The butterfly flitted through the moonlit night, his body almost glowing in the intense light of the full moon.

He danced through the sky like an autumn leaf, floating just above the palace rooftop, eyes looking out for prey. The cool night air was pleasant but barely registered with Adon fully in murder mode.

As he sought an opponent, he was every inch a monstrous predator despite his diminutive species.

He felt a little like a big game hunter, back in his old stomping grounds: the exterior of the palace. Finally, he was truly the deadliest thing out there. He wanted to take on something larger than himself, something that a normal butterfly would not have been able to kill.

It would alleviate the feelings of powerlessness and rage that he had felt overwhelmed by in the last quarter of an hour.

Adon’s unblinking insect eyes scanned the garden and rooftop for the creature or creatures that would become his unfortunate victims.

But the night was mostly quiet. The rooftop was empty of nesting birds or any insect large enough to be worth the butterfly’s notice. He saw on the ground below that there were some of the night creatures he had previously observed as a caterpillar wandering the grounds of the garden.

A hedgehog, but that would be no challenge at all at this point.

A vole—no, he still felt bad about letting a whole family of voles die when he was afraid of the Red Slayer Wasps a few weeks back. He wasn’t hurting any voles. Plus, a vole would also be no challenge.

Adon saw a possum walking the grounds and shook his head. That animal was better, larger, more formidable than the hedgehog or the vole—but still too weak.

A fox raced through the garden and snatched the vole up in its jaw, then ran away. For a second, Adon wanted to fly after it, but he hesitated as his conscious mind considered it. The red-brown blue darted under some bushes, and he recognized that his opportunity had passed.

That fox booked it out of there, he thought, his mind a strange mix of frustrated and amused at the sight of the bushes lightly rustling with the fox’s retreat.

It was as if it knew that the eyes of a superior predator were upon it—or it knew that the palace contained many fearsome life forms. It could have been using some sort of extrasensory perception, perhaps related to Mana. Regardless of the reason why, the creature was out of sight long before Adon could make up his mind to give chase.

And he was back to scanning the ground for a suitable opponent.

Damn it, there’s nothing in this garden that can offer me a challenge…

He turned to the skies above, but they appeared empty too.

Would he have to fly out to the forest nearby?

He shook himself slightly.

Get out of your own head, Adon, he told himself. Just kill whatever animal you see next. It’s better than getting yourself even more worked up, because you don’t see a fucking apex predator hanging around the palace garden.

It was a laughable idea, really. As if the palace would happen to have a pack of wolves just sitting in the backyard. The palace—and by extension its garden—was located within a walled city, not a wilderness. There were trees outside the walls and a forest nearby, but big, scary animals were typically afraid of the noises of human settlements. There was no reason the Claustrians’ capital city, Wayn, should be any different.

Adon took a moment to center himself—and braced to spring at the next thing that crossed his eyes.

After a moment, approaching from just outside his range of vision, some medium-sized, black shapes glided through the sky.

The winged figures were smaller than owls but far too large to be moths or other, similar insects.

Their bodies were furry, with stretched-thin skin wings that the yellow moonlight shone through.

It took Adon a moment to be sure of what he was seeing, but when he recognized them, he felt a little shoot of joy spring to life inside himself.

Bats. It looks like just over a dozen of them.

Adon remembered being attacked by a bat in the garden back when he was a caterpillar and barely winning the encounter.

That had been one on one. So, a group of bats might be a semi-appropriate challenge for him now.

Yes, bats would do nicely. The flying creatures seemed to be moving in a near unison, like birds. Adon perversely hoped that they were as coordinated as they seemed, as that would add to the challenge. They were larger than the one he had fought before, too, he realized as he stared. It was more obvious as they drew closer to him.

For a moment, he had thought that they might be the adult versions of the Little Brown Bat, if he had perhaps fought and killed a young one.

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No… Actually, these things are definitely big enough that I could have mistaken them for birds… There’s no way “Little” would be in their species name.

They looked so much larger than the Little Brown Bat, now that they were so near him, that he doubted he would be able to eat them all. But he would bring the leftover meat home for Goldie and Samson. He hoped that freshly hunted meat would be as good for them or better as receiving the benefits of what the palace could provide.

And the young spiders needed their growing food.

He used Identify on one of the larger ones to figure out what this species was.

Greater Claustrian Flying Fox (Male)

Interesting. I guess that name is because you’re so large, ‘Flying Fox.’

He rose into the air and fluttered close to the back of the group bats, which had passed over his head while he was staring at them and were now drifting toward the garden slowly, lazily, on the current of the wind. Their movements, in a swirling line, were almost hypnotic in their steady, rhythmic quality.

Adon had not planned this out at all. He intended to thrust himself into the Flying Foxes’ space, let the bats give him their best shot, and then he would simply counter and destroy them with brute force. He would probably mainly use the Transformation Adaptation for his offensive, along with enhancing his body using Mana.

If he absolutely had to, he would try turning invisible or roasting them with fire magic, but he doubted invisibility would help, given that bats tended to have echolocation, and he didn’t think he would need to use fire magic. He doubted these creatures would have any Mana-using Adaptation other than the sound attack the other bat had employed—assuming that it used Mana as Adon suspected.

He remembered his fight with the Little Brown Bat perfectly, and he expected that these specimens would not have any powers that he couldn’t deal with.

As he got close to the group of bats, a large bat near the back of the line of creatures—what Adon’s mind instantly interpreted as a rearguard—turned to look at him and clearly observed his approach. Then it simply turned to face away again, following along with the group.

Does this species not eat insects? Adon wondered.

Or was it possible they had some other prey in mind?

He was not offended that the bats didn’t see him as a threat. He understood that was only natural at this point.

Adon held in place, fluttering lightly to avoid falling, while he watched the bats fly down to the garden.

His question was answered as he saw the first bat in the group land on a flowering tree and stick its head into a flower. The other bats joined it in tucking their heads into the first flowers they came to. The first one stuck there for thirty seconds or so and then moved to another flower. Adon was unsurprised to see the area around its mouth shining with a clear, reflective liquid.

It had taken only a moment’s observation for the butterfly to recognize that the bats were sucking down nectar. Just like Adon when he had no source of meat present.

All right, then. Vegetarian bats, probably. No use waiting for them to attack me…

He glided down to the closest bat and landed on its back. The Flying Fox had its head stuck all the way into the center of a flower, but it twitched in response to the light weight landing on its body. Adon sensed that the bat would withdraw its head in a moment and try to resist him. Almost everything in nature had a self-defense mechanism of some sort, in his experience.

He wasn’t going to wait for this bat to try to employ its own.

Before it could back its head out of the flower and perhaps try to throw him off, the butterfly used a quick Transformation to turn his proboscis into his old mandibles. He turned to get a sideways angle on the neck, and he closed his jaws decisively.

Crunch.

There was a crack of bone and a gentler sound of the chitinous blades cutting through the flesh around the bone.

The head sagged away from the base of the neck, and the body went instantly limp underneath Adon. Then the figure of the Flying Fox slumped slightly forward, head tipping forward into the flower it had begun to feed from. The body’s movements were like those of a drunk whose face had fallen into an exceptionally large mug of ale.

Through his feet, Adon felt and tasted as the blood began to pour out of the Flying Fox’s stump neck, into the flower bulb, and back out again, commingling with the flower’s natural nectar. The salty-sweet mix of blood and nectar was richer and more intoxicating than either one alone. The butterfly’s instincts told him that this brew of liquids would be an unusually nutritious meal.

He quickly released his focus on the Transformation, allowing his mandibles to turn back into a proboscis—they snapped back to their original shape like he’d just let go of a rubber band—and he inserted the long, straw-like appendage into the flower.

Then he slurped up the bloody, sugary juice.

It was nowhere close to the ambrosia that the eagle’s blood had been. Still, every gulp restored some of the energy he had just exerted flying and transforming his body—and brought Adon a dark satisfaction.

I should make sure to try this blend again, he thought. Would it be weird to ask for blood and nectar mixed together in one cup at the palace?

As he consumed the first bat, Adon’s natural impulse, deeply ingrained in his body at this point, was to slip into a feeding trance.

He only barely registered it as the remaining Greater Claustrian Flying Foxes slowly withdrew their heads from their flowers and shifted their bodies in unison to glare at the interloper hungrily consuming one of their brethren.

That is, the movements were obvious enough to Adon—but they seemed to barely merit his attention. He mostly wanted to enjoy the delicious meal in front of him.

As the entire group of bats around him turned in his direction, he recognized that he could not afford to simply lapse into his usual semi-conscious state while eating. He was about to be in a fight.

There was a low hiss from the largest bat, standing on a branch parallel to Adon, around a foot away from him. Its lips pulled back to show its teeth in a shuddering, snarling expression. Despite being a nectar-eater, the beast had sharp, pointed white knives for teeth. Adon’s reaction was that with its mouth twisted that way, it looked even uglier than bats normally did.

But he was far from intimidated.

Bring it on, he thought. He shifted his weight on his first victim’s body, ready to spring off at a moment’s notice, continuing to drink the heady mixture of blood and nectar until the last moment.

He realized he was beginning to feel excited.

It made sense. He was ready. He had provoked this deliberately.

Now he was getting what he wanted.

The largest bat made another noise. A low, guttural sound. It took a step forward.

Then the whole colony threw themselves at Adon at once.