Chapter 187 Collecting Apex-Grade Mana Crystals

The next day.

After playing with Arianell for a while, he put her to sleep. More than play, he was teaching her how to read and talk most of the time. For now, he just read some old storybooks to her.

Zick fed her some good food prepared by the golems in the lab along the way. He was surprised to learn of the existence of such a golem, but it was understandable.

It was created by the alchemist for convenience purposes.

And as he had thought, Arianell was timid for some reason.

'Are all dragons timid at an early age?' This was the only explanation Zick could think of.

But Zick was sure of one thing, Arianell was quite prideful. Even when Arianell talked to her, Arianell outright ignored her.

Arianell only responded to Zick and stuck closely to him.

Putting her to sleep, Zick started to head toward the teleportation circle. And of course, he was wearing an eye patch made by Yuriel.

Zick returned to the Darton's palace, greeting everyone. This time, he gave the method to create the 'will' vein to Seveleen and chatted with Varine.

Their progress was coming along just fine. With their immense talent, there were a few things that could stop their progress.

Zick didn't put much of his attention on Kerene, he was going to sacrifice her later on after her relationship with others grew. As a motivational creator of sorts.

Kerene's talent was just too low, and Zick lost interest in nurturing her. But he still acts normal around her.

Seveleen was surprised by the fact Zick had become a peak-rank mage. She was very suspicious as to how it was possible, but she knew to not stick her nose in others' secrets.

Having a feast with them, Zick was sure to give all of them some presents.

Taking his relation a step forward, Zick was sure to catch on to what they had discovered so far in this palace.

And from the fact that Seveleen had not asked where he had gone, Zick was easily able to deduce that Varine had already exposed his 'secret' of being a member of the Everlor organization by now.

'Well, I didn't instruct her to hide this fact so I am at fault too. Nevermind.' Zick wasn't agitated finding this out.

The next day, he said farewell to everyone and raced off to the Lectic region with Levienel who just appeared.

Levienel had already fully looted the whole Everlor organization by now. All the materials and resources were kept in the secret lab.

Currently, Yuriel was busy creating the golems, so she was not able to accompany Zick.

...

The Lectic mountain region.

There was not much dark cloud like the first time Zick had come here.

Soon a golden streak stopped in the middle of the sky, revealing Zick and Levienel within it. With Levienel's senses, they found a cave in no time and entered it.

Killing off the monster in there, Levienel began creating a teleportation circle at once. There was not much conversation between Zick and her, they moved as if it was the most natural thing.

"Connect the magic circle to the secret lab." Zick parsed his lips while instructing.

Levienel set the coordinates while thinking: 'He has changed...His behavior is still the same but there are some subtle changes in his expression now and then....'

Appearing within the control center of the secret lab, Zick could already feel that Arianell was awake through his connection.

Using the silver wing system, Zick moved to his room instantly. There, the sight of Arianell looking around with her drowsy eyes entered his vision.

The moment Zick entered Arianell's view, The drowsiness in her eyes flew away. Getting off the bed, she moved toward him, throwing her arms wide open towards him.

'Sigh...I want to quickly make her battle ready, but I know that forcing things could ruin our future relationship. Taking it slow is the correct answer, I still have a few years.' Zick held Arianell in one arm while thinking.

Arianell closely stuck to Zick's suit while burying her head into his chest, hiding her embarrassed face.

Looking at this, Zick's eyes froze: 'Her timidness and shyness are driving me crazy!'

'Though I have no experience in raising a child, I have to find a way to turn this girl into a 'proper' dragon!'

Zick started heading towards the Lectic region again using the teleportation circle.

'This mystical feeling that lets me know that Arianell is going to wake up is really handy.' Zick thought while looking at the icy cave.

Zick wanted to make Arianell used to stay alone, therefore he had experimented a while ago.

Leaving the woken-up Arianell alone, Zick continued training. But the results were disastrous, his whole room was destroyed by the berserk mana.

Arianell's talent with mana was out of this world, the mana around her reacted to her emotions destroying the surrounding. For this reason, Zick had to stay with her all the time she was awake.

If he had arrived a little late, the damage to the surrounding area would have been devastating. Many labs might have been destroyed in the worst-case scenario.

It was shocking that just a newborn dragon wielded such strength.

"...Your daughter?" Levienel asked with a blank look.

Zick was surprised: 'Ohh, she learned to crack jokes? Or no I guess.'

"Yeah, this is my daughter, her name is Arianell." Zick introduced her as if it was the most natural thing.

"...." Levienel looked at the cute little girl on Zick's arm, she felt a familiar aura, which made her eyes widen involuntarily.

"This child, she is the daughter of the dragon lord. But how..." A very old memory resurfaced in her mind.

Levienel still remembered the invincible being that could defeat her with a flick of its finger. At that time, the war was still going on. The dragon lord was angrily trying to break the mist barrier around the three continents.

Returning to reality, Levienel didn't know what to say.

"Let's do what we came here for first," Zick said with no hesitation. He found very good use of snow essence, it could be used to create a certain kind of golem.

The alchemist discovered its use a long time ago. Not only snow essence but even fire, water, and wind were included in it.

The wind-type golem created by Wind essence was the one that caught Zick's attention the most.

Its strength was in the quasi-grandmaster rank.

Thus, Zick was already planning on how to get his hand on it.

The most surprising thing was that: Yuriel could create a new golem's blueprint with enough data. In other words, he just has to keep increasing her knowledge. That way he would get many more golem blueprints in the future.

Yuriel had already created five modified golems with master rank strength.

With Zick's instruction, Levienel scanned the whole area around them at once. She found a mana crystal node just a few kilometers away from them.

At once Levienel started moving towards it with Zick and Arianell. Nothing got in their way as they arrived at the peak of a huge mountain.

With no hesitation, the golden streak that they were in started digging into the mountain, going underground.

Arianell held onto Zick's armor tightly.

Bang!

Shortly, they pierced into a passage.

After the dust resided, Zick could see the end of the passage shining brightly. But before Levienel could move, a hishing of a monster could be heard resounding throughout the passage.

A monster having the appearance of a snake slithered toward them rapidly. There were two vertical horns on its head and its whole body was covered in a thick glacier, acting like a shield.

Cold mist closely attached itself to the snake, and an intimidating aura was being released from its body.

Zick was not tense even after a monster with master-rank strength appeared. Before it could even get within ten meters of the radius around Zick, its head was sent flying.

BAM~

The glacier snake's head fell on the icy floor.

Arianell looked at the blood-stained floor quietly. This was her first time seeing such a creature, so she was a little curious.

Zick and Levienel started moving into the main room leisurely. He passed by the corpse and Entered the dazzling room behind it.

Zick's eyes shone looking at the sight before him, as far as his vision could see, only the apex grade mana crystal filled his vision.

'Haha, With this much, there shouldn't be a problem to create another 300 master rank golem.' A sense of exhilaration rose within Zick.

If just one mana crystal node held this many apex-grade mana crystals, then the other node also held just as many mana crystals.

'And...The main node might have even more than this...' Zick smiled.

Zick started collecting the mana crystal rapidly, he didn't care about the mud and rock stuck on it. He had dozens of space rings with him.

Within a few minutes, The whole room became desolate. There wasn't even a piece of mana crystal left.

Next, Zick took out dozens of humanoid golems the size of a human. This golem didn't have a human face and instead looked had a mask with only two gems in the shape of eyes on it.

In this golem's group, the strongest five had peak rank strength, while the others had high and middle-rank strength.

After making five teams, Zick ordered: "Go and collect all the mana crystals in the passages, then bring them to this place."

The golems started moving at once hearing the cold voice.

Zick and Levienel started heading toward the other nodes.

He brought Arianell so that she could gain some experience and become used to stuff.