The first hour of fighting was possibly both the easiest and the hardest, with so many monsters being too far to reach him quickly, allowing him some time to think between each encounter, and his lack of knowledge making it so he fell for right about every trick thrown his way.

As time went on however, he was faced with more and more of the same beasts, learning their patterns and improving like a nerd fueled by energy drinks and using hacks in a souls game to never die despite still getting hit.

And get hit he did.

As time passed and the first real stampede reached the ritual site, Aki was forced to start a small scale earthquake, breaking the scalped earth himself to avoid fighting the wave in close quarters. That did not mean that he stopped all of the raptor like dinos or that the rest of the monsters stopped themselves though.

By the third hour, despite his own deconstruction of the resource to take more mana for himself and all the bane magic flying around, there was a fuck ton of dragonic essence being concentrated by the ritual. For the scaled monsters coming at him, consuming that would be equal to a drug cocktail with incredibly unhealthy dosages, with a corresponding high, but it would likely also increase their Life level or Rank, or whatever equivalent they had.

It was quite possible however, that if the killing stopped for too long or the mana density decreased for another reason, the ritual would be unable to sustain itself and allow for the intangible fuckery to disperse into the atmosphere again.

Explosively. Whether that would be a normal explosion depended on the essence concentration however. Something that would hardly be reduced quickly enough even if Aki dropped dead immediately.

Even were the creatures to understand that, it was unlikely it would stop them from berserking over both the bounty and the carnage in front of them, nevermind that after the immediate cataclysm the victor would be left with an area brimming with what equalled life's blood capable of raising the survivors and their progeny to greater heights, perhaps even bringing them into the sights of their ancestor for awakening, something that all those infected with dragonic essence understood innately.

You either submitted to or killed other dragons when meeting them. A sentiment unfortunately echoed through sapient dragonoids, though easily smothered by those who uphold their purpose.

And platitudes aside, it was indeed more beneficial for a dragon to be beneath one and above all others, the sheer increase in essence generation more than making up for the loss of submitting. And as that essence made their innate and continuous growth in power rise, they fed on the high derived from their instinctual response until their power was so great that the growth became insignificant, leading to boredom and the search for more essence.

Sans the ritual working so well to attract every dragonoid in contact with the land's essence.

By the sixth hour, with such knowledge ringing in his head, Aki had a hard time seeing any of the beings throwing themselves at him as anything more than game mobs rather than feeling animals and thinking sentients.

His original opinion aside, it was simply too hard for a person who already had trouble giving value to the emotions of those around him to continue doing so when exposed to such copious amounts of suffering he himself caused.

Be it the nonstop repetition, the fact that the ground was pretty much a small swamp of blood and shit he wanted to forget about or the monster brawl happening all around as the unending charge of monsters forced several species and packs to meet in too close proximity, it all culminated to him entering a trance of violence and recovery.

Chameleons took wind blades to the face, and when not killed immediately got torn up by other beasts who they ended up bothering. Scaled pumas were skewered by the occasional earth spike behind him. Dragonflies burned well, their wings easily catching fire and forcing them to the ground, where they were trampled to death. Burrowing lizards could be detected by the strange vibrations on the ground so long as he paid attention, so after the first one, they all ended up smushed in their own tunnels, their own abilities causing the earth and rock around them to collapse on them so long as he fragilized the natural spell components they used, which was easy to do by sending sound shockwaves with bane essence into the ground.

Even after he stopped using beams of radiance to stop the simpler enemies as they made themselves obstacles for the others and attempted to clean up the grounds, there were still many things that got to him however.

Most notable were the pseudo-wood kirin, who practically refused to die and much like him kept regenerating no matter what was thrown at them (or them thrown at, as it happened in a few occasions) until he voided it's brain off and burned the carcass himself until it stopped regenerating, and the smiling marsh hydra.

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He didn't particularly understand why the thing was still dripping water when they were rather far from any body of actual water, but he didn't question it too much and just made the thing paraplegic by targeting the junction of it's necks with a giant spike of rock he had laying around, wilting the thing down with lightning and a few more strikes to it's nape until the unmoving heads he or another monster chopped off stopped trying to regrow.

It was still quite possibly not dead, but the colorful frogs that appeared with it did not seem to care about that as they started to eat the hydra, a rather poisonous and venomous monster, though that seemed to not be a problem for most of them.

He honestly considered using pure kinetics to throw the toxic fucks through the battlefield, but they were already doing enough by occupying an area and forcing that would take too much mental acuity, nevermind that he wasn't immune to poison either, and the sludge he trudged around in was more than enough to deliver the contaminants in question. Spreading it would just put further strain to his body.

After ignoring that opportunity, there was little surprise except for the time when five pumas came for him at once, the damn things gnashing both him and each other even as he killed two at mid range. That led to him improving on his vitality and anima drain through physical contact, his exposed innards needing a quick repair that his already exaggerated regeneration couldn't deal with fast enough.

That is, until the day turned and a full twenty four hours had passed.

With a far too powerful roar, a ripple passed through the air, seemingly freezing the carnage. Aki was no exception over the effects of fear, but instead of freezing he overcompensated, telekinetically dumping several monsters to his feet to be drained, bringing himself back to full before the figure in the sky appeared to view.

Yet there was nothing special about it. No imperial aura, no mana storm following in it’s wake, barely an increase in the overall density really. Rather, wasn't that a wyvern? Actual dragons had six or more limbs after all, and that one only had four…

'Which means that despite the pseudo meditative state I was still anxious for the real confrontation. And ended up overreacting over a basic bitch wyvern…' It was an euphemism to say he was embarrassed.

He thought about using some of the significance and blood around to fight the thing off, but ultimately decided that not only would be another overreaction, it would actually be a net loss to the ritual.

No, there was a much simpler (and ritualistic) option that even his stupid and tired ass could see.

With the whole 'arena' going still, some of the smarter monsters looking like they wanted to run despite the ritual's and their instinct's influence, he had the time to make a more thought out spell, especially with the drawn out descent of his newest target.

By the time he could see the crocodilian grin in it's visage as it neared the fabricated clearing this whole thing happened at, Aki had already determined who he should to emulate and garnered his emotions and determination on the proper frame to best affect his target.

As a member of a dragon's inner circle, the wyvern could certainly speak even if he was the dumbest of the clutch, so it was hard to tell whether it opened it's maw to say something or attack, but either way it was too late for him.

With the pity that only a higher being could have for a sufferer, he opened his mind, inadvertently connecting to those in the surroundings. And he showed them the result of Pride confronting Possibility.

'END.'

Be it the suddenness, his gentle touch to it or even his target's lacking defenses, but the entire clearing was easily affected by Aki's narrative. Only those with intelligence and ego were truly affected by such a direct application however.

As the beasts woke to their senses telling them that they were in fact not dead, they soon found that many of the stronger predators were still downed, with the great red wyvern unmoving as it lay in it's back.

Telling whether the bigger shit would be the only one to die from such an attack was rather hard however, as without a predator they recognised as above them, everything on the clearing went on a frenzy again, killing off the zoned out predators first as they did not even move to defend themselves.

The effect could not be called a real spell so much as a psionic trick using magical principles however. While tiring the Mind to weaken the Soul's connection to the whole was basic xianxia bullshit, what with their inner devil tribulations and all, he was yet to reach the level of significance and sheer resources necessary to actually cause the soul to just naturally pass on as they should.

Rather, he had just focused so much in deteriorating the frail lizard's mind that it was now a scaled vegetable. Something perfect to plant on his bloody march of a ritual ground so that the final work could be fed by this source of greater essence for longer.

Better yet, none of this had any downsides to him, as all it may actually do is given an impression to the wyvern's progenitor that it was dreaming of a lavish and uncontested life as a peak existence, which was likely happening indeed as the vegetable's physical brain had not completely stopped working, much in the same being that a truly magical creature's body would be able to sustain itself on mana even if they did not breath or eat.

Considering how common such dreams must be for any dragon and how much essence the fucker was giving out, Aki could only shrug and work harder to take in the units of mana in the surrounding as his new competition as this first reassurance allow him to easily return to and then surpass his previous state of focus, his improvements as obvious as the damage he was doing to his Being if one had the correct sight to see.