From beneath the ray of heat and flame, Akevorax’s teleportation activated and shifted him upwards to the surface in a single moment. While the wizards all around him panicked, the dragon now stood directly on top of their array, none of them reacted fast enough to stop a bundle of Origin Force from entering.
The mana within jammed instantly, and up above, he saw the source of the constant ray, a small mass of concentrated flame and light whittle away to mere wisps before completely disappearing.
“Now then, it looks like you thought a sneak attack would work,” Akevorax addressed the massive group in Baranot, his gigantic figure loomed over the humans half his height and gave a hearty chuckle at their faces.
He not only arrived and broke their array, but came here without even the smallest injury.
An older, shaking wizard lifted a finger and pointed towards him weakly, white face flushed red in a combination of shock and disbelief. “How did… How are you… You shouldn’t be alive. I saw you take the ray head-on. You’re made of ice cream!”
“This is always amusing. But now that I’ve seen yours, isn’t it fair that you see mine too? It won't take too long; just one word.” His question did not garner such a positive attitude though, as both wizards and warriors stepped back and took defensive stances, with good reason too.
That same older wizard opened their eyes wide in realisation and shouted, “Don’t let it cast any spells! Do not let it take off!
Akevorax smiled and said, “Too late.”
The world slowed down immensely, every last warrior had drawn the weapons and launched themselves towards him, hoping to eviscerate the dragon and succeed before it killed all of them.
But as he promised, Akevorax had a very short spell to show off.
With his eyes filled with the sight of absolute coldness spreading throughout his surroundings, a powerful whirlwind of frost which drained the heat from anything living and left them nothing more than frozen blocks of ice.
He said the word, just a single one, “Kelmar.”
It meant ‘Frost’.
As soon as the words came out, the thin golden rings which cast all Draconic magic appeared, but these rings were categorically different. No longer laid like a two-dimensional object, but instead in a spherical form to create a ball. With merely a few dozens of these tiny rings, it hardly appeared all that powerful, but a viewing dragon could tell otherwise at a single glance.
After all, Akevorax released several streams of condensed mana and over a hundred mithril tier souls for this spell.
His first spell with a great language. In the true language of dragons which caused the original splendour of dragons in the far past.
A single word in Draconis.
White mist instantly gathered in the air, thickening over and over before dripping into the floor as the air around Akevorax condensed. All around him, a coldness sapped away all heat, dropping the temperature to such an extreme that the hems and extremities of those wizards already gained a faint coat of ice. Unlike the near-instant spell, Akevorax’s acceleration allowed him to see as seemingly nothing caused the humans all around to shiver and freeze.
Some wizards instantly cast fire element spells to stay warm, but the mediocre Beginner true spells extinguished immediately when presented with the cold he created.
The warriors reacted faster, leaping away at least a hundred metres to safety, while the wizards could only instinctively activate defensive equipment on their bodies. It blocked some of the cold, but inherently all their abilities amounted to utter garbage in front of this single spell.
The nearest wizards, just seven of them, froze without a second chance. The cold penetrated their fleshly bodies, only those further away given a precious moment to retreat to safety.
Akevorax’s acceleration came to an end as he looked at the large group of injured warriors and wizards all around him. So scattered and fearful, he couldn’t help but laugh at their foolishness, “Do you have any idea the power a dragon my age must possess to dare leave the safety of our lands? Of course not, or you wouldn’t have ever come.”
With the orb now levitating beside him, Akevorax’s mocking smile quickly dispersed as a wizard to the side activated a scroll from their storage ring. He didn’t even need to think of a reaction as the liquid silver rapidly travelled down his body to form a coat of armour in front of his soul.
At the same time, an immaterial blade slashed out, intending to bisect the dragon’s potential weak point in a single move. However, even though the slash cut through the soul armament like butter, when it touched his soul, only a tiny nick appeared in the defences beyond it.
And now he couldn’t help looking at that wizard with a disparaging gaze, Akevorax only panicked because he misjudged it for a powerful Adept true spell, not a relatively weak one.
However, that wizard presented a different response, “Impossible! I was told no Formed soul can resist this attack… Even if you blocked a part of it–”
“It was fun, but you bored me. As you tried to hunt me for nourishment, I shall now do the same in turn,” Akevorax spoke bluntly, but not with spite. He hadn’t even finished speaking by the time several warriors already dropped dead, their heads blown to mush as the dark orb zipped across the snow white battlefield.
Some wizards still tried to attack Akevorax, throwing out spells which engulfed him in balls of flame, concentrated gravity to crush limbs, or even just corroded the weak ice cream with acid and darkness.
But they all still fell, those who tried to run fell first, and the pressure given by spells striking Akevorax’s body hardly invoked a groan from the young adult dragon.
Limbs melted to puddles, some completely rotted away, his wings crushed to a pasty, sticky ball…
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But all of those simply regrew over and over. On the other side, wizards fell like flies. He executed all the warriors who might have escaped, which left the far squishier group to die. In less than 10 seconds, he halved the group of enemies significantly, in truth underestimating the damage his spell had done as many wizards struggled to move with frozen joints. A few teleported away as soon as things turned for the worse, which they deemed this moment.
But that still left about 20 of them for easy pickings.
Akevorax’s thoughts already drifted elsewhere though, as he stared at the corpses all around him. What worried him most was that these wizards failed to provide enough of their bloodlines for an assimilation. Saying aloud, “So much meat as well… Guess I should just eat as much as I can for now.”
With the battle over, Akevorax gathered all the bodies, and their intact equipment, before descending back into the pit to see what damage they inflicted.
His body came up unharmed, the attacks merely destroyed his physical state and couldn’t restrict his regeneration well enough. The psychic attacks actually worked rather well, a wall collapsed on his main manor, but that was the extent of damages. He almost wanted to laugh at how weak these Mature wizards were, Mala could shatter one of his walls with a single spell, but now 30 wizards couldn’t do the same?
Some of them definitely had psychic-focused bloodlines too! No reason they gathered so quickly for a dragon heart, this desperate bunch couldn’t have been talented, or why would they need any sort of tonic so badly?
And lastly, the damage on his soul. When his mind dove deep into his body, what appeared was no longer a bundle of elemental veins in a form of knots, but instead, a throbbing crystal heart which encapsulated his soul. It did not take long to find a small section of the heart chipped, a crack extended deeper inside, but it visibly healed, and in an hour, it’d be completely unharmed.
The second step of Galactic Soul Armoury, equal to a Formed Soul in status, but so much stronger and more durable than a mere wall of elements. No wonder even an Adept true spell bounced off like this. Not to mention, as a soul spell which actually used soul power, the fact it didn’t have to transform energy types gave it a massive boost in power.
Definitely 1.50 Authority well spent.
“Why didn’t any of them use these? The hell?” In the underground space, after stripping the corpses of their gear and searching profusely, he separated the earnings into a few major piles.
Materials, of which not a single one passed for grade 1 as they lacked great runes. Books, of which a few actually interested him since they offered information on arrays, alchemy, and scroll production that he and Mala would want. Scrolls, for which some hundreds of them turned up with Adept true spells, only one other contained a soul spell though.
And also a massive pile of equipment. Literally hundreds of wands, potions, disposable barriers, explosives, and way too much elemental-specific armour.
They could’ve at least thrown down the barriers and used up their wands… He didn’t understand what held them back.
Nonetheless, Akevorax now had a ton of humanoid bloodlines to feast on for now, and cast a spell to summon a considerably large flame before roasting all the meat. Dismembering corpses was way too much work for him to bother with, and after cooking them through, he easily tore them apart with every bite.
Incidentally, it seemed that every single corpse gave enough of their bloodline for an assimilation… But just barely. If even a single limb was missing, it hardly went above 90%.
[Assimilated Psychic Law wizard bloodline! 3 new bloodline direction potentially available]
[Assimilated Flaming Inferno wizard bloodline! 3 new bloodline direction potentially available]
…
[Assimilated Soul Banisher wizard bloodline! 4 new bloodline direction potentially available]
It should be noted that besides the 30 odd bloodlines he just assimilated, multiple of them also gained a reaction from his divinity, resulting in 5 more bloodlines. Interestingly, as well, these Kandir ones all came with four pathways, unlike the human ones which varied between three and four.
Did that mean Kandir bloodlines were slightly stronger in general?
[Assimilated Aura Caster bloodline! 4 new bloodline direction potentially available]
[Assimilated Spiritual Magister bloodline! 4 new bloodline direction potentially available]
Akevorax glanced over the other three, now incredibly interested in the Aura Caster bloodline. Of all the bloodlines, this was the only one he’d seen in a long time which directly mentioned Origin Force in any regard… And it came from a wizard of all things!
Then again, he routinely used the substance to enhance his spells. He even muttered, “I guess it makes sense. How am I still not full after all that though?”
After the bountiful mass of wizards, Akevorax went through the warriors as well for an increased selection of bloodlines. Unfortunately, whilst he got another reaction from the divinity, these bloodlines only added to an already incredible pile of them. From here on, he needed quality, and while Extreme rank bloodlines gave rather interesting effects, none of them came close to what surrounded him at the moment.
The giant corpses which stood stoically in this grave for all those years, watching over their master even in death.
Back then, even Raccelline wielding a low-rank treasure tool failed to cut their decaying bones. And this time, Akevorax took a guess at their power by casting a long Adept true spell called Conceptual Sword, a human-made spell which condensed magical winds into a blade and then accelerated it with a boundary of space to incredible speeds. It could slash out at hundreds of times the speed of sound, and appeared almost anywhere with only milliseconds of notice.
Unfortunately, speed and surprise did not equate to direct power. It could barely injure most mithril tiers… But what if he empowered it with Origin Force?
As the Draconic rings formed in mid-air, the spirit infused it with that transparent substance once more to great effect. When cast, everything ended faster than Akevorax blinked, the flash of white and gold which cut into a desiccated corpse’s thigh revealed the extent of its body. While incredibly durable and completely intact, the instant slash cut several inches into the blueish-grey flesh, stopped only by the thigh bone as though striking metal.
Well, if the easy way didn’t work then Akevorax could just take the hard route.
“Elfret,” he spoke with a distinct gaze of destruction. Eyes which demanded the chaotic winds to slice the corpse apart without retreat, untamable and unstoppable by all accounts. This was the spell he envisioned and directed it to become.
Streams of condensed mana flowed through his body, forced through the connection of Mind and Body in his head before entering the spell. But as weakness appeared in his legs, another hundred mithril tier souls flew out and burnt up to stabilise the quickly formed ball of rings. Akevorax regained his thoughts, and the spell completed as he maintained the envisioned winds.
He didn’t have enough souls to do this so often… His current supply of souls gave him just 5 more chances, but hopefully, that was all he needed until consuming the dragonstone and moving up to master tier.
With the spell’s completion, random winds with unknown and clashing trajectories filled the small prymite egg. However, as chaotic their existence, countless streams purposely gathered around a particular dead giant which Akevorax focused his gaze on.
One after another, slashes appeared all over its body, as though hundreds of tiny razors floated about and zipped past at impeccable speeds. At first, the skin tore to shreds, but the blades cut deeper and faster. From a lacerated corpse it changed into a dissected husk.
And finally, a limb fell. Then another.
Legs completely removed, the body tried to fall down, but those streams of wind held it in place as the body quickly collapsed to strands of dried meat. Bite-sized, and easy to swallow.
The next couple evolutions would be good.