That night, he eventually earned some peace and quiet as the group above fell asleep.
Before he himself collapsed from exhaustion as well, he repeatedly dropped his MP below 50% to activate his body’s mana absorption. Each time watching it refill in tens of seconds. His tunnel, just several body lengths in size now crossed so much distance that he barely saw the end.
Along the way he placed supports as usual. Digging up at this point should be fine, but he wanted to do so at night, when everyone returned to the cave for safety. With that in mind, creating this new route was merely a matter of time But, unlike a snow wassat’s hole, he had to ensure complete security such that no one accidentally came across it. The hunters above clearly lacked any advanced dragon finding instruments, and that played to his favour.
If they had any, he’d already be captured or dead. He understood this point well enough.
That morning, he was woken up by the heavy clangs and footsteps above. The hunters were probably eating and putting on gear for now, in which case he had a whole day to learn more spells or do more research.
In particular, he wanted to learn more about humans. Ensuring he knew their abilities to an extent, and finding out what bloodlines he could expect from them. In the end he also did some research on similar species, namely dragonkin, elves, criads, and a large subset of elemental beings.
What these species all shared was that they possessed very few, or no, bloodlines!
Well, it was a bit more complex than that. They didn’t possess bloodlines like he and the beasts on this mountain did.
Most of these species can evolve their basic bloodline, the thing which made them what they are, but its effects are really pointless besides making them appear slightly more beautiful and increasing magical talent. Even dragonkin only barely improved their draconic bloodline if they desired; this is sometimes called wasting an evolution.
Instead, these bipedal races received evolutions in a different form. Their bodies instead focused on adapting to various specialisations. A human who grew up using a spear would, without a doubt, receive the spearman bloodline later down the line. The bloodline first restructured parts of his body to better excel at spear usage, and the Nexus gave boosts to learning spear skills and such. It was practically a completely new pathway for bloodlines to work…
And that meant hunting these species for bloodlines would be far too important down the line. But that could wait a while, he barely had the ability to kill one human, let alone obtain bloodlines from all of them.
He soon realised that the Kandir giants also followed such a system, not that the implications meant anything important. In theory, there should be more bloodlines he could harvest from them, if more bones existed, that is.
Without a doubt, he spent the next couple hours learning a six word wind element spell to block off the smell coming from above. Very simply called Air barrier, it was annoyingly not a real barrier.
The spell created a layer of stagnant air wherever he pleased, which stopped any air flows between the two sides. However, before using such a thing he would need an exit to flush out the current air within his chamber.
Besides doing a little bit of digging just to approach the surface, he only really looked into more spells to learn. In particular he sought new words, bridging the gap between incantations and true spells.
* * *
For the rest of the day, a length of time unknown to him, he learnt two more six word spells and another seven word one. Blinding flash, Earth slate, and Metal coat, respectively. Of the three, Metal coat may appear the most useful as a seven word spell… But it came with a troublesome downside of only working on sufficiently durable materials..
In other words, ice instantly shattered during the process. As well as pieces of sharp rocks, the force quickly accumulated on the edge and shattered it.
One suggested method in the book was to use a normal chunk of rock, and create several coats using the spell before sharpening to create a small edge. Since Metal bolt is a True spell this was one of the few ways a dragon may acquire metallic attacks early..
The other two spells sounded rather obvious as well. Blinding flash created a slightly condensed ball of light in front his line of sight and detonated promptly. Meanwhile, Earth slate drew on any nearby earth to create a small sheet to defend himself with. Unlike the barrier incantation, Earth wall, this one could be moved through Telekinesis or Earth control.
He only stopped with Metal coat because he heard heavy footsteps from above. Different from the night before, each one felt heavy like the hunters dragged their weight with every moment. If they exhausted themselves this fast, then he really had some good luck. Hoping they left in just a day or two, it was time to finally exit his abode.
While a nice place to live, he despised the idea of just hiding underground to stay safe his whole life. Even if he was born of ice-cream, he wanted to one day fly through the sky like any other dragon.
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Flame source quickly continued the rough tunnel upwards, and he simply continued up and up at a gentle slope. There was no rush to escape immediately, and anytime he dipped below 50% MP, it refilled extremely quickly.
He began to try and feel how his body drew in mana once below half MP, but what it did to allow such a process simply didn’t appear. Once at the specified MP, several points on his chest and back began to rapidly suck in mana, he realised this part the first time it happened. But further sensing revealed that his body produced ten invisible whirlpools which then drew in mana.
It was like the suction force just instantly appeared, and the result was ample mana funnelling straight into his heart. Sure, he enjoyed it, but being able to activate it at will was so much more desirable.
He learnt nothing over the course of the next few hours. However, finally sensing some mana-rich objects above began to excite him. It presented a possibility that his distance from the surface grew shorter, and the next few minutes confirmed his findings.
Moonlight spilled into the small tunnel, and he looked out to see a thicker crescent moon in the sky.
“Finally! Some fresh air!” Glad to breathe in something not stinking of urine, he took several large gulps before looking at the point where he broke through. The place looked like most other places in the snow field, and he had to look for something to find his position.
Given the direction, it was very likely that the ancient battlefield was around here. He wanted to avoid that place if possible, at least until learning an Invisibility spell to safely investigate. A dangerous beast can be avoided, but some advanced magical device was out of the question.
With food being a major priority as well, he tried to head out in search of something. But before leaving covered up his tunnel and left a mark for himself in the form of a small pile of mana-rich plants within.
To find the general location he also placed a Light spell some distance from the tunnel. If any hunters found it then they’d look in the entirely incorrect location. Moving on out, he did his best to stick to recognisable places.
By heading along the tunnel, above ground this time, he quickly came across the tree root and planned further movements from there. In case the hunters actually captured him this time, he opted to stay away from his cave. Moving along the trail of mana, he found a few things worthy of interest but none contained bloodlines.
One item he found was a small crystal full of icy mana, perhaps a material used for weapons or to cast spells. Either way, he had no use for it at the moment and left it in place.
Sometimes he heard the flapping of wings, seeing strange bats which left trails of white smoke behind. On closer appearance he realised that their bodies were white and glossy, not to mention absolutely covered in mana. Trying to single one from the swarms, he prepared a Fire spell and targeted the wing of one straggling bat.
The fire suddenly appeared in front of it, and unable to react instantly fell to the ground with a screech. The bats further along didn’t seem to notice it though, and he walked over to see the white, shiny bat with cerulean teeth and hostile eyes.
But more importantly was the hole burnt right through its wing. Just a touch of fire caused such damage to the creature, it was no wonder they only came out at night. He put the bat out of its misery with an Ice bolt to the head and sucked up some of its blood, only then checking the Nexus.
[Killed Level 4 Frozen elat! Received 2% EXP
Consumed Frozen elat bloodline! Assimilation progress 1%]
A mouthful of blood for just 1% progress… He quickly tried drinking the rest of this bat’s blood to check the final progress. In any case, there were a large number of bats to pick from. After sucking the corpse dry, and picking up any which fell to the snow, he checked the newest prompt.
[Consumed Frozen elat bloodline! Assimilation progress 4%]
He also confirmed that the body provided assimilation progress, so he estimated 10 or so elats were needed to assimilate the bloodline. Furthermore, they clearly possessed some naturally magical ability, just lacking the method to use it in any way.
While not appetising to eat raw, he figured that trying to cook such bodies wouldn’t work. As for hunting…
The next time he saw a group of frozen elats, he produced a Flame source and darted from one elat to another as fast as possible. He prepared for some attack and having defend himself, but the rest of the elats ran in fear. In just a few seconds his small flame burnt holes through the wings of at least 15 of their cluster.
Of course, these creatures just saw their natural enemies, heat and light. Most beasts would run in fear, terrified, if something like this happened.
He quickly found out that the wings of these elats actually held no blood, just being interesting magical sheets with a leathery texture. With a naturally chilling property, they could be used to keep a store room, or individual items, cold. Too bad, but he had no use for such things.
Consuming the blood and flesh of the bats only took twenty minutes, and before long the flush of heat and tiredness passed over. While weaker than the glacier wolf, it still contained a significant effect.
[Assimilated Frozen elat! 2 new bloodline directions potentially available]
It took a little while to find anything else from then on, but he filled up time by digging up anything of interest underground. Lucky once again, he eventually came across another snow wassat. Rather than risk his life, a Cone of fire formed above its small hovel and instantly roasted the thing alive.
[Killed Level 8 Snow wassat! Received 45% EXP]
With Telekinesis he dragged its charred corpse out of the ground and began taking it back home. He noted its far larger body, at least twice as thick as the adolescent ones he killed but only slightly longer. It would do for a few days of food, and going by the Nexus’ description it should be another bloodline!
After pulling the corpse back that night, he rested and slept through the impacts of everyone leaving his cave later that morning, to the best of his ability that is. With a night’s sleep he was ready to spend another day researching and spell casting, checking on the wassat’s corpse to make sure its blood hadn’t spilt out by accident.
Fortunately, his flames cauterised most of the damage, and then any fluids which managed to leak out overnight simply froze in the night. After last night its body also froze solid, and he had to defrost it just to begin the blood drinking process.
But as he swallowed a few mouthfuls of blood, the expected prompts didn’t appear. In fact, the blood remained in his stomach. Was he not assimilating this bloodline? What was going on?