He pulled the mana away, seeing the lone brick remain on the thick snow of the mountain. It seemed so ordinary, but he could already feel the difference. The mana around him moved with a slight ease, and the weight on his mind already released significantly.

With every Jump seal becoming easier to lift, he knew the first brick to be part of his mental space. But it was merely the beginning of something greater.

Without waiting, he placed a second brick, spending just as long compressing it next to the one he placed. Then a third brick, and a fourth. It wasn’t that bad to place ten, but as he looked at the miniscule platform, he knew this to be just a starting point, and not even hitting entry level yet!

From ten bricks, he expanded out to twenty. Then to thirty, having now spent at least 15 minutes in the blizzard.

Sure, it stopped feeling cold once he dominated his mental space, but the flurry of snow remained. One by one, he laid out the bricks until forming a simple square platform. From those first two bricks, he laid rings further and further around to reach this point.

The square grew larger and larger, hitting fifty bricks at just 5 rings. But without anything better to do, he continued onwards.

At eighty bricks he could now comfortably lie down on the platform of 7 rings. But it was at 100 bricks, just halfway through the 9th ring, that things finally made a difference.

Thrust from his mental world, the dragon awoke in his home to feel a gnawing grow in his brain, like an itch deep within. The links connecting to his various seals all snapped, the powers dissipating as that sensation grew stronger.

But he held strong, just curling up into a ball and holding the itchy head tight. It was so close now… Just that one, last...

His ears popped, a cool stream passing through his very mind like an eternal relief sought by a captive in torment. Body relaxing, the world grew clearer and more detailed, his eyes and mind seeing more than ever before.

[Obtained title ‘Mental space beginning’. Unlock requisite - Achieve the first transformation of a mental space]

“It took that long to hit entry-level… But at least I’m finally here,” he absently said while flexing his body. Everything moved so much better than in his mind, every limb and muscle became responsive and controllable. The few parts of his mouth, which didn’t move perfectly like his tongue, also followed through. Pretty much no Beginner true spell troubled him at this point!

And even better, his mind increased in strength massively! A simple test with Jump seals showed that even with ten, he only barely felt the effect. He could possibly hold over a hundred on his body, a rather feeble thing as Jump seals are designed to be extremely expendable, not to mention very weak.

The Nexus provided a title as well, but knowing its effect meant that it wasn’t what excited him. As stated by its name, the title just allowed him to create a pulse of psychic power which related to the strength of his Mind palace, mediocre unless one had amazing psychic damage boosts or a massive palace.

What he actually cared about was another attempt at casting Pronounced telekinesis.

He began immediately. The spell completed easily enough, and soon he was watching its range of control increase with every second, and the weight increased more and more but never so much as to discomfort him.

Finally hitting its maximum, the full power of this improved spell weighed down the youngling, but nowhere close enough to even impede walking. Just as the book said, an entry-level Mind palace was critical for all dragons, even with his Pure mana bloodlines, its usefulness couldn’t be higher.

The process of forming 100 bricks took hours, and in the process filled up the Auric sack once more. Another dose of aura continued to strengthen the spirit, the strange liquid passing through its net of aura. He didn't think much of its growing strength before suddenly recoiling.

He heard a beat, a slow, gentle rhythm of the Auric spirit.

Its weak heartbeat.

There was no source, instead its whole existence beat at the same time. Every little node and strand of aura pulsating, not exactly audible but just very noticable to his keener senses. Fearing that his movements may damage the thing, he remained curled up and decided to continue building his Mind palace. Photographic memory was a great goal, except that it required a few thousands of bricks to achieve. Technically that is… Who knew how far away that day was. So he set his sights on something easier.

Build some low walls to grant minimal protection. This required hundreds of bricks, but felt far more manageable to achieve in a few days. On top of this, he wanted to learn a new spell with greater penetrative power in preparation against stronger beasts.

No doubt some on the cusp of evolution would grow rapidly in the newfound mana density, and he needed preparations against their new abilities or enhanced bodies. Not to mention, learning spells is a slope anyway, and only by constantly pushing could he make progress. The spell he selected was called Helix blast, one which combined wind, earth, and metal related words to create an impressive single-shot spell. Two streams of wind create a helical spiral of wind, quickly becoming a vortex through high speeds, then forming a sharp dagger-like piece of metal which was compressed twice over through earth elements.

The result is absolutely insane physical power, which claimed to pierce through the body of a Steel ranked warrior, and this included them using a skill to enhance their body!

While not perfect, he absolutely needed this spell as a last ditch resort. As well as, it helped learn some more words related to the metal element. Helix blast possessed 21 words, making it strong amongst Beginner true spells, but not the absolute pinnacle.

That belonged to the spell, Proto-barrier, a widely learnt but rarely used 24 word spell.

Why did most dragons learn it?

Because it forms the basis for pretty much all barrier magic before casting spells in Draconis. On its own, the Proto-barrier is barely stronger than Frost shell, but even just the simplest 30 word version can block most of his spells with ease! Only Helix blast could get through that ‘simple’ version, and it just goes on and on in regard to modifications and uses.

Proto-barrier doesn’t even necessarily have to become a barrier, instead having decorational and more pre-emptive options like warning or illusory variants.

He started off with learning some words for Helix blast, spending an hour to pick up all the words and now just going over the pronunciation and timing. No doubt his rate of memorisation improved drastically with an entry-level Mind palace, and as soon as he felt all 21 words were said perfectly… he stopped focusing on the spell.

Testing it sounded like fun, but he wanted to continue nurturing the spirit, and in that regard he decided to convert the now refilled sack of aura into a liquid and fed it the growing pulse some more. It guzzled down the fluid and in return emboldened the beat, how this thing even existed intrigued him to no end.

And having learnt Helix blast, to the best of his knowledge, the youngling cast the spell to re-enter his mental space. No obvious method of entry appeared yet, so he left it be while looking at the rustic stone platform beneath him.

100 bricks to create so little progress.

He held grand dreams of keeping a whole palace within, perhaps even one day creating massive walls around the mountain’s periphery to further bolster mental defences, although those thoughts fell apart when reminded of the time taken to just place a single brick.

One by one, that’s what mattered most. In the meantime, he also thought a bit more about what to really do in the future.

Owning this mountain didn’t really appeal to him, unless it came with some incredibly useful resource he needed to watch and consume every day. Even then, he wanted to see the world far more… And eat some of the sweets mentioned by draconic connoisseurs!

For now though, this mountain range fit his needs in having tonnes of ancient skeletons with powerful bloodlines. If he wanted to find anything similar it would result in this ice-cream dragon being a quick meal, although he wondered how his luck was good enough to end up on this mountain of all places.

Believing his parents chose this place specifically, he found a few reasons for this besides the originally low mana density.

Most notably are the weak surroundings, Remelo is a rather ordinary kingdom and none of the books mentioned it! While the Ancient empire of man was at least worthy of some discussion, proving which forces truly mattered on this continent.

Another reason was that this mountain contained low, but not non-existent mana densities. As dragons require the mystical power, placing an egg on one of the mountains completely lacking of mana is stupid, even for a dragon. This specific range was the weakest on the third world, but still had mana.

Leaving just one final reason.

No powerful creatures actually lived here. The strongest should be as strong as a young adult dragon, not even a fully grown one, pretty much guaranteeing his ability to dominate one day… If everything hadn’t gone to hell. But he didn’t want to stay here anyway, the lack of communication was killing him. At least the Nexus interacted occasionally, but his understanding of human languages and desires to actually talk with other beings had grown immensely.

Ah, he hit 200 bricks as well. A very productive hour of work once more, but still he found the platform a bit too small to act as a room. Now he could stand and walk around a bit, but with walls, his tail would constantly be hitting the sides, an undesirable fact. Also, he didn’t want to demolish half the buildings created simply because of another growth phase down the line.

Based on that alone, he continued building with a myriad of things to ponder over.

Like, who betrayed that first group of humans? And what were their intentions?

Or how to charge the soul lantern? Travelling to the human empire and maybe even living there momentarily?

How about a more current situation in the form of, where to allocate his points at the moment?

So many questions, with so much time on this mountain. He really had no clue where to start or end, having no real goals in mind besides survival and meeting his parents again…

He really had to find those two again someday. As proof of the possible success any hatchling may present, he felt aggrieved that his own family saw him as a burden over at least providing some minimal aid!

Sometime later he hit around 300 bricks, not that he even noticed as no effects happened after the 100 brick mark. Instead, he left the mental space to produce more liquid aura, feeding his hungry spirit soon enough.

No longer did its beating web simply exist, instead concentrating that pulsation to a specific point like its own heart. The web itself felt far more stable as well, making him believe the thing either possessed some strange, natural intelligence, or grew with powerful instincts towards a certain form.

Actually… This bloodline effect belonged to a race of giants. “Nexus, how can assimilation allow me to utilise these traits?”

[Based on recorded data, after a bloodline is assimilated it is mostly scrapped as a majority of it only applies to the original species. However, some parts, seemingly at random according to current data, do remain and may be used during evolution for such traits]

That was a nice reply and all, but it actually told him very little about the question itself. This process also sounded strangely similar to how the Kandir giant divinity could automatically create derivative bloodlines under certain conditions. Clearly the Nexus had no clue though, and he let up again. In the end, he received another question which required him to take personal action.

With nothing else to do once more, he ended up placing another 200 and something bricks to extend the ring out to its twentieth layer. While not perfect, he believed it to be a suitable storage space, and in the future could serve as a random shed-like building in his Mind palace.

Perhaps even house some sort of creature which lived in one’s mental space!

Leaving again, he continued the feeding process as per usual. While slower to allow the sack to refill naturally, it gave him time to grow in other useful ways instead. It didn’t take long to completely feed it once more. The condensed pulsing grew stronger and he noticed pulses travelling between the nodes of aura, they appeared close to random.

And just then, a burst of information filled his mind; the spirit instantly transferred all it knew to its master!