One second.

No. Far too long. But then, how much time?

A half? A tenth? Could his body, mind, and soul withstand any more?

“Don’t do anything rash,” Mala gritted her teeth and rebuked him. The sight of that floating pocket watch told her everything she needed to know.

“But… I have to. I’m running out of time.” A reply came out but it barely registered what she said in favour of the body laid in front of them. He saw, clearer than anyone else, every action in those few moments, far more than the single limp leaf.

How could a snapped neck kill any of them? It felt like shit, sure, but with mana alone, their bodies survived, and eventually, that ordinarily fatal injury healed without concern. But to flood the heart with mana and decimate it?

Perhaps a Sage or Cornem rank survived, but no one here fulfilled that. Icy’s eyes only cared for one goal, and as he completely ignored the repercussions of his next actions, the pocket watch didn’t even move past 1 second. It firmly stopped at a measly half. After the last couple years of use, he not only grasped its mana and soul power requirements but learnt to finely control the acceleration rate.

And right now, he decided on a 40 times acceleration. Half a second of reality spread out over 20 seconds… If he guessed right, it was enough.

The world stopped.

He merged with the spirit, its incredibly dim form integrated without a complaint, but he forcibly stopped that first step just before a chance arose. The progenitor’s lone red-tinted iris shook, and his head turned to face the dragon. Such movements appeared stiff and slow, as though on a gear and moved through mechanical motions. But it still kept up with him… Slow, but just barely.

Five seconds in.

His head ached, but it didn’t matter. With a single leap, he crossed the gap and stood beneath the shrivelled demon elf. His regretful eyes only encouraged his next movements. A string of mana activated the dimensional storage ring, and her body vanished, but Icy hardly finished there.

His soul, already pushed beyond normal means, now further drew upon itself to find what he desperately sought. A single grain of light which floated like debris in the air, but with an importance which transcended everything nearby. Careful control encased it in soul power and gently moved it into his Mind palace, here it retained absolute safety. Soul Capturing allowed him to ignore this rule of death, so long as he reached a soul first. This… was the best means available to him. To any of them.

Twelve seconds in.

A migraine set in, but he hardly cared as disgust grew on his face. The dying progenitor above now looked down on him, but did not react beyond simple stares. He returned to his original position with another step.

Just fifteen seconds, a bit less than needed, but he obtained what mattered.

He cancelled the acceleration early. Even if the given mana and soul power vanished, his mind and soul clearly disliked such extreme effects. In standard time, everyone saw a brief flash of Icy in front before he retreated before they processed such information. No one gave it another thought as they stood deadlocked, not even their opponent raised a fuss about a speed which exceeded their own.

But as he stood calmly with a smile, Icy couldn’t help but wonder what happened to cause this scene. His eyes flashed with a ghastly white light, and the already spiteful expression turned grave, time to stay enraged or grieve simply didn’t exist.

“He’s detonating his heart. Well?! Barriers!” Stuck in stunned silence, it took repeated urges from him just to get the two beside him to cast spells. Korridan took time to react, and Jaren raised his bow to fire, hand empty of arrows, but just barely lowered it while instead pointing it at the ground behind Korridan.

Mala, Darak, and Icy all created barriers of varying magnitudes to prepare against the blast. Hers took front and centre stage as it covered the whole group and simply blocked the explosion itself. Darak placed his beneath hers, but left Korridan unprotected this time, focusing on just the five behind him. Meanwhile, Icy’s one sat below the barrier of divine power and purely mitigated high temperatures.

Jaren gripped five arrows in his right hand, one already drawn to fire at the ground when necessary. Now they just waited, prepared to withstand the explosion formed through rapid destabilisation and purposefully activated looping reactions, things which generated masses upon masses of elements, the high density created then led to further creation!

The chimaera master spoke out, his crystal heart literally fragmented and crumbled to fine dust, “Of all the damn ways I failed…”

Blinding light forced all six to squint, but Korridan simply stood his ground behind the greatshield and filled its enchantments with mana. Further, he transformed himself, now a heavy giant with flustered-red skin and bright orange veins. Mala’s barrier instantly collapsed from explosive might, and only blocked the initial shockwave. Only through pure strength and tolerance could Korridan then maintain his position, the explosive force alone threatened to knock his shield away. Let alone rivers of flames that charged towards him like a stampede, with such temperatures, it burnt anything exposed in a matter of seconds.

Darak’s array blasted open as well, but five arrows struck the ground precisely as it occurred. With that, a hurricane sprung up, all around their group, to further divert the flames away or upwards.

Finally, Icy’s array weakened slightly by the second, but an absence of explosive force made fire itself a tolerable matter. The faint blue shell, much like a transparent dome of ice, eventually shattered and dissolved into nothingness under the last flames.

Not that it mattered… They survived. The rest of them, at least.

When they looked ahead, where once stood a Blossoming wizard with two disastrous titles, was now merely a silken belt and some sort of armband. Mala took a step towards the items, but her foot wavered before it touched down, and she took some deep breaths before a short pace there and back. If a Great sage decided to act, then their group possessed no means to fight back.

Icy almost collapsed right there, exhausted beyond belief from constant uses of his pocket watch along with the dozens of spells throughout that battle. Most only left small nicks or scratches, but like Mala, he often applied restrictions.

But a single elf finally revealed themselves overhead. The slight disturbance in space led him to believe another Great sage arrived and finally showed themselves, but as a golden light brightened on this elf’s finger, he corrected this mistake immediately. The power was identical to others he experienced in more than enough depth.

A demigod actually arrived.

That light brightened until their whole finger transformed into one apparently formed of a golden crystal, only to fire off into the sky for no reason. It certainly seemed that way as the crystal finger vanished up into the sky. That is until a rain of fluorescent rays poured all over the surroundings and each one unveiled another individual. At first, tens of Great sages, Primordius ranks, Sages, and so on…

Then hundreds… And at some point, Icy swore the number of light beams hit a thousand. Over 1000 elves with power to instantly resolve their fight simply waited on the side. Only now, they repulsively stared back, the lot who simply watched this battle as though they saw an amusing game.

“Your impetuous actions have been noted,” the demigod of Salvation first spoke out against those all over, but clearly, they only focused on the Great sages who all sat in a circle around him. Almost as though they formed a wall against those further away… And Icy couldn’t help but wonder about a certain idea.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“You could’ve arrived anytime, yet you waited till now? Were you told to only act if she might die?” Icy’s eyes subtly hinted at what he meant, but the elven demigod above never needed such information.

“Why ask if you already know?” Their ambivalent reply simply angered him more, unsure if it was a ploy by Salvation for whatever reason, or if Manus refused to extend this request to their whole group… The demigod disappeared just as they appeared, and no one really knew what the hell anyone ought to do. But Icy didn’t get to see what happened next.

The youngling collapsed to the floor as his mind and soul outright gave up. For the second time in a month, he fainted.

* * *

Mind in better shape, Icy’s eyes opened, only to reclose a moment later as tiredness pushed him down an obvious path. With a foggy memory, he just stretched a bit and spread out on the…

Fluffy cushion? Not even that, but instead, a large bed for animals placed against the wall. It easily fit a beast twice his size! A wave of confusion overtook his thoughts, and he retraced the events to remember what even happened. The array, an Origin Force seal, the chimaera master, a pure demon bloodline, and…

Icy’s thoughts trailed off as he really tried to think about what happened. How it all went so wrong, so quickly. In the end, he almost began to think it a false memory, but just a single check of the dimensional storage ring strung around his neck confirmed reality. “Right. R– She’s dead.”

The words sounded wrong. Too wrong, regardless of what language he used.

So wrong that he almost threw his heart out when trying to say her name, and he simply couldn’t understand it. How to process this, or how a dragon processed this. But as much as he wished to flip through books, and draw upon the experience of others to possibly see what resolved this problem, he knew that none of it possibly helped.

“Where– Where am I?” He took the large animal bed for granted just now, but a further search scared him, mana sense barely penetrated through the walls around him, but the Elder eyes performed better. Only so-so overall as dozens of empty spaces appeared in his vision and revealed what clearly was a palace containing specially restricted places.

Albeit no guards… However, his random search found that Jaren resided in a room not too far away. Korridan and Darak didn’t appear in that momentary search, but he’d likely find them in due time.

For now, he owed an apology. Of the whole group, Jaren tended to enjoy her discussions most, as sparse as they came for the perpetually stealthed rogue. Earlier on in their travels, he actually thought of the two as a pair, like Mala and Korridan, but these assumptions proved false. At least, the four of them claimed so…

The palace as a whole took on a very light and spacious atmosphere, almost divine as the empty corridors and rooms somehow incentivised him to imagine it as a ‘personal heaven’.

Everything made use of some white marbled stone for a base, with further designs added on top through precisely cut and textured insets. No paintings or relics lined these walls, and a heavy rug, with thick fibres that tickled his paws, lined the centre of every corridor. Meanwhile, beside the bed in his room, he only took note of a white rug of similar style as well as tall, vertical windows that showed off nothing to gawk at. The front only featured a small garden with a hedge archway, like some entrance, but in the distance was a blank canvas. Endless fog led on to nowhere.

Icy condensed some psychic power through his Mind palace and knocked on the large door to Jaren’s room. The door of similar stone only stood out due to a brass-coloured doorknob and dips in the surface for design.

He awaited a response, but instead, the door simply opened on its own, and he stepped within. The room matched his own in basic measures, but the bed here instead sat to his right, aligned with the room’s centre. Even so, Jaren sat on it, cross-legged, in some sort of silken shirt and pants, a bow in hand yet facing the window.

“It seems you recovered well,” He didn’t bother with an introduction and began their first words very soft-spoken.

With some degree of social skills, he replied, “I seem to have recovered fine, at least.” His words ended, but Jaren sat on the bed, eyes affixed to the window where no focus existed in that infinite distance. As no reply came, Icy’s heart jumped, but still the words came out, “I wanted to apologise…”

Jaren stopped his fingers’ gentle motions along the bowstring as though moments away from something to say, but they fizzled out.

He continued, “I didn’t do my role properly, and because of me. My mistake let her die. I should ha–” It didn’t take much for his incredibly quiet and fragmented voice to vanish in the presence of another’s.

And Jaren did precisely that. “Icy. Get the hell out of my sight.” A sudden tone of focused rage only worsened the absent-minded dragon’s mental state, and he blinked several times with a contorting face before an echoed patter sounded out.

He stepped backwards through the open door and stood outside. Eyes glared at the door, but every bit of will to open it dried out the instant he moved even an inch forward. “Was it too insincere? Or… Because I sound too much like a child?”

Not that he could change what happened, and Icy just walked onwards for the most part. At the corridor’s end, his eyes flashed white for a small fraction of a second, and he descended after a final check on Jaren. Indeed… He should just stay out of the man’s sight.

Icy still didn’t find Korridan, Raccelline, or Darak, but Mala appeared. The only other person around.

In the palace’s back garden extended a massive range of places used to cultivate hundreds of flower species. In particular, Icy saw Mala sitting on a bench amongst rows of tulips. Reds, purples, pinks, blues, yellows, and whites, simply common colours for this flower, but she chose this place over all other options. Several of which contained vibrant and mystical flowers, which changed their environment and even comforted those nearby.

When he eventually made his way through several twisted halls, without anyone to help, he entered the same garden as her and walked over to the wooden bench she sat on.

The size didn’t really accommodate a dragon, but he made do even with such limited space.

At first, he wanted to outright ask about Jaren, what happened, and what they ought to do. Every single question drove him mad, but after that incident, he didn’t want to become a nuisance to multiple people. In silence, he sat on the wooden bench, surprisingly, the feet and backrest both withstood his weight.

Both of them sat in silence, and Icy quietly picked up a book on an experimental form of training called ‘Soul weaving’. It took the general idea of a Formed soul and asked if such a tough-wall type of outer shell was the only option.

He found it a novel application, the use of thin strands with pure elemental compositions to weave a fabric around his soul. Unfortunately, the results of this experiment went nowhere. The results ended with a similar tough shell, albeit slightly tougher as the weaved nature better distributed forces.

“You really have more patience than me,” she chuckled a bit under solemn eyes, but at least he saw her as the same Mala as before. He shook his head and described Jaren’s immense change, especially after his words. But she already knew what about it angered that comedically cynical man. “Give him time and space. You’ve been asleep, but he just spent two days blaming himself. We pointed out how wrong he was, but… It’s best to say he wants a scorned crown to rest on someone’s head.”

“He’s assigning blame?” Icy still felt a bit lost on how that related to the sudden outrage. Reasonably, he’d jump at the chance to make one who willingly confessed feel worse.

Not anymore, it seemed, but Mala gave a more insightful clue this time, “It’s very easy to misinterpret someone’s repetition of your mistakes as mockery.” Even if unintentional, Icy knew what went wrong. But he stayed on the bench without any desire to leave. Nothing said to Jaren helped either side’s moods.

“How do humans stop feeling like this?”

Mala turned her head in wonder, of all the questions, not expecting something like this. But she only contained one answer from the bottom of her heart, “I don’t know, but do tell me if you find out how. It still hurts like hell… How do dragons deal with losing their children?”

“We don’t. Few grow attached to their children before birth… Most simply wait and see.” More than enough time went into this memory. A rare dragon who cared for a life with such an uncertain, rocky fate.

“Wait for what?” She asked with a confused frown.

And he answered with a grim smile, “Whether we ascend, or perish. I don’t think dragons can offer me any help here.”

“You really don’t act like any dragon I’ve ever seen, even compared to actual ones your age. It’s just all so human.”

Perhaps what she said rang true, but the only other dragon he’d ever met was a traitorous blood dragon. And they considered a young child as something to drink. Just another tonic… The hypocrisy of that argument almost amused him enough to laugh. Other questions also arose from it though, specifically if most dragons behaved in that manner. Did he conform to those tendencies and attitudes?

Absolutely not. Even if it removed the feelings within him, the extortionate price made his answer resolute.

If it required a new way found on his own, to overcome the muddy trenches which sucked him in far too often, break past walls and barricades and pesky chains which glued to him no matter the counterpoint, and somehow reach a point where the death of a single, weak, insignificant, and…

A beloved friend no longer hurt more than a hole through his chest.