Chapter 97 - Elemental Refining

The Demon concentrated on the area around him, and the cold dirt that he was sitting on. It felt very different compared to before, and the reason for that wasn't just that Eiro's senses recently increased manyfold, but that he felt more connected to dirt and rock through his increased Earth Elemental affinity.

Slowly, Eiro started to think of the basic practice for Earth Magic, and then scooped up a little bit of dirt with his hand, pressing it together as tightly as he could before letting it just lay on his left palm.

And with accordance to the practice, Eiro pushed his mana out of his palm and tried to cover the dirt with it, which basically absorbed all of the mana Eiro pushed out the moment that it touched it, like he expected now that he had an earth affinity.

[Beginner Earth Magic Skill leveled up!]

Trying to ignore the notification that he just saw appear, Eiro started on the actual practice part, and tried to slowly make the dirt-ball break up into multiple pieces. Since a ball of loose dirt like this was rather brittle anyway, that wasn't all that hard to do. But on the other hand, it wasn't supposed to be hard to do either. It was just a basic practice, after all.

[Beginner Earth Magic Skill leveled up!]

With a bit of satisfaction, Eiro ran his fingers through the notification, before the sensation of the blue notification mist wrapping around his fingers caught his attention again, although he soon just ignored it. It was a very different feeling to what Eiro was used to, since until now there was no sensation of touch attached to the interaction with the notifications, only visuals.

Either way, for now, Eiro just continued trying to make the dirt on his palm crumble down, then pressed it into the shape of a ball again just to make it crumble down once more, until he felt confident he would be able to move on from this practice and rather do the opposite.

With the loose dirt on his palm, the Demon attempted at making that exact dirt move. Just bit by bit, he wanted everything to move closer together and 'compress' like it would when he was using his hands to form a solid shape.

It only happened at a rather slow pace, but even then, Eiro managed to pull everything up a bit, push some other things around, and try to keep everything in shape in order to create something that at least took the shape of the dirt ball that Eiro had before. Of course it would, and did, crumble at the slightest touch, but at least this was some progress that nobody could deny.

And his Beginner Earth Magic Skill leveled up to 13 just today as well! It seemed like Nelli was right, due to the fact that he already knew how to use Magic to control the other elements, he was able to do so rather easily with earth as well!

Satisfied with his progress, Eiro then stood up and dropped the dirt onto the ground, swiftly wiping his hands clean as he looked over at Nelli with a smile. "So, were five hours of Magic practice like this enough for you?" He asked, and Nelli slowly nodded her head, although that was rather obviously a lie on her part. She was basically just napping the whole time that Eiro was practicing, so he didn't directly understand why she even wanted to do something else other than gathering and hunting in the first place.

"Can't we, like, practice Spirit Magic a bit more?" Nelli suggested as Eiro went to wake Lugo up again, and the Demon just raised his brows in response, "I mean, sure, we can. I can practice water magic while on the move though, so let's do that." The Imp pointed out and started continuing along the path that they were on before, before Nelli quickly floated up next to him.

"Soo... Spirit Magic... You know what exactly that all includes, I hope?" She asked him, and Eiro simply nodded his head, since he figured he had a rather good grasp on things like that, "Yes, Spirit Magic is giving your mana to a Spirit to give them fuel to use magic, right?" He responded, before Nelli slightly chuckled.

"Hehe, you're not wrong, but that's not all there is to it~!" Nelli explained, "A big part of Spirit Magic is elemental refining! Not many people know about it, because most spirits are too lazy to do it, but I actually find it rather relaxing."

With a curious expression, Eiro looked at Nelli to wait for her to continue explaining what 'Elemental Refining' was supposed to be, although the Spirit was just looking at Eiro as if waiting for something herself, although she did soon realize her fault.

"Oh, right, sorry... So you don't know about elemental refining, I assume. It's basically just what it says, you can refine an element into a better version of it with the help of a spirit." She explained, and Eiro lightly furrowed his brows curiously, "A better version of it? Could you demonstrate?" He suggested, and Nelli quickly nodded her head.

"We need regular water for it though, I can't do it with water that I created myself, so let's wait until we're at the river." She suggested, and that honestly didn't take them that long anymore. Once they were by the river, Eiro quickly scooped up a bubble of water and held it up to Nelli, curious to see what she was about to do with it.

"So, how it works is rather simple." Nelli explained, placing both of her hands onto the surface of the water bubble and then whispered something. It was in the Ancient Language, so Eiro didn't fully understand her. Maybe he should try and learn an Ancient Language Comprehension skill soon.

Either way, when Nelli started muttering like that, Eiro noticed that all of a sudden, inside of the water small clumps of dirt started to form and were then pushed out to the bottom of the water, pressing onto Eiro's palm.

"That was the first step of refining water. I split off all of the dirt, dust, or sand inside of it and pushed it out." Nelli explained, and Eiro then slowly started to try and move the water around again, simply to make it float a little bit to get rid of the dirt that now gathered on his palm, and immediately as he did so, he noticed that it was far easier to manipulate than regular river water usually would be.

"Huh..." Eiro muttered quietly as he looked at the clear bubble of water, and Nelli then just slightly smirked, "If you think that's cool, then look at the second step!" She exclaimed, once more placing her hands onto the surface of the bubble to then start muttering something in the Ancient Language.

Now, once more, something gathered inside of the water, just that this time, it all gathered right at the center of it before a tiny bead dropped onto Eiro's palm that he quickly took a look at, "And what's this?" He asked, only seeing some small weirdly metallic parts on it, and Nelli quickly explained.

"Those are the minerals inside of the water. They're usually good for you, but for the third step, we need them gone!" Nelli explained, seemingly rather excited, before she immediately once more placed her hands onto the water.

And this time around, the process took a fair bit longer, up to ten minutes for this small bubble of water, although as Nelli was speaking in the ancient language, Eiro noticed that the water-bubble actually shrunk down a fair bit until it basically only had a third of the volume it had originally, and Nelli soon opened her eyes and interlocked her fingers behind her back, seemingly excited to have Eiro take a look at the water.

"So... What changed this time?" Eiro asked curiously, and Nelli looked at him surprised, "You didn't notice yet?" She asked surprised, and the Demon shook his head before Nelli sighed deeply, "That water was now turned into a magical version of it. It won't be affected by natural forces anymore, it won't mix with regular water, but it's quickly affected by magic! Come on, try to turn it into ice!" Nelli exclaimed, and figuring he should just go along, the Demon used his Ice Magic to quickly freeze the water.

And to his surprise, it froze a lot faster than water usually would, although when Eiro let go of the thought of 'freezing' the bubble, the ice turned back into regular water nearly immediately.

"Erm, what's this? Not affected by natural forces? Didn't it melt really quickly?" Eiro asked, and Nelli quickly shook her head.

"No, no, it didn't melt. You see, that's the downside of the element when it comes to your style of magic... Water that was refined up to this stage will want to return to its basic state as quickly as possible, so you would need to constantly have it freeze, but in turn it should go a lot colder than usual as well?" She figured, "I don't actually know too much about Ice Magic..." Nelli explained, before Eiro just slightly chuckled.

"That's fine, don't worry. This might take a while to get used to, but it might be worth it..." The Demon pointed out, and then slowly started to heat the water up with fire magic to make it boil, and the very moment that he did he chose to turn it into ice, before the water close to instantly froze. It was at a speed that Eiro wasn't used to, and one that he really did not expect, so it took a moment for him to actually realize that it did really happen that quickly.

"Now then, at least that natural force still works, huh?" Eiro smirked lightly, and then turned toward Nelli, "So, what do I do with this now? Do I just take it with me, or leave it here, or..?" The Demon asked, and Nelli just shrugged in response.

"Hmm, it's good for magical plants, so maybe use it to water your tree?" Nelli suggested, and Eiro looked at her with a satisfied smile, "That sounds like a good idea." He replied, and then started to make his way along the river to get to his tree, and on his way turned toward Nelli rather curiously.

"Does something happen when I drink it?" The Demon asked. Since it helped magical plants, then maybe it could help him as well! At least that's what he hoped...

"Yeah, I wouldn't do that if I were you. It's technically like poison to regular living creatures... although then again, you're not regular... I wouldn't risk it though. Even for those that can drink it, there's no benefit. It's just water to them." Nelli pointed out, so Eiro sighed with a bit of disappointment.

Either way, they soon made their way further along the river bank and found the pale blue tree that actually stuck out like a sore thumb in this area here... No other tree had this color-scheme, after all.

"I'm surprised nobody that came along tried to fell it yet..." The Demon pointed out, and Nelli looked at him with a wry smile, "This is a magic forest, not many people come into these parts at all... And if they do, they would need to be suicidal to try and do harm to anything that sticks out like that."

"I'm aware of that, but there should be plenty of dumb people out there, right?" Eiro pointed out, and in response to that, Nelli couldn't really say anything anymore. Technically, the Demon was right about that, so she didn't really know what to reply to that other than...

"Just water it already!" She exclaimed, so Eiro lightly sighed and did as the Spirit suggested.