"Drink this, Flying Flame," Abel handed a soul potion to Flying Flame. He didn't have to order it since it opened its large mouth the moment he took out the bottle. It knew how good the liquid was.
When the entire bottle of the potion went inside Flying Flame's mouth, its eyes started to look hollow. The grey scales on its body became a little darker and after thirty seconds, it started waking up. The effect of the potion was over.
Abel took out another bottle to feed it. He didn't know how many he needed to make a real change, but since he had a total of thirty-something bottles, he could always just keep feeding it more before any real change started happening. Besides, he could also get more soul potions by killing the hell creatures in Black Marsh.
Again, it took Flying Flame thirty seconds to fully absorb the second "soul potion." The change was still very subtle. Its scales just became darker. There wasn't much else other than that.
It drank the third, the fourth, the fifth... Once the Abel had fed ten bottles to Flying Flame, its body started trembling. It crouched down and, whilst covering its head in its body, tail and wings, a powerful impose pressure started coming out.
This pressure was much stronger than when it was roaring in the sky. Even Abel's summoned creatures, which had gotten used to a dragon's roar, started to crouch down in the presence of the force that was spreading out.
Black Wind was affected, too. As the king of mount wolves, instead of crouching down, it got into a defensive stance, all of its furs standing up.
Abel had the least reaction. While he couldn't unleash a dragon's imposing pressure, his soul was technically infused with a giant dragon. That being said, he was perfectly calm and could observe all the changes happening to Flying Flame's body.
It took ten bottles of "soul potion" to inflict any real change to a dragon-beast. Even White Cloud only took five bottles to level up, showing how powerful dragons were. Even if they had barely taken any potions before, they still needed more recourses than most creatures.
Right now, Flying Flame's entire body was shaking violently. It looked like it was was in great pain, so Abel tried to communicate with it through his soul chain. When he did, he began to feel the same pain that it was experiencing.
The pain was not from Abel's body, but it certainly felt a lot worse if it was coming through the soul chain towards him. If he wanted to, he could always cut off the chain's connection, of course. He didn't do this, though. If Flying Flame had to go through it, as its master, he wanted to take responsibility and share the same pain.
Abel tried to endure and he tried to comfort Flying Flame by talking to it. While that didn't ease the pain, Flying Flame eventually stopped trembling. It was in a lonely place before, after hearing Abel's voice, it was starting to relax.
As blessed as the dragons were, the world existed with "balance". For the strengths and powerful abilities that they possessed, they had to "sacrifice" not just their numbers (i.e. fertility), but also their potential to improve their skill levels. If they tried to overcome their own limits, there were higher risks involved.
Flying Flame was still young. As potent as the "soul potion" was, it couldn't strengthen its psychological weaknesses. When it was in pain, it would become helpless, which was especially true since it grew up without a family. If Abel didn't comfort it, it might have just lost the will to keep living.
Once Abel took care of the psychological factors, the soul potion would do its job to take care of all the other factors, which really showed how powerful it was.
By definition, soul potion strengthened its consumers by directly interacting with his soul. Since souls were the most mysterious parts to a living being, there weren't a lot of research on them. Wizards had it hard when it comes to this field, because any subtle change that's made could lead to an unpredictable outcome.
Even if the wizards could produce something powerful like the soul-potion, the number of souls required was too much to be realistic. Besides, the living beings on the Holy Continent were simply not strong enough. The Horadric Cube only absorbed souls in the dark world. To make a concentrated solution of hundreds of souls, only a large number of strong, vigorous souls would suffice.
Which was kind of why Flying Flame had such a hard time after drinking ten bottles of the soul potion. In fact, it's already been a whole excruciating hour since Flying Flame became in pain.
Abel was just starting to recover from it. The pain was still there, but he the sensation was more numb than when he first experienced it. Nevertheless, this had been an unforgettable experience for him. If the damage was actually inflicted on his own body, he would've been torn into shreds by now. Now that he's overcome this "mental simulation" of what a dragon's pain felt like, he became better at tolerating pain.Obviously, he didn't feel like that at all. Not now, anyways. When he tried to rub Flying Flame's body, it started letting out a terrible scream. A sharp pain started coming through the soul chain. It was many times worse than last time. Thankfully, it only lasted for a few seconds.
Abel started to taste blood. He had bit the inside of his mouth. He didn't have the time to worry about that, though, because something odd just happened to Flying Flame. He wasn't sure how, but it suddenly grew an extra pair of claws.
Two-foot dragons got their names because, unlike giant dragons, they only had one pair of claws. The pair Flying Flame grew were not like the one that giant dragons had. They were nowhere as strong and thick as the giant dragons, but still, it was somewhat close to being a four-clawed dragon now.
While the pain was pretty much over, the process of leveling was still unfinished. Abel could feel the same refreshing sensation that Flying Flame got. Its scales started falling off and when they did, new, darker scales were replaced.
After tens of minutes passed by, Flying Flame was covered in pitched black scales that were as dark as the night. They were also harder than its previous scales, which actually had a soft touch and comfortable firmness to them.
And those claws. Abel could see that they were becoming sharper and longer by the seconds. They were white before, but now they were stained blood red. It was both mancing and spectacular at the same time.
Instead of the feeling of hopelessness that it was drowned in before, Flying Flame felt joyful with the growth that it just underwent. Abel was there to share that joy. He watched as Flying Flame tried to stand up with its new body which, due to the pair of claws at the tip of its wings, was making it kind of hard to maintain balance.
After a while, Flying Flame tried to gain a much better control of its front claws. It was more confident, because all dragons knew how significant having four claws was. Also, it was thankful for Abel. If it wasn't for him, it would've never experienced the same kind of progress as the one it just had.