BXBX NOVEL Chapter 31: Mana Exhaustion I
Explosions rocked the landscape, tearing some trees from their roots and burning through others with their roots and branches.
It was a Disaster!
And the source? Damien Terrace!
"Hehehe… More! More flames!" He laughed like a mad man as he watched his summon shot out fireball after fireball.
Just over an hour ago, he\'d gone on a hunting spree and had ended up taking the lives of approximately a hundred demons within that time frame.
Damien wouldn\'t let only his Summons do his work. He wasn\'t that lazy. Damien wanted to keep up!
This had led to him actively searching for demons around the forest. It was gigantic, spanning over seventy thousand miles and Damien knew he hadn\'t even explored one percent of the entire forest terrain.
Because of this and his thirst for growth and power, Damien had gone out to hunt. He\'d only summoned Luton to help him secure the cores he would acquire from his hunt. As for the other two summons, the consumed too much of his magic essence just by being around.
Damien need to save it all up in case of an emergency so he went ahead with his plan. Hunting with his special storage space.
The Hunt was fun to say the least. Every now and then, either out of luck or fate, Damien would stumble upon a few demons or mana beasts and it just so happened that he only encountered Grade Seven mana beasts as well as Demon Scouts and Demlings. The perfect creatures to sharpen his skills.
After his hundredth demon kill, Damien had witnessed the demons turn around and flee. Unwilling to let his potential Essence Cores run away, he\'d given chase after them, forgetting what kind of environment he was in.
When he realised, it was too late. These demons also has intelligence. While they weren\'t nearly as smart as humans, demons knew how to lure their targets into traps they set.
This was exactly what they\'d done to Damien. They drew him toward two Grade Six mana beasts.
However, what they failed to understand was that Damien was already in search of these beasts, he would fare well in a fight with a single one but he wanted to test his limit and so, they\'d actually done him a favour by bringing him to two Grade Six mana beasts.
Damien had used the opportunity to also discover that they weren\'t as difficult as he thought they would be. He was growing stronger by the day! In their last moment, these beasts that resembled bears with scales and iron claws had let out a final cry, a cry for help which Damien had believed to be a death cry.
Unknown to both the Demons and even Damien, he\'d just killed the two remaining offspring of a Grade five mana beast.
Their mother had appeared almost instant, arriving just in time to see them get swallowed up by Luton. The mother immediately went after Damien who had killed her two offsprings, destroying everything in its path while it was in a furious state.
Eager to test his strength against it, Damien had gone against the mana beast and he learned the lard way the difference between a Grade Six and a Grade Five Mana beast.
The first swipe the creature had landed on Damien threw him into the forest breaking a few bones and almost knowing him out cold.
Then and there, he knew his limit and also knew he would die if the beast landed another attack on him.
A new mission arrived at that moment telling him to survive the fight and he would stand a chance to receive an extra Grade Five Essence Core as a reward. This would be the second mission he\'d received in the six months he had been with the system and it was just like the first one. Survival.
Damien who\'d never seen one, immediately aummoned Cerbe to the rescue. He didn\'t even bother asking the system any question. The system wanted him alive and he would stay alive.
As Cerbe emerged from the blue shimmering portal, the three-headed hound had first shot out a ball of condensed red flames. This one was twice as large as the ones it had initially used on lower ranked beasts.
The ball of flame landed on the beast and then exploded in a dazzling work of red. The explosion had pushed the mana beast back a little, damaging its scales upon impact.
Cerbe didn\'t back down though. Immediately the first ball of flame landed, failing to do what the Three-Headed Hound had intended to do, two more balls of fire erupted from its two other mouths, both of them bigger than the first.
Cerbe\'s opponent had immediately sensed the danger behind both balls of flames speeding toward it and while it couldn\'t dodge, it also has abilities of its own. It opened its mouth and sucked in the air in the surrounding, compressing it into a ball of air, and then shot it forward.
The ball of compressed air and one of the balls of fire had collided mid air and exploded wildly, throwing the mana beast further backward. This had helped the beast to evade the second fireball aimed at it.
As it stood up, it noticed three more balls coming its way and roared in all its fury. It seemed to be complaining about the fight been so one sided but Damien didn\'t understand beast language.
He simply laughed as Cerbe\'s attacks shot forward, destroying everything around. "Hehehe… More! More flames!" Damien\'s laughter was drowned by the explosion that\'s followed.
Boom!!
But he didn\'t care. Not until he Sawa panel at the side of his eyes.
[-300 units of Magic Essence!]
[-300 units of Magic Essence!]
[-300 units of Magic Essence!]
"What?!" Damien was shocked to see three panels pop.uo in quick successions. He was well aware that summoning Cerbe would eat at his Magic Essence reserves but what he saw was frightening. Cerbe couldn\'t be the one eating at his reserves this fast.
However, when he saw the Three-Headed Hound open its mouth and form another three balls of flame, he understood where the deduction had come from. "This is going to cost a lot."