The next morning approached with the dragon feeling wonderfully rested. He immediately went to see the wyvern for both his daily bowl of blood and to report better news on acquiring the sheep’s trust.

He could also use this as a chance to mention the seeping veil mushrooms, just so that someone watched over its growth and stopped the dream monsters from invading too soon.

[Consumed Blue storm wyvern bloodline! Assimilation progress 45%]

“I received confirmation from one of the lords that they will join once you take over the node tree,” he said in Draconic. Beasten worked great for communication with beasts in general, but his lower capabilities made it a bit troublesome to use.

“Then continue. There is no need to report until all trees are captured, or you meet an enemy you truly cannot beat.”

The wyvern did not seem bothered with the matter, and so he moved on to the more pressing part. Then said, “Also… The dream realm is invading that place. Should I search for the nightmare stalk?” His leader’s eyes opened finally.

He spoke seriously to the young dragon, “You did your research. Leave it be, I want to see what thing is trying to invade. A source of those denizens will greatly increase the value of the trees.”

“Understood.” No more had to be said, both sides knew why they wanted the monsters of that realm to invade.

He left the wyvern’s abode and as he left a single chuckle escaped the large beast’s throat. While a bit naive, it enjoyed having company who could keep up with his plans. Albeit, just a little.

The dragon intended to complete some other goals today though, and headed to the reindeer’s tree in hope of finding the butterfly corpse, his first and foremost goal. Since the dream realm was of no concern, he didn’t bother investigating further, and right now absolutely needed to take advantage of the calm.

Once the dream realm raided, he would likely be part of the front line. Such great benefits and dangers came in pairs… although he wished to skip them entirely if possible.

Nonetheless, this was the price of having the wyvern save him back there. Being forced to fight meant nothing in comparison.

With a merged spirit he reached the reindeer’s verdant oak tree, no beast dared take the spot beneath it, and he began focusing on his mana sense for anything of interest. Obviously, the veins contained a different movement of mana to the tree itself, and the infection spread down the roots. Both the tree’s own roots as well as the one used to transfer mana to the node tree.

However, besides the large tree beside him, no other serious sources of mana existed, just like the sheep said.

It felt unlikely that the reindeer travelled too far from the tree, but at the same time it seemed impossible for something to be hidden closer to the node tree. At least, the area between the two was almost entirely flat snowy ground with some small hills. No room for powerful, uneaten corpses existed there.

One hidden too far below could never have been found by the reindeer as well. In other words, it moved away from the node tree, and likely came across a previously blocked off cave or something of the sort.

Immediately moving away, his first instinct was the check the nearby mountain walls. Like his current home near the wyvern’s mountain, he wanted to see some small holes leading to deeper cave networks. As long as he approached his mana sight would immediately pick up on it…

And then a Third eye could easily investigate deeper.

He considered it a great investigative method, and before long came across several small caves. Some dug out by bronze tier creatures seeking a home, and a few more natural ones.

So far, neither extended more than a dozen metres into the mountain. And as his mana sense had yet to pick up anything worthy of notice, he only continued the search. But it couldn’t go on forever, only so much space existed around here. And soon…

He found it!

A cave which appeared to have recently collapsed, with snow purposely being used to cover the rocks.

With the help of Pronounced telekinesis and his spirit, it was a breeze to clear the snow and rocks, revealing a passage so deep it only descended into pitch-black darkness. A Third eye and controllable light immediately went down to check on the situation, simply travelling lower and lower through twisting and branching tunnels.

Sometimes he met with a strange creature below, many of which destroyed the eye before he even took a good look at them. However, he stopped taking those routes immediately in hope of finding the one that reindeer used.

It was not fast by any means, but it was safe.

After half an hour of attempts, trawling Third eyes through dozens of passageways, he finally found one which opened up to a small cave with a lack of hostile creatures. Something seemed to be shining a mellow light into the room, and he kept the Controlled light spell away for now. As the Third eye entered, it immediately noticed the bright rocky ball above, laced in a gentle white light, it looked no different from a miniature moon. Like a large bulb in glorious splendour, it lit up the small cave to reveal hundreds of small drawings of moons all over.

Little things drawn by someone, or something, and all of them rather poor artwork in his opinion. But the importance of this place was not lost. It had to be a grave, why else create such an amazing moon…

And only then did he see it properly.

It was no moon hanging from the ceiling. Instead a giant pair of wings, still radiating with the powerful moonglow all the way from the days of its life.

That thing was the butterfly, and after moving further into the cave he was greeted to the sight of thousands of tiny moons covering the cave floor.

Thousands, truly thousands, of tiny butterflies no different to the one above. Their light, weak and mild, like little stars.

A closer look showed the edge of the butterflies’ wings to be a dark beyond normal means, so much so that light absorbed by the moon on their wings appeared untouched by anything else.

A sole celestial body dominating the night sky.

However, beneath this moon laid a body. One with its head torn off in a frenzied effort to eat it. Undoubtedly the source of its moonlight powers, but this no longer mattered as he could now assimilate this butterfly.

With the path recognisable, he now just had to leave a trail all the way back. To do so, his spirit left obvious markings in the wall to direct a return, and soon enough he stepped into the almost untouched cave. Just ten minutes later, he walked into the cave himself and cut off the Third eye.

The cave’s splendour was not lost on him, as he took in the sights like no other. This being a strange tomb for the dead of this powerful species. Only a few minutes after looking through the drawings and selection of small, starlike butterflies, did he finally try eating them.

[Consumed Lunar-scaled butterfly bloodline! Assimilation progress 1%]

He was not surprised that the bloodline differed, the sheer power between the large and small butterflies made such a thing obvious.

With insect newborns all being larvae, it made no sense for an adult of the same species to be significantly stronger than any other of their race. That is, unless they knew of methods to train and broke through whatever limits they had. Therefore, the only reason for a couple extremely powerful creatures to exist is random mutations, or they were an entirely different species altogether.

An example of this are the Ice ants when compared to the royal guards of their species. One are cannon fodder that even a human toddler could kill, while the other is a threat with power near bronze tier! But the difference in power is still just one tier.

This rationalisation didn’t go on long as he shovelled the tiny butterfly corpses into his mouth rapidly. Cooking them wasn't even worth it as that lovely embracing sensation filled his body with every further swallow. Before long, he finished its assimilation feeling slightly weakened but not enough to struggle walking.

[Assimilated Lunar-scaled butterfly! 2 new bloodline directions potentially available]

Throughout the whole assimilation he didn’t even register the pleasant warmth, completely swept up by the moonlight’s far more tempting, soothing energy.

If he wasn’t well aware of the nourishing properties offered by moonlight, he’d have been far more cautious. Especially since the Divinus-coated bones in the battlefield almost possessed him.

But dragons understood the mental properties well enough that he simply bathed in its excellence.

But that soon faded as its energy was consumed.

Next came the most important part of this cave, the far stronger butterflies’ body. While eating insects wasn’t a problem for him, a preference for cooked bugs naturally came about overtime. Cleaning them also improved the taste by a large margin, and after so many years in this cave he refused to believe this meat was fresh.

Full of bloodline energy? Sure!

But not completely dehydrated from microbial invasions?

He’d be cooking and washing it. First he cut up the fallen body with its brain eaten. In size, its body was just slightly larger than him. But with gigantic wings that utterly eclipsed him, he took care to carefully cut them away from the body for storage.

Such powerful wings could be used for many years to come, whether sold for products in the future or simply hung on a wall to infuse his home with moonlight.

However, he doubted this much body mass fulfilled its evolution and looked to the insect above. From this angle he better saw its similarly desiccated head, yet its eyes still gleamed with a reflection of moonlight. Some dragons say that the bodies of powerful beings are exquisite artworks, and absolutely worth collecting. He could see the appeal, but did not find any personal drive for it.

He saw beauty, and his stomach called out to devour it.

Moving the telekinetically driven blade upwards, he slipped its tip underneath its neck and sliced apart the flesh with ease. In just a few moments he removed what he needed and hoped the corpse remained above…

Just for a while, this place could be his personal sanctuary. If he needed to relax or recover, nothing else truly matched.

With the corpse of one butterfly, and the head of another, he now believed to have enough of its body. Even if this bloodline was above the Kandir giants, he knew this to be enough because of this place’s identity.

A sort of inheritance ground.

For beasts attuned to moonlight to awaken those bloodlines, but more specifically aid the other moonlight butterflies in advancing to the level of those two stronger ones… Clearly something happened to entrap all the weaker ones though, resulting in the mausoleum he witnessed.

A sad end for them; A bountiful one for himself.

But there were more bloodlines to collect!

Over the past day, he collected bundles of eternity ferns, enough to complete the assimilation in just 10 more days. His body digested them at a set speed, and nothing he did sped this up. And if he overate, it was known to lead to temporary comas.

With the spirit merged once more, he began a hasty climb across mountains to return home. His mental improvements made this speed a lot easier to keep up with, and aside from the occasional stumble, he crossed the range of three node trees in about two minutes.

On a mountain range with about 50 node trees, each possessing between 6 and 8 mana gatherer trees, it was hard to grasp its true size by his little cutout beside just a single node tree.

But in truth, the Evelard range is in no way small. It was just unprofitable, and that stopped being the case recently…

Racing across the snow faster than many birds flew, he knew that travel wouldn’t be an issue in the future. In just three minutes, he finally reached the side of the range’s largest mountain… the sea-freezing crab’s home. Staying a fair distance away, he simply ran past anything which bothered him, very few steel tier beasts matched his speed and they simply didn’t care enough to chase.

However, at around five minutes, his speed began to slow, the aura within him coming to a dangerously low point. The spirit simply could not maintain such motion for so long, and he forced it to unmerge and rest, at the same time converting mana into liquid aura for it to recover with.

He was still a distance from his home, in fact near to his original winter’s hope tree. By foot, he saw it taking half an hour, although a Wind burst seal reduced that somewhat…

Why was Assisted flight an 80 word spell of all things?

True flight was 459 words in comparison, a spell no dragon used due to a version in Draconis being easier to cast!

After some time, an hour, from his estimates of the sun’s movement, he reached his real home and collected the crystal-frilled lizard corpse before grabbing some solar-death shrooms. And so began the journey back to the wyvern’s abode, where he was truly safe.

Just another hour-long journey…

Whenever the spirit completely recovered that is.