The battlefield fell strangely quiet around them.
Flames still burned across the ruined ground while distant battles continued throughout the outer sectors, yet the immediate area surrounding Lucas, Daniel, and the dying Flameberry Butterfly had become completely still.
The butterfly remained collapsed within the massive crater created by Lucas' strike. Its breathing had become unstable. Cracks spread across its burning wings while violent mana fluctuations leaked continuously from its body.
Yet despite being half-dead… Its scarlet eyes still carried pride.
Daniel stopped several meters away before calmly speaking again.
"…Do you want to survive?"
"Weak Human." The butterfly immediately narrowed its eyes. Its voice sounded weaker now, though the arrogance within it remained obvious, "You speak as though survival is yours to offer. Your Novice Rank Strength can not affect the Great I"
"Well that is true, but you fail to consider that even if I personally don't have the strength right now, I can still temporarily stabilise you till I grow to Expert Rank. I awakened around a week ago and have already reached the Fifth Stage of Novice Rank. My potential speaks for itself." said Daniel, as his aura changed from that of a weak mortal to that of a Regal Emperor.
"Do you even know why I am dying?" The Butterfly growled as it tried to flutter its wings, but that just increased its misery.
"Your evolution is collapsing because your body cannot handle the Monarch Butterfly's bloodline yet." Daniel replied calmly, as he made his way closer too the Butterfly, his eyes gleaming in interest and intrigue.
"How do you know of the Monarch Butterfly Clan?" The butterfly said, as it was both confused and shocked by the young man in front of it.
"Knowledge is its own kind of strength," Daniel said simply, crouching down to the butterfly's level. He studied the fracture lines spreading across its wings with quiet fascination. The cracks pulsed like dying embers, each flicker a reminder of how little time remained.
"The Monarch Butterfly Clan is one of the oldest bloodlines in the beast world. Their transformation requires not just raw power, but a body that has been tempered through successive evolutions. You tried to skip stages, didn't you?"
The butterfly's scarlet eyes flickered. Something shifted behind that pride — a crack, much like the ones spreading across its wings.
You are either extraordinarily well-informed, or extraordinarily lucky."
"Bit of both," Daniel admitted. "But that's beside the point. The Monarch bloodline won't kill you if the evolution is stabilised before full collapse. Your core is still intact — I can feel it. Damaged, but intact. Which means there's still a window."
"A window you claim you can hold open." The butterfly's tone dripped with scepticism, though its voice had grown noticeably quieter. The arrogance was still there, but it was worn thin by pain and exhaustion. "You are a Novice Rank at the Fifth Stage, as you claim. What could you possibly do that my own body cannot?"
"Your own body is the problem," Daniel said. "It's fighting itself. The Monarch bloodline is pushing outward while your existing core can't contain it. You need an external anchor — something to hold the forces in equilibrium long enough for your body to negotiate a truce with itself." He paused, tilting his head slightly. "I can be that anchor temporarily my absorbing the energy."
Lucas, who had been standing silently behind Daniel throughout the entire exchange, finally spoke.
"Daniel." His voice was low, careful. "You're talking about absorbing a Beast's Bloodline. That's not a small matter."
"I know what it is."
"Do you? Because if her core destabilises while you're connected to it, or if your mind gets corrupted by its bloodline, then you might truly die."
"Then we'll deal with that when it happens." Daniel didn't look back. His eyes remained fixed on the butterfly. "Well? I've explained what I can offer. The question is whether your pride is worth more to you than your life."
The silence that followed was long. The distant sounds of battle drifted in from the outer sectors — explosions, the crash of abilities meeting shields, the occasional tremor running through the earth beneath their feet. Here, though, everything remained suspended.
Finally, the butterfly spoke.
"...Even if I were to accept." The words seemed to cost her something. "I would not do so without conditions."
Daniel's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened with interest. "Go on but you should realize you are in no state to negotiate right now."
"This would be a temporary partnership." She emphasised the word with quiet force. "I am neither a contracted beast nor a familiar. I am not yours. The moment you possess the strength to complete what you began today— to stabilise the Monarch bloodline fully within my body— our arrangement ends, and I go my own way. No debts and no obligations beyond what is agreed upon now."
"Agreed," Daniel said without hesitation.
The butterfly narrowed her eyes slightly, as though she had expected resistance. Finding none, she continued.
"Second. I will not act as your weapon. Do not expect me to throw myself into every battle you stumble into. I will observe and wait. Only if you are truly in danger— danger that threatens your life will I intervene." She held his gaze firmly. "Not every difficult fight or every moment you find yourself bleeding. If you have the strength to survive it yourself, then you will survive it yourself. I am not a shield you carry."
Lucas muttered something under his breath that sounded vaguely like 'that's fair, actually.'
"Also agreed," Daniel said.
"Third." The butterfly's voice dropped lower here, quieter but no less firm. "I have my own judgement. My own sense of what is right and what is not. If you ask me to act against it— to harm those who have done no wrong, to be used as a tool for cruelty or dishonour. I will refuse. Regardless of circumstances or what it may cost either of us." Her scarlet eyes burned steadily. "I have lived with pride. I will not abandon it simply because I find myself temporarily inconvenienced by near-death."
The faint ghost of a smile crossed Daniel's face at that. It was brief, barely there, but genuine.
"I wouldn't want you to," he said quietly. "A partner without principles isn't a partner. They're a liability." He held her gaze. "I'll not ask you to act against your conscience. You have my word on that."
Another silence. Shorter this time.
"Your word," the butterfly repeated slowly, as if weighing the texture of it. "You speak like someone who considers that to mean something."
"It does to me."
"Hmph." She looked away from him for a moment, her gaze drifting across the ruined crater, the scorched earth, the fading light filtering down through smoke. When she looked back, something had settled in her expression. Not warmth— not yet, perhaps not ever— but something adjacent to a decision made and accepted.
The Flameberry Butterfly regarded him for a long, measuring moment. Her scarlet eyes moved across his face slowly, searching for something— the small dishonesty behind reassuring words, the flicker of ambition that would eventually twist good intentions into something else. She had lived long enough to know that most creatures, human or otherwise, eventually revealed what they truly wanted. She had learned to look for it early.
She found nothing she recognised as a lie. That, more than anything, was what decided her.
"Then we have an agreement, Human." She lowered her head — not deeply, not submissively, but enough to acknowledge the weight of what had just passed between them. "Stabilise my core. Prove your potential is more than words dressed up as confidence. And when the time comes that you no longer need the anchor..."
"You walk free," Daniel finished. "No debts. No obligations."
He stepped forward into the crater, kneeling beside her, and extended his hand.