Stomach aptly filled, he didn’t stick around his home much longer. He stored a weapon in case of sudden situations and took care to apply as many Jump seals as possible with his rising mental strength. With 15 seals now on his larger body, he wondered if the increase in weight would decrease the seals' effectiveness.

No matter for now though.

He set off for the tree root, ignoring anything along the way to reach the tree faster. As his mana sense failed to pick up anything hunting him, it was a quick journey, relatively, that is. Walking this distance still took forty minutes at his speed, it was not until the surrounding mana grew thicker that problems appeared.

Distance to the node tree remained unknown, but the increase in mana this far out could not be good. It meant the tree was wildly emitting mana due to being incapable of storing and controlling its flow, in other words failing to adapt to this situation.

The books documented such things happening, although it is rather rare.

On approach he realised that the sounds of crashing bodies, squeals, roars, and simply destructive power were resounding out even at his distance. Creatures up ahead fought wildly for some reason, and he didn’t really want to be a part of it.

Casting Rapid camouflage, he decided to take a look before retreating if the situation turned sour. He greatly preferred the winter’s hope tree and its calmness.

Approaching further, the appearance of hundreds of creatures became clear, all of them being magical creatures. But that wasn’t the surprising situation, instead it was the very obvious fact that beasts on par with the Stormforst wolf sat around here. With so much mana he didn’t dare to think what fought further on, and when walking closer things finally appeared in sight.

Just past a small hill, the land suddenly dipped down to form a huge cone-shaped canyon. At its base were the two beasts fighting, and from the sight of seven other beasts lying dead nearby… This wasn’t the first fight today.

A massive gorilla, around the size of the wolf, fought against a similarly large bull. However, it wasn’t truly a fight.

The gorilla appeared brutally injured, gnashes all over its body, with one eye even being stabbed out as well as heavy bruising all over. Yet it fought stoically without a moment of rest nor weakness, every single attack threatening to smash the bull into pieces.

And while the bull appeared in a better situation, the pressure this injured gorilla layered only proved who deserved the place. It tried to charge, kick, and use a few spells, but compared to the gorilla’s brute strength and incredulous defence… None of it mattered.

The bull’s horns were grabbed by the gorilla, and with a hard rotation both snapped off at the base. But things weren’t done yet.

Grabbing the two horns, it jammed both gleaming tips into the bull’s neck, a leg flicked around to smash into its wailing face, knocking it over with immense force more like kicking over a tin can. Barely able to breathe, it bled out slowly on the ground, mauled with its own delicately maintained horns.

And that concluded the battle. One against nine, but a complete domination in the end.

None of the watching creatures made a sound, watching in silence as the gorilla of immense power screamed to everything in the area, reminding them all of their place in comparison. This continued for almost a minute before it gave one final fist to the loosely gasping bull, the heavy punch knocking its light-headed mind unconscious as a final breath arrived.

Walking back beneath the tree, he finally took a better look at the originally splendid structure. The bloodstains and corpses broke that silent beauty though.

The tree with silver bark appeared similar to the winter’s hope in a manner, but once he looked higher up, things changed completely. There were no leaves for this tree, instead small currents of air circled around the branches which carried countless snowflakes.

As well as this, giant rings of snowflakes floated all around the tree itself, forming five such layers of these rings, increasing in diameter the higher it rose from the ground. Strangely enough though, even the highest ring of this massive tree didn’t pass over the steep slope forming this pit.

But what amazed him even more was the incredible power of that gorilla, but at the same time a different sort of fear realised itself. While the beast held incredible power, it was only several times greater than his own… But compared to the girl, Raccelline?

He knew even this gorilla would lose against a small tantrum from her, how a small human frame held such power made no sense. Just who was she? Having a Sage for an uncle as well, perhaps making up with her was for the best.

This gorilla though, it wasn’t any less magical than the creatures attacking, but what stood out was the power of its body. Furthermore, its innate abilities all revolved around empowering its body, for both offence and defence.

With today's matter over and done with, it tore a leg off one of the other challengers to chew on. Each bite revealed several sharp teeth with the express design of tearing flesh off with every bite. And it so easily ate the tough, raw meat, on one occasion crunching through bone with ease.

Roughly speaking, this level of power compared to Steel rank warriors, although the level of brutality it displayed likely existed in only the worst of humans. He knew better than to fight something with such insane physical abilities, only with the lantern did he stand a chance of killing it.

As for mana in this place, it greatly exceeded anything reasonable. Being at least twice as high at this periphery, he couldn’t imagine how far it grew standing beneath those flurries of snowflakes. Either way, this place would quickly be monopolised on the mountain, and seeing nine slightly weaker beasts all dying like this only reinforced the difference in power.

He needed more bloodlines! He needed to grow faster!

He needed power!

Going through a book on mystical arbour once more, he found notes on different arctic node trees pretty quickly, comparing some beautiful images and knowing this to be the snowy heaven tree, given its name due to the rings of snow which form around it.

These are similar to the layers of heaven in some ancient religions, to clarify the actual heavens were real rings. Not that the religion believed it to appear like that. Its description went on just as long as the winter’s hope tree, and he didn’t bother to read it all. One more important point was that all these trees grow in large pits solely due to the rings of snow coming from the tree’s surroundings.

Looking down at the corpses below, some freezing while others bled without end, he wondered if the gorilla might trade for any of them. Although, he’d also rather avoid risking that. As it rested beneath the tree, some creatures took places on the downward slope while the weaker ones remained outside. The battle ended, and they had no right to interfere.

Also, what would he even trade for it? A beast, even intelligent, didn’t care for things like wealth or potions. Perhaps a pile of mana-rich plants could be used to trade, but a different question appeared.

What stopped it from killing him and taking them anyway?

With no rules, laws, or pride to stop it… He decided to avoid hanging around the snowy heaven tree for now, instead looking through the surroundings for items of interest.

With more natural mana there had to be a variety of different plants here!

It wasn’t long until he found a few as well, one being a sort of yam with sweet, yet bitter internals. Perhaps after being cooked its flavour would improve greatly, some books said that about bitter things in general. But due to its lacking bloodline, he threw it away after taking a few bites.

Something grabbed it just a minute after leaving, so at least it would see use.

Following which he found a mushroom with snowflake-like spores, on its cap was a green ring which seemed purely decorational; its spicy taste almost made him tear up in the process of eating. After that came his first plant with a new bloodline.

[Consumed Super-chill grape! Received 1% EXP]

Consumed Super-chill grape! Assimilation progress 1%]

A relatively valuable alchemy ingredient as well, their effect indicated by their name. For many potions, this grape’s juices are used to restrain reactions which emitted massive quantities of heat. As well as being rather unreactive, seeing that it had a bloodline was both a boon and a pain.

Super-chill grapes weren’t exactly the most common plant, even the few he found were actually the results of a sapling growing beneath the snow. While they directly grew off the sapling’s branches, when the tree fully grows, it instead forms a net of vines on which the grapes grow off.

Magical saplings being capable of flowering in snow is a whole different can of worms altogether.

Either way, finding unharvested grapes on fully grown trees is near impossible. More so because no such trees existed! Humans dig them up and transport them for personal use in most cases, leaving copious amounts of seeds and nutrients to grow more in the process.

However, the time to gather 110 grapes was only about two hours. Why’s that?

Because he didn’t have to tirelessly melt his way through snow for every single moment! By walking along the surface his mana sense eventually found saplings with ripe grapes, and after finding just twenty of these saplings he had more than enough.

Having loaded all the grapes into his storage belt, he also found some other plants in the meantime but no bloodlines. Although, some powerful spots of mana several times further down did draw his attention. It just wasn’t convenient to dig down that far while this close to the node tree…

He did try, but the slowly growing pile of snow drew attention, and resulted in a battle against a slightly weaker creature. A single Mental shock stunned for ten seconds straight while his tested out Great flame bolt for the first time.

The damage was… horrific. To say the least.

He didn’t see precisely how the animal died, but its eyes and brain boiled in seconds, the former so bloated he feared just touching the corpse would lead them to explode. At the point where his spell hit, a huge hole appeared with burn marks all over its body, just the residual flames singed some fur.

But the hole itself… bone crumbled to ash with fat, fluids, and blood turning into a sticky residual all around the blast site. Grabbing a piece of charred flesh to test, he looked at the pair of Nexus prompts.

[Killed level 11 Coldiron shrew! Received <1%

Consumed Coldiron shrew bloodline! Assimilation progress 2%]

It wasn’t exactly a strong creature, but another bloodline never actually hurt. If anything it might merge with something else to create a new, stronger path. Throwing it into his storage tool, he decided to head home, finally.

Oh! Almost forgetting, he retrieved the soul lantern and held it up with Telekinesis. As it simply hung in the air around the shrew’s place of death, some faint blue and white lights seemed to enter the lantern. While he couldn’t tell how much power this was, or if he wasted a load by not absorbing a soul straight away, he knew it worked.

Imagine if he hadn’t tested this out before waging war on another bug colony!

The journey back featured little in the way of amusements. A few field roots and earth-frost carrots also entered his storage tool, but at this point it filled up completely. And once back, everything promptly entered their usual spots, with the shrew corpse quickly cut apart for consumption.

Quite a bit of blood was lost in the battle, even if the Great flame bolt sealed most of its vessels instantly.

The shrew wasn’t a tiny thing, being a level 11 beast meant it needed both size and power. About as large as his hatchling form, he certainly obtained a fair quantity of meat from its body. With organs and blood separated as well, he mixed the meaty, metallic liquid with some ground field root and drank the mixture directly.

It was far better than his attempt at cooking the blood, albeit still a bit overpowering. He drank every last drop and got to work on cooking the flesh in a pot, this time doing so more thoroughly than the boar this morning.

Even though he didn’t feel so hungry as well, devouring the whole body was easy. So much so that he cooked the liver, heart, lungs, brain, and spleen together and ate them all at once. For the brain at least it didn’t seem to need much cooking.

And about halfway through eating that he received an expected result.

[Consumed Coldiron shrew bloodline! Assimilation progress 100%]

A surge of warmth passed through him, rather refreshingly after his last few bloodlines burnt painfully, and a considerable weakness left him curled up for about five minutes. It passed alongside a Nexus prompt.

[Coldiron shrew bloodline assimilated! 2 new bloodline directions potentially available]

Quickly finishing off the last of the shrew, he couldn’t help but admit some hunger remained. For meat at that… A bit of the Monk wasn’t too much, was it?

[Consumed Monk bloodline! Assimilation progress 66%]

As for the super-chill grapes, he chose to just leave them as a snack tomorrow. They’d help cover up the taste of more blood for now.