While the group harvested countless materials over the years, not to mention everything looted from the demon elves’ bank vault, their materials actually came up in the form of plants or metals.
This was mostly because elemental objects only appeared in their respective environments, and the group never once travelled to a relevant location!
Thus, the variety of fire, space, light, elements that they needed, just to name a few, had yet to be collected in sufficient quantities. Akevorax utilised a small amount for his arrays, but it hardly compared to the masses required by the whole group. Not to mention that Mala and Jaren’s evolutions required somewhat specific ingredients rather than pure elements. The other two really had an easy way out with their pathways, which was why Korridan would elevate to Starlite rank months before the other two.
“Mala, do you at all think we’re not overdoing it with this?” In one particularly level-headed day, Jaren posed a question to Mala as she projected a diagram of points on the cave wall and explained each one’s importance.
Her head tilted slightly as she replied to the usually acute archer, “What would we be overdoing? These are all the ingredients we require, sorted by likelihood of availability and occupancy.”
“Then why are we travelling to over TWENTY sub-realms!?”
The exact problem didn’t really need any explanation, they all understood it well enough… But Mala’s point also stood perfectly well. They needed materials, and in some cases the locations of specific sub-realms were too far for Akevorax to teleport to in a single array, thus she used relay points which required them to investigate a sub-realm and place down the relay before teleporting back.
Unfortunately, this meant that Akevorax had to place twenty teleportation arrays in total.
“Before that, can we allocate groups to figure out how we’ll be going about this all?” Akevorax raised his own complaints regarding the matter, a given since it sentenced him to mass array creation across almost excessive differences. However, his problem came in the form of time allocation, as the whole party investigating every single sub-realm required an excruciatingly long time.
“I was thinking of three groups. There are six of us after all. You and Raccelline can take the tougher places, I’ll take Jaren since his gaps are easiest for me to fill,” Mala already sorted the teams which just left two remainders wondering what exactly left them to get paired up. She already prepared an answer for this though, she said whilst facing Darak, “No hard feelings, but you really need something sturdy to keep you alive.”
He nodded understandably in the end, agreeing with the analysis in stride as a strong mithril tier ruined him pretty easily. With Korridan as a heal-able wall, he’d be in little to no danger for any foreseeable battles.
“Tell me when you have all the coordinates then, I’ll start worrying about it in a couple months after I evolve,” Akevorax cut off the conversation as he lacked any desire to start the process, something they all understood well enough. But he didn’t end things as it reminded him of the various books taken from the Evelard ruins, as he said, “I forgot about this earlier, but I got these books, they should be somewhat valuable.”
Instantly, piles of books appeared in front of them, with Mala given a separate stack filled with alchemy and scroll-creation. While everyone flipped through the pile of well-maintained but evidently dated books, it was obviously her to take the most expressive reaction.
As she read not only the top book’s contents but then realised its source, her jaw hung open as she said, “Are these all books by legendary figures in their crafts? No… Are these all originals too? Some of these have been lost for thousands of years!” Her face bizarrely morphed to disgust due to the unexpected surprise, and Akevorax’s response did nothing to cut that down.
“They’re not all originals, just the top few,” he said without much thought. While the books were valuable, most of these were available in various libraries of the stronger factions. With the exception of a few select titles, the dragon’s library contained these… somewhere.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group looked through the pile of skills left on the floor, most of them pretty much useless as they asked for a crystal body at the minimum.
Even then, elemental bodies weren’t good enough.
Multiple types of crystal bodies exist, but distinctly the category is separated into two levels. The simpler elemental bodies, and the huge cliff called rune bodies. Many dragons never exceeded master tier as they struggled to form their rune body, and the same applied to every race regardless of the evolution path set by the Nexus. One had to condense the runes of an applicable great language into a body, the idea of which is ridiculous until higher concepts are understood.
Needless to say, of the massive pile, they sorted out just 10 skills which the three warriors of the group found usable. An additional 15 books required an elemental body though, which Korridan found helpful.
As for Mala, she rapturously scoured the alchemical notes regarding the processing and refinement of material only seen in stories or legends. She read through countless recipes, their production methods, and even analytical experiments of results to comprehensively answer what role a resultant item performed.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Darak too at least saw use in the skills, but hardly ever used them as most of his mana was stored as divine power at all times.
With the conversation sorted, it truly just came down to a matter of time. They trained, relaxed, researched, and in time Akevorax gathered hundreds of vials of refined blood, the lack of concern from the supreme tiers about his actions made it clear they truly didn’t care for what he did. As long as no dragons died, they saw no reason to intervene, and in time most master tiers could only suffer as the loss of blood became a sort of ritual of the Dragonlands.
But before the day of consumption arrived, he finally finished the assimilation he’d waited weeks on.
The bloodline which finally exceeded Legendary.
[Consumed Conquering Juggernaut Kandir giants bloodline! Assimilation progress 100%]
This probably wasn’t going to end well…
His body fell to the ground in a mess of spasms and throbbing pain instantly shot through every single nerve in his body. As though every single lymph node inflamed all at once and cried out in pain, yet his body curled into a shaking mess just croaked weakly.
Somehow, the shrinking magic came undone and his form instantly expanded several times, filling the cave instantly and hitting the walls with enough impact to draw attention.
Raccelline appeared first in a distraught state, and her shouts instantly alerted the others, not that it helped as Korridan had no choice but to rush in and grab her. Even though she tried to wriggle away, Mala set up a barrier as well as a small domain to constantly freeze the zone Akevorax completed this assimilation in…
None of it mattered to the thrashing dragon with full control over his Mind and Soul. The pain never bothered him as the retrieved pocket watch appeared in preparation, but he couldn’t even cast his spell to deal with this exact matter!
However, just as the two predicted, immense heat burst from Akevorax all of a sudden… Too much heat actually.
“Mala, an analysis,” Korridan’s voice snapped her from the scene as she quickly cast a four ring spell. The already troubled face only descended into horror as the results appeared.
“The heat is still rising and his body is still deadlocked. He’ll survive the bloodline, but this heat is almost at three thousand degrees,” Mala’s tone filled with dread got the point across pretty well, but something still bothered her. So, she quickly threw together another four ring spell, and a cloak of mist enveloped Akevorax, but that substance completely faded a fraction of a second later as though made of smoke. She followed on by saying, “That bloodline is strange, it’s destroying the connections of my spells somehow.” None of them understood what that meant in all honesty, but it was clearly bad.
Korridan did come up with a solution though. His body rife with elements stepped through the barrier and snagged the ring Akevorax always kept about on a chain about his neck, this aspect of the dragon never changed. From within the ring, he retrieved the rose of ice and snapped off a leaf even as his fingers rapidly froze when in contact.
Fortunately, Mala picked it up and further broke it into pieces, one of which she forced into the writhing dragon’s mouth as Korridan now escaped with a pair of frozen hands and the ring. The heat quelled instantly, Akevorax’s melting body reverted to solid ice cream but continued to rapidly harden as it wholly froze over.
Jaren couldn’t help but look at the effect with disbelief, further revealed as he asked, “That was just a fragment of it, right?”
“About a fifth of that leaf… it’s mana is so weak, but I suppose supreme tier objects really don’t mess around.”
However, whilst the five of them watched, Akevorax enjoyed a far less idle battle within himself.
While he constantly ignored the heat which boiled and tore through his body, its disappearance in no way reduced the pain which coursed through his rapidly degraded and reconstructed body. The unmanageable destruction hardly compared to the far more nuanced ruination as his bloodline fought constantly against the invading force, and he activated the pocket watch on multiple occasions to deal with specific points of conflict.
Fortunately, with full control over his mana, he directed it towards the hotspots for battle between both forces and fed any power required to constantly replenish himself. The fact he remained conscious implied that a chance for survival remained.
And that chance came beautifully.
As the spasms which rendered his body useless came to an end, he quickly crawled onto his belly to cast his assimilation suppressant, instantly weakening its movement throughout his body to give himself a far more lax end.
With the pocket watch to then accelerate his bloodline at certain spots, the slowed Kandir bloodline stood no chance. It broke down into its most constituent forms and forcibly entered a dormant state, unable to act or move in the slightest now. However, that situation outstripped every single assimilation Akevorax ever dealt with, and he couldn’t be sure whether it came down to the gap between him and the bloodline or some other factor. Like the existence of great runes in the host body… Was it unreasonable to assume that high rank bloodlines also accumulated great runes too?
“A great rune bloodline? Is that possible…” Akevorax just mumbled aloud to himself as the frightening tiredness swept over him. It forced the dragon’s head to the floor where he soundly fell asleep, unable to feel the gentle hand stroking his nape at that moment.
Though, he did manage to see the Nexus’ response to his question at that moment.
[It is… But there are reasons why you wouldn’t want such a thing. Classified reasons if not clear]
An unsatisfying answer, but still one which resolved his question. With that information he knew to try and avoid such bloodlines where possible as well, at least until he figured out why exactly the Nexus considered it undesirable. And while he soon fell asleep, the pair of responses obtained perfectly slotted into his precast expectations.
[Assimilated Conquering Juggernaut Kandir giants bloodline! 8 new bloodline directions potentially available]
[Mission 1 completed: New bloodline rank appears to contain elements of great languages within them, expected as higher rank bloodlines tend to grant innate abilities with such powers. Name undecided as of now]
Perhaps with a bit more information than the Nexus usually gave though.