“Oh, are you two leaving soon?”

  Damona says “Yes. We plan to leave after breakfast. We have things that we need to take care of.”

  Leafa says “Much like Kechara, I can’t be away from my tree for long. Although, that will get better over time as our bond develops.”

  “Alright, I will open you a gate as soon as we are done eating.”

  Damona says “We have both enjoyed our time with you and look forward to more!”

  Leafa says “We are both glad that we accepted the summons!”

  “I am glad to hear that! I am also glad that you joined us and I can’t wait to see how things go in the future.”

  Damona says “Don’t worry, I will teach all of your wives everything I know!”

  “I wasn’t worried about that, but now I think I need to be!”

  Kreno says “Oh, come on! What’s the worst that could happen?!”

  “You mean other than all of my wives learning how to manipulate me through our fun? Well, just off the top of my head, Damona’s personality might rub off on them! One of her is bad enough!”

  That comment sets both Damona and Leafa into peals of laughter and gets chuckles from the others. The joking continues throughout the remainder of breakfast, but I don’t mind. As soon as everyone is done eating I open a gate back to the peninsula for the two of them.

  Of course, they don’t just go, they both insist on very passionate goodbye kisses. Not that I mind granting their requests, but it is a little embarrassing doing so in front of my kids. To be honest, I am kind of worried about what the kids might be learning accidentally.

  Oh well, there isn’t much that I can do about it at this point, I’m sure my wives will educate them. It might not be the education I want, but I’m sure that they will be alright in the end. Considering how things ended up, it’s not like I have any right to lecture them on proper behavior.

  When I finish kissing Damona and Leafa, they head through the gate and I close it behind them. Then, the rest of us head outside and watch Kirito play until the caravan is ready to leave. Once the caravan is ready to go, we board the carriage and everyone gets moving.

  Inside the carriage, Mulan and I take out all of the essences we have and start comparing them. Those that are duplicates, I feed to each other so that Mulan can see the process. It also serves to make the essences bigger and therefore easier for us to study.

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  It doesn’t take long for me to share everything I have figured out about essence so far. After that, with Mulan assisting, I continue my experiments on feeding essences to each other. Throughout the experiments, we can’t get the color of the essence to change, only increase the energy.

  The next set of experiments is to try adding a color from one essence to another. The first part is finding two essences of near equal strength and then trying to find a color that is similar. I already know how to separate out a color, but doing it without losing the energy I haven’t figured out.

  Every time I separate out a color, it turns dead and all movement stops, which is a failure. It means that I am extracting something, but not taking the essence with it. The problem seems to be the method I am using to separate the colors from each other.

  All the colors stop moving when I force them apart and the remaining ones lose a lot of movement. Mulan is the one who suggests that I just take a chunk of the essence and then try to filter out the other colors. When I attempt it, it does retain the energy, but filtering the colors proves nearly impossible.

  In the process of removing the colors, I also remove all of the energy in the fragment. I split the fragment into three smaller pieces, all with a single color, but they have no energy left. Unless I can figure out a better way to do this, my experiments are going to end here.

  At least I can feed the failed pieces to the dragon essence, so they don’t go to waste. It isn’t as good as feeding the full essence to it directly, but at least it is something. Even with all the mistakes, it isn’t enough to see any growth to the dragon’s essence.

  I let Mulan try a few experiments, but she quickly gets discouraged by her failures. I end up having to explain that even failures can teach us something and that I fail all the time. I make her list all the things that failed and then add my own failures to it so that we don’t repeat any of them.

  Mulan says “At this rate, we are going to run out of essence to experiment on!”

  “That’s why you will be going hunting to get more for us to experiment on. I don’t have the time to do enough hunting, which is why you get to help.”

  Mulan says “I will do my best!”

  “Don’t push yourself too hard, there is no rush. We can do the experiments once we have enough essence. The time we are waiting will be a good chance to come up with some new ideas.”

  Mulan says “Alright. If you say so.”

  “I’m serious. You collecting essence will free me up to work on other things.”

  Shortly after that, Kirito wakes up from his nap and I let Mulan join Asuna in playing with him. The entire time we were working on the essence, Sero and Kreno were cuddling with Bella. With the kids occupied for the moment, I shift into a female human and join the cuddling.

  We stay that way until we stop for lunch, but I return to dragonoid form before leaving the carriage. The rulers know I can shapeshift, but I don’t see a reason to have them doubting my gender. Although, if I am being honest with myself, the more I use a female form, the less weird it feels.

  That scares me a little, if I use it too much does that mean that I will lose my sense of self? Luckily, Bella is the only one that actually prefers that I be a female, the rest prefer me male. Unless something changes, I shouldn’t need to use a female form that often.

  The rulers see me, but they stay in their own group and I just eat with the girls and the kids. Kirito eats his portion, but he doesn’t fall asleep right away, so I pet him while the others eat. He isn’t as energetic as normal, so he sits peacefully and enjoys being petted.

  I keep him with me when we move into the carriage after everyone has finished lunch. He only lasts a few minutes into the ride before he is sleeping soundly in my lap. I carefully move him to his nest and then spend some time with Asuna and Mulan.