Reading through the information, the method of transfer greatly reminded him of the mental link created by the Sage. Simply appearing in his head completely readable with no issues, and it wasn’t that large.

In the spirit’s defence, it seemed to only gain some degree of thought literal minutes ago. Its sentences amount to its very simple abilities, ones which it understood instinctively, but this information meant very little as the bloodline description pretty much went over it all.

Due to being too weak, it could only separate from his body for a few minutes, but once condensing from a web of aura nodes it could exist as a completely separate being. Besides separating to attack, the spirit could further integrate into his body to grant a massive boost to physical abilities on top of allowing for ‘aura-powered attacks’, although it didn’t really understand how these worked.

Part of him wondered how the thing knew all this, not the abilities but rather how to communicate its ideas. After all, he knew how to walk and talk just from living and listening to his parents… But understanding magic or the Nexus?

“Little spirit, how do you know how to tell me all this?” Unable to respond like the spirit, he resorted to talking aloud.

It once more mentally informed him of the situation. Rather than speaking, it was more accurate to call it a sort of imprint on his very mind. These words told him it had access to all his memories, and instantly cleared up how it all worked, at the same time it left him wondering if the spirit might exceed him intellectually at some point. That would be… depressing.

“How many more meals do you need to condense your full body?” He asked this with specific phrasing which it would understand best.

Receiving the simple answer of, ‘20 more’.

To condense the spirit alone, this wasn’t a bad deal. He took note of its connection and finally stood up for the first time in hours. Everything remained intact several seconds after moving, and he considered it all fine. Now came the harder part, in that he needed to go hunting for food and find more bloodlines. His list of semi-assimilated ones could be worn down a bit by purposely gathering eternity ferns and earth-frost carrots, but whether or not he wanted those bloodlines was a question on its own.

At the very least he could assimilate the winter’s hope tree first. Additionally, looking around to find any more wyrm bones had to be done as soon as possible.

Some more reading revealed that stronger creatures will store masses of their power in specific body parts to allow descendants chances to evolve back to their progenitor’s form! This matter differed from bloodlines entirely, as, if they were killed, it instead allowed completely unrelated creatures to transform into the progenitor race. If that snow wassat actually digested those bones fully, it might have become a half-wyrm at its evolution.

It goes without saying, these resources are incredibly valuable to creatures from weaker species. Changing their form into something better meant a great rise in potential.

Was it not the reason dragonkin even existed?

Some dragons mated with various other races, and birthed children with a few. The expectation was a race combining the fast growth and reproduction of those races with the natural talent of dragons, albeit a bit weaker due to being half-breeds.

And it mostly worked… Except for the fact that their draconic bloodline gradually faded with every generation. This was solved after a while, but requires dragon blood of a similar element to that clan!

In the meanwhile, he already left the cave with his newly formed Auric spirit and made his way towards the Node tree.

On the way it remained completely silent, barely even moving about to the point where he wondered if its ‘living’ nature was actually just a concept he invented in his own mind. But along the way he gave it a simple task to detach from his body and scout out a location just outside his mana sense.

Upon detaching, he immediately gained a sense of unease as something close to him vanished. The Auric spirit walked in front as a small dragon similar in shape to him, however, its body was a sort of transparent golden like a liquid. This golden body also didn’t give off any light, appearing rather strange and less metallic than one expected.

But even stranger was how it flexed its body to reveal two resplendent wings! With a span easily matching the youngling’s body length, he was momentarily shocked to see the spirit take on a completely different form.

It had no problem travelling that distance, simply flapping its wings a few times to hover in the air and flying forward tens of times faster than his max speed! Once it returned, the thing left a few words on his mind to summarise what it found. Nothing of interest besides a small snake which seemed to be a child from its size.

He gave the spirit some credit as it merged with his scales once more.

The thing clearly possessed its own commonsense and knowledge, having copied his memories to the point of identifying such creatures. It made him wonder how his body created an attached lifeform with intelligence.

But besides that test, he performed one more just to understand its capabilities. “Merge with my body for two minutes, or if you begin feeling tired.” Unfortunately, he did not grow wings, not that he placed much hopes on that pipe dream.

However, as the viscous body of aura melted into his own, a new sensation of power gripped him. For the very first time since being born, he actually felt power in his own body. As though he could tear a creature apart, limb from limb, or even just bite to tear out its neck. He couldn’t wait to test this power, and used an obvious first test.

Crouching his legs slightly, he thought himself weightless while pushing up once more. His ice-cream body didn’t weigh much in the first place, even with the wafer scales, he weighed a fraction of a regular dragon’s weight. Still, just how great of a physical boost was this spirit?

Flexing once more, he pushed with all his might. Not once had he been able to jump off the ground using his body, at least not enough to matter in any way. But that changed today.

Snow beneath him crumpled as an astounding force collapsed it, pushing him up with incredible force. He rose higher and higher, quickly exceeding the effect of a Jump seal, and soon found himself in a familiar falling state. Suddenly worried about the fall, he thought about the spirit’s power concentrating in his legs and hit the ground with a small thump but little else.

While the snow broke his fall regardless, he was surprised to see not a single marking below him, not even a foot print. A coating of auric powers not only dispersed the force instantly, but continued to do so afterwards. It effectively gave him a way to move about even more stealthily, saving him on learning more spells.

He’d probably learn the words regardless for the sake of it, but for now he dearly needed time.

While aura allowed for many things, including the ability to reduce incoming attacks, one thing it could not do was enhance his body’s toughness. At least, not at the moment.

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Even with massive strength powering his every move, a soft claw of ice-cream is just that in the end and lacked cutting power to an extreme. Dragging the claw through snow to spell things was easy, but anything tougher proved impossible.

It couldn’t even cut through ice!

And so came the final test of this matter. His new speed. In preparation, he retracted his neck slightly and crouched.

Then he kicked off.

A burst of wind hit his face, and he found himself leaping a great distance with little control, seconds later hitting a snow bank as his legs failed to touch ground first. On impact, the aura coating his body dispelled the force but left him rolling forwards, only stopping a few rotations later as the youngling stood up.

With a far lighter push this time, he tried to run again with the spirit’s attachment. This time he only leapt forward a small distance, but he knew this movement required precise work to be used adequately. He now had a way to move about rapidly, but its use in battle or escape was questionable given his rate of stumbling or outright bashing into the environment.

After trying the process out a few more times, even on his last try, he failed to ‘run’ more than two steps before he lost control of it. A quick check revealed a weakened pulsation from within, but not so much that the spirit seemed tired or concerned.

Condensing the partially filled aura sack, he quickly fed it to the spirit in hopes it aided in rejuvenation. The liquid aura quickly disappeared, but he didn’t notice any quick recovery from the spirit, clearly the process required time.

With the tests over, he finished the journey to the tree, but stopped just outside the pit it resided in.

Hundreds of magical creatures of all shapes and sizes resided here, none willing to approach and instead appearing apprehensive rather than calm. Those standing near the pit’s edge were undoubtedly stronger than him as well, possessing mana either on par or greater, and a truthful concern of what resided within only grew.

Within the pit he already noted two massive mana sources, one obviously being the node tree… But the significantly weaker second source already exceeded the gorilla twice over!

Slowly walking closer, his mana sense finally enveloped the tree’s base and saw a single figure below. A crane roughly equal to him in size, but he now properly distinguished that this was one of those children brought by those giant beasts. The gorilla was already rather strong when compared to Steel rank warriors, so how strong was this crane…

Both should be intelligent beasts as well, especially this new owner.

Taking a peek over the edge, he saw the white crane sitting beneath the tree with its neck upright but eyes closed. With a silver grey beak and a simple tuft of blonde hair sprouting from the back of its neck, it didn’t exude any elemental properties on sight. Not daring to underestimate the simple looking creature he backed away before any of the powerful beasts at the edge took offence of him walking so close to them.

None bothered after seeing him walk away though, clearly understanding it just held some curiosity. The intelligence of beasts was really all over the place. On some level they possessed commonsense and even emotional depth… but they also couldn’t communicate or really think?

Maybe he should’ve read some of the books on bestial intelligence.

Regardless, by walking around the pit he avoided any attention, and even the crane didn’t raise a fuss from his visit. With this, he walked by easily and began today's search for interesting objects.

Mana-filled objects within such a massive sensing range weren’t at all hard to find. If he walked practically anywhere in this section of the mountain range, he found dozens of them every few steps.

The problem was that digging down twenty minutes to pull out a bone with less mana than a single Ice-mind berry was pointless! He needed a Magical or better bloodline to obtain any useful evolutions, and thus comparing mana density was always of utmost importance.

His general ability in doing so wasn’t merely for show, as picking out even minute differences was easy to him. Additionally, anything within his close-range mana sight showed off the precise distribution of mana throughout an object! It sounded useless as an ability, but the easiest way to tell apart a bone, fruit, or fresh corpse was precisely this sight.

Bones often held equal distribution, as the body toughened all bones equally. Meanwhile, plants and corpses contained far more mana in certain parts of flesh, or blood in the latter’s case.

With this information, he knew how intact a corpse may be, as well as knowing to compare plants with one another rather than bones which absolutely contained a bloodline!

Of course, things are never that easy. The items a bit farther down contained quite a bit of mana, but nothing that really stuck out to him. It took a whole 30 minutes of more searching before a single thing, rather far down at that, actually seemed of use to him. At this distance he couldn’t make out more information than it being a rod of some sort, and so began the slow digging.

Water control made it a breeze to get started, but the growing mound of snow brought along some unhappy natives. He didn’t particularly know what thoughts led them to come here, clearly aggressive ones at that, but… What’s wrong with testing things out a bit?

His Auric spirit recovered about fifteen minutes after being fed with liquid aura, taking a bit of time but not an extensive amount. And he believed this recovery would only grow faster as the spirit developed.

The beasts in question actually surprised him, because he’d never seen anything like them before. Three large lizards, but very clearly different from any others he’d seen, with their azure blue scales combined with yellow eyes. What really stood out were the dark blue frills which puffed up as the three roared or seethed. With mana pouring towards those neck frills, he wondered what abilities they contained.

Not that he planned on experiencing them personally. Before the three attacked, he said one word, “Merge.” And only then did the fight begin.

With that amazing power filling him once more, he gently leapt to the side while quickly grasping how to move aura into a limb for attacking. It only took a few attempts until an aura-filled slam crushed a pile of snow in front of him into a small footprint. Fragile snow wasn't the best testing ground, but it made him feel so much damn stronger.

All three lizards stopped trying to scare him now, charging with extended claws and open frills. But the speed between them simply wasn’t comparable, with a single push forward, he slammed into one… And “slammed” was the only word for it.

Failing to swing his leg in time, his body just knocked this one away with his incredible speed, not at all letting up as he stood quickly and whipped his tail back around while charged with aura. A sudden crack let out as he broke the sound barrier, the cone-covered tail withstanding the immense power as it cut across the lizard's body and frills.

The supple frill was far weaker than its azure scales, which only received a light cut, instead tearing and leaving the lizard to cry out in pain. Not to mention, all mana inside the frills dissipated as it could no longer cast innate abilities.

The two others already reached him and tried to bite, the mana within their frills also dissipated in exchange for their frills glowing brighter. Whatever the ability, he’d rather not be hit. But, naturally, the two fell into his mana sense from the battle’s start. As the two rushed to pin him down with their bites, all four legs of his pushed upwards, flinging him high up in the air. At the same time, he began casting a spell.

How long did he have in the air… Maybe 7 seconds? That was enough time to cast up to an 18 word spell, roughly, and he chose a pretty old one.

First forcing some mana into his aura sack, quickly transforming it into liquid aura, he began the casting process for Wind blade storm. With his mental acuity and pronunciation abilities, not a single mistake was made in the cast, and he looked at his aura sack as the spell began requiring mana and neared completion.

As the ground neared, it was now or never.

Alongside a massive release of mana, he pushed out every bit of liquid aura and simply left it inside the forming spell. But as it neared completion, he realised the aura had yet to even interact with the spell, instead simply dissipating and forming a recognisable pressure on the lizards below who scurried away in fear of what he planned on doing.

Fortunately, he still controlled the spell, so he began firing Wind blades at all three of them. Each of the lizards received multiple blades to their scales, chipping them slightly and even drawing blood in one or two places.

But the damage was lacklustre, having achieved barely any of the damage he anticipated. He very clearly should’ve been able to imbue his spells with aura! So why didn’t it work?

He couldn’t afford to waste time though, picking out the strongest, fleeing lizard, he chased after it while casting Great flame bolt. This time not only crashing into it, but flinging it away with an aura-coated leg before finally casting the spell.

At the final moments before impact, he jumped back and watched as an explosion of extreme heat burnt away its scales to a chalky powder and boiled its brain and heart in mere seconds.

A horrible but quick death. Still this was merely one of them.

“They ran away?” Only now seeing that the two lizards completely exited his mana sense, there was no reasonable way to track them besides random luck. Getting one of them met his needs though, and if the assimilation required more, he knew where to come.