Hana laughed like a crazed aunty who's gotten the best discounted meat after a fight with the other aunties in the supermarket! She had 'fortuitously' made her pets (plus one 'friend') evolved into stronger creatures! It was extremely satisfying. It felt like playing a certain game where evolving occurred with enough food and experience collection.
"I'm so great!" The aunty shamelessly praised herself.
"Sorry, Markisah. I don't think you should try the skewers." She patted Markisah's head with a smile when she saw Markisah eyeing Ara's leftover skewers. And I thought she was vegan before. She chuckled under her breath. She still remembered Kuro's comment about the little bird previously. Without asking Kuro's opinion, she wasn't going to make the bird suffer unnecessary trouble.
...
Ara was silently absorbing the energy between the heaven and the earth right outside the cave door. Since the two brothers were further out, she wasn't affected by the turbulent weather phenomena. The intensity of her breakthrough was milder too. The energy from her meal flowed everywhere within her body, tempering it as it moved along. It even acted as a precursor to redirect some of the nature's spiritual energy funneled by the brothers to enter her own body. Hence, she had indirectly benefited from their breakthroughs. After a while, her bones, her muscles, and even her fins and scales were saturated thoroughly. The access energy finally surged to a single point inside her consciousness. They rotated at a rapid pace and coalesced into a dense multi-faceted circular aquamarine gem.
She had finally made her own water-attribute core!
The size of the aquamarine core was as large as a sesame seed inside her brain where all her powers were concentrated.
However, it wasn't over! The leftover energy from the two bites of shrimp skewers coupled with the excess accumulation of the natural spiritual energy were continuously absorbed by the newly formed core for quite some time until the core enlarged into a pea-sized core in one go before the energy was finally depleted. With the presence of the water attribute core, a sustainable energy circuit had been forged within her body. Now, the powers within her will circulate in her body in a loop autonomously and slowly re-enforced her core to become stronger over time. As her core grew, the power concentration will increase. In turn, she will be able to utilize high level water-based techniques with high arcane energy requirement!
She opened her eyes slowly and lamented, "Such a wondrous shrimp skewer. Maybe almost the same level as my pill. I need to get the recipe from Mistress." Ara shamelessly compared. While the aunty was making the skewers before, she was engrossed with experimenting on the lightning mushroom spiritual herb while sulking at the corner of the cave. Hence, she had missed the whole process.
As the gullible little fish pondered over how to request for a recipe, she had not noticed the scant amount of Hana's blood Ara previously absorbed resurfaced undetected within her body, silently. Faint glimmering tiny runes appeared within the blood as they penetrated through Ara's newly forged energy circuit. The blood traveled in her body following the path of the energy circuit until it reached Ara's new core. Once it arrived at the core, it immediately fused itself with the core. Faint runes appeared within the aquamarine core, as if they were swimming freely within.
Ara looked behind her to see the two not-so-friendly brothers still going through their own breakthrough process. She started later than the brothers but managed to end her breakthrough before them. Their prowess will surely get a whole lot stronger than before after this! She thought she needed to firm up her relationship with the aunty a little bit more, so that one day, she can even restrain these strong spiritual beasts by sucking up to the aunty. If not, her safety will be compromised once she makes a small mistake and offend them!
...
Kuro was immersed in an insight he had finally unlocked within himself. As he confronted the last of the heavenly lightning strikes, the susurrus of profound whispers he had faintly heard since he was awakened from his previous hibernation had finally gotten clear enough for him to ponder upon. The susurration was in the form of profound aged old ancient chants, forgotten by time; fragments of a cultivation technique buried deep within his ancestral blood. Yet, deep within him, he finally realized he knew what they meant. It's like unlocking a long-forgotten memory.
Slowly, he repeated the chants and immersed his inner self in its wonders. He was not aware of the battered body being repeatedly tempered by the lightning strikes again and again as his soul concentrated on the now enlightened cultivation technique. His beautiful translucent black scales cracked and fell bit by bit. His body was wounded and charred at many places. Yet, he persisted within the eye of the storm.
Slowly, his scales fell one by one as sounds like the shattering of heavy glass was heard. His skin started to shrivel and loosen...
...
Hana was observing her beloved pet from within the cave worriedly after the initial excitement was over. It had been more than two hours. The last few lightning strikes were especially terrifying; each strike was as thick as a water tank back home, deep blue, approaching to black in color. She felt the atmosphere around her being charged up, even when she was safe within the confines of the cave. It was hard to imagine what her adorable little Ku-chan was currently facing. Kuro wasn't showing any signs of waking from his enlightenment. As the lightning strikes were getting harsher, she had not seen him retaliate a single time.
[Was this how an animal around here level up? Will he be okay? Following the little one's injury, he'd be a fried delicacy if this keeps continuing.] Such were the many questions swimming inside the aunty's mind. However, she was powerless to help her pet at all. She knew how insignificant she was at this moment. Even one of the smaller lightning strikes would've turned her to dust. Even if Kuro perished, she wouldn't be able to do a single thing.
[It'll be okay, I'm sure it'll be. The handsome bros in those novels took days to break through their limits.] Hana tried hard to appease her heart to no avail. She did not forget that some of the side characters failed their breakthrough sessions and were plagued with health issues afterwards.
All of the sudden, a strong wave billowed over like tsunami! With the gigantic wave, two large fishes appeared in front of Kuro and Shiro midair. The one slightly in front was a gigantic pink tilapia with two scarlet red glowing eyes and a single white horn in between them. The scales on its body was as huge as a large serving plate each, partially translucent, with faint dark red lines on top. The tilapia was as big as a two-storey building! A silver-colored catfish with snowy white whiskers was slightly behind the tilapia. It had a body as big and long as an airplane! The two fishes rode the waves like two marine-gods!
"ARANYE! SHOW YOURSELF NOW!"
...