With the city now far in the distance, and with the glow of thousands of lights extending over its high walls, Jaren couldn’t help but look back in remembrance. It had taken a while for him to catch up and asked, “Was this the place with the kid who–”
“Yes. Bit slow on the uptake today.” Mala glared back as she replied, not exactly fond of that week. Mainly because it involved some lustful 19-year-old who just wouldn’t leave her alone, then dragged the party into a mess. Well, the former wasn’t really the issue, it was that he really acted too much like a kid for any woman her age to see in any other way. A funny thing, given how children related to powerful figures are expected to age faster…
Distractions aside, none of the group relaxed after making their way out. From here they could still see some signs of battle at the border, and it was likely that a few advanced groups existed this far in.
For safety, they wanted to stay away from major routes, and perhaps even travel through some low-mana forests.
Unfortunately… The invading army shared a similar thought process as such large forests and tiny paths received far less attention. With each group supplied with hundreds of small markers, they passed through the various environments and used corresponding colours to indicate a safe path and mark off any nearby dangers. Of course, having only a few of these meant that the exact danger was unknown, but with it acknowledged the future groups could easily perform a quick test or two for further information.
In most cases, such dangers were things like quicksand infested with bardkin, some nests of lords or relatively powerful beasts, or simply small yet well-worn paths which indicated frequent travellers.
Their group wasn’t exactly quiet whilst they tried to run for lengths of time. Because Icy’s spirit was occasionally running out of aura, they inevitably had to slow down every ten minutes or so. And that’s where things went poorly as their slow speed certainly didn’t inspire the concept of power.
“A noble child and her guards? Hand over your weapons and wealth,” the group’s leader, a man dressed from head to toe in black garments which muffled his voice and exact figure, spoke out. A Steel ranked leader with a group of Bronze ranks, perhaps sufficient for a scouting party, but they clearly weren’t making exceptional progress in the hour or so since the attacks began.
“Fuck off, we don’t have time for this,” Korridan swore with visible disgust on his face for once, somewhat annoyed that they’d been dragged into a random mess for the second time in the past week. About to reveal his mana to force away the group, he didn’t even have a chance as a bolt fired out from the shadows, aiming straight for Raccelline.
It hit her back and bounced off a second later, unable to even leave a tiny cut in her dress, let alone a mark on her skin. However, their enemy in a full black get-up hadn’t noticed this…
“One step and we kill the girl with our next shot! I won’t ask… again…” Only towards the end had he seen Raccelline rubbing the part of her back jabbed by a sharp bolt, a minor pain leaving her flummoxed for a few moments. Meanwhile, Icy below her looked the leader dead in the eyes and began casting in Draconic, not that anyone there could honestly tell what language it was.
It only took a couple seconds for the leader to break from his shock, and order his men to attack them all… But now it became a matter of wondering if the man was just a dumbass.
His spell completed, Tornado Storm, and with a surge of mana which utterly exceeded what any of the soldiers could output, such a sight allowed them to realise just how stupid it was to attack the group in those last few seconds.
Not that Icy cared any longer, a column of green and grey winds formed in front of him, like a mini-tornado seen in flat plains during stormy conditions, but that quickly grew larger and larger until the spell’s eye was as large as an adult human…
Then it swept the field around them, passing over every single Bronze rank, to leave the last one, the leader, to Korridan.
Those poor soldiers didn’t stand a chance against the stronger Apprentice true spell, the tornado itself formed from hundreds of winds no different from Sword Wind in power.
The result?
Anyone who touched the moving tornado’s walls was instantly diced to a pile of meat scraps, unable to resist in the slightest, and while some of the Bronze ranks certainly had the common sense to run, they lacked the numbers to stall his tornado long enough. Five of them decimated in a mere few seconds after his spell completed. And finally the leader, a weaker Steel rank who couldn’t even be compared to the least melee-acquainted of his group, Darak. Against Korridan’s absolute size and weight, it only took two skills to send the opponent splayed on the ground and a second to crush his head to a pulp.
Well, he actually did try to run after that first move, but a well-timed spell from Mala froze his hands and feet before he could stand.
The experience from killing 5 Bronze ranks was negligible, less than a percent, in fact, at his level only those near to Gold rank could provide meaningful experience.
However, before they left, Icy dipped his tongue into the leader’s blood to check the Nexus’ analysis.
[Consumed Steel ranked rogue bloodline! Assimilation progress 0%]
A full human body would be enough, right?
He stuffed the body into the ring, still hanging about his neck, and received a few strange looks from the group. Raccelline really didn’t seem to care at least, and he told the rest of them, “Not like you care about them? And it’s purely so I can grow stronger, faster.” He posed it as a question, but it really was a matter of fact.
Jaren spoke up first, getting a rather fair point in. “Just… A bit hard to stomach you eating– Well, others like that.”
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“Never in front of you. And if we ever kill a dragon, I would expect you to use the body to grow stronger. And only ever enemies, surely that much is fine?”
Rebecca and Mala seemed to come to terms with the concept relatively quickly, with Darak following soon after as Manus never required his rules to be burdened onto beasts or monsters. If the dragon wanted to eat their enemies, so what?
Only Jaren really found it hard to swallow, figuratively, but that might have come down to his relatively normal upbringing compared to the rest.
Even Korridan just spent ten or so seconds in thought before replying, “Only those who antagonise us, and if it’s required to grow stronger. Just don’t do it around us, I’ve seen it before and it’s never a pleasant sight.” Realistically, they used to just burn the corpses to ash before leaving, but if it actually helped the dragon become stronger, then what wasn’t to like about it?
As Mala and Icy then cleaned up the piles of meat and blood his spell caused, they rushed off and left the area. Fortunately, this time, it seemed that most of the advanced groups already passed them and traversed deeper into the nation, giving an easy way west to a neighbouring country. From there on, they pretty much learnt their lesson about staying in cities or near populated places, and as such were able to spend weeks in absolute safety.
Their two biggest threats during that time could be summarised with two words.
Bandits and Beasts.
The former were always more worrisome, but the latter far more dangerous. Raccelline, Icy’s recently given skills, and their new techniques, all worked to make normally deadly gold tiers into opponents where they could hold off before retreating. However, killing one was still out of the question as they so easily ran off the moment any significant damage occurred.
After a few nights, Icy ate enough of the Steel ranked rogue’s corpse to assimilate its bloodline, another Rare level one to move closer to that mission. How in the world he’d acquire 7 more Advanced ones was a mystery though.
[Assimilated Steel ranked rogue bloodline! 4 new bloodline directions available]
[Assimilated derivative Cold stealth Kandir giant bloodline! 4 new bloodline directions available]
The first Rogue bloodline he assimilated directly led to a derivative, a small surprise but more so a welcome one. In the end, he needed to focus on collecting all the major human bloodlines for now. Although, one thing that made him curious was whether or not the Kandir giants naturally having higher level bloodlines meant that he needed Steel rank humans for any derivatives.
Not that the Nexus could answer that insanely vague matter.
[Completed Nexus mission 3]
That was another one finished, and just left the hardest mission for last.
As well as this, over this time, he always made sure to drink all the blood from the steel tier beasts they hunted for food. While never enough to assimilate anything, he built up a huge amount of bloodline energy, and he didn’t doubt that an evolution was approaching any day now.
In fact, it might even happen before the second growth phase ended, because of which his size had already doubled!
There wasn’t long left!
If they came across a town, the group often stopped by for a few hours for a resupply, but always left before nightfall to avoid any troubles from staying within the walls.
On the two times they visited a city, they only stayed for two hours each time, moving at a relatively hurried speed to purchase materials Mala may need, help Darak purchase more divine spells, and most importantly, buy an absolute ton of food. The weeks they spent travelling had been a true eye-opener for Icy in that regard, allowing him to understand the exquisite nature of a species that valued cooking!
And desserts! All his concerns over mediocre or horrid food finally vanished once he had a taste of sugar-filled frosting. A confirmation that it really was just his horrible taste buds this whole time.
Of course, a stew or roast with proper spice and salt applied left his mouth watering for more, but something about sugar just… filled a void.
Not his emotional void, or maybe it was simply another that he’d never realised existed, but it truly felt like he could live off the various treats they’d found in this recent time rather happily. Just like when he ate the ant queen’s wafer shell, or finally got to enjoy the taste of ice cream. It wasn’t him alone that tasted delicious, just anything with stupendous amounts of sugar!
He even purchased a sack of refined sugar from a large merchant to test this… And ate it by the mouthful as a snack over the course of a week.
For the betterment of his mind, he chose to never do that again and focus on eating treats with sugar in them.
But damn that was a good week.
* * *
“Well… Here we are. Final border before the Avril port. Though it’s still a month away on foot, just how do they maintain such a large size?” Korridan posed a small question as a conversation topic, but also, this was the group’s first time coming here. The nation of Messecan matched the size of almost four smaller kingdoms put together, ones the size of Remelo for a reference point.
And while the journey halfway down the continent took three months, a somewhat small width meant that going from near the centre to a coast only took two additional months. Shorter, but also due to the group not resting as much as they did on the way to find Icy.
Mala got to the question before him and replied, “How else? They have a Primordius warrior.”
“Duke Valnettio, quite a legendary figure. Killed a supreme tier Ocean-devouring kraken, and dragged its corpse to the shore for the Avril port to feast on for two days and three nights. Also made a mansion from the shell of some supreme tier sea turtle… Seems the dragons like him quite a bit.” To further just how impressive such a person was, Icy found a record of some exploits from this warrior. Except for some incredibly generous Great sages, he doubted that many living humans possibly compared to him.
“That just makes him a target in the end…” Jaren did quietly point out the problem with such fame, and no one disagreed with the fact.
How long until the eternals decided to remove such a powerhouse from the hands of the humans? It would likely be a while since they didn’t want to appear so powerful yet, going so far as to hide their new Great sage from the world.
“We could leave a warning, I know it’s stupid, but surely letting them kill him is worse?” Rebecca popped in with a suggestion, but no one could provide a satisfactory answer.
“We’ll have some time at the port to consider it, chartering a ship across continents takes quite some time… And at the very least I’m close to an evolution.”
The whole group, besides Raccelline, looked at Korridan in surprise. While Icy could tell the warrior’s mana substantially increased since acquiring the manual, he never imagined that one of them would reach the higher rank so quickly. Even just one Gold rank granted them a lot of respect in a larger city like this port, and a chance someone else evolved during that was possible.
At the very least, he certainly would.