Chapter 23

(Still in 3rd person vision!)

Juri without further ado opened the chest, where in moments the glow that surrounded her, as well as the fanciful sound disappeared, then she saw the things inside.

Two items in all!

What caught Juri's attention was a book, her eyes sparkled and she picked it up.

[Skill Book - Flaming Palm(Magic)]

"What is written?" - Gabriela asks, not understanding the writing on the cover.

"It says it's a book that has a magic called [Flaming Palm]!" - Said Juri smiling happily, as it will help her immensely!

Gabriela was surprised, so she asked to take a look, full of curiosity, Juri handed it to her, also curious to see if anything would happen.

So Gabriela stood with the book in hand, before she started blinking in surprise, then calmed down and said. - "Apparently I can... consume the book to learn what is written... what a strange feeling!"

Juri was surprised at her saying this, so excitedly she asked how exactly and soon understood.

Gabriela explained to her that by touching the book, she received the information that she was not properly connected to this Dimension and that the knowledge in the book is in a special language.

In order to have access to its contents, she would need to sacrifice the book in order to understand future books of the same language.

In other words, the book would be consumed for her to discover a new language, but the existing knowledge itself will be wasted.

"I understand, but I already know the language due to my connection, I want to!" - Said Juri without hesitation, eyes shining with intensity.

Gabriela handed him the book, no need to fight anyway.

Smiling, Juri left it in Inventory for now and looked at the last item, which was a small purse.

'Is it?'- Juri wondered having an idea of what it is.

But upon picking it up, he was disappointed.

[Potions Bag(Small)]

Description: When opened, it will randomly deliver 5 basic potions, small chance of a more advanced one!

Juri was sad, but soon opened the pouch and the next instant 5 items appeared in his Inventory.

"That bag contained some of the Elixirs, let me see their effects first." - Said Juri taking out the 5 potions.

3 HP Potions, 1 Poison Resistance Potion and 1 MP Potion!

"Those 3 in red color, are Healing Potions, from what you're saying, it's low quality, I think it's pretty much the Death Element Healing Rituals with an average Negative Energy expenditure." - Said Juri analyzing.

It recovers 50 HP the instant it is taken, as well as it will recover 5 HP per second for 30 seconds, in all it will recover 200 HP!

Gabriela listened carefully and asked about the others.

"It says it is a potion that increases resistance to all kinds of poison by 50% for 30 minutes!

This one here is similar to the Healing Potion, only instead of healing wounds, it recovers Magic Energy, the energy you use to use whatever is in that book." - Said Juri which Gabriela understood.

"I think you better keep 1 of the Healing Potions in case of emergency, I'll keep the other 2 in my storage since we don't know the resistance of those things." - Said Juri passing the potion to Gabriela, who nodded took it and looked at it for a while.

She was quite curious about it.

"Would you like to test one? I think we will find a lot of them over time, as far as I know, there are chances of monsters dropping these potions, just like the snake dropped the bandana, so if you want to test the effect to see if it can be trusted, now is the time!" - Said Juri, which Gabriela didn't hesitate to pull up her shirt sleeve and immediately pull out a machete!

She then made a deep cut on her arm, her expression twisting just a little in pain.

Next she with her mouth took the lid off the potion, then poured it into the wound.

Juri wanted to say something, but left it quiet and just let Gabriela watch as the wound magically healed.

The feeling is very different from receiving a Healing Ritual, as the affected area ages faster for healing.

In other words, it feels the pain more intensely, pain that it would feel during the healing process, until it closes up.

In the case of the potion, she felt no pain, in fact the pain stopped in moments, she felt a numbness as if it were an anesthetic.

"Is that... can all monsters drop that?" - Gabriela asked seriously.

"The chances are low, only mutants and very powerful ones have such chances, weaker animals, the chances are extremely low or almost zero!" - Juri said.

Gabriela nodded, having several plans in her mind, then said. - "When will you explain everything to Mr. Pietro?"

"Well, I wanted to do some basic research, because there are many things I don't know, one of the things I want to know, is how strong the Rulers are!" - Said Juri calmly.

"Rulers?" - Gabriela narrowed her eyes and asked seriously.

"From the information I received, there are requirements, which I have no idea what they are, for a creature to appear that could be a random animal, only much more powerful, the snake we faced, at most would be a child compared to the Rulers!" - Juri said seriously.

"And you would tell me when you have such a thing here?!" - Gabriela asked seriously, wanting very badly to hit Juri.

"Don't worry, if it comes up I just need to get us out of here, not to mention I'll be warned if a Ruler shows up.

I wanted to investigate the boundaries a bit, get some precious items of course, before I talk to Mr. Pietro, at least give him a base of what to find here." - Juri said seriously.

Gabriela looked at her thoughtfully, then just nodded.

Then they started to replenish their ammunition, Gabriela asked them to continue hunting the monsters.

Juri smiled and nodded, and together they continued to hunt!

...

At some point in the hunt, Gabriela got used to kill the animals and she began to find it fun!

Not to mention that even though she didn't like Juri much at first, Gabriela admits that his sexist and idiotic comments help keep her spirits up.

What bothers Gabriela, is that Juri really wants to fuck her, this is quite obvious in the smiles she sends her, a certain tension that arises after some difficult confrontation and so on.

But at one point, Gabriela just stopped being bothered by this, she even smiled sometimes, showing that she was beginning to appreciate Juri's presence.

And Juri noticed this and loved how things were progressing!

And finally, it was time to rest!

After 4 hours of hunting, the duo was very tired, Juri less so, because in the process he had risen to Level 43.

So Juri was very smiling and energetic, while Gabriela was sweating a lot, since the climate in the forest is very tropical, in other words, hot!

Together with her armor which is also hot, it turned out that she was feeling very hot and sweating a lot.

But Gabriela was trained and used to such a situation, so she never complained.

But when Juri passed her a bottle of ice water, she accepted without hesitation!

"How about we camp here for the next few hours?" - Juri asked smiling, being that here they had just dealt with a Level 13 Giant Rabbit.

"I'll set up the perimeter!" - Gabriela said, walking over to Juri to ask for things.

"No need, I already told you, the creatures don't leave their areas, the nearest animai is about 50 meters from us and dare not approach, since technically, this area is Giant Rabbit's!" - Juri said quite nonchalantly.

Gabriela looked at her seriously.

"I'm not kidding, it's the rules, it's like a role-playing game, the generated monsters follow a schedule, where they will be hanging around in the given area, if the Player gets close, then it will start attacking!

So as long as we don't leave here, we won't have any problems, maybe if other people were here, I would spend time making sound traps and so on, but it's just the two of us here, don't worry." - Said Juri smiling as she explained to Gabriela.

Gabriela sighed and decided to trust, she sat down on a log and started to take off her armor, exposing her muscular body covered in sweat.

Juri sniffed a little, Gabriela's smell getting more intense now, she was smelly before, the smell now got even more intense and good!

But Juri controlled herself, smiling as she took wood from the Inventory, soon getting an idea.

Taking the book of [Flaming Palm], Juri decided to open it and read a bit, but there was so much confusing... she just decided to consume the book and learn it!

[You learn the "Flaming Palm" Active Skill!]

In moments a myriad of information entered Juri's mind, making her understand many things, something deeper of Magic and Mana, Juri was touching the principles of the Elements, but the knowledge given is extremely rudimentary and incomplete.

The most significant thing she achieved, was to learn more of the Fire Element, but only something very vague.

And forcefully she learned the [Flaming Palm] Magic, without understanding so well its structure, the steps to form it or etc., it was like simply getting a new arm, but already knowing how to use it without problems, without having to go through adaptation or anything like that.

Juri felt embarrassed and sad, a little regretful, maybe if she had concentrated on reading the book, learning normally, she could gather much more useful information, but she wants to do things quickly, it results in this!

[Flaming Palm, Lv.1]

Type: Active

Effect: Magic that is activated when the palm is open, gathering your Mana in it along with the Fire Element! Cost: 10~11 Mana! Flaming Damage: +1%! Distance: 30 cm!

Obviously a touch-type magic, it could at most move 30 cm away from the palm before breaking apart.

Juri stood thoughtfully, before extending her palm and activating the Skill, unlike the [Mana Trigger], which she developed and could manipulate in better ways.

The [Flaming Palm] she needed to activate as if it was a command, soon her palm was covered in flames, startling Gabriela by taking on water.

Then Juri with her hands on fire, touched the wood and fuel, soon the fire appearing and then Juri undid the Magic, still losing 10 of Mana.

"That... you did Ritual with the Energy Entity?" - Gabriela asked narrowing her eyes.

The Energy Entity is one of the most volatile and cruel, its Rituals, Abilities and Talents being the ones that consume the most Sanity, in return they are quite powerful.

And the Energy Entity does very well with firearms and all kinds of electrical appliances.

But the existing knowledge of the Energy Entity is little, there are few in the order that made agreements and received powers from the Energy Element.

The best known was the Energy Cult, which were maniacs craving chaos and fun.

So there is a lot of prejudice about the Energy Entity and those who make agreements with them.

The flame that Juri has just conjured in her palm, even though it has no Negative Energy individuals, is still a flame and from Gabriela's knowledge, only the Energy Element is capable of generating flames.

But then she concentrated and saw that these are normal flames, not purple and blue flames.

"That... what?" - Gabriela asked without understanding.

"It's that book, I just consumed it to learn its contents, the [Flaming Palm], I spend my Magic Energy to generate flames in my palm!" - Said Juri explaining to Gabriela's surprise.

Gabriela curious began to ask how this worked, what did Juri sacrifice for this power, how much did she sacrifice?

If it was just a tiny bit of Sanity, Gabriela won't see a problem, but if she sacrificed a lot of Sanity for the ability to generate flames in her palm, she's going to talk a lot, because it's a very useless thing!

"Sacrifice? I sacrificed nothing!" - Said Juri in surprise at Gabriela talking so much.

"Nothing? You acquired the ability to generate flames and you sacrificed nothing?" - Gabriela asked shocked.

"Gabriela my beautiful, Magic Energy is different from Negative Energy... if I were to put it in simple terms, Magic Energy is something that exists in all human beings, I can sense that you have a pretty significant amount, it's just that it's stagnant and stationary!

But the focus is that the Magical Energy, is something less volatile and potentially being like Nature, since it exists everywhere... it's hard to explain because I don't know much either, only recently I started to progress in the area, but understand that the Magical Energy is like a school subject, that you study to understand, at most you will sacrifice time, in some cases money!

As for Negative Energy, this is something that is not from our world, but from another world, the Paranormal Entities are from another world, so why would they support us without anything in return? That is why they receive sacrifice, since they have no reason to support us willingly!

Not Magic Energy, it's already here, we can only blame our ancestors for not noticing it, potentially due to the existence of Negative Energy, where it was much easier to sacrifice things for powers, than to spend a lifetime studying and potentially achieve nothing!"

Gabriela hearing this, widened her eyes and found herself contemplative, amazed at such a revelation.

"How do you use Magic Energy?" - Gabriela asked seriously.

"Like I said, I'm still learning, but I could only feel it through Meditation, but I think I can help you feel it faster, do you want to try?" - Asked Juri curious, as even the [Flaming Palm] being forced on her mind gave her some hints and ideas.

Gabriela agreed, if it's a way to get stronger, who is she to complain?