Luckily, his scales are huge and with him fighting it Bella ends up having plenty of time. She manages to stay ahead of the regrowing scale and as she completes each tattoo, I enchant it. However, when she moves to trying to tattoo his claws she runs into a problem.

  The tattoo gun that I made for her isn’t strong enough to make a mark on Everburn’s claws. I end up having to replace the needle with one made from one of the claws from the gold. While I am at it, I go ahead and improve the enchantments on the tattoo gun a little.

  Once I am done, Bella is able to tattoo Everburn’s claws and then I enchant them. When Everburn channels some mana into the tattoos, his claws are instantly covered in ice. It would make for a good surprise attack if he ever ends up in a similar situation to the gold’s attack.

  Everburn says “This is better than I expected! These tattoos are beautiful, I feel bad that the rest of them are going to be hidden. They are definitely worth a high price. Tell me, is there anything that you would like in payment?”

  Bella says “I honestly have no idea what I could even ask for. Ash, a little help?”

  “Hm, most things that you could use, I could make. Maybe some unique protective item or something along those lines? Honestly, I have no idea what kind of things Everburn might have.”

  Everburn says “You can make her any protective items she might need. Didn’t you say that the goal was to get her to Soul City physically?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Everburn says “Then I have something better for her. It is a necklace that increases experience gain for the soul.”

  “Really?! I didn’t even know such a thing existed!”

  Everburn says “Most don’t. It is extremely rare! However, I have no use for it and it should speed up the process to get her to Soul City.”

  Bella says “That sounds perfect! Thank you!”

  Everburn somehow summons the necklace and it appears floating in front of Bella. However, I grab it before she can and take a look at the enchantments that are on it. They make absolutely no sense and don’t even look like any enchantment I have ever seen.

  “What is this?? What kind of magic made it?!”

  Everburn says “I have no idea! I have never seen anything else enchanted the way that thing is, but it works.”

  “You’ve been to other worlds, right? Did they have different forms of magic?”

  Everburn says “Yes, when I was younger and yes, they did, but nothing like this.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Where did you get it?”

  Everburn says “It randomly dropped from a beast I killed in the battlefield.”

  “So, it was probably one of the treasures created by the battlefield itself?”

  Everburn says “Most likely.”

  Bella says “So, do I get to keep it or not?”

  “Oh, right, sorry! Here.”

  Bella takes the necklace from me and puts it on, then I open a gate back to where she was. She goes through and I close the gate behind her, then turn back to Everburn.

  “Next time I come, I will see about making a chime sound or something before I come through, so please don’t eat me!”

  Everburn says “I will try to remember that. I doubt you would taste very good.”

  “Thanks, I think. Anyway, I’m going to go now, unless you need something?”

  Everburn says “Nope. I’m good.”

  I wave goodbye to Everburn and then open a gate to about halfway back to the caravan. I stop there to have a dragon meat snack before gating the rest of the way and catching up to the caravan. As promised, I make it back before the caravan stops for lunch and rejoin the girls.

  As soon as I take a seat in the carriage, Sero and Kreno move to cuddle with me. Then, they bombard me with questions about where I ran off to and what I was doing. So, I tell them everything that happened, Bella will probably fill the others in, but I will tell them in the soulscape anyway.

  After a short stop for lunch, Mulan joins me in experimenting on the essences. We try all sorts of different energies to try and increase the speed of the essence. Unfortunately, none of it works, the only energy that will work with the essence is lifeforce.

  Basically, we can only increase the energy of an essence by feeding it other essences. The amount of essences needed to increase the speed of a single essence is ridiculous. It takes most of the essence that Mulan has collected just to see a noticeable change in the speed of the essence.

  It does prove our theory that increased speed helps to separate the colors within the essence. However, that doesn’t really help as it would take way too much essence to fully separate the colors. The only thing it really does is improve our knowledge and understanding of the properties of essence.

  While that is useful, it doesn’t really help with the problem since it would take too much essence. I estimate that just getting the essence to the point that it fully separates the colors would take over a hundred essences. The cost really isn’t worth it, I would be better off feeding those essences to the dragon’s essence.

  As part of the experimenting, I do let one small essence return to being pure lifeforce. I am able to feed that lifeforce to the test essence and it does seem to have a little more effect. However, even doing it that way isn’t effective enough to make it cost effective.

  There is another option, beasts aren’t the only source of lifeforce, plants have lifeforce too. The problem there is that it would take the lifeforce of an entire forest to equal a single weak beast. I don’t want to go around stripping entire forests of their life just to feed an essence.

  It just wouldn’t be worth it, not to mention I would piss off someone for sure. Even if there isn’t a god or goddess of nature, which I doubt, I’m pretty sure Seronia wouldn’t like it. Besides, it is easier to find beasts to gather essence from than forests to strip of lifeforce.

  Not to mention that my lifeforce drain is only a single target, meaning I would have to do it tree by tree. That sounds like far too much work for far too little effect, not to mention a waste of time. I am starting to think that these experiments are pointless, there are no shortcuts.

  I have increased my knowledge a lot since I started, but haven’t found any real answers. Maybe that will change once I find some beasts with elemental powers to experiment with. However, until then, I may as well just feed all of the other essences to the dragon’s essence.