Chapter 297 - Ifrit's Determination

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Ifrit sighed as he touched his shoulder, the pain was really shocking and even a bit electrifying. He gritted his teeth as he continued to meditate, Lilith had decided to stay with him and monitor him for the moment, making sure that he wouldn't do anything reckless.

He sat cross-legged over the bed and continued to amass the Qi across his body. Unlike some talented beings such as Chaos who had an insane amount of Mana, which could be used to compensate for his near null amount of Qi due to being an Undead, Ifrit had to carefully use everything he had.

There were several energies in the world that fighters and mages alike used, and many of them usually just combined them all to fight, it was often rare to find people that only specialized in one of the two, as both powers were essential to fight and survive, using both physical combat and magic was essential, even the weakest and smallest of people had to learn basic martial arts to defend themselves whenever they were pushed into a corner.

The most basic energies, however, were three.

Mana, Qi, and Aether.

The first one, Mana, was the most commonly used, and the easiest to wield, everyone had some mana, and it was very easy to awaken as well. Mana was often used to activate most Skills within the System too, so it was an essential power.

And it was also the only energy that could allow a person to wield magic, the widely known strongest form of fighting, and the most destructive as well.

Without mana, you were pretty much soft-locked into physical fighting or using long-ranged weapons.

Nonetheless, the people born without Mana were very rare, often none, as Mana was an essential energy of the very soul.

Ifrit, compared to his brothers, had an slightly higher amount of Mana, however, the race he belonged to, the Ifrit or Fire Demons, were not the best at magic and had a hard time controlling it and dealing sizable damage with it because they lacked enough Magic Power to deal decent damage against other things that were near their level of power.

Due to this, the fire demons specialized in the ability to wield Qi, which they often were born with the ability to control innately, even more, it was not just common Qi without an attribute, thanks to their bloodlines, Fire Qi was naturally produced around their bodies.

But there was also the third energy, Aether. This energy was the one that encompassed the very fabric of the soul, it was often named Soul Energy sometimes, and it was the basic ingredient to form an Aura, which Ifrit and many already knew how to use.

Unlike his siblings who often just used insane quantities of Qi to fight due to their amazing constitution and talent for martial arts, Ifrit had to merge Qi, Mana, and Aether together to unleash his truest potential. He had to merge these energies together, just how Chaos had once told him.

Nonetheless, he was still foolishly forcing himself to overuse his small quantities of Qi…

Now, he had decided to begin something completely out of the ordinary, merging all three energies together around his body and quickly filling his damaged Pressure Points with them.

The pain was strong, but he gritted his teeth while closing his eyes, Lilith noticed that something was wrong, but Ifrit told her that he was merely healing himself, despite doing something reckless once more.

"I have to use all three energies instead of a single one or the other separately… Magic and Martial Arts… just like Chaos-sama does it but different at the same time… Chaos-sama uses pure Mana to do everything, but I have Qi and Aether as well… I think I can bring forth something of my own creation… Ungh…! But I have to persevere…" he thought to himself.

"Ifrit…" sighed Lilith.

Seeing her childhood friend pushing through his very limits was not something abnormal to Lilith, she had been seeing him foolishly do all these sorts of things since the two were very little.

Lilith recalled that her own powers might also require some polish, so she also decided to meditate for the moment, gathering her Mana across her body, and even beginning to use Qi and Aether, imitating Ifrit a little bit… A Succubus using Qi and Aether was certainly something very strange… but Lilith had already gone past a stereotypical Succubus, and was aiming to become stronger, even if her race was specialized into seducing and extracting energy through intercourse.

…

Meanwhile, Abyss and the rest of the group gathered near the giant grilled catfish in the back, which was slowly being cooked, the scent was rather tasty and Abyss herself realized she was very hungry, and might partake into the lunch later.

"As of now, is there any clues where the giant frog might be?" wondered Belphegor.

"The giant frog… it is most likely looking for its egg, even now… If it can truly track it, it might be following us and trying to find us." Said Yuki.

"That's true… if she could truly track the egg, that would actually make things easier for us…" sighed Belphegor.

"But where else could it be?" wondered Yuki.

"Hmm… I remember hearing from one of the servants we captured that he spoke about a "giant frog destroying the factory" or something, most likely trying to tell me anything he knew within all the memories he had fragmented… at that time we were rather flustered, so I wasn't able to properly assess this info… Could it be of some help? But there must be many factories around, right?" asked Edward.

"Y-You should had tell that earlier!" sighed Abyss.

"Sorry, I was very tired, and my mind honestly felt rather dizzy… Using a lot of Mana exhaust me…" sighed Edward.

"O-Oh… So that was the case…" said Abyss.

"A factory… I remember there was one near here… Maybe we could start here, if the giant frog wasn't so far from our previous positions, and she moved here to destroy a factory… She might even be closer to us than we thought…" said Nesephise.

A spark of hope emerged inside of everyone's hearts as they heard Nesephise's words.

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