He openly admitted that most of the work was done by those humans, but in the end the victory was still claimed by him! With the battle finally over he checked through the selection of prompts to see his experience gain.
[Killed 89 Ice ants! Received <1% EXP
Killed 13 Ice soldier ants! Received 4% EXP]
And the only source of experience which actually mattered here was saved for last.
[Killed 3 Royal soldier ice ants! Received 43% EXP]
Not enough for a new level on its own, but he immediately realised that this ended the series of prompts. Had an Explosive bolt really not killed the queen?
Without waiting he quickly descended into the nest once more, finding it completely desolate this time round and taking the metal blade deeper within. He dropped the previous one to cast spells while running, but this time he might actually need such a weapon. It didn’t take long to find the mucus covered chamber, seeing the ant queen in the flesh.
At her back was a large bulbous sack like his mana sense showed, within he saw eggs squirming about, gestating until it was ready to release a whole new generation of ants. He absolutely had to kill the queen here, and looked at her main body in shock and awe.
Albeit mainly shocked as he saw a strange yellow and brown carapace covering it instead of the usual black. Or blue in the case of these Ice ants. The strange carapace was oddly decorative, and on one side he saw a large hole as well as great cracks spreading throughout, somehow still held together and even slowly healing.
The queen looked at him with intense vehemence, yet why did her mouth slobber at sight of him? Was that why all this happened!!
She got a taste of him all those weeks ago and simply never let go? He tasted good, but being so delicious to the point of sacrificing thousands of ants was just too far. This queen couldn’t be an intelligible creature if it practically destroyed its own hive just for one bit of tasty food, but that just meant she had to die today even more. And being immobile left her a sitting duck.
Using Telekinesis, he grabbed the knife and first stabbed out her eyes, the damage only angered her further but he took some pleasure in returning the trouble she caused this whole time. But that sweetness faded just as fast, and he wanted to end this whole matter, finally trying to stab into her body but finding it too large.
Telekinesis required line of sight to move an object, and completly sinking it into a body stopped it from counting. He switched to throwing another Explosive bolt at her face, the casting was unimpressive and it formed as usual.
The outer shell hit her face, the strange carapace surrounding it cracked and fell to the floor as a flaky dust, but upon explosion he saw the blast itself damaged her internals a bit but did little more. Her fire resistance was insane!
It seems he underestimated the power of a hive’s queen. But if there was anything he had, time and mana sat rather high up. And so he bombarded the immobile, blind queen with Explosive bolts, Glacier bolts, and Telekinetic powered stabs until her heartbeat faded with the arrival of a pleasing prompt.
[Killed Level 13 Wafer-coated Ice ant queen! Received 65% EXP]
Feeling a bit faint from mana use, he checked his status for a quick look. Also wishing to see where he sat.
Name
Title
Nexus Aid Bonus
Species
Dragon
Bloodline
Slightly magical Ice-cream
HP
100%
MP
35%
Level
10
EXP
22%
Unallocated Stat Points: 12
Strength
0
Luck
0
Agility
3
Growth
0
Magic
10
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Mutation Rate
5
But focus returned to the prompt in question after hitting 50% MP just a little while later.
“Another food mutation? That’s too much of a coincidence… Should I try eating it?” He didn’t really understand why such an ant queen existed so close to him, it seemed far too unlikely that something like her existed naturally. But that didn’t stop him simply moving over to take a small piece of wafer for testing.
It was sweet and easily snapped in his mouth, a strange difference since it previously withstood Glacier bolts with relatively little damage. After swallowing, it quickly disappeared from his stomach, clearly being a different enough bloodline to assimilate!
“Nexus? Is there a problem with this bloodline?” Without an expected prompt he felt some concern.
[There is no problem. You have already assimilated the bloodline from this creature]
What did he just absorb then? Perhaps if his bloodline wasn’t already abhorrent he’d see it as too dangerous to continue, but he knew when to be honest.
He had nothing to lose. If it weakened him physically… That didn’t matter, not like he could be much weaker. And assimilations alone never weakened his mind, so he was safe there. He’d need some sort of soul absorption ability to affect himself mentally.
Besides, if this was actually beneficial and he missed it then his future death was solely on this mistake. He didn’t fear absorbing a bad thing anyway, and with that in mind continued swallowing the wafer shell piece by piece. As it always broke down in seconds he didn’t have to worry about filling his stomach, although the bulging feeling appeared again.
When his body received enough nutrients it began giving off this sensation, and so he decided to get some rest in his home. But to future proof the situation, he noticed that some eggs within the huge connected sack still contained life after their mother’s death. To ensure the hive never rose again there was a quick Cone of fire to destroy every last one. These killings didn’t provide any experience, a situation well-known throughout the world.
The journey back was easy as his lights remained, and with more time he created a simple guide by drawing arrows into the nest’s walls. A tiresome night of sleep in the underground abode allowed him to move right back to the queen and continue eating. Her shell lost a bit of its crispness after sleeping, but the taste remained.
Over the course of the day he began looking into a different type of sight spell. Called Third eye, it was a human-made spell adapted by dragons many ages ago. It ended up becoming a 13 word True spell, but came with some severe problems.
First though, the spell’s effects. It formed a small, weightless ball which the caster moved around with their mind and received sight through. Due to the nature of this spell, one had to choose between ‘seeing’ through this spell or their own eyes, leaving them vulnerable in some cases.
As for major downsides, it was an extremely fragile construct. A light smack destabilised the spell, and being entirely visible made it to stand out in most environments. Especially one where the surroundings were all pretty much pure white. Wizards also noticed such a spell easily as it didn’t hide from mana sense.
His reason for learning such a spell remained obvious though, it being his only way to investigate at a distance. In the meantime, he ate shards of the shell when hungry. At some later point of the day, he already finished the whole spell, yet his body continued absorbing the wafer shell without end!
With the words fully learnt, it only took twenty minutes for him to figure out at what points to release mana and he activated Third eye with no problem. Unless excessive mana usage was included that is.
The small ball appeared as though made of metal, giving a shiny reflection in its obsidian-like surface, and moved akin to a Living flame or Controllable light. Before long he adapted to its speed and effect on his mind. Which left just a single function to test.
For all those controllable spells, it felt like a small switch existed in his head, pressing it cut his link to the spell and ebbed its mana flow. And without mana there cannot be magic. However, the Third eye spell instead gave the sensation of two switches, and he intuitively used the one which transferred his sight over to it.
Immediately, his view shifted to higher up in the queen’s chamber, able to look down and see his own static body with perfect clarity. Even from this point of view he found movement of the orb to be precisely the same, although now placed within it made adjustment a bit tough.
He also had yet to adapt to his far smaller size whilst looking through the spell, afraid of bumping into walls or tripping on occasion. And for his first real test, the orb snaked its ways up through various tunnels without stopping, although the connection clearly thinned with distance.
Unable to reinforce it himself, the string connecting to the orb snapped. His sight instantly returned and he took a few seconds to move. Such a sudden and instantaneous effect jarred him greatly, but the spell’s capabilities remained amazing.
“30% MP from just a minute or two? How much of that was to create it though?” He questioned the values on his status and quickly created another Third eye and dissipated it with the second switch moments after creation, the Nexus clearly showing that it cost him 20% of his MP.
If he needed to use the spell then simply maintaining it was for the best, the cost of creation left him a bit concerned. Not enough to avoid using the spell though.
As for consuming the wafer shell, it took several more meals and an entire day to finally stop absorbing more of the thing. He tried consuming the ant queen’s innards in hopes of it being faster, but his body simply digested it at a regular speed. Whatever happened to this queen, only the carapace was affected for some reason.
After absorbing enough of the wafer, he felt nothing for a while. But like his evolutions the chances of it merely building up existed, and he quickly moved to a less disgusting place outside the chamber. A few minutes later results appeared.
A warmth similar to that of assimilation spread throughout him, but such pleasantry ended moments later. That warmth turned to a boil and spread all over his body, like dumped in a vat of frothing oil, but it didn’t end there.
Roaring in agony, his soft ice-cream skin began to split and harden, the top gaining a repeating indent. Below the hard, patterned ice-cream, a thin layer of yellow and brown appeared on top, finally allowing him to silently breath on the cool ground. The pain ended quickly, but it left him shaken as he never encountered such an uncontrollable intensity before.
The layer quickly thickened and on closer appearance one would see the strange indents to be thousands of small, overlapping scales. The new scales of wafer covered his body from head to tail, only very few places left untransformed.
His claws, teeth, and eyelids remained as ice-cream. As did any internals.
[Unlocked Innate skill ‘Mana fueled wafer scales’
Obtained title ‘Innate development’’. Unlock requisite - Awaken an innate ability]
His first question was rather straightforward. “This is an innate ability?”
[Mana fueled wafer scales: Scales formed of a sugary wafer treat are highly synergistic to mana, and will be reinforced at a logarithmic rate when supplied with mana. The effects diminishes overtime to its original form, and withstanding attacks will exhaust mana within the scales]
The clarification came soon enough. This was his first innate ability, a skill which toughened his newly formed scales. Honestly, he didn’t even need the skill to be happy at this revelation.
He finally had real armour! Not extremely tough like a normal dragon’s, but most bloodlines also didn’t have a skill like he did! In fact, most dragons’ first innate ability was their breath attack, which required them to finish the first growth stage and become a youngling.
However, with a growling stomach he knew the cost of such growth. Not another look was taken of the ice ant queen, he headed back to his cave to enjoy the acquisition of some more bloodlines.
What better to start on than the wizards who’d most naturally improve his magical abilities?