloodline! 9 new bloodline directions potentially available]

Just 9 options? He really expected something closer to 11 given the power of this beast. Perhaps even more given some elemental affinity between himself and it… Numbing the mindless thoughts, he accepted the unimportance of such things. On the other hand, this wasn’t an evolution yet, and in that regard he continued chugging vials of essence until that all-important trigger appeared.

[Bloodline energy has reached an evolutionary threshold. Prepare for evolutionary measures to begin]

A notice on this next rank of bloodlines also should’ve arrived, but perhaps the Nexus wasn’t prioritising the task in the face of simulating evolutions?

He wouldn’t be surprised to see quite a few incomprehensible names once more.

Minutes ticked by once more, his time already reduced to just half an hour, the dragon fidgeted as every second dragged on longer than the last. Anxiety and paranoia already created concerns but thinking only brought up the worst-case scenarios.

Complete death of both him and Adret if they planned properly. Just losing all his wealth amounted to a destructive move too, war around the corner made those resources far too important.

But compared to just death or financial loss… Things could probably be worse, right?

Captured and tortured, his Soul sealed into a Rune tool and True Will puppeted for whatever means. Heart plucked out and regrown over and over, abusing the unlimited regenerative potential of his body, or what he hoped was unlimited. His divinity taken and used to create a new demigod for the eternals, a foe which might kill his friends too.

And who knew how they planned to deal with Raccelline? If they knew of his potential, then hers shouldn’t be far behind, perhaps the eternals feared an enraged Manus, but who knew regarding the elves?

As a mainstream civilisation with diplomatic ties, no doubt their allies on other worlds fended off humans from beyond the third world. The human continent lost undoubtedly against the elves with a massive stockpile of high-level fighters thanks to Salvation’s leftover body. If 20 Great Sages charged towards Raccelline all of a sudden–

Prompts ended that train of thought.

[Evolution imminent. Your possible bloodline pathways are the following:

Glacial Overlord Ice-cream

Breath of Thermobaric Dissolution

Ascended Serpent Ice-cream

Path of a King

Frozen Hellscape…

Essence of Cold…

Cloudborne Flightful Menace…

Source of Power and Absolute…

Coldness

Please make a selection in 2 minutes, or a random pathway will be used]

Halfway down the list, a momentary expectant gaze lost all interest in the other options. With good reason, he harshly stated, “Show me Path of a King right now.”

[It shouldn’t be possible, but perhaps it was allowed because of the relation between your species]

[Path of a King: The status of king is not semantics, nor frivolous narcissism, it is both a state and responsibility. Many unworthy of such a title wish to mimic the role of the king, even we grant such namesakes to represent a ruling status, but the ultimate kinghood of beasts is truthful in its regards. The path is no test of character, such frivolous things, but instead bears down as pure might. What this means… We do not know. Is this path sureness to kinghood or one adorned by unknown failures? We cannot provide aid or benefits on this path]

“Am I absorbing the ‘concept’ of kinghood by doing this?”

[Yes, a fraction of it]

Nothing else explained the reason for obtaining this option, in the first place, this untouchable status of kings existed only because of conceptual powers. Knowledge all from the Nexus and later proven by excellent Great Sages, yet rather useless to most. Concepts didn’t actually have much power, they just existed.

It was then worth asking if becoming a king actually increased one’s abilities, especially since only the strongest became kings.

Indecipherable. The only feeling this evolution inspired.

A quick burst of soul power activated the watch’s mental acceleration, granting him an extra 20 seconds to quickly blitz through the other 8 options decisively. Options dropped off like flies as he found their effects too vague or questionably useful. The 20 times acceleration only cost him 1 second of real time, something in short supply this time. Many great abilities appeared across the evolutions, meeting his requirements for a supreme tier beast, and his upgrade to Authority level 4 brought far better descriptions for the earlier few.

Path of a King wasn’t poorly explained due to lacking simulations, but because the Nexus simply could not parse the ability. Many of his assimilated options never existed before, and compounded with abilities which plainly should not be absorbed… He couldn’t blame its lack of depth.

This bloodline only led to the state of kinghood, something never before seen. Proper data formed the backbone of all simulations, without it, the Nexus relied on guesswork for developments and effects.

For the evolution options he stripped away immediately:

Ascended Serpent, Essence of Cold, Cloudborne Flightful Menace, Source of Power and Absolute, and ‘Coldness’. All five disappeared from his view.

The first granted him the serpent relation of a wyrm as well as some flying enhancements. Its practical effects primarily boosted flight and swimming, granted an incredibly potent venom, and infused great runes with innate abilities.

Essence of Cold dropped his internal temperature drastically, resisting heat in all forms to a major extent, and then changed his Mind Palace to completely control… Entropy? The Nexus didn’t explain this final ability very well.

Next, the last three options also suffered from poor names as it struggled immensely.

Cloudborne Flightful Menace granted impressive camouflage in any and all forms of clouds, whether the standard misty air or galactic clouds of dust. Then the Nexus expounded on some things related to flight and movement, and he couldn’t figure out what was menacing about this evolution.

Source of Power and Absolute opened a link to the Ice Source, but besides opening a link, no other abilities or improvements stood out after a three second read through.

Finally, this was the funnest option he’d seen in quite a while now, only called Coldness.

[Coldness: Redefine all cold; senses vary relatively; illusions of reality. Ends and beginnings exist, but also not, as limitations appear anywhere. Are thoughts cold? Is death cold? Is death the beginning, end, or in between? Redefine or Replace… Who knows?]

He memorised the description messily. Just the Nexus’ interpretation of these effects held great value, something he came to realise a bit too late, but it was better to start later than never. The delay with Right of a King left him with just 92 seconds left. Three options to see and a tool which sped up his Mind kept him completely calm. If any amount of time wanted to make him sweat it had to be at least below a minute. Reasons for this strangely short evolution all came down to the overwhelming supreme tier he assimilated, but he hadn’t put that much thought into it. Akevorax’s thoughts all drifted towards whether he took Right of a King on a hopeful gamble or focused on abilities with potential uses in the next few minutes?