Flying Flame was a lonely pseudo-dragon. It didn't know who its father was. Its mother died during a conflict a long time ago. It was adopted by a tribe of two-foot dragons, but it was never being looked after like those who had their own parents. Since it never had its own parents, it was never given a name. The other two-foot dragons called it "the Little One," which was a nickname that it absolutely disdained. Things were different now. Its name was now Flying Flame.
Abel checked Flying Flame's wound a little more. The soul potion wasn't exactly medicine. It was more like a stimulus for the body to grow faster than normal. Right now, most of Flying Flame's wounds were recovered. Even its broken wings were starting to gain strength again. He didn't feel confident to fly, though.
Abel looked towards the sky. It had only been a few hours since he left team Lawland. He came over here by flying on top of White Cloud. It wouldn't take a day for him to get back.
"Protect me, Flying Flame!" Abel commanded through his soul chain. Flying Flame couldn't fly now, but it sure could do a good job to keep the spiritual beasts away. Abel could place his trust in it. After all, it was happy to fulfill the task that was requested from its master.
Abel first set up an intermediate defense circle. It was meant to protect both Flying Flame and White Cloud. When he was done setting it up, he surrounded himself and Black Wind with a seclusion circle. If anything dared to come inside the intermediate defense circle, it would be killed instantly by Flying Flame's deadly flames.
Abel then began to open up his Tome of Town Portal. It had been eight days since he went inside the dark world. That's the equivalent of staying five months inside there. When he went inside the Rogue's Encampment, he felt like it's been the same as always. It was quiet, and there was nothing around him.
"Master!" an excited voice came from his druid spirit. It's almost as if the voice had been waiting for him for a very long time. Abel kept searching for the source of this voice, and to his surprise, it was an oak tree that was trying to communicate to him.
It was the super big oak tree he planted when he first became a druid. Abel was a soulspeaker, yes, but he never expected a tree to be capable of sending its thought to him. Anyways, whether he did it on purpose or not, the oak tree's soul was connected to his druid spirit. It was doing so through a spiritual contract.
When Abel's conscience went inside his druid spirit, he felt like he was the tree that tried to contact him. He was seeing things from the tree's viewpoint, and oddly enough, he could see countless blue howling rabbits in front of him. There were about ten thousand of these little things hopping around.
The blue howling rabbits were surrounding the giant oak tree. They were actually worshipping it. Apart from the time they searched for grass to eat, they spent most of their time playing next to the tree.
That's when the vision ended. Abel knew that the oak tree was trying to tell him. It was trying to tell him that it had followed his orders. It was taking care of these blue hollowing rabbits.
Abel was kind of shocked about the image he just saw. It had only been a little more than five months. How were there so many blue howling rabbits? It should take two months for a bunny to mature into adulthood. If one rabbit could give birth to about a dozen bunnies, the most they can breed in five months would only be up to three generations. The numbers simply didn't add up.
Abel was impressed and scared at the same time. If what he saw was real, he would have created himself an unlimited source of crystal core: that, and an unlimited source of the most popular delicacies in the Double Moon Forest.
Black Wind was very fast. Abel took no time to get under the super oak tree. When he was there, he saw that the branches were becoming much bigger and firmer than when he last saw them. There were bunches of blue howling rabbits surrounding the tree. They weren't scared of him at all. Instead, they just kept playing around like when he possessed the super oak tree.
Abel went to touch the oak tree by its bark. At this point, it was very easy for his druid spirit to communicate with it. As his hand laid on the bark, he could feel that the branches were tingling to welcome his arrival. Trees were supposed to be inanimate, so that's about the most reaction that it could show.
After receiving the order from Abel, the super oak tree had spent all its time attracting the blue howling rabbits to come towards it. When they did, it would guide their livelihood in the exact same ways as the druids would. Since the Blood Moor was full of mana and grass, the rabbits actually matured a month earlier than they should.
To make sure that blue howling rabbits could get enough exercise to be ready to breed, the super oak tree would design an exercise routine for them to follow. The routine was just the same as what Abel was looking at. It might look like they were just playing with each other, but they were actually trying to mature their bodies as quickly as possible.
Speaking of which, since it's already been five months, Abel thought that some of the rabbits would've already died from natural causes. When he asked the super oak tree this, the trunk of the tree started opening up.
Inside the trunk were many pieces of crystal core. They were about a hundred of them, and they were all neatly lined up together. From what the super oak tree was saying, all the dead blue howling rabbits would die next to it. When they did, it would drag their dead bodies to the underground with its roots. After that, it would pick up their crystal cores and place them next to its heart. It couldn't provide the energy to let these crystal cores keep growing, but it could preserve them for a very long time.
Now that was an unexpected surprise. Abel did tell the super oak tree to take care of these blue howling rabbits, but he's never told it to grow crystal cores from its trunk! Apparently, the super oak tree was reading Abel's mind when he was celebrating for having harvested a few pieces of crystal cores. It had thought that the joy Abel was experiencing was a part of the command.
Very well. That's a total of one hundred and thirty-two crystal cores. It's the first time Abel saw this many crystal cores in front of him. Make no mistake, this was a wonderful experience, to say the least, but there was simply a small, small problem that he had to deal with.
There were simply too many crystal cores for Abel to collect. He couldn't contain all of them with his personal storage box. What he could do, though, was to synthesize the crystal cores to reduce their numbers. That was definitely going to save up a lot of space.
When Abel did his research on rune patterns before, he always wanted to try using crystal core pieces to create new runes. Now that he had enough materials to do so, there was nothing that was stopping him.
And in they went. When three pieces of the silver crystal cores were placed inside the Horadric Cube, a blue crystal core was produced. Then, when three pieces of the synthesized blue pieces were combined, one golden crystal core piece would be produced. Then, for three pieces of golden crystal cores, a dark-golden crystal core would be produced.
That's a total of twenty-seven ordinary crystal cores for one piece of dark-golden crystal core. When Abel held the dark-golden piece, he could feel that it was similar to his tal rune pattern. For the sake of comparison, he took out the tal rune pattern from his portal bag. And just like he thought, whether it was its appearance or the energy that was flowing through its internal structure, the tal rune pattern was identical to the dark gold crystal core that he was holding.
After spending a total of eighty-one ordinary crystal cores, Abel got himself three dark-golden crystal core pieces. If these three pieces could be combined again, he might just have the material he needed to produce an advanced level rune pattern.