54 Small changes

Things were very quiet in the new world for about a year after the first zeno jiiva was killed , oh yes there were more than just one. there were three in fact , alex secretly draining them when he found them had brought him to ninety percent of the way to undergoing sublimation. this had began the show as well as his skin was paling while the roots of his scales after he shed them to get rid of the itch were white. this gave him the appearance of a star filled sky as the little bit of white clashed with his mostly black.

Meanwhile the red star shaped birth mark and the gem in the center of it were slowly turning blue making the people of astera have a crazy theory. they were starting to believe that he may be the sapphire star itself incarnated as a mighty dragon. the funny thing was that this actually fit with alex's previous actions of seemingly knowing the future events and growing to match or surpass them. it would also explain his claim to be the only member of his kind in existence as there was only a single sapphire star to guide the way.

'Absorbing bioenergy to increase my progress to sublimation has crept to a snails pace after finishing those zeno jiiva. compared to the massive sums i gathered for them the elders barely give me any at all.' alex was think one day as he was experimenting with the bioenergy crystals in his nest. this was actually a hobby that he had picked up after realizing he was strong enough at the moment not to need to rush to improve any more. this had caused him to have a considerable amount of free time after his daily hunting trip to fill with whatever he fancied.

For the past month or so alex had been experimenting with the bioenergy crystals that are common near the everstream. at first he tried to grow them using the elemental orbs but was surprised to see that it simply didn't work. this made him scrap his initial plans but he was fine with that since it wasn't a huge loss for him either way. alex had created a life span gauge in the system after gifting both the admiral and the wanderer an elemental orb each. it was a small bronze box with symbols for life in various languages carved onto its sides.

On the front face of the thing was a small hole as well as a digital screen that only worked after a drop of blood was added to the hole. the device used the blood of the thing placed in it to exactly figure out the total length of their life span not including disease or random unnatural causes of death. for alex he found that his life span was one thousand five hundred years exactly which further solidified his belief that some sort of divine being set him up in this life.

Sure it was possible that he was just lucky enough to have a perfect number as his life span but he doubted that very much. almost every creature or plant has a different number for it's lifespan and alex had only seen a perfect number show up once out of close to a thousand test on different creatures. still knowing he wasn't some sort of firework that shone bright briefly before vanishing was reassuring. knowing that he has plenty of time even if he didn't actually choose immortality let him relax and focus on things beyond power.

Instead alex had delved into the only of thing that interested him , scholarly pursuits. the admiral had teased alex about his lack of romance but alex made it fairly clear that he was entirely uninterest in such a pointless and irritating thing. this was true as well since the changes in mindset that being a monster brought him basically removed all human lust from his mind leaving a mind that was perfectly fine alone. even more so alex had discovered long ago that his body didn't actually have any reproductive organs making such a thing even more pointless.

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