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*FUSH*
"Hai."
*GROWL*
"Huh? What is it, Kryn?"
*ROOOAAAR*
"Danger?" Kryn pointed to one of the giant polar bears surrounding them.
Giant polar bears with 4 arms, 6 meters tall, claws and teeth harder than tungsten, and a body that can endure antimaterial rifles' shots with relative ease.
Chilly who was laying on Hai's shoulders also gave her opinion by emitting some strange noises which he assumed to be her agreeing with Kryn.
"Meh, they are just angry because their favorite drink didn't arrive yet." He commented while looking around and noticing that the bears started to fix their position to launch themselves at him and Kryn. "So, shall we do some practice?"
*ROAR*
With one loud roar in a snowy, deserted plain in the middle of the Antarctic Continent, 8 bears ran faster than some old-model vehicles toward two people.
"Here we… go." Hai jumped up while bringing Kryn along with his magic.
With a simple jump, he went more than 50 meters in the air before turning to the little girl who observed the enemies below with impassive eyes.
'She sure is different, huh.' He mused inwardly but shrugged it off.
"Kryn, try to use your magic on them."
She woke up from her stupor and looked at him before nodding.
Extending her small arms, Kryn focused her mana and tried to cast a simple fireball.
At first, her mana moved well and accordingly to her will, however, moments before she cast it, the mana started to move on its own and the result wasn't a fireball like what she has done the first time she used magic in her training with Hai.
*BOOOM*
An explosion happened a few meters below Kryn and Hai, and resulted in the being blown away a bit due to Hai protecting them.
"…" Looking at his hand, Hai briefly showed a mildly displeased expression on his face.
A few instants before the explosion went off, he used his magical vision and tried to apply some of the things he observed from his training session with both Akame and Charlotte.
While Akame used of what he thinks is a concept to manipulate space, Charlotte herself is still using what can be considered magic. And so, Hai tried to imitate what she did, but at a more basic level.
His intention was of making a simple barrier by using space and in turn, not being caught in the explosion.
The result was that he made a fragile barrier that broke when the explosion occurred, forcing him to protect himself and Kryn with a mana barrier.
"Hai?" Hearing his name, he woke up from his stupor and looked to the side.
There, he saw Kryn looking at him with a hint of sorrow in her usually calm eyes.
Making a small platform of mana below his feet, Hai brought her close and ruffled her hair.
Chilly also gave her support by emitting some sounds that Hai thinks to be an encouragement.
He is growing more and more proficient in the salamander language by the minute.
"I'm not angry. I'm thinking about how to better myself because I too am learning here." He said before slowly and steadily bringing his hand forward and abruptly making a slapping motion in a backhand manner.
*SWISH*
*PUCHI*
An ice spear with a bit more than 1 meter in length made a graceful arc in the air before digging in the snow.
One of the polar bears on the ground, the one who fired the spear, dumbly looked at Hai who casually slapped away a lethal attack without even using mana or looking at it.
"But, as I said before, I will help you with your problem." This was also the reason why he chose her as his team.
After the girls accepted his proposal, they divided themselves into teams.
Elena and Jia; Bing Qing and Chang Hua; Stella and Hong Li-Wei and finally, Hai and Kryn (and Chilly).
And with this, the hunting game started.
The rules are simple: the one who kills more beasts wins.
Simple and fast to understand.
And the team's current score is…
0.
They haven't killed a single beast in the almost 10 minutes since the game began.
"Now, I don't know if this might sound strange but have you seen or know anything about a phoenix when you use magic?" His question earned a snap of Kryn's head in his direction and a surprised expression on her face.
"Huh." She nodded her head, waiting for what he was going to say.
"If what I think is right, then you probably need to "tame" your core, or more specifically, that bird which must be your strength or something like that." Hai's comment earned a slight reaction from Kryn's aura as he saw it become a bit fiercer.
'So it does have a will of its own, huh.' He concluded by observing the timing of the reaction and the trigger.
"?" Kryn's tilted her head to the side and Hai swear that he could almost see a question mark appearing above her head.
"Although I don't know how it works, I think that this situation must have something to do with your lineage or something along those lines." He clarified.
Hearing his explanation, understanding dawned on her and Kryn nodded her head.
[He's right, Kryn.] Laila's message was the last nail in the coffin.
Until now, she has been silent to let Kryn have her lesson with Hai since Laila has limits to what she knows and can share.
Seeing the message, Kryn nodded her head again and turned her gaze to the bears on the ground, all of which had an ice spear in their paws.
"Focus…" Hai whispered and used his mana to make a soundproof barrier around them.
Looking at the bears, he willed his mana and their spears shattered.
*ROAR*
One bear let out a confused roar while looking at the ice shards in its paws.
Another bear, the one who threw the first spear at Hai, looked at its paw and threw the shards on the ground, kicked a pile of snow, and then sat on the ground.
Kryn closed her eyes and started to circulate her mana.
As the mana became chaotic, it started to become wilder and wilder and soon, it looked like fire spreading through her mana veins.
"Kuh." Gritting her teeth, with a trembling body and sweat rolling down her forehead, she tried to do something else.
Chilly raised her head and worriedly looked at Kryn.
Hai also glanced at her with his magical vision and smiled.
She was doing something quite creative but also dangerous.
Seeing that her problem was with her mana, instead of trying to use magic, Kryn started to focus solely on circulating her mana. The problem with this is that her mana became wilder the more the time went on, so it was a dangerous thing because she could overload herself and cause injuries internally.
As Kryn kept circulating her mana, the previously golden liquid that composed her mana went from a liquid to something resembling a raging fire, borderline plasma.
The surrounding temperature started to rise. The bears on the ground noticed the difference and tried to run away but Hai trapped them in iron armor that only let their heads visible.
With her whole body trembling and sweating like a waterfall, Kryn bit her bottom lip to endure the increasing temperature of her body that reached such a point, that it started to become painful to her.
Seeing that the process was being more harmful than actually helping, Laila started to worry.
[Kryn, try to focus on that phoenix. Also, try to do something about the heat! Your body is becoming hot to the point that it is going to cause injuries!] Laila said through a message, but Kryn was far too focused on her task to even notice it.
Seeing that she wasn't having much progress and the actual state of her body, Hai raised his hand and put it on her head.
*SIZZLE*
Suddenly, a cloud of steam appeared from where he touched her and started to the surroundings.
Willing his mana, he made trapped the hot and cold steam and sent it away from them.
*PANT*
*PANT*
*PANT*
With several audible panting sounds, Kryn finally relaxed a bit due to her temperature lowering.
Hai's hand which was still on her head was covered in a light, ethereal blue hue and one could visibly see that it had some effect on her as even the golden aura around Kryn lessened in visibility where his hand was.
What Hai is doing is manually cooling Kryn.
By using of his ice affinity, he started to use his mana to turn it "cold", and then started to circulate it in and out of Kryn's body.
And although it sounds simple and is feasible in theory, Hai used more than he thought he would. Kryn's mana, or rather, her flames had something else in them that made it harder to deal than with normal flames.
Even Chilly's magma wasn't this troublesome.
The good thing is that he recycled his mana so the small amount he initially injected was all he used in the end.
"Focus on the most vivid image you have of it, Kryn." He said in a calm, caring tone.
Kryn's body further relaxed after hearing his words and feeling his hand on the top of her head.
Focusing on her memory, she remembered when she saw a phoenix emerging from a sea of flames.
How it was wild.
Beautiful.
Pure.
Destructive.
But above all else,
Powerful.
*FUUSH*
As Kryn kept remembering about that phoenix, the golden aura around her started to shine brighter and brighter.
Sensing something wrong, Hai narrowed his eyes but he wasn't given time to think.
Her aura started to grow bigger and bigger and when it reached dozen of meters, a pair of feral, slitted eyes opened.
"Chilly, I will come for you later. Try to not die." Hai said and not even an instant later, Chilly was hurled at hypersonic speed away from him.
Hearing him, the pair of eyes directly looked at him and when they landed on him, Hai felt an immense pressure falling on his body.
It was still nowhere as close as that higher being, but it is still something that he certainly didn't feel from anyone whom he fought until now.
As the girls who were killing monsters heard this, they all stopped and not even a second later, their attention was drawn by a single thin pillar of golden light raising toward the sky coming from afar.
"Human." With a deep, melodic, but also powerful, overbearing, and brimming with pride voice, the phoenix spoke while its eyes peered directly into his.
"You sure are bold, meddling into a phoenix's awakening." Anger was evident in its voice.
"Even if she is still a child, an awakening is something sacred for us."
Hai boredly looked at the phoenix and snorted.
"Have as many lives as you want. Come back from the dead as you like. I won't let her do something that is going to kill her just because you are mentally ill and deemed such thing as sacred." He commented in a calm, unconcerned tone.
And his response earned him something really quickly.
As the temperature started to rise at an incredible pace, Hai watched as the bears were incinerated alive.
"You certainly are arrogant for a human." The aura started to mold itself into a shape resembling a phoenix.
"Hands off her." It said and directly sent a bit of its aura toward him.
Hai raised his eyes and looked at it before freezing it and shattering it into pieces.
"Hands off? Why?" He questioned with an unbothered gaze, not minding the attempt at his life a few seconds ago.
"You know nothing about her or a phoenix at all." The phoenix said while the temperature spiked up again, a crater started to form due to the snow and ice below melting at an incredible pace and range.
"Well, then I must deserve an award. Knowing nothing about her I was able to give her a bit of happiness in her life, something that you seem to not be able to do in… How long have you been with her? Years?" He stated with a sarcastic smile, not sugarcoating his words even a bit.
"Enough!" It said and narrowed its eyes at him.
"Be gone!" The phoenix bellowed and the temperature got out of control as it started to raise at blinding speed rate.
Feeling himself sweating, Hai showed a small, peaceful smile on his face.
*FUSH*
Suddenly, his lips turned purple, and the hairs on his arm, leg, neck and every other place aside from his head rose.
His skin got paler.
And his deep neon blue eyes started to shine while deep dark blue ripples of mana were emitted from them.
Under the phoenix's incredulous eyes, the temperature that was raising, stopped.
Making a big dome around them, he then protected Kryn's from the cold by avoiding even grazing her with his magic and placing several barriers around her, just in case.
Hai then focused on the phoenix.
And the temperature started to drop.
Not at a fast speed.
Not a slow one.
Not at the same in which the phoenix made it rise.
The temperature simply started to drop.
By hundreds of degrees.
Per fraction of second.
Under the phoenix's stunned gaze, the ground that had melt not only stopped, but it was refilled with ice and a blizzard started out of nowhere.
With the temperature becoming cold to the point that no heat was present aside from the phoenix's aura and Kryn's corporal temperature, even the humidity in the air started to completely freeze.
The air got hard to breath as it felt like a cold blade cutting one's lungs when inhaled.
As the phoenix's aura swayed along with the cold, icy winds, Hai's deep blue eyes became the only thing that it could see amidst the blizzard.
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"How about… no?"
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A/N: So, what do you guys think about this chapter?
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.
Another thing: Please give your feedbacks. I want to know what you guys think, if there are things that could be better or if I could have done something in a simpler manner. If you could also leave a review, that would help me to understand what you think about the novel in general, so it would be really helpful.
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...….
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That is all for today, thank you all for reading! 🍷😎