Inside the cold stone room, Akevorax rested still without a single tremor across his entire body. Flattened across the ground, he couldn’t be bothered to resist the powerful forces compressing his body from all sides, not that he in any way wanted to. Day after day, with minimal rest, he repeated the injection of elements and a crushing force all along him to slowly exchange the ice cream within him to a single mass of crystal. While not slow in his application, the process itself demanded a minimum amount of time for all races.

Just like how every single heart transformation required months of work. The increasingly reduced compressions multiplied whatever work was required several times over with each transformation.

But right now he laid across the ground at the final moments. As all his scales, ice cream, sorbet, treats, and even sticky, toffee-like substance of his wings transformed into a type of golden crystal. While their original design could still be seen, at this point, his body was no longer wafer scales but a resplendent statue of semi-transparent gold. And while in theory he should have lost all physical downsides of an ice cream body, the weakness and fragility gone with this transformation…

That was just a theory.

The ‘scales’ of this purely crystal body still cracked all the same under pressure, and the insides still leaked out much like semi-solid ice cream smashed against a surface. In his eyes, a very obviously solid object was acting like a partial liquid for no reason.

But as the transformation required focus and a nonstop attitude, he continued it regardless, having only discovered these abnormalities a couple weeks into the transformation.

And now his brain came last. The only other delicate part of his body besides an already crystalline heart, albeit not too important as his Undying Body bloodline allowed him to repair his brain at a small cost.

For this process, he took his time and slowly condensed the elemental crystals at every step, not in a rush to accidentally destroy parts of his ice cream brain unrelated to the current exchange. A crushing force centred on his head had worse effects overall as he often felt faint and dizzy throughout the process, even more so as parts of his head oozed out onto the floor constantly every time. But he managed to push through it after hours of repetitive compression on his head.

The final few bursts of elements moved into his head, occupying a space still made of ice cream, and reducing that small chunk to pure energy as crystal took its place.

Once that final piece took form, after not a single shred of him was still made of food, the final step arrived.

Uniformity. Wherein the array below him blasted to life once more and now covered every inch of him in a force field, crushing him constantly to align every crystal into a singular mass. Only through this could anything be considered a Crystal Body. Under the compressive force, the tightly knitted crystal bonds loosened, and he could manoeuvre them as necessary, rotating and distributing his body until it all linked together into a singular object.

And yet, as he moved about small flakes of fine gold crystal, a substance which held firmly like any other gemstone, if he applied too much force, it still so easily crumbled into pieces much like overly frozen ice cream would do…

For the past weeks now, dread over this reality filled him, but every little test only reaffirmed this idea instead of dispelling it as he hoped. The Nexus also mentioned some important news once he finished, undoubtedly referring to this oddity. Could he overcome such an effect though?

He thought of this matter over and over, and at times linked back to his sugar-mana crystal heart as a reference. Mala and him analysed it several times to find out what exactly caused such an automatic transformation, but both came up short as it happened without any reasonable source. No energy, no power, no explanation.

To some degree, she argued it was more like his heart existed to become this way from his birth!

The Nexus gave no insight a couple years back when they first looked into it either, in the same boat as the pair who tried and failed to unveil the mechanism of reality.

Worrisome thoughts like this occupied his head as the crystals rotated and merged slowly, a considerably faster process over their creation, as in just an hour, he completely rearranged all the crystals in a leg. But this was hardly his first time stuck in a loop of repetitive actions for the sake of improvement, and after a full month he already grew tired enough to push onwards. This took 41 days so far, a mere 12 or 14 hours just to finish one final step barely made a dent in that.

His next leg was completely aligned an hour later as well, consistently finishing all four legs in just under 4 hours. And then came his tail, up to his abdomen, chest, and then neck. As the hours passed, he slowly moved upwards further and further.

And at the 15 hour mark, he finished the final crystals in his brain completing his Elemental Body.

Without any input, his body shimmered gently like a light passed by and shone over it, the internal reflections producing a smooth emission all along from tail to snout. But that only indicated the start, as his body didn’t just stand there with a faint glow, but quickly brightened over and over. From a shimmer, it exploded into a golden sight filling the room with blinding light.

The shadows receded to nothing as not a single spot went untouched, and strange pulsations could be felt within the bath of light. A heartbeat within the light itself resonated through space.

It struck the Soul and Mind, causing one to quiver and shake in its presence, not from the fear invoked by a True Will, nor the overwhelming danger felt by such an existence in close proximity. But purely from the raw mana and elements held together without any hindrances. The power its static existence released multiplied throughout the limited space and bounced back onto itself several times, the result formed a room of such overwhelming effect that few at the same level withstood it.

Akevorax didn’t leave it active for too long though, and suppressed the idle powers within his body. The light immediately died down and the echoing heartbeat diluted in time. Rich in the volume of mana he felt within, it was a world of difference as he felt the limit increase several times over from this transformation.

In the past he struggled to cast more than a dozen Master true spells in a single battle, but now he could manage at least 40 of them! These weren’t merely those ridiculously long spells in Draconic as well!

Two or three word Draconis spells opened up to him!

“How do they do this for months on end?” Akevorax’s golden jaw finally moved, the crystal stretched and reformed much like normal muscle might behave. His wings flapped gently, and legs extended as he stretched the new body which felt and behaved identical to his previous one. Perhaps it was due to his Mind now growing to such a level, but the mental exertion of this Crystal Body hardly impacted his mental ability. While the first in a long time, a thin mental tether now tugged on the back of his head, but beyond that had no effect.

Next came the shaking of his tail, neck, head, and just every commonly moved part at his disposal. For a bit of time, he stretched his belly and back too. Nothing went untouched.

However, that didn’t change the fact that he appeared as a giant dragon carved of crystal, but as seen by every Crystal Body prior, this wasn’t at all hard to deal with. Just as the mana distribution in his eyes shifted what dimensions appeared in his vision, the distribution of power in his body affected how it appeared too. It took just minutes of trial and error for him to transform the golden-patterned crystal back to its rougher textured appearance from before. Some fine-tuning reversed it back to his old wafer scales which became a signature effect of his body.

The wafer horns returned, as did his ruby red eyes. Speckled jawbreaker teeth and red gummy tongue.

Not to forget the chocolate speared tail tip and ‘fins’ along its length. Though, he completely forgot those things existed for the most part… In his defence when was he ever going to detonate them?

Regardless, a smile popped up on his face as he said, “Now then, all that’s left is my title. Nexus?” His words didn’t care for that in the slightest as he only initiated this conversation to find out what important fact it found out a month ago but made him wait to discover.

[Yes, so the first matter. As well as the Elemental Body title, we finished the adjustment to your duly owed Soul titles. Here are all three of them]

Well that was more than a pleasant surprise. He needed these a lot the past year now. It really hurt having so few options when he uncannily rose in levels so fast.

[Elemental Crystal Body: At will, select any applicable element composing your body, it may be projected outwards as a domain]

[Proto-formed Soul: Produce a temporary barrier around your Soul at will using mana or any of the elements composing the Proto-formed state. The quantity of substance provided will produce a non-elemental barrier equal to that level]

[Formed Soul: Gain a reserve of Soul Power equal to 25% of your current maximum Soul Power. All spells utilising Soul Power will default to this reserve first before drawing any from your Soul, must be refilled much like your own store of Soul Power]

“So they just give the exact same effects without any changes? I suppose it’s a bit much to expect preferential treatment.” While he nodded in agreement, his words shared a far more discontent belief. Expectedly given how long he waited to finally obtain these two titles.

[We were having serious problems implementing a change to the titles which allowed them to interact with your Body. For a long time now, we failed to uncover that uniqueness, but this transformation process finally shed light on our missing link]

His eyes half closed as he gave an indignant stare to the Nexus, feeling more than a little plucky now that he better understood the story. Then giving a rather sarcastic response, “So rather than just admit you didn’t know how to modify the title… You kept silent until something gave you inspiration? Has anyone ever referred to you as ‘prideful’ before?”

[Yes, many times now. We were designed to act as a perfectionist after all]

While not really a revelation by any means, it certainly fit the bill extremely well. Though, this was a rather rare moment where the Nexus spoke of its past to some degree. He could only imagine why something which sought perfection could be helpful as a tool… At least that’s what he guessed they designed the Nexus for. The way it managed and stabilised the universe indeed felt like some sort of otherworldly array layered on top of all dimensions and reality, a tool which acted on both local and non-local events all at once.

That didn’t stop him asking the question out loud though, “Who would need perfection so badly that they’d make it a core feature?”

[If you were tasked to make an array which saved lives, would you be satisfied producing something which ‘worked’?]

Only a second passed before he shook his head meekly, in full agreement with the reasoning of those original creators. If the Nexus half-assed things, the universe as a whole might be in a far worse situation…

Might? No– No– No. Without a doubt everything would be so much worse.

[Onto our results now. You may recall, our initial confusion with your Soul was that you should not be alive given the inherent mutation of it. The one caused by an infusion of concepts and ideas, both of which are normally untouchable before accessing great languages. Ordinarily, we would expect a simple modification of the title would allow it to work with your Soul given many high-level individuals with such Souls also use those two titles. But in your case the simulations always resulted in a failure of application]

“Was that a real failure or just the simulation breaking?” He titled his head as he read along, at this point far too critical of the Nexus’ often breaking models. The suspicion only grew further as it rarely expounded to such a degree.

[Our models were fine, this time, but the problem came from our modification. We only ever accounted for the change in your Soul, and until now we never truly realised how deep that mutation thrived in your Body and Mind]

“I know the link between a Body and Soul is somewhat weak… But you didn’t take that into account?”

[That’s not the issue, we accounted for that long ago. The issue is that the concept of food never mutated your Soul. Or it may have, we just don’t know where it started. But once infused into your existence, while you were merely a foetus in an egg, it quickly rooted itself into your Body, Mind, and Soul without any distinction. You don’t understand just how much this explains regarding extreme mutations like yourself, up until now we’ve always wrongly assumed that the bloodline mutations themselves are what kill most prior to hatching or birth!]

He very rarely saw a Nexus this excited about anything, but its explanations all kept to a very basic level to make the information immediately digestible. So much so that he grasped the direction it wanted to lead him down and figured out what really happened, but out of both respect and surety, he stayed quiet and let it explain the rest.

[In the past we told you that most with food-based mutations died before birth because their bloodlines collapsed extremely quickly, believing that they unluckily obtained highly volatile mutations. This is still true, but only after the creature is born. Prior to birth, they are either killed by the infection born from a concept forcibly mutating their existence, or because they were simply too weak. Many newborns can survive their Body or Mind mutating, but very few survive the Soul mutation, dragons should have a natural advantage as your manifested wills increase your Soul’s stability at birth]

Aside from a couple points, he pretty much guessed correctly from the previous wall of text in front of him. In the end it didn’t actually change much for him. This just meant that the reality of birthing more food-based creatures was incredibly hard, something he preferred and disliked at the same time.

“So even though countless mutated babies have survived the infusion of a concept… All of them will die without some sort of powerful bloodline stabilisation?” His words contained a hint of depression as the vague loneliness of his existence came to mind.

[Yes. This is unavoidable]

“So that’s it then? Nothing else to note?”

[Should there be anything else?]

He almost scoffed, but held down the easily impetuous action to respond sarcastically, “You don’t care the slightest for storytelling. Two years in the making and you dump that information without any buildup or tension.” Akevorax laughed as he finished the sentence, in full realisation that it wouldn’t be the Nexus if it actually cared to over-do something as simple as giving facts.

But damn did it really offload information all at once, he could manage it with such mental speeds, but anyone less familiar with soul mutations, bloodlines, and their inherent instabilities would definitely need more time to understand all that…

Oh well, that wasn’t his problem to explain.