Chapter 328 Item Trial: Legendary Beast Blood Essence Part 3
After Mira finished eating the entire polar bear, her size and strength were now equivalent to a large dog or a medium-sized wolf. However, she felt like she was approaching the limits of her species and bloodline.
Her instincts as a beast were telling her that she would only be able to kill and consume a few more polar bears before she reached her body's maximum potential.
So, that's exactly what Mira did. She didn't want to begin thinking about how to evolve before she reached her maximum potential.
Over the next week, Mira was able to kill and consume four more polar bears using a similar strategy that she used to kill the first one.
Her size and strength have also grown considerably. Now, she's about the size of a large wolf, which is absolutely massive for an Arctic Fox.
Once she reached this point, Mira felt something stir in her bloodline and deep within her very core. She felt like her body was trying to guide her in some way, but it wasn't explicitly telling her what she needed to do…
No, that's incorrect, her body is telling her, it's just that there is more than one way to evolve causing Mira not to be able to make heads or tails of what her body is trying to tell her.
At this point, she could only use her intelligence, experiences, knowledge, and myths trying to solve the puzzle of evolution.
From what she knew, at least back in the outside world, most beasts once they reach their maximum potential either need to search for some treasure, refine their bloodline, or somehow tap into their ancestral bloodline if they have one.
There are probably other ways to increase a beast's potential, but those are the most mainstream and successful.
However, this wasn't of much help to Mira. She didn't have a treasure, she didn't know how to refine her bloodline, and she didn't know if an Arctic Fox even had an Ancestral Bloodline.
Not only that, but this world clearly worked differently than the outside world, so who knows if those methods will even work.
For all she knew, she'd need to do all three of those methods or maybe none of them.
Since that wasn't of much help to Mira, she decided to tap into her memories of legendary beasts and their myths back when she lived on worlds without any form of cultivation.
More specifically, anything about foxes. From what she knew about foxes in mythology, they gain more tails the longer they live.
From what she can remember, a fox would grow another tail every 100 years, and after 1,000 years, it will evolve into a 9-tailed fox and ascend to the Heavens.
However, there wasn't anything credible about this information and she's not about to waste 100 years just to see if she'll grow another tail. Also, she can't see that actually helping her evolve her bloodline.
Right now, she's just a normal Arctic Fox! She'd be lucky if she actually lived past 5 years old, much less 100!
However, she can take a few things away from these myths, helping her decide which direction she wants to evolve in.
Thinking about this, all of a sudden, Mira had an epiphany and went into a state of enlightenment.
In this state, she was able to better deduce what her body was trying to tell her and the multiple ways she can evolve.
Mira was combining this knowledge with her own preferences in hopes of coming up with something that will not only perfectly suit her but will also allow her to complete this trial.
A few hours later, Mira exited her enlightenment. Her eyes shone with clarity as she was able to figure out how to evolve!
The method of evolution that she's going to use is rather complex and much more complicated than the other avenues of evolution available to her, but it was also the method with the most potential which is exactly what Mira needs.
What she needs to do is basically a mix of everything. She needs to refine her bloodline using the surrounding snow and ice to enhance her affinity, use a large amount of energy to mutate her bloodline so she can add extra tails, infuse her Ice Dao comprehension into her bloodline, and use an ice treasure to speed up the process of refinement while also increasing her strength, then kill and consume a beast with a higher-leveled bloodline than her to use as a catalyst to support her evolution.
Hopefully, she can refine and create a mutated version of her bloodline that will give her near-infinite growth, essentially becoming the progenitor of her bloodline.
From then on, she just needs to keep doing the same thing whenever she reaches her current body's maximum potential. She'll refine her bloodline some more, find another ice treasure, infuse more of her comprehension, add another tail, and consume a beast with a higher-leveled bloodline to promote her growth.
This may all sound incredibly easy, but Mira knew that she might run out of lifespan before she can even complete her first evolution! Normally, it wouldn't be that long, but Mira wants to not only change and mutate her bloodline but also base the foundation of her new mutated bloodline on her Ice Dao comprehension and the level of ice, snow, and cold she's able to infuse into her bloodline during the refinement period.
Naturally, there were other easier ways to evolve that she was able to discover during her enlightenment.
In fact, she could technically evolve right now. She could use up her body's potential to increase her bloodline level and evolve into a new species but doing so would mean ruining her future as she wouldn't have any more potential left in her body.
She could also look for a beast with a higher-level bloodline and consume it to evolve, but Mira knew that although this may look good in the short run, she'll have to deal with the consequences of doing this later down the line.
Even if she were able to become a Legendary Ice Beast by using this method, she would never accept such a bloodline as it wouldn't be of much use to her.
There were also a few other ways, but Mira found them all severely lacking.
In the end, she found this method to be perfect for her. There may be better methods that she can use to evolve, but that didn't matter too much to Mira. As long as the method suited her and allowed her to be an exceptionally strong Legendary Ice Beast by the end of it all, then she didn't care if there was a better method.
Having set her goals, Mira wasted no time in completing them as she immediately set off to start the evolution process.
***
Five years later
In an igloo lay a small baby fox. This fox has pure white fur, crimson eyes, and two tails. One tail is white with faint blue stripes running down it, while the other tail is silvery-white with faint icy blue stripes running down it.
However, don't be fooled by this little fox's appearance as the aura that was coming off of its tiny body is several times stronger than that of a polar bear. There was also something else mixed in with this aura, something that proved its identity as a beast with a higher-tiered bloodline.
Suddenly, a burst of power was released by the fox, and not long after it opened its crimson eyes.
"I finally did it! I finally evolved my bloodline and species! Damn, that took much longer than I originally thought it would! Oh? It also seems like my body was reset back to its infant stage. However, I feel much stronger than I did 5 years ago. No, much stronger would be an understatement. With my current strength, I feel like I could casually slap a polar bear to death!"
That's right, the fox in the igloo is Mira who just completed her first evolution!
Over the last five years, she has worked all day every day in hopes of evolving. She's killed off most of the penguins, many of the polar bears, a few sharks, tons of fish, caribou, etc. Basically, anything that could be eaten and turned into energy was killed by her.
However, she vastly underestimated the amount of energy needed to refine and mutate her bloodline while adding an extra tail.
Not only that but finding a treasure to use while also the process of infusing the ice energy and her own Ice Dao comprehension into her bloodline took much longer than she thought it would.
Part of the reason for this is that she wanted to refine her bloodline to the utmost limits through this method.
Another reason is that most of her Ice Dao Comprehension she has outside of the trial world doesn't work here. She doesn't know exactly why, but she does have a few theories.
However, none of that really matters. What matters is that since she can't use a majority of her Ice Dao Comprehension, she now has to restart.
So, most of her time was actually spent in meditation or trying to gleam into the secrets of this world in order to improve her bloodline's affinity with ice.
Now, after 5 years of nonstop hunting and meditation, Mira has finally taken her first step toward becoming a Legendary Ice Beast!