Instead, I open my eyes and take a good look at her body where I find a few red lines. They are mostly around the scales on her neck, but a few stretch down onto her shoulders. Other than that, the only changes I can see are that her teeth and claws look more dangerous.

  “How do you feel?”

  Lizzy says “Good. It didn’t hurt, but I’m really hungry.”

  “Alright, go have dinner and we will talk more about it tomorrow.”

  Lizzy rushes off as soon as I finish speaking, she must be really hungry, but that isn’t surprising. The rest of us move into the cabin to have our own dinner and chat about various things. I take care of feeding Kirito while everyone else eats, then I start chatting with Mulan.

  “So, now that you’ve seen it, do you think the essence would benefit you?”

  Mulan says “It’s possible. My essence is still low after sharing with mom, but I can’t be sure my essence won’t just consume it.”

  “Even if it does just consume it, that would still benefit you.”

  Mulan says “That’s true, but I don’t want to waste such a valuable resource!”

  “It wouldn’t be a waste. I am very curious if dragon and phoenix essence can mix! So even if it doesn’t work, we will learn something. Besides, if you can observe the process in your own core, you might learn a better method.”

  Mulan says “Alright, I guess we can give it a try.”

  Once she agrees, I take out the essence and a drop of blood and repeat the process. This time I judge the amount of essence needed better and don’t have to put any back. However, as soon as the drop is infused with essence, Kirito goes crazy and starts trying to eat it.

  Mulan laughs and says “It looks like he really wants it! Are you going to let him have it?”

  I grab Kirito before he can snatch the blood and hold him in my arms, but his eyes stay locked on the blood. When I scan him, I find that his core has fully developed and it is a pure white ball of energy. The core is still at the basic level, but that shouldn’t stop him from being able to absorb the blood.

  “His element is holy, that shouldn’t conflict with fire, so I don’t think it would hurt him. I also don’t think his instincts would be telling him to eat it if it would harm him, but I also don’t want to experiment on him when he is this young.”

  Mulan says “I don’t know, with as bad as he wants it, not giving it to him might be the worse option.”

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  Asuna says “I’ve never seen him react like that to anything. If you are taking votes, I say give it to him.”

  Leafa says “Looking at him, he has a powerful ability to adapt to things. He shouldn’t have any problems absorbing the blood from what I can tell.”

  “Alright. I guess we can let him try.”

  I cast the spell and then carefully move the blood drop into the center of Kirito’s core. I cross my fingers as I release the spell and wait to see what will happen. His core gains some hints of red, but the bigger change is that it no longer looks solid.

  His core now looks more like a ball of white flames with just the occasional flash of red in them. When I open my eyes, the only visible change is a streak of red in Kirito’s fur. It starts between his ears and goes all the way to the very tip of his tail, like a racing stripe.

  Honestly, it just looks like he tried to go under something that had recently been painted. Hopefully, it will look better once he grows into it, right now it looks fairly sad. Of course, I am not about to say that out loud, I wouldn’t want to upset him or give him a complex.

  “He seems to have absorbed the blood without any issue. I can’t detect anything wrong with him, but he might develop issues as he grows.”

  Kirito starts whining for food despite having just eaten, so I take out another serving for him. He scarfs it down as if he hasn’t eaten in days and then almost instantly falls asleep. I move him to his nest and then infuse another drop of blood for Mulan to absorb.

  However, when I use the spell and move it close to her core, Mulan’s core grabs it and absorbs it. Her core pulses a few times, but it was already red to begin with so there is no way to spot any changes. It is the same when I open my eyes, Mulan’s human form shows no changes at all.

  “I can’t tell, did it work?”

  Mulan says “Yes, it did. I am now about five percent dragon!”

  “Not as big of a change as I was hoping for, but I am glad that it worked.”

  Mulan says “I think it would have been more, but my essence was of equal strength to the dragon’s.”

  “So, in order to make you more dragon we would have to use up your essence first? That could be problematic.”

  Mulan says “Agreed. I don’t particularly like the feeling of weakness I felt when I weakened my essence.”

  “Then we don’t have to do it. Just knowing it is possible is enough to keep my curiosity at bay. By the way, did you detect anything interesting when you absorbed the dragon essence?”

  Mulan says “Not really. I am pretty sure that I got exactly the same amount of essence that I saw you infuse into the blood.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Your essence grabbed it from me, did you do that?”

  Mulan says “No, my essence did that on its own. I have no idea why it did that.”

  “Can essence act on its own? Does it have instincts?”

  Mulan says “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “My best guess would be that your essence wanted it for some reason. It would make more sense if it had consumed it.”

  Mulan says “Because that would mean my essence was trying to fix itself. Since that isn’t it, we have far less to go on.”

  “Right.”

  Mulan says “I wish I could tell you, but I really don’t know.”

  “It’s alright, I was just curious. I will just wait and see if anyone else’s essence acts in a similar way. It is hard to make educated guesses with only one example.”

  Mulan says “That makes sense. In the meantime, I can try to help you in studying and experimenting on the other essences.”

  “Actually, let me teach you how to harvest essence. Then you can go hunting with Lizzy in my place and gather more for us to experiment with. Sound good?”

  Mulan says “I’d love to!”

  “You have learned the gate spell, right? How are you with it?”

  Mulan says “Yeah, mom taught it to me. I am okay with it, but I haven’t practiced it as much as I should have.”