“Is there a problem, Kia?” The president in his white admiral uniform looked towards his secretary closing the set of doors behind her. As the handles clicked back into place, the bite marks on her lips could still be seen as she turned and walked over. In a rather standard loose skirt and a tight blouse only half buttoned-up, whatever she heard must’ve been bad for her to not maintain that frigid persona seen in public.

“Somewhat. A few of the investigation groups overheard the civilians discussing island 357.” Fixing a couple of the upper buttons, she paced over to him with the written reports in hand.

He didn’t show any strong emotions and made his own comments on the matter, although guesses fit better as an unbiased descriptor. “For food? The resources? This island has more than enough land. For what possible reason do they care about that forsaken place?”

He was no stupidly evil leader. In the first place, he obtained the role by winning the people’s hearts. From there, a slow acquisition of power made it near-impossible for anyone to successfully revolt. Not that many had reason to.

She continued speaking as he read the report, reporting the crux of what happened. “Rumours of the beasts on the island suddenly appeared. We think it was one of the cities up north, but the only conclusive fact is that the individuals were warriors. Of course, that wasn’t the bad part, it’s due to the human warriors that escaped without a trace that criticism appeared.”

Along with details of the report, he pieced together the situation rapidly.

“These fools think I can’t keep this place protected.” His face turned ugly, and an empty palm hit the desk, shaking the room slightly with some items on shelves rocking. But there was so little he could do. That island down south, untouched for centuries, was a hellhole.

And that was the kindest descriptor.

In his other hand was a quill pen hovering over its inkwell, prepared to sign all the reports and have them stored in confidential dimensional storages. But even so, he continued to hold it and tapped his finger against the desk while looking at the sheets below. A short speech he’d be giving soon at one of the island’s many yearly festivals… But now?

He scrunched every last page into a ball and gently placed it on the table’s edge.

“How much do they know about the island?”

“Just that it’s filled with gold tiers. But some already suspect that stronger beasts exist.” This wasn’t great, but at least none of them were panicking over the master tiers. It gave him options for a better solution.

“Those warriors who escaped. I want to know where they went, and have a message sent to the Stormbreakers in Avril Port. Gather everything about them. If any of them are valuable, they must not be killed. Capture them if possible.” While a weak addition, it reminded the people who held the strongest might on this island.

However, before taking any more immediate action, he thought for some time. Kia left the office and returned by the time he thought things through well enough, although she first informed him, “The request was sent, but they were not available at the moment.” He hushed right after.

“Those seventeen people who acted as the sources for these rumours? Force their employers to fire them all. Those who refuse can get one more chance tomorrow. Include their businesses in the rota if they refuse a second time… Spread rumours of a large-scale expedition and bounty, something which portrays trust in my leadership. And prepare some vessels for hauling large objects; if they wish for the island to be cleaned, then who am I to reject them?”

The ‘surveyance’ rota, as it was officially named, involved just as much harassment as one expected of it. Legitimately, it existed for some high-risk businesses to stay in line as they might be working with toxic materials that killed everyone on that street if mishandled.

But in time, it found its way to incur huge penalties onto ordinary businesses which didn’t have to have such high standards. And so, it became a tool for the president to control the economic sector if anyone went out of line.

Over the course of the next couple hours, he continued to give out orders and observe the situation. Very little information about the passengers of that crashed ship existed for some reason. His informant in the Port claimed to know nothing besides there being five adults, a young girl, and some sort of scaled companion beast.

It matched the information from all those months ago, so he did not believe anything was modified. Why would their identities be so classified though?

He maintained the order to capture them, not kill. It was a tiny objective though, instead focusing on his rather small army’s preparations and setting aside a sizable fund to purchase the gold tier beasts killed off by the couple hundred Gold rank warriors in his city. Large-scale operations took serious time to start though, so rumours were just as helpful at the current stage. Additionally, he wouldn’t even have to move out the Mithril ranks that he gathered!

There hadn’t actually been any beasts of a similar tier on island 357 in years now!

* * *

His fear of the elephant bloodline proved itself now, but the fact is that he was lucky to be alive, all things considered. Six potential evolutions was the limit his body could handle, and that was with or without his makeshift spell slowing down the heat generated. The mutative power of this bloodline almost knocked him out instantly, but this time he retained lucidity with a stronger mind and soul than what happened with the Warborne bloodline.

It still felt wrong to him. He would have died. Not a maybe, or a possibility. It was a certain fate.

And that’s why he only did it with confidence. He’d been burning the souls of gold tiers for a couple months at this point, assimilating bloodlines and fiddling with his new soul armaments when possible.

The Bodily Acceleration innate ability attached to the watch was his greatest interest though. It replaced the soul power requirements with mana, and its acceleration feature could even be sped up well beyond just 50 times, but for efficiency, he generally maintained only 10 times acceleration with the ability. But the question arose, where exactly did he precisely target the effect?

And that also answered how he even survived that wicked assimilation.

He accelerated his own bloodline, learning to sense and differentiate the two powers, then applying a grand effect all over his body which temporarily accelerated the suppression of assimilation. The effect was rather obvious.

An assimilation which took minutes to complete, was now completed in just ten or so seconds. The tougher ones, anything Rare+ and above, still took time to suppress. However, it barely left an ache within his body at the end. Meanwhile, when they actually hunted a stronger gold tier with an Advanced bloodline, he comfortably assimilated it without even a single emanation of heat. The World-shaker elephant would have killed him before, but after using the pocket watch to speed up his body twice in the process, it quietly settled after boiling him alive.

Even with his body at ten times its normal speed, he partially melted and received burn marks on his scales. Going with that as a baseline and assuming the elephant was ‘Legendary+’, he might just barely survive a Legendary rank bloodline with the help of his makeshift spell.

However, each use of his pocket watch for a ten times acceleration required about 60% of his MP. Luckily, his most recent bloodline provided such a massive boost in max MP, on top of the tanks full of gaseous mana inside his Mind palace.

It’d taken nine and a half months of training to reach that point.

And since then, it’d been a couple weeks. So much for a year of training. They were all tired of this place 10 months in. Raccelline’s tolerance surprised them most of all, given her age, surely the time felt even more tedious and annoying.

At this point, it could be seen that no one saw any reason to stay. All three warriors long since learned the skills they acquired in the nearby city, one which everyone hated because of its deep restrictions. Honestly, with the exception of Raccelline, they’d have happily learnt the language and stayed there for a year instead… If anyone welcomed those from the continent.

Mala, out of sheer boredom after learning a bit over 100 Intermediate true spells, decided to learn an eighth spell structure. She finished that just a few days back but wanted to leave as far back as two months ago.

Darak’s personal shield from healing took quite a bit of work to grow effectively, but after 10 months it already reached a point of surviving quite a few attacks from gold tiers. Stronger ones broke it in just one or two hits, but weaker ones needed at least a dozen. Spells were a different matter entirely though, as he finished learning the few they bought very early on.

Overall, these 10 months of growth actually exceeded the progress they made in around five years before meeting Icy. And to say it all came down to wealth would be undermining the experiences they’d been through.

But. It was time to go.

To build a simple raft, Icy and Mala rapidly chopped down trees, then carved along their lengths to equalise their thicknesses. With the others gathering vines and tougher reeds where possible, everyone just did their best to get it set up as soon as possible. For good reason too, all of the requirements that Icy set himself had more or less been met.

At first, although he learnt to cast spells using souls, it didn’t always work.

These past couple months mostly focused on him not only growing his soul power, but manipulating and controlling them without making any pop. Not at a 70% success rate whilst in battle, and almost always succeeding while the group were on stable ground, why wouldn’t they leave?

Unfortunately, a serious matter wasn’t foreseen.

While out to gather the vines and reeds, the three warriors and Darak did not seem the slightest bit exhausted or bloodied. To walk through the jungle of this island and not encounter a beast was strange. In fact, none of the three on the beach heard any sounds of battle.

“There really wasn’t anything. Some steel tiers, but Jaren took care of them all… but if there’s a battle going on, then why is everything so quiet?” Korridan shook his head at the two’s disbelief, and instantly both spellcasters used observation spells to take a look at the island.

Icy’s Sky Sight Barrier went up first, and he looked down on the island to see thousands of beasts all on the northern half, charging towards a great barrier which couldn’t be seen at ground level. However, he didn’t get to observe for long as his spell suddenly broke as something hit it…

Mala too, showed surprise, but with her hand massaging her head, clearly, something broke her spell as well. She used an Intermediate true spell as well, so it couldn’t have been some random gold tier which stopped her.

Instantly fearing an oncoming mithril tier, the group dropped the parts of their simple raft and immediately ran out onto the water. Icy and Mala both threw basic invisibility spells onto every member of the group while they ran, such spells only stopped them standing out like a sore thumb on the clear horizon.

Only after a minute or so, when the island was a fair distance away, did they slow down and look closely at the coast. With Icy’s mana sense they could be sure of nothing popping up beneath them.

Still, nothing could be seen…

“Not good. Defensive positions!” With Jaren’s warning, Icy brought out his second soul armament and stood slightly behind Korridan, Rebecca did her best to enter an invisible state, but the water made it extremely hard to maintain complete stealth. Meanwhile, Jaren and Mala stood on either flank with Darak at their centre, Raccelline stood in front of him as protection with a blade of her own.

A grey blur escaped the treeline and dashed over the water at such speeds that none of them could discern the shape. Merely three seconds, that was how quickly the blur crossed a distance that took them a minute to cross.

They were so fucked.

Icy didn’t really have to explain what his mana sight observed of the grey-furred beast in front of them. Not even trying to hide its mana, all of them felt how just the residual amount it emitted already pushed against their Gold rank bodies…

“You’re not with those humans. So why the hell are you on my island?” It spoke only in Beasten, directing those words to Icy. However, the young dragon didn’t exactly feel confident talking to this foe.

Because he tried to look it in the eyes and almost entered a daze. This was a master tier.

And now they had to not die.