Chapter 69: A place of snow, ice, monsters and blood [1]
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Hours later, as the sun was at its highest position, Elena, Bing Qing, Chang Hua, Stella, Kryn, Hong Li-Wei, and Jia were finally freed from their training, but just for a few hours.
As they made their way into the mansion, Elena abruptly stopped in her tracks and turned to the right before walking away without saying anything.
"Where is she going?" Jia muttered in confusion while watching Elena walk away from them.
"She is going to where my nephew is." Chang Hua commented before pondering for a few seconds, shrugging, and following her.
"Wha-" Jia made a dumb sound and looked at her mistress with a dumbfounded expression on her face.
"…" Hong Li-Wei expressionlessly looked at Elena's back and sighed before following her too.
Kryn who was looking at everything unfolding, crouched down and picked up Chilly, who appeared from seemingly nowhere. Then, she also went with the girls.
"How does that work?" Stella wondered aloud while her crimson eyes displayed confusion and curiosity at Elena's supernatural ability.
Then, she and Bing Qing also went with them.
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"Hai…"
"Huh? Oh, what is it, sweetie?" Hai turned to her direction and asked with a smile on his face.
"What in Heaven's name are you doing?" She blurted out, not even trying to form a better line, since she was too confused to do that.
And she wasn't alone as all the other girls nodded, expressing that they too shared her confusion.
"Me? I'm reading, of course." He commented in a matter-of-factly manner.
"Reading?" She asked for confirmation, her expression clearly saying that she didn't believe him.
"Yup." He nodded.
"And, what is this magical circle on the groun-, nevermind, this is a pentagram, isn't it? Also, why are there lights floating midair, and why the hell are you reading with the book upside-down?" The more she questioned, the more she lost the will to hear an answer.
And just like she described, Hai was floating in a lotus position, above what appeared to be a pentagram on the floor, with will-o-whisp lights all around, and holding the book upside-down in his hands.
"I don't know how to read. So, I used some methods that I thought could be of help to me." He stated with a straight face.
"…" The girls looked at him with an 'are you serious?' expression.
"…" Hai also looked at them with a calm expression and a charming smile, completely not concerned with the situation at all.
"Hai. Help." Kryn was the one who broke the silence, and everyone's gaze went to her small figure.
"Kryn, what do you need help with?" He said while bringing out a candy from his space ring.
Getting down from his mystical monk-like position, he walked up to her and crouched down before giving her the candy.
"Her-"
*SLAP*
His hand didn't even make it through half of the journey before it was ruthlessly slapped away by a certain pink-haired bunny.
"No candies before lunch." Hong Li-Wei said while looking at Hai and Kryn, the duo who expressionlessly kept gazing at her after the action.
Bringing his gaze away from her, Hai put away the candy and looked at Kryn.
"So, what do you need help with?"
"Me. Magic. Explode. Use. Help. Please." With her usual broken form of speaking, Kryn conveyed her problem to him.
Yesterday and today too, she has repeatedly failed at even using a simple magic, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make out what was wrong.
She knows that this must have something to do with that strange dream/ vision of hers, but she doesn't know what to do about it. Hence, she came to Hai as he always seemed to have an answer to everything, at least, in her mind.
"Huh…" Hearing her, Hai hummed in understanding before using his magical vision on her.
As his world was dyed black and dark blue lines appeared to outline the shapes of the things around him, he focused on Kryn, or more specifically, her core.
A few seconds later, Hai could see her core in her abdomen.
With a shining golden liquid inside it, he observed as the core seemed to act slightly strange.
"All right, everyone, please gave some space, around 10 meters or so." He said that while having an inkling of what could be related to her problem.
When the girls heard him, they all complied with his request and distanced themselves from Kryn and Hai.
"Now, Kryn, try to circulate your mana." He spoke to her while keeping his eyes on her core.
Kryn nodded and did as instructed.
As the mana started to circulate in her body, Hai immediately observed something strange.
Her core started trembling and the mana which was originally lowing smoothly and at small quantities, suddenly became chaotic, in greater quantities, and fiercer in nature.
"Try to use magic." He said while calmly observing the changes.
"…" However, Kryn didn't immediately comply this time. She knows that he is too close and will inevitably be caught in the explosion.
And although she knows that he is strong, she herself doesn't want to do any harm to him, even if it is unintentional.
Noticing that she wasn't complying, Hai raised his gaze and meet her eyes that now contained uncertainty in them.
"Don't worry, I won't get hurt, just believe in me." He said with a small, confident smile.
"…" Kryn looked into his eyes and nodded.
Right when she started to try to make simple magic, Hai immediately noticed the problem.
Her core started to act wildly and her mana got out of control.
'So this is the problem.' Her core was "acting" on its own.
In the next moment, Kryn's mana went awry and an explosion happened.
*BOOM*
An explosion of air, that is.
When her magic went wrong and the explosion happened, Hai who was already ready, immediately acted.
Using of what he learned in the battle against the possessed Ye Chen, Hai froze the explosion right when its flames materialized themselves, and due to the explosion's force, the ice was shattered and Hai also made it dematerialize itself, thus only the force of the explosion was what remained.
Hai coated himself and Kryn with a simple mana barrier and, in the end, the explosion did nothing apart from creating air.
Raising to his feet, Hai dusted his knees and turned to the girls a bit far away.
"Let's eat for now, and then you can tell me about your training." Then he turned to Kryn. "I more or less have figured out your problem, but to treat it, we will need to go somewhere else, I will talk with Akame about it. But to explain in a few words, your core is "wild" at the moment, it must have something to do with that bird, but nothing that can't be solved." He spoke with a smile.
"Hum." Kryn nodded and didn't pursue the matter further. He said that they would need to go somewhere else to solve this, so she will wait until then.
After this small episode, the group went towards the dining room and had lunch where the girls talked about the torture they went through.
Hai in the meanwhile only smiled and chimed in from time to time.
Overall, the girls were progressing in their training, but not by much as it has been only one day since they all started this training.
The one whom Hai was most worried about, Hong Li-Wei, showed signs of progress, not in regards of her magics, but in her mentality as she wasn't as down as she was yesterday.
That small change in itself was already a good progress in his opinion.
Bing Qing and Stella also showed some progress in their relationship with the girls, as they would cuss Chang Hua from time to time and even Jia was dragged along.
Watching them all behave like this, Hai displayed a small smile and continued to eat his food.
He really enjoyed those times of peace.
Sadly, he knows that the end of this peace of theirs is fast approaching.
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"So, you're saying that our training is now going to be outside?" Hai questioned Akame, who suddenly appeared in the mansion a few minutes ago.
"Indeed. You will hunt some monsters, however, you will only be using what you learned in your training sessions with Charlotte and me." She commented with a big smile on her face while eyeing him with her reptilian eyes.
"You know that I only had one session so far, right?" He added with a plain face.
"If you can't learn something from a session, then what would it change if it were two or ten?" She threw back at him.
"Touché." He didn't deny her reasoning. "So, when we depart?"
"Asap." She spoke while moving her hands. "In other words, now." And snapped her fingers.
Then, Hai who was comfortably sitting on a cushion on the ground, suddenly found himself floating a few centimeters off the snowy ground amidst a vast desert of ice and coldness.
"What?"
"Where are we this time?"
"That damned palace master…"
Looking at the source of the voices, Hai saw that the girls were also transported along with him.
"No… my rest…" Jia muttered in a defeated tone while looking down.
"Shit, how cold is this place?" Hong Li-Wei muttered through gritted teeth while her bunny ears shuddered and her body trembled due to the low temperature.
"…" Elena said nothing and walked toward Hai while a barely visible transparent purple mist enveloped her body.
Bing Qing quietly circulated her mana and coated her body with a layer of mana, to keep her temperature from dropping.
Stella meanwhile stood there, carelessly and uncaring about the temperature. As a vampire, such things as temperature, pressure, wounds, and injuries are a piece of cake as long as no unnatural thing is involved.
Kryn on the other hand started to glow due to the dim golden aura that appeared around her and started to melt the snow under her feet.
Chilly on her arms also didn't need to worry due to having a high corporal temperature by default.
"All right, folks." Hai clasped his hands loudly and got everyone's attention. Looking at Hong Li-Wei trembling, he made a coat of mana and covered her body, thus erasing the coldness she was feeling and earning a grateful look from her.
"Akame, the palace master, gave us our new training routine. We are to hunt down monsters." He commented while willing his mana and making Kryn float, as she was starting to sink into the ground due to her aura melting the snow, which made the ground below her.
Chilly also jumped off of her arms as the temperature got too high, even for her, a salamander.
"Now, while everyone here wants to cuss Akame, how about we make this training into something fun?" Hai decided to not dwell too much on Akame's ways of teaching and where she dropped them off.
Raising his eyes, he looked at the sky while using one hand on his forehead to shield his eyes from the brightness of the sun.
"How about we do a small bet between us." He continued while feeling everyone's gaze on him.
His thoughts immediately cleared off the girls' doubts about where they were.
"We make teams of 2 and the winner can request something from the loser. It's a simple bet, how does that sound?" He suggested while looking at the girls.
"What would be the limits of the request, young master?" Elena asked with subtly anticipation hidden in her voice.
"…" Chang Hua wordlessly looked at her with a dry expression.
Hai's smile widened.
"As long as the other team doesn't refuse for being too outrageous, everything is valid." He commented and noticed how Elena's pupils slightly dilated and she restrained herself from smiling.
"So, what do you think?"
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A/N: Sorry for the lateness, folks.
So, what do you guys think about this chapter? I will be finally showing a bit more about the world, more specifically, about the monsters and how the ecosystem is actually.
Comment what you thought about this chapter. If you liked it or not, I want to read your opinions and interact more with you guys.
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