As the Greater Claustrian Flying Foxes hurled themselves through the air just above the flowering tree, Adon felt time almost slowing down.

The colony of bats had lunged at what must have been their top non-flight speed. But compared with the Golden Eagle or Rosslyn—or even relative to the Eagle-Owl—it was like they were leaping at him through pudding.

Adon watched them for a moment, marking each bat’s position in his mind before he took action.

With a thought, he sent Mana pulsing from his core, through his frame, and into his feet. He took one final suck on the stream of blood still pulsating out of the dead bat’s body, and then he flung himself upward. In an instant, he found himself rocketing up, above the bats that were still moving through the air, following their momentum toward the place where Adon had just been. His proboscis trailed behind him, pulling out of the dead bat’s neck stump with a small pop.

He reached out to the place where he had discovered mental magic weeks ago, and he connected with that power. His mind accelerated to a much faster processing speed.

It was as if the slow-moving bats below him had actually paused in midair.

His mind devised and discarded a dozen plans of attack in a fraction of a second—and also quietly recognized, then dismissed, the fact that mental magic itself had grown noticeably more powerful than before.

He estimated that he could hit all the bats with a psychic scream like what he had used on the wasps, but probably fifty percent more powerful than the previous one had been.

But it wouldn’t kill them, he felt certain.

The scream hadn’t been that effective on the simple-minded wasps, only killing a few of the physically closest ones, and mammals were an order of magnitude more complex and intelligent. If the only effect of such an attack would be to stun the bats, it would be a waste of focus and Mana. He didn’t need to stun such slow-moving creatures.

Most of the violent methods Adon considered revolved around the Transformation Adaptation, which had already proved effective against the first bat he targeted.

Mandibles were too limited. He didn’t want to kill the bats one at a time.

Infusing Mana into his wings to use them as blades would have a similar issue.

Adon finally settled on his method.

The bats were still moving super slowly through the air—not truly paused after all, just slowed drastically down—and he checked their locations once more.

Then he took a fraction-of-a-second, imprecise count of how many spines his body was covered in. The number had declined post-Evolution—his body had reshaped itself to make it almost impossible that he would accidentally pole himself in his delicate wings—but he still had dozens of the deadly weapons.

Should be enough.

The butterfly made a series of small changes to every single one of his spines—an act of extraordinary focus that he knew was only possible with the aid of mental magic. He took aim as best he could, using the slowed down experience of time he was enjoying and his recollection of the Little Brown Bat’s anatomy to best advantage.

And Adon launched his counterattack.

Forty-eight spines shot out of his body, propelled by the combination of his Spine Shot and Telekinesis, which both caused the spines to move faster and guided them into their targets.

Every single spine found its target, in a variety of critical locations on the bats’ bodies. Where he could, Adon aimed for identifiable veins and arteries.

They planted themselves in the mammals’ delicate bodies with a pleasant series of light thuds reminiscent of darts striking a dartboard.

The bats let loose a series of pained shrieks to all sides of Adon.

To his relief, the sounds were no more painful to his ears than ordinary sounds of suffering and pain. That is, these bats did not seem to share the Little Brown Bat’s echolocation attack ability—or, if they did, they were not using it on him, perhaps worried about affecting each other in the close quarters of the fight.

The butterfly stopped using mental magic and began to drink.

The spines had remained connected to Adon’s body by thin tubes of flesh reminiscent of the material of his proboscis. That, plus adding a hollowed out tip to the ends of the spines, were the changes Adon had made to his body with Transformation.

His spines had gone from merely penetrating the enemy’s body and injecting a small amount of venom to providing a straw through which Adon could drain the bats of their blood. He sucked in forcefully, and all eleven of the still-living bats began bleeding through the various regions that he had pierced and into Adon’s numerous straws—effectively draining their blood into his stomach. Weakening them to make himself stronger.

The wounds, most of which had deliberately been inflicted in areas Adon expected would be highly prone to bleeding, pumped blood into Adon’s extra probosces, and he felt the rich, hot liquid restoring his power even as Transformation steadily drained it. The resource draining and the refueling processes seemed to keep pace with each other, keeping the Transformation sustainable.

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The bats stuck with Adon’s dozens of needles wiggled and writhed in the branches of the tree, but Adon ignored their movements for now. Most of the movements were quite weak. He had struck each of them in critical areas, he was fairly certain.

Even if one managed to pull off of the spines that impaled it, the bat would still have had venom injected into more than one vital area, and it would be in immediate danger of bleeding out through the resulting holes in its body.

As the bats suffered, slowly but surely bleeding to death through the tubes Adon had connected—and very quickly and visibly weakened by the venom he’d injected—the butterfly alighted near the top of the tree, a foot above the closest bat. He watched as the dark fluid flowed from the bats into his body, and he quickly began to feel bloated.

One bat finally yanked itself free from Adon’s spines after a minute of struggling. Then, staggering drunkenly and bleeding profusely from a half-dozen wounds, it plummeted off the top of the tree and struck the ground, where it continued bleeding, forming a small puddle around itself.

Adon looked down but otherwise ignored that single, unmoving bat. He was still drinking from the others, and he did not want to disconnect from them to go pursue the bat that appeared to be near death.

When he was finally more than full—Biomass stocked up so high that he thought he would begin shedding his skin if he consumed anymore—Adon pulled his spines free and dismissed the Transformation. His body snapped back to its former shape like a rubber band stretched to the limit and suddenly released.

The bats continued bleeding, dyeing the flowers and the leaves beside them a deep red that shone in the moonlight.

Adon saw how all of the bats had fared, and he was satisfied with his performance.

With only one move from the butterfly, the fight had concluded.

He was becoming a very efficient killer.

In fact, he felt slightly smug. He knew that these bats were nothing compared to the predators he had just hunted in the forest and by the mountain, and he sensed they were even more insignificant next to the enemies he was likely to face in the future, but still—to have such a one-sided fight when he was outnumbered felt like a drastic improvement in his combat capabilities.

Even the slight headache hangover from using mental magic could not dampen his spirits.

On the ground, far below, a possum—perhaps the one Adon had seen when he was scouting for prey—picked up the mostly dead Flying Fox that Adon had seen drop earlier. The butterfly did nothing about it. He had all the other bats, after all, for the spiders. Nothing was bothering him in the treetop.

Perhaps the other animals in the garden were too prudent to try to scavenge in a place where a dozen animals had been killed within such a brief period.

Adon thought about how he would transport the bodies, and he quickly settled on wrapping a half-dozen up with silk—he still had a silk-generating organ, he thought a half-dozen was plenty, and he did not think he could easily carry the rest of them, even drained of their blood.

He moved up and down the leafy canopy for a few minutes, moving a selected few of the Flying Foxes closer together. Then he spun his silk around them, forming a densely packed cocoon around the bats that used up some of the extra Biomass he had accumulated beyond his point of satiety.

Finally, he stood still, resting his body atop the silk-wrapped package, and he waited.

Adon had alleviated his feelings of weakness somewhat, he had worked off any alcohol in his system, he had enjoyed an after-dinner snack, boosted his Evolution Points, and conducted a test of his current combat capabilities—but there was one more experiment he wanted to perform before he went inside to the spiders.

After the dinner conversation with the Duke’s sons and his separate time spent with Rosslyn, Adon was very curious whether he would be able to complete a Transformation into human form. It seemed to be the natural next step for a mystic beast that had reached maturity—and something that Adon needed to know if he could do. Thus far, he had performed only small Transformations—adjusting the size of his wings or antennae, turning his spines into needles.

Shapeshifting into a whole different species was something else. The kind of power a fantastical beast in a magical world should have.

He wanted to try on a thousand different skins. He could be a dragon again, or a spider—or a human, of course.

That had been Adon for the plurality of his incarnations in the past.

Human, and a loser in his own mind.

Although Adon was grateful for his butterfly life, and he would not have simply become a human if given the option, it was exciting to think about temporarily being human—and doing human things for a while. Even if he could only hold the Transformation for as long as he could remain focused on it, he would enjoy being able to wear a human face for some period of time. Having a conversation in which other people could actually see his facial expressions. He thought he had the confidence for that now, at least with his friends. He was still iffy on having any conversations with people he did not know at all, and he could imagine how violently he would have cringed after some of the things he’d heard and said at dinner if he’d had a human face that evening.

Being a butterfly had some definite advantages.

But being able to throw a punch or swing a sword or perform other functions impossible for a butterfly some of the time would come with a lot of obvious perks too.

Based on his experience thus far, the power would probably continue to be limited by the duration of his focus as well as his pool of Mana, but both of those had continued to grow stronger, alongside his other abilities, following his Evolution.

The key question was if he could make the Transformation at all. If he could do it once, his Transformation duration would only improve with practice.

So, Adon waited for the Mana he had expended fighting the Flying Foxes to fully recover.

He waited to conduct an experiment that would tell him where he was in his growth as a butterfly—and a mystic beast.

The butterfly waited outside and alone, because although he was eager to make this attempt, he had already dealt with a roiling pot of hot and unpleasant emotions this evening.

More than anything else, at the moment, he did not want anyone else, even his friends, to witness his attempt if he failed.

If he embarrassed himself out here with no witnesses, Adon thought he could handle it well. That might be a bit harder if Goldie or Rosslyn or Samson saw.

Under the moonlight, he waited until his Mana had filled up completely.

Then Adon flapped his wings and flew down to ground level.

If he was in human form, he might break the upper tree branches with his weight.

The butterfly focused his mind on the shape he wanted to embody with his Transformation, and he poured his power into making that vision a reality.

Adon’s body began to change.