Dragon enthusiast

You know, dragons are absolutely marvellous creatures.

In truth, the more I studied them, about their biology and magical abilities, the more I was astounded.

Scales twice as hard as sword steel, strength that exceeded what should be possible even for things their impressive size, blood that grants them a ridiculous level of healing and, most shockingly, the ability to (barely) survive things like losing half their brain matter, all things that made them for all intent and purposes the greatest naturally occurring beings.

But the best part of it all was that all these things were completely biological in nature.

Now I'm not a biologist, I only did biology till GCSE's in my past life and I'd already forgotten that, and neither were the magical who wrote the books on biology books, but that didn't really matter as what it basically meant was that I could create essence's for them.

Speaking of essence's, I'd made a breakthrough on that front as well, and just in time too.

It wasn't something as ground-breaking as figuring out how to take magical traits, unfortunately that was quite a bit off, but it was something that addressed a major efficiency problem with my trait extraction method. I had figured out how to increase the dosage of essences from an initial sample.

In other words I could increase the doses of whatever essences I already had.

Funnily enough, I actually got the idea from the self-updating book of rituals, the same one that I rarely used anymore due to having far more advanced material, in the form of a fertilizer making ritual of all things. What's funnier is that it wasn't even that hard, nor did it require all that much work, to achieve this monumental achievement.

See, the fertilizer creation ritual in question was meant to use the sacrifice of a couple of plants to create a sort of 'liquid nutrients' and then running it through a 'increasing' part that's powered by the user's magic. I had decided to run some mundane animal essence through the 'increasing' part, after altering it to run off essence like the magic grenades I made, because of complete random curiosity and badabing badaboom I have a ritual to increase the dose of any essences I had.

The only problem with this new ritual was that if I multiplied the amount of essence by more than seven times it just… stopped working, despite all my attempt to get it to work… well, that and the fact that it consumed other essences to increase the amount of the chosen essence but that wasn't as much a big deal.

But regardless of that limitation, it still meant that I could get multiple traits from the one egg I had. All I'd need was around fifty doses of a particular trait, which I could turn into three hundred and fifty doses, and I'd have more than enough to fully gain that trait while having enough to test if the essence has side effect.

The only limiting factor was how much essence I could get from the egg. After all, it'd be kinda pointless if I couldn't even get the bare minimum of fifty doses for a single trait. Though, seeing as even adolescent dragons could easily kill trolls, I had hopes for the egg.

Now, I just had to decide what traits I'll try to get and in what order I'd try to get them.

- Some Time Later -

It had taken me a good part of a day to finally decide what traits I wanted and what priority I had for each of them.

First, and foremost, I wanted the biological properties of dragons blood. This was what I considered the goal of this whole thing. Not only did it was it the apparent source of the great regenerative abilities of dragons, one that allowed them to bounce back from anything short of death, it was also just better in every way to human, or any other species, blood (at least according to the books).

The second priority was a trait stronger in Norwegian ridgebacks compared to most dragons, specifically their nervous system, and the reasoning for this was simple. Living beings are, for all intents and purposes, just a nervous system inside a meat suit and dragons can survive losing a large portion of that nervous system without issue. Ergo, if I get that trait it'll massively increase my survival rate.

After those two however I didn't really have a particular preference, what with all the traits being equally good. There was also the fact that I very much doubted that I'd even get more than a hundred doses combined for the previous two, higher priority, traits… not that I would complain if I did.

So, with that decision out of the way, it was finally time to start the process.

"You know, it's a shame I didn't have more time to make a better ritual for this," I couldn't help but say to the egg as I placed it into the holder, "I mean you'd die in a couple of weeks if I don't put you into heat, which would lower the essence, but if I put you in a fire you may hatch into a murderous scaled lizard sooo…"

Getting up I patted the egg, to make sure it was fastened tight, and finally slid the ECA and the bottle (which could contain about seventy doses) underneath it. Checking everything again, after all I really didn't want to spill this, I finally took a deep breath and metaphorically 'flicked' the switch…

"The fu-no!" only to 'flick' it back immediately as it blasted essence like a fucking faucet.

Pulling the bottle out from under the ECA, thankfully noting that none had spilled, I couldn't help but just gape. Looking at the egg, which had only gotten a bit duller, and the almost full bottle in my hand there were only two thoughts going through my mind.

I'm going to have to turn down the speed of conversion and that I might need a couple more bottles.