"There is a way, but you are not going to like it," Hellen answered.

"Tell me," Maxine demanded.

"You would have to be inflicted with a fatal wound on your main body," Hellen answered, "The trauma from such a wound forces your body to awaken that bloodline in order to survive."

"Yeah, you were right. I don't like it and it's not going to happen," Maxine announced.

"However, your father can't exclude the possibility that certain herbs could trigger it's awakening," Hellen said.

"Seriously?" Maxine said in disbelief.

"Yes, but the odds of that happening are very low," Hellen assured Maxine, "Guan has already checked your blood to ensure that the herbs of Earth wouldn't trigger it."

"Wait, when did he get a sample of my blood?" Maxine asked since she couldn't recall him doing that.

"About two weeks ago, while you were sleeping," Hellen answered, "Don't worry he also gathered samples from a few million others from across this world."

"Would it have hurt him to ask?" Maxine complained.

"Not really," Hellen answered, "But there is always the possibility that another immortal could pick up that he is talking to someone."

"Then how do you and him have these talks without being discovered?" Maxine asked.

"My mind and Guan's work far faster than yours," Hellen answered, "A conversation that would take you hours to complete only takes me and your father an instant. That very small window of time makes it virtually impossible for anyone to even detect that he is using his spiritual sense."

"Damn," Maxine said, "Well, could you keep me updated on if Guan finds the combination of herbs that sets off my Twelve-Headed Hydra King bloodline?"

"Certainly," Hellen answered, "Hmmm, weren't you about to do something besides taking to me?"

"Yes, I was about to start experimenting using my Shadow Lord Form," Maxine said.

"Alright, I will leave you to it, sweetie," Hellen said and she withdrew from the conversation.

Maxine had put off testing how her Shadow Lord Form effected her essence armor and it's variations for long enough and decided now was a good time as any to test it. She quickly formed her essence armor and took a look at herself with her spiritual sense. 

The first difference that Maxine noticed was that her pointed ears were elongated by a few inches and the jewels on her forehead were showing through her mask. There goes my idea of using my essence armor to hide the fact that I have the Shadow Lord Form. However when she brought her hand up closer to her face, she saw that the scales were different as well.  Each scale was smaller and more flexible than before and they all looked slick as well. She ran her finger acrossed the scales on the back of her hand and felt almost no resistance at all as if her scales were slicked down with oil. However her palms did not have that same effect. This slick coating on my scales will make it harder for swords to cut me unless they hit me dead on. 

Next Maxine summoned a Shadow Wolf and one of her ravens to test the variations of her essence armor. She started with the Shadow Wolf by merging it with her essence armor. After it finished merging, the only difference she could detect with this variant was that her hair was glossier and her furry tail was longer. She moved swiped at the air with a clawed hand to test her speed and power. She saw that she had only a small additional bonus to her strength and speed with this essence armor. That was disappointing. I was expecting something more besides a different appearance than before. I don't even feel that much difference in my strength or speed other than what the Shadow Lord form brings.

Maxine separated the Shadow Wolf out of her essence armor and wanted to see how her harpy essence armor was different. She examined herself carefully after entering harpy mode. She still had her pointed ears, but instead of her hair turning into a cluster of feathers, it remained looking like hair. She still had talons on her feet and feathers all over her body. Again she didn't feel that much of a bonus to her strength and speed from when she did this in her normal state. She quickly separated her raven from her essence armor.

Maxine was extremely disappointed, but she didn't want to leave things half-finished. She drew out the bracers that were part of her Shadow's Embrace armor from within her body to summon her dragon. She immediately had her dragon merge with her essence armor. Unlike with the other two, she immediately could tell the difference even before it fully formed as a huge ammount of essence flooded her body. The ammount of power flowing into her was noticeably greater than it was the last time she did this. However it's external appearance was exactly the same. Unfortunately this increased strength drained her essence much faster as well. In fact, it was too fast. She would run out of essence in only five minutes of using this dragon essence armor while in Shadow Lord Form. Before she could deactivate it, she felt the essence within all of her constructs and clones. It was almost as if she could reach out and use that essence for herself. Just by thinking it, the essence from her constructs slowly flowed to her and replaced the essence that her dragon essence armor was using. What the FUCK!? I can use my constructs like batteries! If this were a game, I would get reported to the developers for having game breaking abilities. It was at that moment that Maxine noticed that it only worked on her constructs and clones that were within a thirty feet of her. My clone and two constructs are feeding me their strength and I am only recieving about half the essence they are sending me. That doubles my run time with this essence armor. I guess it's lucky for me that most one on one fights don't last long, but this essence armor drains my essence too quickly. I can't use it to fight multiple opponents. Although I could put all of my constructs into the bracers of my Shadow's Embrace armor to increase the runtime, but it would be far more efficient to let my constructs fight as a group. Regardless, I can't get cocky. If I have overpowered abilities, there are certainly other people that do as well and I know for a fact that Chris is one of those people. His Elemental Destroyer mode may not be as powerful as my dragon essence armor in one on one fights, but it is perfectly suited to battle against large groups. 

Maxine shook her head since she was beginning to focus too much on that line of thought and ordered fifty of her Shadow Wolves to approach her. She was going to have them enter the bracers of her Shadow's Embrace armor and feed her essence in order to test her flight capabilities with her dragon essence armor.

After the Shadow Wolves had entered her bracers, Maxine walked outside of the cave and flapped the draconic wings on her back gently to test their strength before she jumped powerfully off the ground. She spread her wings and glided to get a feel for flying in this form. Her center of gravity was different from when she flew using her harpy essence armor, but she quickly adapted. Once she had confident that she fly easily, she flapped the wings with just enough force to maintain her altitude. Flying like this was much more enjoyable compared to her harpy mode since her hands were free. Unfortunately, it burned up essence too quickly for it to be used during long flights. Now time to test the limits of my flight speed with my dragon essence armor. 

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Maxine smiled in anticipation as she flapped her wings powerfully and she shot forward like a bullet. During her rapid acceleration, she heard three distinct sonic booms. Three? However that thought was the furthest thing on her mind as she began to laugh ecstatically from the wonderous sensation of moving this fast. However she knew that she didn't have long to enjoy this even with fifty Shadow Wolves fueling it with their essence.

Maxine slowed down and banked right to initiate a long turn. Once she was lined back up with the cave, she flapped her wings to propel herself forward at Mach 3. However on the return trip she scanned the area ahead of her with her spiritual sense. She had been so excited earlier that she had forgotten about the painful possibility of colliding with a bird. 

When Maxine was roughly a minute from the cave, she noticed a man with a heraldric badge of Lord Kenta on his chest that was looking at the village through a spyglass. More specifically, he was looking at her medicinal garden that the villagers were tending to for her. Why is he spying on a village within his own territory in the first place? It could be that he was sent out to scout out the forces of an opposing territory and he noticed the anomally within the village.

Maxine dived down torwards him while releasing a draconic roar. This action was more to intimidate the scout than to bring him harm. I know my desire to not kill people will eventaully come around and bite me in the ass. Anyways, even if I did kill this guy, another one would be sent to find out why he didn't return. Also, I doubt that anyone will want to pilfer the contents of my medicinal garden after that scouts reports it has a dragon guarding it. Seriously, who would want to mess with a dragon, even a small one, over some herbs? 

As expected the scout took one look at Maxine and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. She pulled out of the dive and leveled off. For added effect, she decided to fly in a huge circle around the village a dozen few times at a slow pace as if doing a patrol. She wanted to be certain that the scout saw her doing this, after he confirmed that she was no longer chasing him.

However while Maxine did her aerial patrol around the village, she saw her best student in the village, Talia, pointing at her and making the other villagers aware that Maxine was there. Canis appeared concerned for a brief moment before a look of enlightenment spread across his face and he went to calm the rest of the villagers. He might think that this form of mine is actually one of my pets.

After finishing her 'patrol,' Maxine flew straight to the cave and deactivated her essence armor. However she hesitated for a moment and decided to have her dragon protect the village. In fact, she ordered it to make hourly aerial patrols and to notify her if it saw anyone besides the villagers. Since I have already shown a dragon guarding the village, I might as well keep it on guard duty. In any case, it just makes a difference of what I do if I need my dragon's power. 

Maxine wondered what time it was and had her clone check the time using her cellphone. She saw that she still had plenty of time left to make a special potion for her class tomorrow. However first she would check on her mother. She knew her mother hadn't come home yet since her shadow clone at the house hadn't encountered her, so she decided to check on her mother through the Shadow Wolves in her mother's shadow. However she immediately regretted it as her face burned crimson. I DID NOT need to see that. Why didn't I consider that mom would have a conjugal visit with dad? She really wanted to banish the image of their entwined bodies from her head.

So Maxine quickly pulled out bronze essence core, a two- year old Blood Ginseng, three strands of Essence Grass and a small glass bottle distilled water inside it from her dimensional pouch. They were the ingredients of a potion that gives the consumer eight to nine strands of essence, but it only worked on people that had yet to form their core. It was called Awakening Fluid. Fortunately it had no bad side-effects and each potion had enough in it for twenty doses. Unfortunately, it could only be used once per person. After that, it didn't matter how much they drank of it. It wouldn't do anything for them. Regardless, she only had to make one potion. It would save her alot of trouble if she didn't have to refine a bunch of copper essence cores for them for five days, but that was only if she could refine this medicine. However, this was the first time Maxine would be performing alchemy, but she had already conceived of a rough method for refinement. Fortunately she had acquired fifty sets of ingredients for this medicine during her shadow clones hunt for medicinal ingredients, so she wasn't too concerned about destroying some of the ingredients by accident.

First, Maxine creaed a low-heat flame and used her essence to move the Blood Ginseng above the flame. She had to constantly monitor the heat. If she made it slightly too hot, it would destroy the component that she was trying to retrieve. Slowly tiny blood-red droplets that had the consistency of syrup appeared all over the Blood Ginseng's surface. Those droplets are what she was trying to retrieve and they had the right color as well.

Maxine used her essence to gather these droplets and had them form a ball above the ginseng. After the ginseng started looking like a dried up piece of charcoal, she discarded it and brought out the three strands of Essence Grass. She moved them above the flame in the same manner that she had with the Blood Ginseng only further away from the flame. She wanted to warm up the grass without cooking it. This method would separate the medicinal fluid from the fiber within the Essence Grass. Once she could detect that the fluid had formed, she split her shadow essence into both black and white essence. She used the white essence to encase it while her black essence vaporized everything else. She combined all of the fluid into a ball as she did with the Blood Ginseng. Now she had one red and one green ball of liquid floating in the air infront of her. So far it's been easy. I am not sure why the recipe said that I needed so many sets of ingredients. Anyways, I need to combine the refined Blood Ginseng and Essence Grass while infusing all of the essence within this bronze essence core into that mixture at the same time.

Maxine used the most primitive way she could think of. She started to knead the two ingredients together using her essence while applying heat to the essence core to slowly release it's essence. She funnelled the released essence into the mixing ingredients above the flames. It was going very smoothly and she was feeling somewhat excited about being successful on her first try. Unfortunately when half of it's essence from the core had been released, the essence core fractured and exploded. She didn't even have time to register that she had made a mistake before she was thrown by the explosion as the ingredients were obliterated by the explosion. She slammed violently into the cave walls. Fortunately due to her being an iron stage essence cultivator, she wasn't hurt. It only scared the hell out of her. FUCK! I should have known that was too easy. Now I have to figure out why the damn thing exploded or it will happen again. 

Maxine closed her eyes and reviewed the events prior to the explosion and realized that in her excitement she had allowed the essence feeding that flame to fluctuate very slightly. That had caused the flame under her control to spike in temperature for an instant. She was surprised such a minor tremor in her control would have such a big effect. I need to have finer control of my essence.

Maxine went through the whole process again, but like before the essence core exploded on her. Fortunately this time, it only had 40 percent of the essence left in it before it did. I got closer. I just need to remain calm and lower the heat slightly. 

Maxine kept trying and adjusting the heat of the flame. She went through almost all of the prepared ingredients before she suceeded on the last set by chance. YES! I did it! She was overjoyed that she hadn't wasted all of those ingredients for nothing, but still she didn't let her excitement distract her. She very carefully dropped the essence enriched ball of mixed medicinal ingredients into the bottle with distilled water in it and it immediately began to dissolve. I am just happy that this last step is so easy. I should let this sit until that glob has completely dissolved. The recipe indicated that it shouldn't take more than sixteen hours Earth time for it to completely dissolve. It looks like I am all set to teach tomorrow.