On the way back, Hydra accompanied us in the sky while we walked - Elias had insisted so that we had a chance to encounter a few more monsters. Alaric had disappeared into Kaelen somewhere during my battle with the shadow owl, and hadn't come out since.

Silence covered us for a while until I remembered Hydra's promise of telling me about shadow essence. I sent him a telepathic message about that, and his reply came after a short while of thinking, 'When someone with control over shadow essence kills another creature with access to this substance, they can accept the essence as part of their own pool. If they choose not to, the System would take away any that is not claimed at the end of a battle like it does for normal creatures. You can manipulate this energy as your actual weapon to cause physical damage, and invade others' minds like the shadow owl tried to do to you. You don't need mana for an attack using Shadow Essence, and you can reuse most if they are not absorbed by your enemy.'

My eyes widened. That was stronger than I thought. Curiously, I asked, 'If you are not the dominant species, how do you know all of this?'

I could hear clear annoyance in Hydra's voice when he replied, 'Just look at the monsters you've fought, birdie. They are not the dominant species either, but they still have levels. It's the same for us. Although we are not the species chosen by the System, we still have access to it, we just don't have any Class. Dragons were one of the species chosen to possess Shadow Essence, so I know a bit more about it than its counterpart.'

I hummed, letting my body operate on autopilot as I summoned my newly acquired shadow essence so it it formed a little ball on my palm. It wasn't painful like the fire was, but there was a cold chill that ran through my body when it was called out. When I cautiously poked a finger at the black wispy ball, my hand just went through it as if it was mist. That was to be expected. Then, I tried to control it and shape it into something harder. I've favored daggers and knives so far, so I shaped my shadow essence into a rough shape of a small knife, before bestowing upon it properties such as hardness and sharpness as I would when creating a new monster.

When I touched its edge again, the blade was no longer the ethereal ball of shadows it was just a moment ago. Instead, it was sharper than even my lion claw daggers, and if I had touched the sharp side, I was certain that I would have cut myself. I sent a wave of surprise and appreciation towards Hydra through our emotion link and described the experiment I had conducted.

'Great, you know how to use it now,' Hydra sighed, his tone a little disappointed, 'Stupid hatchling, do you know that this is the most inefficient way you can use this? It takes mental strength to keep the blade sharp, and you can easily achieve the result using a normal weapon. No, what you should be doing is attacking the minds of your enemies from afar. This synergises well with the Skills you already have, since all of them are long-ranged. If you want to fight close-up, temporarily imbueing your weapons with shadow essence is also more efficient way of using it. But I guess you don't know about these methods yet.'

I grumbled some indiscernable words through our link, and reabsorbed the essence into my body to practise with at another time.

Nothing eventful happened for most of our journey after that, much to Elias' dismay. However, when we were a few metres from the safe space - we could see the fences built around it - we finally encountered some enemies. It was a group of three snakes. They were the size of pythons, but from their jaws, poison dripped. One was red, another white, and the last one was black. While they would have been a hard opponent for hand-to-hand fighters like Elias, battling against a duo of two long-range attackers (Kaelen and I) was a bad matchup for the snakes.

Kaelen protected us with her force field, and trapped the white snake in another. The red one slithered towards us, sinking its fangs into our protective shield while its black companion slapped hard with its tail. The golden dome shattered for a brief moment, but Kaelen put up another just as quickly. I remembered how she was struggling to defend us against the bees merely a day ago.

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She must have levelled up her Magic, too.

I decided not to call Hydra for help. This should be nothing more than moderately difficult even without him. Deciding to test my shadow essence's mind attacking ability with this opportunity, I generated a ball of shadows and made it hover on my palm while sinking into my mental world to visualize a special illusion for the two snakes I was in charge of. I first crafted a world without me, Kaelen, Elias and all my attacks - I do the same thing every time. Then, I needed to put something that would weaken the snakes' mental fortresses. I wasn't sure what snakes were afraid of, so I just recreated a larger version of Alaric and inserted it into the illusion, instructing it to keep scaring the two snakes. When that was done, I pushed the completed illusion onto the minds of the snakes.

They did not even resist, allowing the image to slide in smoothly. After giving 'Alaric' some time to spook the snakes, I instructed my ball of shadows to spilt into two thin veils and allowed the first one to fall onto the red snake. I imagined my mental self riding the shadows and forcing my way into the snake's mind. Once I was in, I allowed the wave of shadows to overwhelm everything in the little space.

With a ding!, the snake met its demise and I retreated out of its now-broken mind with all of my shadow essence intact. I combined both veils, locking my eyes onto the black snake. By now, Kaelen had finished off the white one with her lightning bolts, and was soothing a grumpy Elias (he could not help at all because of how strong the snakes were in close combat). I directed my sheet of black mist to wrap itself around the black creature's long muscular body, and transferred my consciousness into the shadows again. The black snake put up some resistance at first, but with a heavy push, my black torrent and I were in.

Soon, this snake succumbed as well, and the only proof that it ever existed was in the new notification that I just received.

A Battle Group Member has slain 1x Venomous Python [Lvl. 5]! You gained 250EXP, 100 New Gems

You have slain 1x Venomous Python [Lvl. 5]! You gained 500EXP, 4x Python Meat, 200 New Gems

You have slain 1x Venomous Python [Lvl. 5]! You gained 500EXP, 2x Python Fangs (Venomous), 200 New Gems

"We won," I grinned, then remembered that Elias was still sulking, "Sorry, Elias, we'll get you some monsters to fight tomorrow."

He smiled slightly, "I'll take you up on that. Hear that, Kaelen? You and Terra will be supporting me tomorrow!"

"Sure, sure," Kaelen sighed, pretending to be exasperated.

Our spirits were high as we entered the safe space together with Hydra, who was allowed in presumably because of our connection. As soon as they saw the dragon, those who rested close to the gates vacanted the spot for us, too fearful to confront a beast. We took up the place we did the previous night, Hydra landing beside me. I took out two pieces of meat before handing one out to Kaelen, but she shook her head, "I got some food from the python. Thank you though."

I shrugged and put one of the food items back into my inventory before biting into the python meat I had just received from killing one of the two snake monsters. I lay back against Hydra's muscular wings, relaxing. He shifted a little at first, startled, but did not push me away. I hummed. It was just as comfortable as they had depicted it in the fantasy books. Hydra's scales were smooth and cool to the touch, and it was quite sturdy too...

I lowered my mouth to bite into the snake meat again, but realized that it was gone. Frowning, I looked around to figure out who had stolen my food. My gaze landed on Hydra, who was munching away at something. When I glared at him, he just snorted through our telepathy link, 'What, little birdie? You are going to make me starve? How sad. Maybe I will get hungry and eat you... Because-'

'-birds are not prey,' I grumbled, and he slid his wing out from behind my back. I fell onto the ground, groaning in anger and a little of pain as my wings crashed against the earth. Before I could get up, Hydra was poking me on the head with his wing.

'Lunch is over,' he urged me as he flapped his wings and took off, 'Let's fly.'

Why not? I was not hungry anymore. I answered his call by extending my wings and soaring into the sky. Time to train.