Broken element

The element that the runt got from it's two normal ones fusing was called "plasma" by Alex due to the fact that it was basically just that. Super heated energy that was extremely destructive and was blinding to look at. The downside to this new element however was equally impressive as well since unlike normal elemental attacks any that the runt made using this new element consumed a metric fuck ton of energy. To the point that a small ball of the stuff the size of a grape burnt through half the runts energy stores.

This was a huge downside without any doubt but the trade off was totally worth it in Alex's mind since that grape was seemingly unaffected by gravity or friction as it burnt a straight line through the ancient forest that went on for an entire two miles. Alex guessed that the attack slowly lost it's energy as it traveled since the hole got smaller and smaller as he followed it. Nonetheless this was a devastatingly powerful form of attack as Alex was completely convinced that that grape would have bored a hole straight through him if it hit him.

Alex was only slightly jealous of the runt however since he was sure that once he decided to unlock the [variant electrosis] trait he could try and fused the fire and thunder elements in him as well. Though Alex was concerned that he may instead have his water element interfere with the fusion and create something totally different. 'I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.' he thought calmly before dismissing his ideas about the fused element. The success of this experiment by Alex to create a variant within a single individual sent the scholar into a frenzy since it filled in one of the gaps in their knowledge about how subspecies could come about.

This method was listed as "artificial variation" due to the fact that in this particular case it took Alex forcing the growing wyvern pup to consume materials outside it's natural elemental proclivity. An interesting thing to note was that the runts weakness to water attributed energy had actually decreased by a bit while it gained a slightly increased weakness to dragon energy. The scholars were tempted to list it as a new elder dragon but since the runt barely changed physically they could only push it to variant anomaly instead.

Rather than let the little one get a big head from all the praise it was getting Alex made sure to rough it up a little bit to make sure it still knew who was it's better. This wasn't all that necessary but Alex didn't feel like risking that small chance that it was actually needed to keep it in line. He wasn't abusive mind you as he just suppressed it when it looked like it was acting arrogant with his aura. Once the commotion about it died down however the little one returned to acting normally so Alex didn't bother with it anymore.

As if triggered by the appearance of the runts transformation news started to come in of powerful monsters appearing in various locations. Zane was sent to go investigate these monsters but Alex remained at astera since he was well aware of the truth of the matter being that these were high rank monsters. Alex just rolled his eyes when a meeting was called to discuss these new monsters since all that was speculated was that there was an area where these monsters originated from that was clearly richer in resources.

Alex had even been in one of these areas so he didn't need to speculate anything about them. Alex was actually rather disappointed in the previous fleets since finding these areas was literally just as easy as exploring past the normal ones. 'Forget the high rank areas , there are even master rank ones if you go deep enough.' Alex thought with a mental sigh. He of course didn't share any of this since that would definitely let them figure out he had been there. Not to mention he very much doubted that they'd not catch the disapproval that his words would include should he say anything about it.

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