For once, I actually dream and it is a dream of the fight between Everburn and the gold. The difference is that I am Everburn, or at least I am a dragon and I am the one fighting the gold. The fight lasts a lot longer than it really did, but I am rudely awoken by something in my ear.

  It happened right as the fight was about to end and I am not happy at being woken. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a naked, giggling Brightfire, which lessens my anger. However, the way she is giggling tells me that she is the reason that my ear feels strange.

  “What did you do?!”

  Brightfire says “You wouldn’t wake up no matter what I did!”

  “So what did you do?”

  Brightfire says “Well, I kind of licked your ear.”

  “You what?!”

  Brightfire starts laughing at me, that is until I lick her back, from her knee to her face. Of course, I don’t stop at just one lick, I pin her down and lick her until she is completely soaked. She tries to fight back, but I have a completely unfair advantage and I easily win.

  After that, she insists on taking a real bath to get cleaned up and I don’t argue. Instead, I shapeshift into elven form and follow her, just to help her get clean of course. After our bath, we join Asuna and Grimgar to have breakfast and I feed Kirito while the others eat.

  Grimgar says “You will be leaving my clan’s territory today, but I sent runners ahead. You should have safe passage until you reach the human kingdom that borders the Magic Kingdom.”

  “Thanks, Grimgar.”

  Grimgar says “No need to thank me, not with how much I owe you.”

  Brightfire says “That means the caravan should be about a week away from the Magic Kingdom?”

  “Yeah, that sounds right. Why?”

  Brightfire says “Then tomorrow will be when I trade places with Sero and Kreno.”

  “Oh, alright. I guess that means I need to check with Mercy and see if Lenora is ready to return.”

  Grimgar says “That would be appreciated, I miss my wife.”

  Brightfire says “I can do that when I arrange the switch. I know you have experiments that you want to do.”

  “That works, thanks.”

  We finish eating and I pack away the cabin, then we watch Asuna play tag with Kirito. When the caravan is ready to go, the two of them simply move their play inside the carriage. Kirito is lasting longer before he needs to sleep, which is a good sign that he is healthy.

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  Grimgar promises to rejoin us for lunch and then heads over to ride with King Vex. Brightfire connects to the network to make arrangements and I take out a giant essence to experiment on. I only have dragon blood to work with, but I have several vials of it, so it should be fine.

  I take the giant essence and start trying to isolate an intact quarter of it from the rest. For this to work properly, it needs to have all the colors in the proper balance. Just trying to get the right balance of colors isolated takes me almost an hour.

  Once I manage to get it right, separating it from the rest of the essence is fairly easy. The next part is what has me worried, actually forcing the essence to infuse a drop of blood. I stretch out the mana holding the essence until it forms a point and stick a single drop of blood on that point.

  Then I squeeze the rest of the mana so that it forces all of the essence into the blood. Surprisingly, it works the first time and the blood absorbs all of the giant’s essence. It might be because I am using dragon blood that it worked so easily, but I am just glad it worked.

  I’m guessing that blood will have a limit on how much essence it can absorb based on the quality. Dragon blood being about as high quality as it is possible to get, it should hold anything I put into it. Now I have a drop of blood infused with giant essence, but no idea what to do with it.

  It would be a waste not to use it, but none of my wives or kids would want to be giants. Well, Ekard might want it just to be bigger, but as a drake I would think that giant's essence would be a step down. His own essence might just feed on it instead of absorbing it, which would be a waste.

  I turn my attention back to the giant’s essence and it has noticeably shrunk, but it hasn’t lost any energy. That tells me that removing a color damages the energy of an essence, but removing equal amounts doesn’t. That would mean that it should be easier for the essence to recover after having a full chunk removed.

  If I fed the other essences I have to the giant essence, it would probably recover. However, I don’t plan to waste them for that, I will save them to feed to the gold’s essence. Having dragon essence to help enhance people is far more valuable than any other essence.

  I doubt that the gold’s essence, as big as it is, is going to be enough for everyone I want to enhance. Not to mention what I want to use it for for myself, so being able to restore it will be important. The only problem I can think of is that it is the essence of a fire dragon and that isn’t going to work for everyone.

  There is practically no chance of me getting the dragon essence of the other elements. So, I need to figure out how to change the element of the essence, or find other essences for the others. In order to change the element of an essence, I need to figure out a lot more about essences.

  To do that, I am going to need to find beasts with strong elemental properties to study and experiment with. Common beast essences are just not going to cut it, I need to find much stronger beasts. Beasts that are both strong and have a strong elemental affinity are not going to be easy to find.

  Even worse, finding them and hunting them is going to take the one thing that I don’t have, time. Even if I knew where to hunt, finding the time to do so would be problematic. As much as I hate to admit it, I may just have to give up on the idea of enhancing everyone.

  I’ve got too much that I need to do right now, maybe later I will be able to find the time. For now, I still need to figure out what to do with the blood infused with giant essence. I am still thinking about it when we stop for lunch and Grimgar rejoins us at that point.

  “Oh, Grimgar, would you like to be bigger and stronger?”

  Grimgar says “Lenora and I discussed it and we decided to wait until after we have at least one kid.”

  “What? Oh, no. I wasn’t talking about that.”

  Grimgar says “Then what are you talking about?”