“Head south-west. There is a mana gatherer tree there belonging to another node. Your job is to subdue the lord of each tree. If they are unwilling, you know what to do. Any bodies are yours, but try to keep them alive.” As the wyvern gave out a new order, he knew this to be his first proper job.
From what he’d seen, most mana gatherer trees only had bronze tier beasts watching over them. Meanwhile, node trees always had steel tier beasts instead. Given that the wyvern did not possess these trees as well, he could not guarantee the node tree owner letting him live.
For his own safety, skirting around the node tree was important.
With nothing else to mention, he left the mountain cavern to think things through a bit. In particular how to maximise bloodline acquisition. The obvious answer being to collect more solar-death shrooms from the other side of the mountain and pick up the crystal-frilled lizard corpse left in his actual home.
The latter appealed to him far more.
Except that travelling the distance was far from easy. His previous home was rather close to the major mountain in the range, but from here he knew it to be quite a distance. Not to mention he had to completely avoid that massive mountain in fear the crab controlling it grew enraged and killed him.
Well, he could start off by seeking out that new tree and seeing how strong his first enemy, or even victim, could be…
On the way he utilised the spirit a bit more to further adapt to its new speed, each casual step moved over double the distance, and he constantly had to re-adjust or roll to a stop. It was on one large jump where he finally had a thought as well.
While halfway through the leap, he crouched once more and leapt up. The full power of his merged body shot from his legs, creating a blast of air beneath him.
His body rocketed upwards, looking down to see a concave pit beneath him at the same time. The height of this powerful jump was a mere fraction of his actual max height… But he actually jumped off the air.
Didn’t this count as flying?
Or at least some weakened version of it!
It greatly exhausted the spirit to perform just a single jump of that power, but if he simply utilised smaller leaps then couldn’t he potentially fly for several minutes at a time?
There were so many possibilities with it all, and the only way to find out was through repeated testing. Even so, he had a job to complete first. After landing, he rushed over to the tree in search of this opponent, rather surprisingly a reindeer.
This mana gatherer tree was also some type he didn’t recognise, although its only difference were its green leaves and strange purple veins extending up through the trunk
At first, his hopes rose in thought that this was an aurora reindeer, helping him complete that bloodline, but its antlers told the truth. Some research showed aurora reindeers to have strange flows of light passively floating around their antlers, giving their rather obvious name. Instead, this reindeer’s antlers were a pure white, likely being some sort of ice or snow-related bloodline. The tinge of disappointment ended moments later as its mana clearly exceeded his by a small degree.
This reindeer… Might just be on the cusp of steel tier. And in truth, he couldn’t have asked for a better opponent. But first some new spells were needed.
The limitation of Wind blade had started to catch up to him. As an incantation, it was purely through his high magic stat that it still did any damage to bronze tier creatures. But even against those weaker crabs from before, he required an empowerment of aura to deal any meaningful damage.
It was time for an improvement.
And he chose the 14 word True spell, Sword wind.
Just like Wind blade storm, it too came with a higher tier form which cast several at once. However, he chose not to learn it as the usability of such a spell remained dubious.
At least, until he learnt how to speed up spellcasting he didn’t want to rely too much on Apprentice true spells. This was done through a process called casting compression, the specifics of which he read but had yet to test out.
That idea was cut short though.
[Bloodline energy has reached an evolutionary threshold. Prepare for evolutionary measures to begin]
“Is there no way to suppress it? Even just for a day?” He called out to no response, although he’d already read enough to know this answer.
Yes, there were ways. It just required disgustingly rare magical plants to do so, not to mention the side-effects of suppression was an extreme weakness. If he had a corpse lined up, such a thing might have been reasonable… But hunting in this state was impossible.
Sulking about it, he could only rush back home and seal off the entrance with a combination of Sky sight barrier and Frost shell. Around then, it occurred to him that simply blocking off the entrance with snow might have been a better solution… But it was too late.
“Nexus, automatically remove all evolutions from assimilations below Rare rank bloodlines. And remove the food related bloodlines,” he’d thought about this as well, realising that in no world he picked a Normal rank creature’s bloodline direction. The problem was that he truly had too little time to gather such bloodlines, and the short list only proved this.
[Evolution imminent. Your possible bloodline pathways are the following:
Auric soul Ice-cream
Critical auric Ice-cream
Volatile mutant Ice-cream
Draconic palace Ice-cream
Faith immolating…
Soul body…
Life essence blooded…
Mana transverse…
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Frozen existence…
Rampage…
Build-up…
Beast rallyer…
Destruction fed…
Blood focused…
Bleeding Monolith…
Please make a selection in 4 minutes, or a random pathway will be used]
He forgot to remove the Volatile mutant one, but so be it…
The first two aura related bloodlines held promise, but wasting an evolution purely to improve his aura production and capacity was a massive waste.
Draconic palace was interesting, and not just in a casual way. Its direct effect seemed to enhance his Mind palace and allowed it to descend onto reality way earlier than usual!
You generally needed a completed shell of a castle just to allow for descension, let alone produce such a strong effect.
Faith immolating was once more useless as he lacked a sufficient number of intelligent creatures owing prayers to him. While, Soul body interested him, but with the soul lantern he didn’t really fear anything attacking him in that regard. So it too fell off the list.
Now the winter’s hope tree and Rampage bear, as well as the derivative he luckily obtained.
Life essence blooded, Mana transversal, Beast rallyer, Destruction fed, and Bleeding monolith all received strikes for different reasons. But they could be summarised into one of two categories.
Either having no long-term prospects beyond some very specific uses, or being so battle-centric that they required him to participate in wars to ever be useful. And if he hadn’t made it clear enough, there was not a single shred of interest in fighting a war.
Even the one he currently took part in wasn’t so much a war as a ‘persuasion’ over the masses. His job for months to come would be killing or beating over respected beasts with the intention of winning them over for his boss.
Which left the few bloodlines he cared for, although the two auric bloodlines remained at the side for now. He’d simply pick them if none of the others interested him in the slightest.
[Draconic palace Ice-cream: The will of a True dragon supports your mind, and it may be harnessed to create a Draconic palace. When merged with aura, the Draconic palace may descend into reality. This creates a mental domain requiring a powerful palace simply to stand in, while all spells below Beginner true spell will simply dissipate in the powerful auric and draconic suppression. In addition to previous bonuses, grants -25% Mind palace construction time, +80% suppression power, +20% draconic will, +20% max aura, +70% mental defences]
The length of these evolutions had only been increasing, but after reaching an entry-level Mind palace, reading such a thing in seconds was a breeze! In fact, he checked his time and believed it more than enough.
[3 minutes 23 seconds]
Draconic palace gave him somewhat mixed feelings, as it clearly possessed immense defensive capabilities as well as turning his mind into a real fortress even faster than usual. But that was all it truly did, provide high defence with very little offence… And with the spirit making evasion a breeze he really didn’t need such a thing.
Not to mention there were so few creatures capable of harming his mind at the moment. Perhaps at steel tier he’d encounter more, so the value wasn’t wasted at least. Being able to draw on the will of a True dragon could not be underestimated as well, it allowed him to understand what the term even meant. And on a simpler level, the Nexus literally made it faster to build his palace, that alone made it an excellent choice.
[Frozen existence Ice-cream: Your natural home is the coldest reaches of the world, and perhaps even beyond that. The world around you descends into a wintery frost, and at will moisture condenses into snowflakes of any desired size or shape, even imbued with mana if need be. In addition to previous bonuses, grants +40% domain size, +250% ice magic defence, +90% ice magic damage, +10% max MP for every 10 C below 0 C, +100% memorisation speed of ice related great words]
This simply sounded like a bloodline belonging to a real ice dragon… Not to say it was bad by any means. Although, assimilation was never really meant to take into account the fact he has an ice-cream body. Maybe that was the reason his only bloodlines to move away from ice-cream were ones granted by a higher Mutation rate?
Anyway, if he could freeze anything in a radius, wasn’t this just a stronger version of that crab’s freezing ability? Very few creatures at an equal level could actually survive this thing. But the next bloodline for now…
And he chose to look at all the bear bloodlines at once.
[Rampage Ice-cream: Waves of destruction are left in your path. In combat you let loose and cause damage freely, growing stronger by the minute as you ruin to your heart’s content. Uncontrolled decisions and destruction feed your will the most, and an unstoppable momentum forms around you during battle. Anything which dares stop the rampage must deal with the surging river behind it. In addition to previous bonuses, grants +50% damage to instinctive attacks, +100% defence while attacking, +55% suppression power, +25% momentum river power, +50% stamina]
[Build-up Ice-cream: Battles are not all won straight away. Some are long slogs, requiring one to slowly gain an advantage until obtaining their victory. With every moment that passes, you grow stronger and faster. Casting, striking, escaping, and even thinking, the rush of battle allows you to take in the whole scenario and understand it all to an amazing degree. After half an hour in battle you’re effectively half a tier stronger. In addition to previous bonuses, grants +100% stamina in battle, +25% build-up speed, +50% all senses, +50% all damage]
[Blood focused Ice-cream: Rather than glorify in the battle at hand, you pick your target and annihilate them. Their blood will be spilt, and they will die by your hand. You can track your target to the end of all worlds if you please, plaguing them with nightmares of their demise until killed. If the target is a lord or king, once killed their power may be absorbed for your own. Gain innate ability ‘Blood trace’. In addition to previous bonuses, grants +50% all damage when fighting target, +40% suppression in battle, +35% mental defences, +40% physical defence, -30% enemy lord/king’s stat boost]
He picked these three because of their single target potential, even if the bloodline clearly existed to be used in large-scale wars. To say these weren’t all amazing was an understatement. None as poetic or extreme as the Warborne bloodlines… But the raw power offered already gave chills all over.
Rampage allowed him to fight enemy after enemy, perfect for situations where many individuals targeted him at once. While Build-up also worked in such a situation, it instead encouraged his survival at all times until finally turning things on its head at the final swoop. These two bloodlines practically decided the flow of all his upcoming battles alone.
And then there was Blood focused, an oddity amongst them. It seemed to be used for hunting the commanders of an enemy group, chasing after them and destroying the enemy’s morale while growing stronger from the hunt of a lord in many cases. But what really drew his attention was exactly that last part, being able to grow stronger, almost indefinitely it seemed.
Of course, a quick check with the Nexus clarified this specifically.
[Power may only be absorbed from lords/kings stronger than yourself]
A simple limitation, but it still meant he could fill in so many gaps of his physique! Although, he had to wonder how many lords he’d receive the chance to kill. Especially lords stronger than himself, which would quickly become more and more dangerous as things went on. And he was doing this all for a chance… Maybe if it guaranteed some power he’d have already chosen this bloodline.
But now comes the toughest part of these times. Actually choosing one. This was so much easier when only two of the bloodlines didn’t horribly suck… He had up to seven rather useful choices and the indecision was horrible.
[1 minute 1 second]
A bit of time remained, but not a huge amount.
Which one should he even pick? Breaking things down further didn’t seem beneficial with the time remaining… And the prospects of each were rather clear. They continued to remain beneficial, even into his later evolutions, and all of them provided some utility at this moment. With mana sense to cover searching, it became power and defence that he wanted most.
“Hang on… Doesn’t Ice slash kill pretty much everything with that one? Not as good off the mountain… But I’ll evolve by then. Alternatively, power from lords or the ability to travel anywhere without melting?” When he phrased the question a bit differently, he realised that the Frozen existence bloodline came with another benefit.
With the gap having closed a bit, he now just had to make a choice.