They are small, but there are hundreds of them and they have lots of sharp looking teeth. There is no way that I want to feel those hundreds of mouths biting into me. Considering that they live within the barrier, I am betting that their teeth will tear right into me.

  Luckily, they flock closely together and when they get close enough I strafe them with my lightning. The ones hit directly pop like overfilled balloons and the rest scatter while shrieking. I take out about a quarter of them and the survivors dive until they are under the trees.

  After that, nothing else bothers us and we are able to make it outside of the barrier. Once I feel the mana density drop, I open a gate in mid-air and fly through it. Luckily, I was smart enough to have the other end open above the camp, or that would have been a rough landing.

  I slow down as I circle back and make a nice soft, gentle landing in front of the cabin. Lizzy immediately jumps down, drops shapeshift, says she needs a nap, and leaves. Leylisha hangs back and waits until Lizzy is gone before she turns to talk to me.

  Leylisha says “First off, thank you for the armor you made for me, it saved me tonight. Second, how can I get stronger?”

  “Well, there are only two main paths that I know of. You need to work on your core and level up. Speaking of, you should have gotten some good exp off those giants, right?”

  Leylisha says “Yes, I gained two levels even though I hardly did anything during the fight. I barely managed to do any damage to them.”

  “Then you are already stronger than before the fight. I’m betting this is the first time that you have seen her fight seriously.”

  Leylisha says “I wouldn’t really call it seeing. It was more like she was teleporting around fighting all three of them at once. I never imagined that a fight could be that intense. To be honest, I was terrified!”

  “I can’t blame you. Lizzy in combat mode is intense. She even scares me at times. I am still not sure who would win if we fought seriously.”

  Leylisha says “That makes me feel a little better. What about my core?”

  “First, I need to know if your class gives you mana?”

  Leylisha says “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Then I can’t really help you. I use mana to work on my core. I will ask Asuna to ride up top with you tomorrow. Between her and Lizzy, they should be able to figure out how you can work on your core.”

  Leylisha says “Thank you. Alright, I will see you in the morning, I am going to try and get some sleep.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Alright, sleep well.”

  She heads off to get some sleep and I head into the cabin, the first thing I do is check on Kirito. Asuna is sound asleep for now, but Kirito is awake and bouncing around on the bed. I snap my fingers to get his attention and he jumps down to run over to me.

  I pick him up, quietly close the door, and then take him into the dining room to play. I play with him until he starts showing signs of being tired and check his teeth. Then I take out some meat from a low rank beast, dice it up finely, and let him try to eat it.

  I don’t think he has all of his teeth yet, but he has enough that he should be able to eat solids. I am proven right as soon as I put the bowl of meat on the table because he tears into it. He eats the entire bowl and manages to fall asleep with his head still in the bowl.

  I pick him up, use the cleaning stone on him, and then quietly take him back into Asuna’s room. She wakes up momentarily as I am putting him in his nest, but goes right back to sleep. After that, I sneak back into my bedroom where Brightfire is still sound asleep, but I find myself torn.

  I want to work on my core, but I also want to experiment with the essences I have collected. My curiosity is triggered by both, but eventually playing with the essence wins out. After all, it is the newer curiosity and actually has a chance of getting some quick answers.

  With that settled, I take out the first giant essence that I got since it is the weakest. If I am going to ruin one, I would prefer that it be the least valuable one that I have. I could use the beast essences, but they are more complex and would be harder to use for this experiment.

  Once I have it out of its container, I start trying to exert my will on the colors within it. I want to try and separate a single color, but my attempt to control all of the colors fails. However, when I try just controlling and gathering a single color, that does work.

  Yet when I try to separate that color from the essence my will alone is not enough. The connections between the colors, while small, are just too strong to break. So, I use mana shaped like a scalpel and see if I can cut them, which does work.

  It is slow, delicate work, but after some time I managed to sever all of the connections. When I cut the last one, the color I focused on basically jumps out of the essence. The remaining essence regathers itself with just one less color, but it is noticeably smaller.

  Also, the way the colors are moving is slower than before, I get the feeling that it is a lot weaker. What I extracted is just floating, held in place by my mana, with no movement at all. I imagine that if I released it, it would immediately dissipate into nothing.

  However, I don’t plan to waste it by testing that theory, I have many other experiments to try. The first of which is trying to recombine it into the essence, but that doesn’t go well. Instead of recombining with the essence, it gets consumed by it as if it was another essence.

  The essence grows a little after consuming it, but the color does not reappear within it. It remains just the two colors and the movements of them are still weaker than originally. Next, I look through my essences and find the weakest beast essence I have.

  I am hoping that it is weak enough that the giant essence will still be able to consume it. When I let them touch, the colors all swirl together as normal, but the process takes much longer. Eventually, the weakened giant essence wins out and consumes the beast essence.

  The essence doesn’t grow any, but the two colors do start moving a little faster. It looks like I basically crippled the essence when I removed one of the colors. For the next experiment, I grab hold of the two colors and carefully separate them from each other.