Fortunately, Mala knew the location of Pritaslo’s cave and pointed it out in between some of her tests. This impressive dragon resided some distance up the western mountain, a position indicative of her relationship to its owner, an elder of the Dragonlands. Quite a memorable figure too, the dragon Casstilandri, who fairly changed her view when Icy presented the true value of his achievements. Far fairer than Dreisetno and that other elder he hardly remembered, Ginsetbo was it?
The flight drew some attention, as Icy hardly ever approached this peak, but the dragon with golden brown scales and even brighter, yellow wings obviously stood out amongst the mountains of grey and brown.
Furthermore, as he hovered right outside her cave, the sudden appearance naturally caught her off-guard, as Icy acquired a rather solitary identity these past weeks. But she welcomed him nonetheless, mostly out of curiosity as this became the first time Icy took the initiative to find anyone of their generation.
You know, the generation he wasn’t part of, as his real age was 10 years less than all these dragons… He preferred they never discovered that fact.
“I assume that this appearance involves your battle with Lostradus. You won last time, but do you think the elder behind him would send him without any preparation?”
“You should try saying that with a chunk of divinity in you… I’m just lucky I didn’t take an evolution which drew its power into my body. He's a lot more irritating because of it,” Icy spoke casually, unable to put on airs since he came to request help. Additionally, because all the fighting with dragons like Pritaslo ended, his friends convinced him to try and at least become acquainted with these ones.
Anyway, as stern or harsh as these top-ranked dragons behaved, in their age bracket to clarify, they never actually judged him for having a weak or abnormal body.
Never outwardly at least, especially once his power came to light.
Pritaslo nodded in agreement, but didn’t actually know too much about the internal conflict both dragons inebriated themselves with. However, given Icy’s general calmness she could hardly imagine the considerable strength of emotions that he morphed so quickly.
A related matter drew her attention though, and she asked, “Why didn’t you take it? Were the evolutions not that good?”
“Funny thing… The priest in our group, Darak, regularly communicates with Manus. No, seriously. And he recommended against choosing them. Some of the options seemed pretty good,” as he explained the matter, the levels of disbelief visible on Pritaslo’s face multiplied. From a questioning gaze to one which outright believed him a liar, she almost began to wonder if the quiet dragon no one truly understood behaved most like Jaren.
She suddenly twitched at the thought, and replied to Icy who appeared amused by her disbelief in his story, “Why were you here then? Again, I imagine it relates to your upcoming deathmatch.”
“Yes, I came to ask for help. I don’t have any basis when it comes to fighting, even if spellcasting is technically my forte. So I ask, would you be able to provide some advice?” Her eyes closed slightly in suspicion, especially since Icy beat her not too long ago, but as she thought back to the battle, it was clear he didn’t really fight according to any trained method. Rather, it devolved to the use of extreme speed and power where possible, and some strategy by choosing specific spells.
“My first bit of advice would be to never fight solo against anything equal to you, especially if it involves melee combat. I might be able to beat most mithril tier dragons, but that confidence doesn’t extend far… That option is long gone though. Follow me,” she stepped past Icy and flew out of the cave only to land in another just further up the mountain. Here, he found a free-standing teleportation array.
Once she stepped onto it, Pritaslo teleported away and Icy followed in immediately, given the spatial distortion, it appeared that they teleported into a small sub-plane near the main world.
Here, he found several dragons practising spellcasting in a barren land without any targets. They could safely test out new spells without worry of destruction.
“I’m hardly the right one to teach you, but I can tell you what information I received. Firstly, do not depend on spells unless you are pushed into a corner or completely sure it will win you the fight. Draconic is almost impossible to use at our level in a solo battle.”
Icy’s head turned from the first advice which completely deviated from anything he assumed. For a while now, he put a lot of work into learning Adept true spells and compressing them into relatively quick casts, but where did it say this was all pointless in the books?
“Compare yourself to that human wizard, Mala. She can cast an Adept spell in 3 to 4 seconds, how long would it take you to cast one? Without your soul armament,” Pritaslo veered her head downwards in a knowing manner, her words all stood out to Icy and he agreed with them when spelled out so obviously.
In truth, he almost never cast spells without the pocket watch’s acceleration anymore, they just took too long!
“So just don’t use magic in fights? I don’t have any stat points in strength, I legitimately couldn’t do any harm without divinity or this spirit,” Icy also considered the orb’s offensive capability, but ignored it for the purpose of this situation. He wanted to improve his base skills, not rely even more on that incredibly demanding object.
“No! Are you a brute that depends on skills to fight? Either store your spells or depend on those you can cast instantly! Or, cut out the words and directly manipulate mana to form the Draconic spell rings!” In a couple sentences she already gave several options available for him, and it reminded Icy of their battle more now.
The mines she released at her feet must’ve been some sort of instant-cast spell, perhaps an innate ability she obtained after evolution.
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Spell-storing wasn’t impossible either, as many Adept true spells which transformed into seals were freely available, and many of them hardly impacted his Mind. If he prepared a few hundred seals then he’d be a lot more secure in advance…
Ah, Icy’s eyes lit up for a moment there. Some weaker Master true spells also possessed seal forms, and if he were to burn through his condensed mana reserves he could easily cast them, preparing a mass of attacks which harmed Lostradus even with the flame’s protection!
Icy’s tone energised as he realised some new options with her berating words, and asked, “Do you have any advice for what to do whilst flying and using spells too?”
“Use fast or homing spells, obviously. Always have a sight spell active so that the enemy can’t catch you off guard, if you need it… And you can descend your palace as an illusion, right?” She listed some more basic advice, and remembered another point worth mentioning. As Icy nodded in response, the barren dirt landscape around them gained a hint of colour.
Above her head an illusion of her own formed. Twisting tunnels with branching paths exploded into appearance, growing endlessly like a maze until it left him staring at a single tunnel without any clue where her Mind resided within… She too possessed a method to descend her palace early, but never showed it off.
Thinking about all the things he had ever heard about Pritaslo, Icy questioned her about this unknown part, “You never used this in the battle?”
“Only my master knows about this, I planned to use it to beat Kalmiktar’s rank… But that’s pointless now. Anyway, did you see how my descension differed from yours? How I controlled mine?” He nodded instantly, the visual difference in their descension clear at first sight.
Hers transformed… Or something like that, he didn’t understand the exact difference. But what stood out was that once he pulled out the mountain’s apparition, he left it there to work on its own, never changing or utilising it.
“Did your master teach you a technique to control it? Or was it just through trial and error?”
“No, I just found a mention of it in the library,” she casually answered the question, ready to continue the explanation. All the while, Icy did a double-take.
“Library? As in inherited memories? Or your master’s Mind palace?”
“No, the clan library. You’ve been here a month and no one mentioned it to you…” A smile grew on her face as she laughed a bit, unaware that a huge reason he never left his cave was due to how little he knew about the Dragonlands. The book, in their inherited memories, on this place even mentioned a library as well, what did he possibly imagine they spoke of?
Surely he didn’t imagine that the elders stored all the clan’s knowledge in their Mind palaces… That’d be ridiculous!
“I’ll stay out of this matter. Just pull out your palace and follow my instructions,” as her laughter stifled for seriousness, the two spent some hours focused purely on refining Icy’s magical abilities, the extent and number of which disgusted Pritaslo as she learnt of them.
His spatial control, while in the main world, allowed him to easily make use of Master true spatial spells. Meanwhile, his soul control allowed for easy use of soul spells, and casting what might normally be above him. The ability to automatically refine mana into condensed form actually put a sneer of disgust on her face though, and she now realised how little Icy used in battle to their full effectiveness.
She wasn’t at all capable enough to fully teach him all these fields, only an elder, like her master, could go through all those various fields and give advice for each. So she did her best, because truly, she wanted Icy to win this.
He and his friends killed the progenitor without the use of divinity, meanwhile, Lostradus was almost nothing without his flames. And besides, while a bit of a loner, Icy didn’t lord over them all just because he showed off his power. Meanwhile, the one who almost died acted oh-so-mighty. She also really enjoyed the disputes with Mala, a human wizard who somehow learnt magic faster than her.
It gave her an idea of what she actually wanted in her future.
* * *
When finished with Pritaslo’s continuous lessons, Icy rested before heading to see Kalmiktar. On the peak owned by elder Dreisetno, he awaited to see if many dragons here despised him for ‘taking’ the dragonstone right from under them as the elder claimed at the first meeting, but very few did.
At least, few of the younger dragons, the middle-aged or older ones revealed that same petty spite for no good reason. He met with Kalmiktar and received very little useful advice.
In the end, since Icy couldn’t output any meaningful physical might without divinity and Origin Force, it wasn’t really possible to teach him. However, that didn’t stop Kalmiktar from giving advice on what he saw in his fight with that divine incarnation. What mostly stood out was how Icy treated the fight as a one vs one, but the earthen-scaled dragon saw it as something entirely else.
A fight against a massive, intelligent plant. Lostradus formed the core body, like the stem and head of a flower, or the trunk and branches of a tree. However, the flames acted like roots or vines, flexible attacks he could freely send out to attack and control a battle with, leaving Icy to divert his attention from one target to several. In battle, he did this rather well, at all times alert to movements of the flames and actively prepared against them.
But that was also his flaw.
He treated these flames like Lostradus, an extension of the dragon. However, they were mere vines on a tree, attacking or blocking them wasted energy and strength. The subsidiaries should never be treated as the main body.
In this regard, Kalmiktar helped. Forcing Icy to merge with the spirit and evade attacks while in melee range. Unless cutting the flames weakened Lostradus, or created an opening, he just had to evade everything in his way. This was easier said than done when taking the form of a gigantic incarnation no smaller in size than fully grown dragons.
Outside of that, Icy learnt to better control his body as a whole, but such a thing required long and dedicated training to actually treat as instinctive motion. What Kalmiktar could teach was adequate responses, but unlike Pritaslo he did not willingly reveal too much about himself to teach Icy.
Their reasons for doing so simply differed too much. And in the first place, he wasn’t all that interested in helping, if Icy came the day before after spending time with Pritaslo he’d have sent away the dragon.
But his master said otherwise, to provide some simple exercises and training to this dragon, and so he helped. However, Kalmiktar didn’t bring this matter up, simply acting as though he fulfilled a duty whilst Icy poorly dodged or attacked. In the end, he fought by reacting, not by reading… And at his levels, the difference very well led to an early death.
At master tier or above? You needed those skills engrained to one’s bones, something Icy just didn’t have.
While the ice cream dragon learnt a lot of his shortcomings, whether in timing, faints, versatility, reactions, or just simple decisions in a fight, few of them were resolved in this short time frame.
However, Kalmiktar gave one last bit of advice before the two separated. “In a fight to the death, no one can judge you for whatever disgraceful or shameful actions you take. If cheating allows you to live then give up on any pride you might have… If pushing yourself near to death grants a victory. Do it.”
Icy agreed completely with the statement, but having never participated in a duel the idea of cheating was foreign to him. After all, too many have tried and failed to kill him. Even if it required the most extreme actions, this would be no different.
That night, he extracted a condensed chamber of Raccelline’s blood. The final day was hot on his tail.