After killing the reindeer, he decided to just accept what happened and enjoy the bloodline it offered. It also gave him time to learn his very first light element spell which actually did damage! Called Solar blast, the spell not only lit up the surroundings for a few moments after detonating, but the rush of powerful light elements destroyed anything in direct contact, to a certain limit.

The process was along the line of ablation, but far more violent. Additionally, as a light element spell, it naturally purified weaker curses and cancelled out some dark element spells. While not immediately useful, he figured that learning light and dark spells had to pay off eventually.

These formless projectiles could even be enhanced with aura, so what was there to lose?

[Consumed Moonlight reindeer bloodline! Assimilation progress 19%]

By estimate, he believed this assimilation to be barely faster than the stormfrost wolf, given that, he began to feel worse about this bloodline. Either way, another Rare rank one was always good, and he always had those Nexus missions to work towards. What was his progress towards them anyway?

He’d collected 31 of the 50 asked for by the Nexus, arguably he could have finished this by now if he stopped caring about quality and just ate every new creature he happened across. But this mission was never the stopping point.

The next rank of bloodlines though… Right now he barely survived Advanced rank, but he still anticipated another Kandir giant bloodline to brutally injure him. As for something higher, without another evolution he refused to attempt it.

The Elder guard bones technically fulfilled this requirement as well, he just needed to be far stronger to survive its assimilation.

Utilising divinity two more times to complete mission 3 was almost a joke, its ease of completion pleased him. And finally…

Mission 4. Where he still needed 10 Rare and Advanced bloodlines, in each rank that is. Every Advanced bloodline was incomparably hard to find on this mountain, and he simply didn’t believe in collecting them all in the Evelard range. At least not without a few years to grant other beasts time to evolve. He pondered over all these figures after entering his mental space, and so began a long breadth of construction.

For the first couple hours, he somewhat hoped that the connection to his body allowed for aura to be transferred into the mental space, but that turned out to be incomparably wrong.

The boost in speed from his new bloodline definitely helped though. Only a couple hours in the heavy snow passed by the time his building’s walls now extended slightly higher than himself. And now he just had to continue until it reached a reasonable height.

On occasion he tasted the sweet, fruity snow to pass time, unsure of the exact flavour but realising that it too made an excellent treat. He wondered what might happen if something invaded his mental space and tried to eat it… Would they ironically try to keep him alive as a food source?

Now, not only did his body work as an infinite source of sweet treats, but so did his mind. While increasingly morbid, the joke helped pass time as a few more layers of bricks built up on his simple home.

He decided about 20 layers of brick to be enough. While too small to be a real house, it worked as a small storage room. Just something to completely house his mind and begin storing information was enough. The draw of photographic memory had also grown with every word he tried to learn. He just wanted to retain the information, that much wasn’t too much to ask for…

By the time he hit the ninth layer of bricks, he finally grew bored enough to exit the mental space and make some food. The sun just began setting on the horizon by now, and still greatly lit up the snowy mountain peaks. With few plans, he decided to take a look at the next target amongst the mana gatherer tree owners. He could formulate how to fight it, and before that, see if it would willingly join the wyvern’s side. So he left the cave soon after.

Once merged, it was just a hop, skip, and jump away.

On sight, he found another tree with those strange purple veins creeping up its trunk, although these leaves were a combination of colours besides green. Some fall colours like brown and orange, but also the sparse pure white ones. He didn’t understand the reason for its difference and simply sought out the beast beneath it.

Another bronze tier beast, this time cladded with… wool? What he saw was a sheep similar in size to the stormfrost wolf, nothing about it seemed abnormal besides the reserve of mana within. He approached it carefully, with clearly peaceful intent, and spoke in rough Beasten. “Hello there, I’ve come on behalf of my lord to invite you. As one of the stronger lords, he is likely to become the king.”

The brown-bodied sheep looked at him blankly, just staring at his ice-cream eyes with no discernable emotions. The lack of moving mana left him feeling safe, albeit a bit wary nonetheless, and he began to feel awkward from the silence.

However it finally blinked and turned away. Its eyes squinted slightly before it said, “Are you the one who killed that reindeer?”

Taken aback for a few seconds, he didn’t realise information travelled between trees so fast. Were intelligent beasts that much more common than he imagined? Perhaps one of the many smaller critters all around sent word to the other trees long ago, at least he hoped that was the answer.

What if it was something more insidious, like the anaconda spreading such things to make his life harder?

“Yes, it refused and wanted to kill me. Do you expect me to stand there and let it do me in?”

“I’m rather grateful, to be honest. He often came here to discuss how to take over the node tree. I never cared much for it… But my mistake was not telling him earlier. After a while I feared retaliation for speaking against him.” As he was unable to cut in, the sheep began going on about its unfortunate past with the reindeer.

Ever since gaining its moonlight-related abilities, it easily beat every other bronze tier beast amongst the mana gatherer trees… But it did not dare go against the node tree holder and quietly retreated to its own tree once more. That did not stop it from trying to constantly discuss attempts to take control and challenging other beasts for more battles.

From this, he found out that the moon it summoned could instantly attack any spells cast towards the reindeer and block them! When fully charged, it even grievously injured a level 19 lord on the cusp of steel tier, winning the fight there and then!

But! That moon clearly only worked on spells with power below Apprentice true spells. In theory his Voltaic blast could have also hit the reindeer, and then his spirit would have torn out its throat with ease.

Helix blast also would have worked now that he thought about it.

The sheep also spoke of its strange evolution a few months back, and how it claimed to come across some powerful corpse and consumed its intact, preserved brain to evolve. He cut its story at that point to ask, “Did it happen to mention where the brain was?”

“Some already looked, nothing nearby. And beasts aren’t exactly known for their memory.”

“Sorry, this did not go as planned. What do you say to joining our side? Our lord is far stronger than whatever owns this node tree.” The sheep seemed more than happy to talk after finding out that he killed the reindeer, and perhaps of all the beasts it was the most grateful. No longer did it have to put up with such arrogance.

Although, that reindeer had been smart about one thing. Whatever brain it ate, if any, absolutely made it powerful.

“I will take your side on this, lizard. But I will not join your lord until he subjugates the node tree. Until then, do come by freely, I am thankful to the one who allowed me some silence after all this time.” Even with such relief in its voice the sheep’s face remained blank.

But for the dragon, he mentally jumped with joy, with the second attempt at recruitment having gone so well already. And it didn't seem that any of the other beasts held the reindeer in high regard, so killing it meant no attempts at retaliation, hopefully. If anything, they might just respect his strength!

“My task is just recruiting the mana gatherer tree beasts. Someone else will take over the node tree. I wanted to ask, but are those purple veins healthy?” He’d considered it from first sight, but nothing about the way those veins spread up the tree looked natural, and seeing this second tree with off-coloured leaves had him worried.

“Ever since the mana heightened these things have appeared. They did not seem harmful at first, but none of us are confident now. The leaves change to these colours around this time of year, do not fret over that.

With all his questions more or less answered, the dragon decided to perform a few simple tests back at the reindeer’s tree first. Obtaining his first acceptance had been so easy, and it more than made up for his shrinking mistake from earlier.

“Farewell sheep, I am a dragon as well. Please do remember!” His Beasten remained rough, but as he saw the sheep’s brows clench ever so slightly, he knew the words got through.

That was the first time he actually managed to give that sheep a facial expression as well, and as the shock involved his species, how could it not fill him with glee?

On the stride back, his head bobbed as he both replayed the slight shock displayed by the sheep, objectively not that funny yet the dragon couldn’t help but chuckle over it. He soon pushed those thoughts aside and began thinking about the purple veins at depth.

While he was suspicious, the colour was both what tipped him off but also kept him only half sure. Purple isn’t an abnormal colour for some spells… the problem is that most magical plants focus their colour schemes very specifically. Like how winter’s hope trees all had silver-white bark with leaves of snow and ice.

Or these new mana gatherer trees having their more white-ish bark alongside vibrant green leaves, then undergoing a loss of leaves during the spring. It just made no sense for such a tree to have deep purple veins growing along its trunk.

He did not believe the reindeer to be the cause.

Back at the first tree, he first stabbed through the bark to test its sap and quickly identify the tree. And just as he saw a similar yellow liquid seep out, he realised that hundreds of small brown spots filled the fluid, immediately filling him with apprehension towards the substance.

Could he even get sick? Probably not, and what were the odds a body of ice-cream could be infected like a tree or other living creatures?

With a slight bit of caution remaining, he held the sap in midair with Telekinesis and used Lesser flame to boil it, at the same time some of the small brown dots shrunk in size until even his enhanced eyesight failed to locate them. If they were dead, then now was as good a time as ever to consume this.

He swallowed the small ball of sap with a paranoid expression. Once inside his stomach it all broke down rapidly and he found something of interest.

[Consumed verdant oak tree! Assimilation progress 1%

Consumed Seeping veil spores! Assimilation progress 0%]

It was time to research.