The day finally arrived. Icy didn’t even bother trying to dispute the logic of him undergoing a fight to the death for no truly beneficial reason beyond the aggravation of Lostradus and those flames.

He didn’t have a leg to stand on, but at the same time, he lacked a way to truly escape.

Raccelline already confronted him that very morning with the whole group present, her grievances the greatest of them all as she unhappily held him by the neck and refused to let go. Saying to him, “Why do you have to go? You might actually die! Why do you keep on doing this!?”

Her shouts combined with stress waned towards sobs, but she forced back any tears because of the anger she held towards him. Clearly unhappy that he effectively ‘sacrificed’ himself for no good reason.

“We could have teleported away, left the stone for a few more months and come back for it later. Or just refused Lostradus’ request, he already lost to you and would’ve died,” Mala also raised a couple fair points, but he knew that the divinity within him wouldn’t have allowed the latter to happen.

As for the former… He didn’t get to reply as Korridan exited his meditation for a moment to answer that, “You’re generally smarter than me when it comes to these things. Or are you just willing to risk your life that much?”

“Talking confusingly is my thing, what do you mean?”

“That elder, or whatever dragon supports Lostradus, would probably kill us the moment we exit the other elders’ sight. It just takes a single instant for someone like them to ruin us… But if Icy wins here we stay protected and that dragon can’t harm us.”

“But if he loses then he DIES!!” Raccelline’s shouts turned to Korridan this time, clearly even more upset by the likelihood of what happens next.

“Hey,” he jabbed the pouting girl with the tip of his tail, whose arms gripped his neck a bit too tightly. She now showed that heart-wrenching pout to him, and Icy replied, “When did your confidence in me drop so low? I beat him before, even if he’s got a few tricks, so do I.”

“Because you barely won last time… If he’s prepared then–” Before Raccelline could continue, the group’s attention turned to a dragon who hovered outside the cave. Icy quickly invited them in but the grip around his neck didn’t exactly lighten.

Unexpectedly, of all the possible visitors, he saw the fire element dragon formerly in second place. At this point, Icy knew his name but denied its use as a bit of internal pettiness.

Still, they just took a look and snorted, then said, “I came to give you some information on Lostradus. Consider it a personal repayment.”

“For what?”

“Just a lesson. My point, regardless, is that Lostradus has an unfamiliar flame within him. My bloodline is naturally drawn to mystical fires, and the one within him draws a large response,” the dragon directly stated what he came here to provide, and Icy saw no reason to doubt the information.

Bloodlines with all sorts of abilities exist, just that these vague ‘feeling’ based ones aren’t all too common. Especially when they exist to sense certain elements, regardless, the usefulness of this ability grew to incredible heights when hunting for such mystical elements. Icy thought about the concept some more as well, now wondering if the flame was what healed Lostradus or a new ability granted to him as a way to deal with Icy.

After all, a flame to melt through his physical body gave anyone an obvious edge in battle, especially one so powerful that even a mithril tier dragon considered it worth mentioning.

“Thank you for the information. I assume you’ll take your leave now?” At the dragon’s nod Icy didn’t pay much attention as they turned and walked towards the cave mouth. However, before they could flap their wings, he said, “Farewell, Golsheinna.”

The brief interruption stopped their little spat, but with his departure, Raccelline quickly remembered her place in the conversation and continued clinging on tight…

It took a while to finally calm her down. When he finally did so, Icy further soothed her with the help of some candy, for the first time in months willingly making use of the Maestro of Candy bloodline.

By concentrating mana beneath his scales, on a layer of ice cream skin, small pearls of white sugar began to form. These left clear indents against his scales as they grew and swelled up. From here, he began a slow and careful process to moderate and move the mana within these pearls exactly as required. Even tiny deviations in position resulted in vastly different tastes, and this led to a successful batch of sweets almost two years ago taking ages to complete.

For about 2 months, he created little pearls daily with success and failure. The result of so many flavours, which were handed out for free, racked up a considerable bonus for the Maestro’s Touch title.

Almost a hundred successes which their tasters enjoyed, but after that much suffering Icy just couldn’t bear with it any longer.

As the pearls within his scales finally set, their mana now incredibly tough to change, he saw how their colours also morphed drastically. From pure white candy balls, they gained a glossy surface and diffusions of colours. Some an entire spectrum of the rainbow, others limited to select types.

Oranges to reds, dark greens to whites, Light greens to yellow, blue to purples, and so on. The two colours blended together like a complete mixture of both starting points, but this didn’t change their flavours in the slightest. Although, he found that most people found anything black a bit more bitter, as well as yellow or orange ones reportedly being sour even if identical to other sour variations.

It gave a very interesting look into psychology based on colours those elves saw in their day to day lives. Nonetheless, as these pearls below Icy’s scales finally set in colour, they grew larger once more until reaching about an inch in diameter.

And once they finished… Icy’s scales cracked and tore off as the sweets were forced out of his body. He winced slightly at the pain and collected the 34 candies made in this run through.

The scales healed in seconds, but in no way had this recovered the desire to make candy with this bloodline. Raccelline gladly sucked on one he created to taste like chocolate cake. When he said any sorts of flavours were possible, Icy really meant it. The sweets bought some silence from her, but in truth, he saw the unwilling eyes given to him at all times, ones which clearly wanted him to not wander to his death.

But not once had a sense of death or demise overcame him, so either his power against Lostradus was too evenly matched to garner any reaction or he pretty much had a guaranteed win!

As a last minute check though, he followed Pritaslo’s advice to visit the Dragonland’s library for a short moment. By heading to the central mountain, he found that the sub-arrays beneath it were easily changeable by all dragons and selected the third option as told. With a bit of mana to activate it, he teleported away and found himself standing on polished, wooden boards ornamentally arranged for flooring.

And while he would’ve liked to gawk or stare in amazement at the library itself, he lacked the time. A resting dragon on a mat in front of him took no notice of his appearance, but still, he asked them, “I want records on mystical flames which can heal wounds, preferably ones that can heal dragon hearts.”

“Section 18, Third floor, shelf 32, fourth row from the bottom, and seventh from the right,” with an exact memory, Icy shrunk down and gently flew over to the described location in the library.

This place existed as endless bookshelves arranged into neat rows and appeared to continue on forever in any direction. It contained something like 100 kilometres of bookshelves in any direction, and was split up into 36 sections. Technically, only 35 as the 0th section WAs solely utilised by this place’s library as the teleportation array. Located at the library’s very centre, it was rather easy to get back to when needed.

There existed no railings at the edges of these floors, or staircases between them, just support columns and arrays to keep everything clean and intact. It took Icy minutes to fly over to section 18, and then rise to the third floor where he soon found the correct bookshelf. From there, he selected the row fourth from the bottom and realised all the books there described various types of fire and their special properties.

If he spent a bit longer here he’d probably find reference to the Divinus-wrecking flames as well, not that he needed it… Maybe he should read it just in case.

* * *

The time came. Icy spent several hours in the library pouring over notes on types of flames and still hadn’t concluded what Lostradus could possibly have. With hundreds of options, most of them relatively similar in ability and origin, it could very well be a powerful, ordinary flame… Or something just as frightening as what already came with him.

He realised sometime whilst in a passage about the transparent flames that there was no real reason that such flames couldn’t merge with other elements to create a frightening combination.

However, the Nexus confirmed that such transparent fire could only merge with other flames… information he found nowhere in references to Divinus-wrecking elements.

This single bit meant he knew to heavily prepare against an enhanced flame just like anything enhanced by Origin Force. Given that, he probably needed some specialised flame counter for this fight, and prepared another single-use array which created an overwhelming burst of ice elements.

Not only this, but Icy loaded his body with a ton of seals, not to mention prepared to use the myriad of scrolls the group kindly requisitioned from the demon elves’ vaults.

With a Mind palace with over 100 containers filled with condensed mana too, Icy felt confident using a few dozen Master true spells if push came to shove. Furthermore, a few ordinary tanks held a transparent fluid as well, the massive quantities of Origin Force dedicated for use in enhancing such high level magic. With so little time, he couldn’t possibly prepare in further ways.

Even with the Nexus’ warning of the suicidal results of such an idea, he theorised a way to complete a merger against the two opposing concepts.

Theorised that is, in reality, his chances of death were still astronomical.

As it turned to just 5 minutes before their allotted time, Icy stood on the central mountain’s teleportation array once more. This time it teleported him to a similarly barren land as the training field Pritaslo took him to, but this one was truly lifeless.

Not even withered grass pushed out of the black dirt of this place, and the sky lacked stars in exchange for an orange sky like it’d been stuck in a perpetual sunset. Just black and grey against the colourful sky, this world was incredibly stable as space felt rigid to his World Veiler bloodline, furthermore, the density of mana within the ground emphasised its ability to withstand master tiers.

Lostradus already stood here, ready for the battle… Ready to kill him. Only one of them could possibly leave this place alive, the elders wouldn’t allow otherwise, all because they agreed on this deathmatch.

Icy hadn’t even touched down from his flight before Lostardus’ vile tone reached him, “I heard you’ve been running around like a headless chicken for fighting advice. What happened to all that confidence and arrogance you showed back then?”

“I am confident, but only because I was the strongest. Now I can’t possibly know what your master prepared, they’re the only dangerous variable in this equation. Why the hell are you so arrogant though, did you forget the sound of death’s knell?” Icy ended his rebuke with a scoff, and no longer restrained the divinity’s urges.

Instantly, its power exploded out once more and coated him in golden runes. The incarnation reappeared once more and a tingle grew over his body. Icy’s eyes dulled for a moment, they lost all focus and Lostradus realised this too, but with two minutes left till the battle’s start he couldn’t attack in Icy’s moment of weakness. Not that he could have anyway, at the sight of this divinity the flames within him exploded out similarly and coated him once more.

Icy’s eyes flashed white in their thousand yard stare, then gained a gilded coat, and finally transformed to pure gold as Divinus runes surged into them. His body shuddered but calmed down moments later.

Focus returned and his eyes carried a hint of deeper meaning, even within the incarnation Lostradus was able to see this and angrily shouted, “What gives you the right to look like that? Stop trying to act high and mighty!”

Icy hadn’t even done anything and it triggered his ridiculously volatile emotions. All of this reinforced Manus’ point even further, to never take a bloodline which merged with his divinity.

“Your flames aren’t transparent; they’re just invisible. Invisible and a little bit red, no reason you couldn’t ever merge them with other attacks… Hmm, if only I had more time like this,” his initially mocking voice turned to sadness as he stared outwards to the orange horizon. With the divinity reignited, any concerns about a Forced Exposure event nullified.

He understood it all, what he saw and what it referred to. At this very moment, if given just a few hours, he knew that learning Draconis was possible. Just a word or two, but that alone could guarantee a victory in this battle of masters.

Indeed, if only he had time.

Lostradus froze from Icy’s words and gaze, but hardened once more as the flames enraged at the insulting comment. “A bit of time couldn’t save you. A little upgrade to your eyes doesn’t amount to anything. In the end, your power is objectively lower than mine!”

Icy didn’t pay much mind to the angered Lostradus. The divinity ignored such words as well since it took joy in the flame’s bearer emitting such annoyance. His mind purely recalled so many ignored or overlooked ideas or concepts, now able to look into the Divinus runes around him or the various elemental powers granted to him. Space itself seemed to unravel in his golden eyes, from an incomprehensible sheet of reality, it devolved into a mess of lines and equations.

If he studied just a bit longer, he could perfectly manipulate it with his Fabric Warper bloodline, but Icy dismissed this possibility as he never properly learnt the methodology from Mala. Again, his actual mathematical skills lacked immensely.

“I don’t think I can blame them now, the way they look down on us as simple-minded beings… The universe is beautiful,” Icy’s vague words existed solely for himself, a consolidation of his thoughts and beliefs. However, they didn’t end there as he continued, “But this place is filled with pointless strife, dragons who refuse to take risks and look down on me for my mere bloodline. This place is weak… Lostradus, since our first battle, have you once despised me for what I am made of?”

As the clock entered its final minute, Icy’s discussion with himself placed all its focus on the dragon opposite, fated to enter a fight to the death. Obviously, they never once assumed this question would appear. After a full month of fantasising revenge and all the ways he’d tear Icy limb from limb.

To think the battle would begin with such a calm question.

But by his very existence, the dragon answered, “Why would I ever answer that? You pile of dragon shit.” Sneering towards the divine incarnation around Icy, it was hard to not feel repulsed as he stood in its vicinity and felt it completely right to dismiss the question.

However, Icy chortled at the answer. An answer came to heart at this moment as the one-track Lostradus placed the final puzzle piece. No one spoke any further, but for the briefest moment, a flash of white appeared on Icy’s eyes, this glow far gentler and softer than the Elder eyes he’d grown dependent on. And really, its utterly mild nature meant neither dragon noticed its appearance and disappearance.

The final seconds passed, and 6PM arrived.

Both dragons beat their wings once and disappeared from the blackened soil, lifted up into the air and closing the distance so quickly that a blink missed the whole interaction. Their claws collided in mid-air and Icy’s tail reactively batted away a spear of flames. Their claws locked as neither pulled back. Glaring at one another, their wings flapped unconcernedly, releasing galeforce winds in all directions, and failed to overpower the other in any way, launching the connected pair upwards even further.

After a hundred metres, the two separated with some small burnt patches on Icy’s incarnation. Lostradus took a slight stab to his hind leg though, a jab from the divine tail with a sharp tip.

Now separated, Icy saw how the wound closed up in seconds like his Undying Body. An unidentifiable orange flame coated the edges of the wound as this happened, emitting a bountiful liveliness similar to life essence, but so different that he simply couldn’t identify its source. Several healing flames existed, so which one could it possibly be?

Lostradus saw no reason to talk so early on, this was merely a single interaction of many to come. Mocking or showing off only ruined their chances later on, besides, neither side wanted to reveal any further abilities while they were still high on spirits and full of strength.

Collision after collision, the two engaged mostly in melee with occasional spells from Icy used purely to deflect or retreat in a variety of situations. With such a reserved process, the two dragons easily fought for two minutes straight without any injuries.

One constantly unharmed by all attacks, and the other with a body which refused to die.