With the gravity finally gone, he was able to stand up with the rose in his mouth and look about. When he touched the barrier, it clearly restricted him, and leaving was impossible. Unless the mechanism below deactivated, he had no way to escape.

“Detected successor bloodline… Detected enemy bloodline. Detected— Detected— Detected! Succession Accepted! Succession Rejected! Succession—” An emotionless voice spoke in Beasten for the whole room, in a way its speech reminded him of the Nexus’ way of speaking.

However, before it could continue, the voice cut out and in his senses some sort of crystal in the altar’s arrays suddenly shattered. However, the array remained active, and in turn, so was the barrier.

“Did my bloodline break something again? The fact this is only the third time is probably good luck. But now… How do I escape?” He quickly accepted that one of his many gathered bloodlines caused the array to stop attacking him, but then it never anticipated that something with so many diverse bloodlines could actually survive!

The result… Something which made a horrendous mistake, and in this case utterly broke.

Once more, he’d been given a massive boon due to his ability to assimilate bloodlines.

It wasn’t a bad tradeoff, all things considered, no doubt the other beasts considered him dead, but he might as well be if he didn’t escape from this barrier in the next couple of months. A dragon starving to death is pretty damn rare, so at least his place in the statistics would be a bit interesting. Another morbid joke, but he’d grown used to it and even found comfort in the ridiculous ideas. He’d die when he was ready to, not as long as there was any fighting chance. And so, he did his best to brave the glowing mass below and used his mana sight to try and identify some weakness in the array.

An impossible task if not for having a library of his own to grasp how exactly arrays worked in the first place.

What mattered first was understanding the part which he broke. A crystal about the size of his head which did not seem to be the core of the array, but rather an important supplementary part. From what he knew, these supplements often managed the main array itself, giving finer control and greater responsiveness.

Such things are important if you want an array to react fast enough, or quickly change on the fly, for example, it disabled the instant a scan of his bloodlines completed as it detected acceptable ones mixed in.

Spells to scan bloodlines start appearing around the master tier, making this whole platform no small pushover. It likely needed the space since a mithril tier beast forcibly cast a higher tier spell through this method, but the fact it remained intact after all this time was…

“That’s a burnt connection? Wait, are all those lines actually burnt?” In his mana sight, he glimpsed at some passages where a concentration of mana resided, but it did not flow like the active parts of the array. At first, he considered these failsafes, as a way to ensure the array didn’t shut down from a single break.

But if what he saw was actually the array simply breaking down over time, he pretty much already formulated a way to escape this place. However, he needed to wait and see if his guess proved right, if not then a method invoking brute force might be required.

This gave an excellent amount of time to focus on recreation and relaxation…

Okay, not really. He spent the better part of a day writing down a 72 word spell in its full form as his main escape method from the barrier, and then attempted to cast it. It took him three tries, and 25 seconds, to finally cast it once.

A ball of wind appeared in the air, ordinary enough on its own and no better than some 12 word spells. But then the changes began.

The winds turned black and lustrous, and the originally floaty ball looked no different from a metallic orb, yet still the winds whisked about within as though a liquid. From appearance alone it was ominous, and then it began to seep with a quickly falling black gas, easily mistaken as a toxin to those without magical knowledge.

And then the whole orb blew up, dissipating before he allowed the final step to complete.

Some of the black winds contained struck the barrier, only to leave ripples, whilst one, unfortunately, hit him and left a deep cut. It sliced his scales apart like snow, and he simply focused on pushing the mana of the attack outside his body before anything worse occurred. A 72 word Intermediate true spell… It drained 75% of his MP in a single cast, and the splitting headache just from that single use made the fact clear.

Fortunately, his rapid absorption kicked in right after, and thankfully the barrier didn’t stop mana or air from passing through.

Array mutilation is a spell which does… Somewhat what you’d expect.

While it did mutilate arrays, the way it went about doing this is rather specific and made it unbelievably niche compared to spells which outright destroyed them or created random blockages in hope the array couldn’t clear them all before failing.

However, mutilation only worked on the condition that an array was already damaged, which gave it a single ‘normal’ use. To clear our damaged arrays in old ruins.

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what he was using it for, albeit because he was the main source of damage here. As such, when more of the array burnt out from continued use, he could cast it and watch as the almost glue-like spell seeped into the array connections and found damaged portions to fill up. The spell then took effect and effectively fed the array’s mana to itself, causing more damage as it spread throughout.

In effect, Array mutilation was a cancer which could be given to damaged arrays.

It had taken hours to find a perfect spell for destroying it, but since he could mutilate it before dealing the final blow, he believed this to be the best method. However, he knew the currently semi-intact array would recover before this mutilation grew to a substantial size, and for now, simply waited.

Whether a week or a month… Eventually, the array would burn itself out more and more, until the spell wore away the entire thing and he finished it off. But in the meantime, he did the logical thing and focused on building his Mind palace, as well as further transforming his heart. With the spirit receiving multiple feedings a day, he hoped that it neared its transformation as well, but there was little hope there.

“Now if only I knew how to get back at those bastards…” He frowned when considering his lack of ability in fighting back. It frustrated him immensely… But this is why so many sought power in any world.

It was how things worked.

* * *

“Raccelline, you need to hold back your punches more. Now there’s nothing left to collect from this ent. Are you alright?” Mala rubbed her forehead whilst going up to check on the young girl who accidentally turned a building-sized tree into a pile of timber with a single move.

Any valuable sap within had been splattered over the surroundings, and its fruits more or less smashed on impact, an unfortunate waste, but it was better than Raccelline first attacking something a month ago. Back then she casually hit a tree and it blew up into a thousand splinters, fortunately not injuring the group but taking hours to remove from their clothing and armour. It’d been a painful first week with her.

As they confirmed the child’s safe situation, it was clear that she was distraught. Understandably so, as she was rarely ever berated or told off for attitude at home. But after a month and multiple discussions, she’d come to understand the nature of her situation a bit better. Although, explaining such a reality to a child is far from easy. She didn’t seem all that hostile to fighting as a whole, although the requirement of physical labour was perhaps what caused the largest source of displeasure. Still, she was truly curious about the world around her at all times, and even more so about the adventurers who accompanied her to the south.

With her great education, she was able to read and write to a standard that even Mala deemed excellent, however, her actual knowledge of the world was the worst amongst them. And combined with the endless curiosity of a child who’d grown up in a birdcage her whole life…

“Mala what’re those rings for? Mala what’s the difference between that tree and that one? What about this plant? Why does it glow? What’s that animal? Why do you have to shout when you use your axe Korridan?” They enjoyed the life and energy she gave to the party, but none of them realised just how… adventurous she was. Touching plants without the slightest thought, jumping into caves with beasts in them, even just going up to random things and shouting at the top of her lungs what such a thing was.

As much as her strength got them out of prickly situations, it also got them into such problems just as often.

At the very least, she made sure to absorb pretty much anything she was told when a question was answered. If not for already being a ridiculous powerhouse, they’d have all wanted to take her as a disciple. Then again, no doubt there were Sages who’d want to take her as a disciple.

Besides all of those situations, as the group called them, the young girl really didn’t give them as much grief as they’d imagined. She remained respectful and courteous at most times, and rarely threw a tantrum or cried. If she truly was saddened, she became quiet and withdrawn, which often resulted in Darak coddling her for the better part of a day by carrying her all the way to their next stopping point or till the group set up camp for the night. They worried at first that more people would bring them under fire for having a literal child with them… But honestly, things weren’t great.

In some taverns or streets it was even possible to hear people talk about the missing emperor, as well as how the Empire’s greatest Great sage recently lost in battle against an eternal’s Great sage. Some merchants cautiously began assuming the worst, and the knock-on effects could be felt throughout the continent.

While chaos had yet to sweep over the land, the people had begun hoarding grains and other long-lasting crops. Medicine slowly but constantly crept up in price, and it became clear that general purpose magical tools had also been growing in price, explosively.

As things grew worse, the group knew more than ever that they needed this dragon’s help to survive the oncoming calamity. Especially with the time bomb known as the emperor’s daughter in their group, none of them even for a moment considered giving the girl up to save their own skin. Even Jaren, perhaps the most pragmatic of their group, didn’t even joke with such an idea. He had his limits, and refused to break them.

But it’d been a whole month and a week before the group crossed the one-third mark to Remelo.

Of course, they could speed up the journey drastically by reducing their hunting, but this threatened their finances, used to afford inn rooms, food, potions, weapon maintenance, and even simple regents for some of Mala’s spells.. Not to mention local taxes on adventurers, in the worst of cases slashing their earnings by 30%.

And so, they’d tried to train Raccelline up in combat such that they could harvest steel tier monsters and beasts far faster than usual, but the results were…

Very similar to that ent.

Fortunately they never allowed her to attack creatures made of flesh and blood. The mess would’ve been atrocious.

And so, that was how the recent past had been for the group of six. Whilst calm and refreshing, combined with a hint of cuteness and annoyance, they all truly feared the ramifications of their knowledge by the day.

It was an exhilarating and frightening time to be alive.