“Finally! Two damn weeks for the transverse mana flow to burn out. I should’ve studied the array better the first time round, but it’s finally about time.” A young dragon focused on a central component of the array designed to provide mass transit of mana between the outer portions and the inner. This part more often stabilises the array, but without it… Well, if he could cast any Intermediate attacking spells then he’d have escaped by now.

However, his first attempt two weeks ago ended up failing as the array self-corrected enough to suppress the malignant growth and eventually squash it entirely. Such capable restorative functions are incredibly annoying, but he located a weak point which appeared to be near breaking.

He just had to wait it out.

But now, he knew for a fact as the major mana channel shut down, he had a free shot to quickly disable most of the array to the point where even a single Sword wind broke it. He cast Array mutilation and stepped back.

The black ball of winds sunk into the floor as per his commands, and on impact exploded into a burst of black blades which spread throughout the array. In less than a second every single entry point had been found, and he saw the masses of black liquid grow inside the burnt out sections with haste. It rapidly ate more mana than he provided and in a few seconds already exceeded the wyvern’s entire mana supply!

But it’d only doubled in size with all that power, as the array did its best to stop the spots of malignancy from further growing, however, it was clearly on the losing end.

Black fluid filled more and more of the array, and before long, critical spots lost all power, immensely weakening the barrier around him.

“It’s finally time. We’ll do an enhanced Sword wind to make sure it breaks.” He waited until his mana refilled to 50% and began the spell, his mana sight revealed weak points in the array, and he merely had to choose one.

The spirit separated, and the spell began to form itself in midair, aura flowed into the structure and gave it a golden glow. He glanced at the spirit for a moment, clearly something about its ability to improve spells increased this past month, but he didn’t bother it as the golden tinge formed on the tip of the Sword wind.

A single light streaked through the barrier, cutting vertically through the selected place and seemingly having no effect…

Except the golden edged blade cut through.

A few seconds later and the entire array destabilised, the mana collapsed in on itself and scattered like a bubble. And finally, after one month and three days of this horrible trap, he escaped. But the offence had to be punished! Those beasts wronged him, and his supposed leader even betrayed him!

Sending enemies to frustrate him into leaving is one thing. But literally sending him to his death? And then stealing his lantern on top of that?

All of them deserved to die!

This month hadn’t been in vain though as he not only understood the basics of arrays to a solid degree, but the improvements to his heart and Mind palace alone were incredible even by draconic standards.

The real house he’d been focused on neared completion, at least its walls and roof that is. He created a large building several times in size from the first storage room, even leaving space for a door. All that remained was about a quarter of the roof, and then he needed to begin creation of a staircase and landing for the second floor before creation of rooms began. In fact, he often argued if stairs were even of use for this place, as its small size meant that he’d lose loads of valuable space when he could just fly.

Even with the creation of this second building, his Mind palace didn’t break through to the next level, but its defences could no longer be treated so casually by steel tier beasts. And, in theory, the suppression effect caused by his Draconic palace would increase.

But that was for the future. His other noticeable change was with his heart. From just small patches of the pale brown crystals all over, the entire lower half of his heart had completely transformed and he roughly hit the one-third mark for the process. Now just four months more of this stuff to complete it and then brag about his heart, which was also literal candy.

At least the food was good. Eating ice cream every day made the stay in this barrier manageable, especially as he had a nice range of options instead of pure vanilla now.

“Now… where do I start? They probably didn’t take the treasure since it’s protected, but does that mean I can take it all?” He cautiously stepped off the altar, looked at the platform and saw that nothing in the room awakened to slay him instantly, likely making it safe.

So, he walked over to a single coin, and moved it slightly to properly test the room’s response…

Silence.

A grin formed on his small face as he looked at the room chock full of worthwhile artifacts and resources. He first needed to see if anything here was a better dimensional storage which he could use, then he could focus on gathering valuables. Gold and mithril were the least interesting materials, but that can hardly be a surprise when they were being used to make coins of all things.

Instead, his eyes turned to the organic materials and other alchemical resources. Of course, those that lost all their mana were no better than common iron in quality, but quite a few had been preserved well enough to last the thousands of years since they’d been placed here.

On top of the sub-zero temperatures and lowered mana concentration, due to the divine relic, which together inhibited the growth of powerful diseases…

Well, surely he didn’t need to delve too deeply into how preserving magical goods went. What mattered now was looting them, and that first meant finding something to store it all in. Fortunately, he eventually found an interesting ring which he strung a necklace through to hang it around his neck. By connecting it to his mana, his mind briefly jumped inside its dimensional space and he saw it easily eclipsed the belt several times over. Whilst too small to store everything here, he could grab all the extremely valuable parts.

However, he also wanted to hide this necklace, and remembered to learn an illusion spell later on, something which the World veiler bloodline claimed to improve quite drastically. It would be critical in hiding from beasts when he left, too.

What interested him most, besides the materials and wealth, were naturally the weapons here. Many were designed for beasts to control with their minds, and as such naturally synergised with psychic spells or directly formed mental links. Needless to say, he could probably support a few of the less degraded weapons, all of which were gold tier in mana density. And then there was the single intact mithril tier blade he found.

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A hefty thing more akin to a sabre, and its hilt rotted away due to being made of significantly worse materials. He didn’t know why anyone would do this to such a wonderful blade, but with the ability to control it through his mind… This thing could actually kill the wyvern if it ever actually hit its target.

It was no surprise when he completely failed to even lift this blade. It made a damn good investment even if he left it sitting in storage for months or years, and so it came along too.

Every single ore piece or ingot which was still at gold tier was also taken, that alone took up a third of the ring’s space, and with hundreds of the most valuable Empire coins he could get ahold of, he knew that things would be pretty easy in the future. However, to avoid becoming a target, he took some of the lower denomination ones as a safety net, at least until he hit gold tier in power.

That done, he finally left the inheritance room with everything of value he could reasonably carry and began to wonder what came next.

He’d need an age to actually get revenge… So did he just hide in these ruins for the foreseeable future until coming out and killing all those enemies?

But then he wouldn’t have any amazing evolutions after the upcoming one.

Well, the elephant was always an option, but first he’d have to overcome the whole dying problem that came with it. He only barely survived the wyvern’s bloodline, which meant another way to overcome stronger bloodlines was critical for the future success of all this. That reminded him of another problem with his evolutions, actually…

“Nexus, how much of my lifespan have recent evolutions been consuming?” He asked the question with full expectations of a response, and received one just moments later.

[Sixth evolution consumed roughly 2 months of lifespan, below initial predicted model]

That was strange, he expected it to have risen to a year by now, or at least several months. This at least meant he could possibly survive tens of evolutions in the future. However, other possibilities existed around how the thing worked.

Perhaps the drained life force directly correlated to the body mass changed? So a greater growth phase results in a greater drain, in which case evolving as fast as possible whilst young is ideal in every case.

But this was a random guess that simply came to mind.

“What is the current limit of evolutions based on a 1,000 year lifespan?” He gave a rather small number for a dragon as it gave a better idea of how far he should seek to evolve rather than his true limit. After all, he still wanted to live for thousands of years as a powerful dragon.

[Current limit for 1000 years of available lifespan is: 89 evolutions]

A number so great that perhaps only a few cancerous species could even approach such a value. It almost made him laugh aloud from the realisation of just how ridiculous his very existence was.

Well, it was a breath of fresh air to finally get some good news about his bloodline that wasn’t merely about his potential.

“Nexus, you mentioned that what kills me during assimilation is the bloodline attempting to take over my own, and not the heat itself… So, what if instead of reducing the heat I focused on a way to reduce the speed of these bloodlines? Would that give my body more time to reign them in and stay alive?”

[The Nexus is not designed for extrapolation of ideas]

He thought for a few seconds as he tried to come up with an adequate argument against this statement. Whilst true… He didn’t actually need it to test ideas, but rather to confirm his guesses with what it knew. And after some thought, replied with, “But this benefits you just as much. Surely it’s important to know the limit of what a body can take, and if spells or skills could push that limit higher. I’m not asking for you to do anything, but merely apply what information I’ve given you.”

More than just a few seconds of silence passed, but he didn’t push for an answer just in case this was a rare moment where the Nexus needed to ‘think’.

[Methods to reduce mutation and bloodline movement do exist. It is too vague to dedicate resources to move onto testing. You will have to prove the effect personally before we best analyse effective points]

“Strangely… personalised. Just what are you even?” However, the Nexus didn’t reply and he almost let go of it.

[ ]

A blank prompt appeared in front of him. Why?

How even?

He had no idea how to quantify or grasp what exactly it tried to say there. It was just as likely that the prompt was a mistake, but even then he couldn’t be sure as the empty message came right after his question. It wasn’t even a hesitant reply like the last one. He realised that he could spend hours trying to figure out what the Nexus meant, but the lack of achievement involved forced him to accept that this was pointless, and he instead cleared his head before exiting the inheritance room.

Directly outside, he not only saw the multi-layered library, but also that the barrier up top still worked perfectly well. He climbed up the stairs leading up and wondered to himself, “I wonder if it’ll deactivate from the rose’s presence.” While a guess, it wasn’t the most ridiculous one.

And so, he pulled it from the belt and held it between his sharp teeth without the slightest fear of it snapping.

Once at the staircase’s top, a golden transparent barrier blocked him from further access. He first just tried walking forward. His nose gently pressed against the barrier, and he pulled back after a confirmation.

He then tried touching the rose against it, but that too was blocked off.

It seemed that whatever granted access to this top floor wasn’t so easily obtained, not that he cared. Instead, the books below could allow him to finally solve the mystery of this mountain. Whilst monumentally old, he noted that some books appeared moderately newer. Newer as in, from just 2000 years ago instead of 3000…

And in particular, he found one book labelled ‘The Ruination from Kandir’, perhaps the first time in his life he’d seen a book which used that name. Without hesitation he took this book from the bottom level and began reading it hungrily, coming to learn what precisely happened all that time ago.

A tale more so depressing than an epic…

Some time after the various lords overthrew the wyrm, taking control of the mountain and practically splitting it into distinct regions, most beasts lived far easier lives without the oppressive breath of that king down their backs. This life actually went on for centuries, and whilst a beast strong enough to take the king title appeared, a lesson of the wyrm meant that they mostly stayed in line much to the pleasure of everything which lived here.

But it was more than that, as this king appeared in a time of prosperity where most lords were actually cornem tier beasts!

Above mithril is master, a level of power which already made each beast a force to be reckoned with. But on the mountain were around ten beasts which exceeded this and hit cornem… But then there was the king, a supreme tier beast. Equal to Great sages and Primordius warriors, however, they mostly stayed quiet and simply grew their strength on the central mountain. As said, it was a time of prosperity for the mountain range. Supposedly, the humans in the place had drastically weakened around this time due to a lack of such powerful beings.

And then the giants of a remote northern range called Kandir attacked. And with them came a demigod who’d only recently exceeded the power of a Great sage… In that battle both the king and that demigod fell.

The result were tens of thousands of beasts dying to slaughter the outsiders, and as the mana degenerated in the years after, it was no surprise that those capable of managing these ruins also vanished.

A land of beasts who possessed untold power, and settlers who wished to take the land.

In fact, it was hard to say if the giants should’ve been so aggressive in their conquest. For the most part, they simply wanted proper land to bring up their young, however, such large forms and power frightened the natives and resulted in a war. The book gave a short retrospective on the emotions surrounding the situation and some errors…

But even in its conclusion the writer’s distaste for the Kandir outsiders could be felt. Especially as none on their mountain could stop the divine relic from slowly quelling their mana, many of the strongest beasts were forced to leave as their mere existence drained the surrounding mana to the point where others died.

And eventually, even a single mithril tier was enough to cause that effect.

From a place of the greatest powers in the world… To an empty husk ruled by a single mere gold tier.

It felt nice to finally receive closure about this place.