His three preferred options all directed themselves to different parts entirely. In order of appearance they were: His Body, his draconic heart, and his Mind Palace. It was best to go in order, just as the list appeared.

[Glacial Overlord Ice-cream: Ice, and snow, and hail, and sleet; names repeated, none compete. The Glacial Overlord commands all forms of ice through physical might alone, elements tremble and follow orders as you beckon. Ice no longer willingly harms you, now subordinated to a master if not already. It becomes your eyes and ears as far as your powers reach, command the ice and equalise all forms. Bonus stats delayed until bloodline effect confirmed]

Still not written plainly, but he’d be lucky to see anything written clearly from here on. Great languages change under interpretations, so how could the Nexus ever give a ‘simple’ explanation for something which changes if he looked at it from another angle?

However, plainly and clearly weren’t the same. This very clearly stated a sort of control and ownership over ice elements, even making him immune to that entire element unless someone else controlled it beforehand. A possibility of ability nullification also existed, an awfully unlikely one. In places with any form of ice, his senses actually spread out massively as well… Like in a mountain range covered in snow.

Overall, a hard to judge ability in a vacuum. Though he might have considered such an evolution if it focused on water instead of ice, the environmental bonus in this oceanic sub-realm helped to a significant degree.

[Breath of Thermobaric Dissolution: The first breath chills and relieves; the second breath freezes and contracts; the final breath leaves emptiness. Your breath, modified by ice elements, rapidly cools anything within its misty range. Beyond cooling, air pressure gradually reduces until only the breath takes up that space. A heart mixed with twinings of ice enforces these changes to their limit. No heat nor gas may exist where your breath passes. Bonus stats delayed until bloodline effect confirmed]

[Frozen Hellscape Ice-cream: Bury life and earth in frost and snow, a desolate land where only sheets of white bring torment. The mental space is assimilated into an ideal vision, and slowly any semblance of materials unrelated to ice convert to achieve purity. Colour will vanish and the world becomes covered in a layer of frost, a palace formed of bricks is painted white and frozen solid. The land frozen by this world decays until all that remains is truly a hellscape; no place for life beyond the endless cold. Bonus stats delayed until bloodline effect confirmed]

Frozen Hellscape was interesting, if for one moment he ignored its unusable aspects, as the ability clearly tied in deeply to Glacial Overlord. Using one’s Mind Palace to suppress the inhabitants of a territory, converting it into a world of ice and snow, to then dominate completely through this controlled medium. If he had enough years, this combination worked excellently for creating his own territory. Impossible by the fact he didn’t have years, or a way to take more than one evolution option from this wyrm king.

Many of these options might even sound weaker than evolutions he acquired in the past, he agreed on this. However, Akevorax always scaled his expectations down during evolutions, as the Nexus boasted about effectiveness slightly… In this case it was very likely that the effect written was precisely what it did and power level it provided.

So, where it said ‘No heat nor gas may exist where your breath passes’, this time the line actually meant that.

In the past, such an ability came with limitations or always worked in a weaker manner than prescribed. For example, Elder eyes couldn’t actually see through everything on their own, but undoubtedly they pierced through any obfuscation below the use of higher powers. Even when it came to said higher powers, great runes forming a large proportion of these, many at cornem tier still failed.

Unfortunately, unless he took Ascended Serpent, none of these worthwhile options aided him in this upcoming battle. Breath of Thermobaric Dissolution, a name he wouldn’t comment on for the time being, didn’t really have a use in his toolset. And while it sounded great at first, he really disliked the idea of completely transforming his mental space to an icy hellscape.

A wyrm which focused on pure ice as its pathway wasn’t all too aligned with him. Truly shocking. Tangentially, if this wyrm king excelled in single combat, then how could they have lost and died against one powerful supreme tier?

Another thing to sigh over.

“Will I acquire kinghood on my own anyway? Please be relatively certain about your answer,” he said in a single hurried breath. Half a minute remained and now his indecisiveness reared its head.

[In our records, those merged with concepts struggle to gain further concepts naturally. This is easy to overcome if you trap and control the additional concepts, but the status of king does not appear so easily]

Such an ‘easy’ solution, a rich description coming from the ultimate power. He rolled his eyes but still thought about this matter properly.

In all likelihood, while this concept probably wouldn’t help in the upcoming fight, his development of it greatly aided in the war. Combined with his True Will, very few without Exalted Souls could stand up.

But for a moment, he ignored all notions of combat, power, or growth. There obviously existed one particular fixation which came with the identity of Dragon King, one which any dragon jumped at. To say it lacked appeal to him was a wholesale lie. Even if he failed to evolve this bloodline, or whatever requirements necessitated complete kinghood, it achieved so much more to just try instead of reluctantly taking another option.

Besides, how often did he say he wanted these ‘impossible bloodlines’?

“Right of a King, initiate the evolution immediately,” his tired but firm voice gave a decision. His body plummeted into the ocean waters, now curled up into a ball of golden wafers. Another evolution took place.

Strange to truly agree that his other seven options were powerful but not for him. Usually a few the evolutions worked against his strengths, or truly lacked any upsides, this supreme tier instead granted eight entirely viable options but with so much specialisation that he couldn’t make immediate use of any. Coldness, without even a proper description, failed to reach a level where he considered taking it, but whatever powers it invoked led the Nexus to include some vast interpretation.

Dozens of other evolutions were also in that list, as well as the small selection which upgraded his current pathways, it was a waste to not take anything from a top-notch supreme tier. Besides, what were the odds he found another king and received this chance again?

His evolution proceeded smoothly. Tossed and turned as usual, all the while considering reasonable battleplans against this upcoming foe.

Things were different this time.

Given the lowered strength of this storm, he predicted that whatever cornem tier arrived, its strength wasn’t too much greater than the one who killed him last time. His sealing array accounted for this, which placed all difficulty on killing this foe into a purely offensive struggle. Divinity reduced the issue of his weak body and an adequate extraction of blood essence weakened the foe as long as the fight dragged on, combined with the seed kindly offered by the lunar realm, his security raised impeccably.

If push came to shove, the Rune tool existed as well. He had read through the entire manifesto on its usage and powers, spent a few hours pouring over the ridiculously shaped arrays to better understand how mana and lightning flowed within, but still never dared activate the thing. Not killing himself after an activation counted as a success in his eyes.

Akevorax never forgot the offering of knowledge explaining its origin too, he just couldn’t afford the distraction of such information.

Elements mushed into a pulp finally completed their upgrade, reformed into solid crystals and slowly rebuilt his body like every other evolution. It apparently worked no different from flesh and blood, something worth reading about after he made it back home. Reformed in the state of a finished evolution meant a time for preparation.

Figuring out how the Right of a King worked could wait.

His first issue was the uselessness of water around him, except for one small problem. A lack of any explicit elemental powers of use in this place.

This sub-realm’s water possessed elements and mana up to mithril tier, making its defences completely worthless, but any platform was better than a liquid. Any blow completely obliterated a glacial platform, so, in a matter of seconds he threw down a metal plate and released one-tenth of a condensed mana tendril. With this, and the remnant ice of his assimilation below, a large glacier quickly transformed into its own miniature landmass. A kilometre in radius.

Just a short 20 minutes left now, options available to Akevorax fell short. Origin Force recovered as surges of mana disappeared into the organ, but the superior Dimension Force accumulated at its own pace without such an innate ability.

“Not levelling more was a mistake, not that it changes much… Two arrays really doesn’t seem like much now that I’m here. How am I still so poor?” Disdain carried over the desolate glacier, but he still considered anything else which changed the outcome further in his favour.

For a moment he glanced over to Adret, but soon enough looked away again. Simply unable to justify such help unless safe enough for her to avoid capture or danger.

If properly sealed, then a better method had her psychic attacks damage their Adept Mind Palace while he brutalised their Body and Soul. Against a Master Mind Palace he immediately benched Adret. Internalising the thought process brought up points for and against such a risky application, but it worked pretty well.

His constant nodding without any real focus didn’t exactly sell the idea. Perfect that he alone called the shots here!

Soul attacks brought up another excellent point too, and Akevorax switched over to his Mind Palace. Tritheus and the others rested indoors, already informed of the possibility of damage, so he teleported straight over to the mountain’s opposite side to a variety of tanks and glassware. White glowing fluid sat within, the colour that of plain paraffin wax, but on this dark side of the mountain, such light only eerily illuminated the equipment here. This was the place he applied the method to create soul bombs. Normally, such weapons expended far too many valuable resources, tens of Souls required for a single soul-damaging blast, but today could be considered an exception.

“Just one bomb at master tier, that should damage an Exalted Soul. If a direct hit, and enhanced, it might give the mithril tier bombs a chance. Or I just burn half those Souls to make a second bomb…” A question escaped his lips but the decision was already made. From their safe storage on the opposite side of the mountain, he pulled out hundreds of Souls and pushed them into an empty tank left of a metal worktable. Little dots of white light poured in relentlessly.

Several items from the table, notably plant extracts and metallic dusts, carefully moved into a glass beaker following precise measurements. Calibrated scales crafted entirely from mana perfected this.

And now the final step, he left the mental space to pour a transparent fluid inside. While ordinarily such things should be impossible, exceptions popped up for some substances. He received the fluid and mixed it into the beaker of measured ingredients.

What resulted was a bubbling fluid for several seconds, steam even escaped out its top, and black sludge formed within as the ingredients dissolved. The materials, some of them even protected by great runes, reduced to microscopic states until only transparent liquid remained. And then he dumped it into the tank of Souls.

No steam or bubbling, but something equally strange.

As though weighed down by the liquid, every last Soul moved downwards until tightly packed against the tank’s base. Above sat the layer of fluid, which now collapsed and dribbled in between the gaps. It didn’t dissolve or transform them, but instead disappeared itself into the layer of lit motes. He pulled these Souls from this tank and transferred them over to the one already half-full of glowing fluid. If one looked closer, they’d easily notice the Souls grew significantly larger. No longer grains of sand, and easily comparable to rice grains.

Akevorax ignored this and prepared another batch of the transparent fluid, using slightly increased quantities, but only pulling over roughly 140 Souls. Just on sight their brightness completely exceeded the previous set, lighting up the dull region like a lamp.

All of this just to gather pure soul power. A clean extract to be stuffed into Souls until they reached their breaking point. Single steps took hardly any time, a whole cycle completed in minutes, but to perform it thrice whilst creating the bombs…

Two minutes until the storm sat overhead.

In exchange, his supply of mithril tier bombs rose to fourteen, the two Master tier bombs worth no less.

He gulped, back in the real world once more.

Something outside destroyed the basic monitoring array he left in advance. Such a short gap separated them now, a single step to his opponent, and he anxiously activated the divinity in advance.

One minute left…

They hung about outside the sub-realm. Something gazed into through the dimensional walls, treating the tough boundary like a crocheted quilt, but the vision never landed on him directly. Just its peripherals glanced by, observing the surroundings carefully.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five–

Seconds focused on Adret and the barrier, but still the gaze just passed through the whole sub-realm. It couldn’t be long now… Just one minute right? Somehow it felt like several passed in that span. Finally, only one unobserved spot remained.

Focused sight peered through Akevorax, he frowned immediately as the divinity failed to block it. The Auric Spirit merged into his Body to hide the recent evolution. He knew the target’s location now, without a doubt, and met their gaze. Due to the greater number of spatial fields, it was all too easy obfuscating their precise location, but not when given multiple reference points.

A wide beam of unseen power cut through the dimensional wall, revealing everything in its direction, inside or out didn’t matter. His enemy appeared, and they watched him closely.

Watched closely as his originally unsure and cautious face switched repeatedly. Entertained by his confusion and dread, his uncertainty and futile recalculations, but the most fun had to be his astonishment at a secondary observation. Some deeply blended barrier hidden behind the dimensional wall, designed to completely seal entry and exit.

Funny that… He didn’t care about its presence, but feared they realised the method to trap his Soul and Mind after a bodily death.

As for the enemy?

Of several threads connected to his Soul, he silently cut one and felt feedback in others confirming the desired effect. Adret wouldn’t be allowed to interfere; hotheadedness would get her killed. The storm arrived overhead but did not disappear, someone had to initiate these proceedings. Eye of Truth ended as Akevorax’s head lowered to face ahead on the glacier.

To the empty air ahead, he painfully said, “I didn’t hope for our next meeting to be so soon.” Space distorted and they stepped inside, from head to toe covered in a metal bodysuit formed of large plates fitted to their body. “How about you, Alkuthuzen?”