Chapter 68: Crossing the zone

When Helena heard that, her eyes glowed.

"Really?" She asked to confirm what she heard.

"Yes. Now, you can go in" Amber said.

Helena's eyes shone with tremendous happiness and excitement.

Then she suddenly dashed towards Amber to give her an embrace.

Amber who wasn't ready suddenly felt Helena's arms around her waist.

Then she gave a smile.

"It's alright, Helena. Quickly go in" Amber said softly.

Helena nodded her head.

Then she released Amber from her tight embrace and rushed towards the gate to go through it.

Immediately she went through the gate, she suddenly appeared in the valley.

"I am finally here" She said with a smile of gladness in her face.

Since she came very late, she couldn't see the other students that went through the gate. They were long gone.

However, she could hear the raging roars of beasts in the distance. She however didn't give a damn about their frenzied roars. She wouldn't let some beasts scare her as her battle confidence had gone up a bit.

Fighting with those sand beasts that Laura used Creation spell to produce had upped her confidence in her spellcasting ability to fight and kill beasts.

Then instead of moving forward, she sat on the ground in the cross-legged position and calmed her mind. She then began to inhale deeply to replenish the Aetha energy that she lost in fighting those sand beasts. And as she deeply inhaled to recover lost Aetha energy, she began to go through many of the spells that she had mastered.

One mustn't forget that her sister, Alyssa, once gave her a magical book which had thousands of powerful spells too that she mysteriously memorized in a day. So, she began to go through the vast numbers of spells recorded in that book in her mind. And as she did so, she picked many of them which she felt would be useful to her in her extreme training in this valley.

When she was done fully replenishing her entirely drained Aetha energy and had created a book in her mind of various, high-powered offensive and other-purpose magical spells which she was going to use in this place, she set out to kill as many beasts that would come at her.

Then she began to walk at a leisure pace, waiting for some beasts to show their ugly heads and then use any of her powerful, element-based magical spells to blast their heads and bodies into mists of blood and hails of flesh.

However, after walking for a really long time, she discovered to her strangeness that there weren't any beast to kill. Also, she stopped hearing roars of beasts in the distance. It was like they had suddenly disappeared, with the valley becoming deathly silent like it were a graveyard.

"What's going on?" She asked herself in a strange tone.

"Did the instructors put invisible magical mechanisms in place which they didn't tell us about and wanted us to discover on our own?" She asked herself further in a perplexed tone.

Then she stopped thinking that and looked around while walking forward to see if there would be caves at the foots of the mountain ranges that bordered the sides of the wide valley.

Not long, she came across one.

"Finally" She said and heaved a sigh of relief.

She didn't want her coming here to be in vain.

So, her intention now was to take the fight to the beasts in their dwelling places which would certainly be deep in the caves made into any of the chains of mountains that lined the sides of the valley.

When she entered that cave which was at the foot of a mountain, she saw that it was really dark in there.

There was no illumination or whatever to allow her see her way into the cave if she began to walk further towards the depth.

So she came out once again to look for something which she could use a fire-based, brilliance-type spell on.

After some time of searching around in that area where she was, she saw a long piece of bone that was really thin. She then picked it up and walked back toward the cave.

When she appeared at the dark entrance of the cave, she pointed at the bone held in her hand and uttered a luminous fire spell.

Immediately after she uttered the spell, a bright white fire suddenly leapt out of her index finger at the bone.

Whoosh!

Instantly, the end of the bone was engulfed by the brilliant white fire that jumped out of Helena's index finger. And surprisingly as it burnt around that end of the bone, it didn't give off any form of heat; meaning that the fire wasn't the consuming type. And since it wasn't the type that would incinerate things to cinders or to a crisp, the bone didn't turn black or start to burn. Instead it was the bright white fire that increased in size to totally engulf the long piece of bone held in one of Helena's hands. And since the glaring white flame had increased in size upon completely enwrapping the piece of bone, it produced more white light that fully illuminated the entrance of the cave, dispelling the thick darkness that reigned in there.

Helena gave a delighted smile when she totally eliminated the darkness that she felt would tremendously disturb her vision and lower her magic and fighting prowess in the cave.

So, like she was holding a small white sun in her hand as the flame burning around the bone gave off an intense, blinding white light, she began to walk into the cave to slay beasts that she would meet in there.

After walking for about twenty minutes, where she had gone slightly deep into the cave, she suddenly heard the loud, enraged roars of beasts.

'Finally. I have met up with some of you beastly bastards' Helena said inwardly in an excited tone and then prepared herself to unleash powerful, instant-killing elemental spells at them.

Roaarr!

Roaarr!...

Helena heard their resounding angered roars and stopped in her track.

Then she looked at the bone in her hand that was engulfed by the brilliant white flame and uttered a floatation-type spell at it.

Instantly, a type of power moved from her hand which held the bone to the bone itself.

Once the bone was infused with that power, it suddenly lost the gravitational force that was acting upon everything in here.

Then when Helena let go of it, the fire-wrapped bone floated high to the roof of the the cave and began to hover in the air at that height.

Now that she was able to use her two hands once again, she prepared to kill any of the beasts that would appear before her.

Not long, she could see many wild beasts appear at about twenty feet away from where she stood. They had come out of many interconnected routes that also led to other caves.

Very quickly, she uttered a Sky-level, lightning-based elemental spell.

As soon as she uttered that and pointed at the beasts with all her fingers, shocking amounts of blue-colored lightning that dyed the cave and everything in it blue, despite the eye-burning white light that emitted from the brilliant white flame burning around the floating bone, instantly discharged from each of her fingertips and raged towards the beasts to strike them.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!...

Numerous loud bang sounds rang out when a great number of the beasts that had appeared many feet away from Helena instantly exploded into mists of blood and rain of of tiny shreds of charred flesh upon being struck by the massive amounts of lightning that had erupted from each of Helena's fingers.

When the sudden, massive volley of lightning coming from her fingertips stopped, Helena looked into the distance and saw without surprise in her eyes that she had reduced all the beasts that had appeared before her to pieces.

She then nodded her head.

However, she was greatly weakened. But she still felt that she had enough Aetha energy to continue.

She chose one of the numerous interconnected routes that led to other caves from the particular cave that she was in and prepared to walk into it.

With a neutralization-type spell coming from her, the floating burning bone in the air suddenly lost it power of levitation and fell back to the ground.

Helena caught it before it could fall to the ground and then walked into that interconnected route that she chose which would lead her to other caves from here.

After walking for a long time in that tunneling route, she finally arrived at another cave where she saw other beasts.

The wild beasts which were feeding on other wild beasts that they had overwhelmed, killed and torn apart to feed on them, turned to look towards the source of bright white light that had suddenly appeared and illuminated the cave that they were in.

Then when they saw Helena, they roared in rage and then frenziedly dashed towards her with the intention to bite her to death and feed upon her too.

But before the beasts could get to where she stood, Helena quickly uttered a one-word, wave-breaking spell that she had also added to the hundreds of spells that she was going to use in this place.

Immediately she uttered that, Aetha energy flowed from her Aetha meridians to her fist and then caused it to emit a smoke-like purple energy. The purple energy that began to emanate from her fist was like an actual smoke as it was formless and shapeless in form.

When Helena saw the visible effect of the spell that she uttered on her fist, she sent her fist towards the ground before her in a punch.

Boom!!

Like a bomb actually detonated, an immense wave of purple energy that carried high destructive power discharged from her fist when it made contact with the ground and then swept out in all directions in the form of a ripple, reducing absolutely everything that it came into contact with to numerous tiny fragments immediately.

When the destructive purple energy ripple disappeared, what could be seen around Helena were pieces and bits of the beasts' hides and bones.

Helena who was now looking pale-skinned quickly sat on the ground in the cross-legged position to recover her fully spent Aetha energy.

Many minutes later, after having recovered all her magic-manifesting energy, she picked the burning bone that she placed on the ground before her and stood to her feet. Then she walked into another of the numerous interconnected routes to continue her training-fight with the beasts.

However, she came across the blue energy thread that signified that she was about to leave the zone of the wild beasts into the zone of the ferocious and intelligent magical beasts. 

When Helena saw this, she gave a smile and then actually passed through the blue thread of energy to leave the zone of the wild beasts and appear in the zone of the magical beasts. Same with many other students who had chosen to go into caves since they couldn't find beasts to kill in the valley to sharpen their combat and spellcasting prowesses.

They had crossed the boundary-dividing blue thread of energy with the idea that they could increase the degree of difficulty of their training and that they should be able to take on the magical beasts that they would meet in there.