Lava Pool

After a few more hours of staring at the egg and contemplating if he should give the system one thousand system points, Roland gave in. Bringing the egg with him would be very inconvenient, not to mention the risk of the egg cracking.

[System Points] [1035]

Due to him doing some hunting while he was going from den to den, his SP was just barely above the one thousand mark, so he could afford the price the system gave.

[Starting Program]

Roland stayed by the egg, waiting for the system to be done.

He noticed that as the system worked, the parts on his map that were greyed out were starting to update.

After about fifteen minutes, the system was finished.

[Calculations complete]

'Get anything useful?' Asked Roland hopefully.

[I found one viable method]

'Which is?'

[Elsewhere in the cavern, there is a large pool of lava]

Roland thought about this for a moment and suddenly froze.

'Are you suggesting I throw this egg into the lava?'

[Yep]

'Are you trying to make this egg hatch faster, or are you trying to make an omelet out of it!?'

[What do you think? Neither of us can eat it anyways]

'Is the egg even going to survive that?!'

[It's more resilient than you think it is]

'...Fine. If you say so.'

Roland brought the egg along, heading to the marker the system placed. Still, he could clearly see the pool of lava on the map even without the marker pointing at it. The lava literally covered an area that was one mile in diameter.

Not one to miss out on training, Roland continued to use [Wind Blade] on the surrounding area as he traveled.

When he was halfway to the lava pool, he received a notification that the quest was completed.

[Quest Complete]

[Wind Blade Evolved Into Hurricane Slash]

Roland nodded, looking at the skill's description.

[Hurricane Slash]

[Creates a miniature hurricane that fires blades of wind at the opponent. The scale of the hurricane increases as the skill levels up, increasing the number of blades you can make with one hurricane and attack power as well.]

'Well, that's a wordier explanation than usual.' Roland thought. Usually, the descriptions for skills were vaguer.

Anyway, it was time to test it out. Roland stopped and found a good place to test out the skill.

He stopped in a clearing with a few trees nearby. The trees would make for good targets, and there was plenty of space to move around.

He moved to the edge of the clearing, aiming for the trees on the other side. Just in case, he left the egg further away, so he wouldn't damage it.

'Hurricane Slash.'

A swirling mass of wind gathered in front of the Roland. Then, the wind started to move, transforming into a hurricane in a matter of seconds. It spun in place, gathering more and more power.

Roland subconsciously tried to control it with his thoughts, finding that the hurricane wasn't all that hard to control. In of itself, the hurricane made for a decent weapon. He could see that it spun quickly, so if he got a few hard objects stuck inside along with a person or two, it would be pretty dangerous.

'But how do I use this?' Roland wondered. The description did say it would shoot out blades of wind, but he didn't know how it would do that.

'I suppose there no way to find out besides trying it myself.' Roland thought.

He tried to control it with his thoughts first, trying to somehow make it work, but nothing happened.

Then, he tried something else. Since wind blade needed him to use his mana to control it, maybe this skill needed him to do that as well.

He surrounded the hurricane with his mana, and something strange started to happen. His mana was fusing with the wind. All his mana was being absorbed into the hurricane, and while he was worried, he found that his control over the hurricane also started to increase.

Now, he could start to separate small parts of the hurricane. They would automatically form a crescent shape, similar to the wind blades. He could also control these; he could move them around freely. Still, after separating about five of these parts from the hurricane, it automatically disappeared. Now, he was only left with the parts he had separated.

Curiously, he aimed them at a nearby tree.

Without a sound, the blades passed through the tree. Just when Roland thought nothing had happened, the upper half of the tree hit the ground, collapsing into even more tiny pieces.

Moreover, the parts of the hurricane were still usable! With this, he could attack multiple times with just a single piece of the hurricane.

After fiddling around with it a bit more, Roland moved on. He wanted to play around more with the new skill, but he had other things he needed to do. After grabbing the egg and bringing it along, he continued traveling towards the lava pool, and after passing another small forest, he had arrived at his destination.

At some point during his travels, the ground had turned into hard rock. After he reached where he was, he saw a large lake filled with lava. In a few areas, lava would randomly spurt up into the air, a few meters high. Some chunks of rock and other miscellaneous mater floated in the lava as well, apparently strong enough to withstand the heat.

In the rough center of the lava lake was a little rocky island, on which rested a group of turtles and a small lizard.

Roland watched absentmindedly as the lizard calmly jumped into the lava and started making its way towards the shore as if it wasn't swimming around in a lake of molten rock and instead was at the community swimming pool.

He shook his head and moved on. It would have been strange to see this in his past life, but this was probably a common scene in this world.

He went to a part of the shore where no beasts were, and he brought the egg over as well. Reluctantly, he lowered it into the lava, praying for nothing to go wrong. The egg was now fully submerged in the lava, and he waited for something to happen.

...

After standing there for ten minutes with no result, Roland was already starting to have doubts.

'How long will this take?' he asked the system.

[About 3 days]

'You expect me to stay here for three days!?'

[Yes. And you might want to watch the egg more carefully.]

'What do you mean by that!?'

Roland immediately turned his attention towards the lake. Ripples had suddenly appeared on the surface of the lava and they were quickly heading towards his location.

[Some creatures that live in this lake seem to have found the egg. During the time the egg is "Incubating", you will need to protect it from others who might want to eat it.]

'So I have to defend this egg for an entire three days!?!'

[Yep.]

'...Great.'