A week later, after making the oldest Lizard Dragon cry, Krune finally achieved the 8th stage of the Qi Condensation realm. He could now opt for slowly stabilizing his cultivation in the spiritual vein lake or go out to do battle. Of course, if he does like the last weeks and chose weak opponents, nothing will change at all, and he might as well stay in the spiritual vein.
'But first, I need to improve my own abilities. Wind blades and earth spikes or walls have reached a limit of what they can do. If I get to find a higher defense demon beast like the Lizard Dragon leader, it will still be quite hard to break through their scales or hides. I should have enough control over spiritual energy to try that.'
The thing that Krune is thinking about is skill merging. By combining two skills to achieve higher attack power. He had quite a feel ideas, Krune had seen way too many types of low-level skills from wisp hunters in his life. Simply put, he saw every type of common element.
There was once when he bumped on a group of wisp hunters. Fortunately, they couldn't waste their time with Krune at that time. That was because that group was fighting one 7th stage Qi Condensation Fanged Bull. It was during that battle that he saw two hunters casting wind blade together with a fireball.
The result was an amazing blazing wind blade, which was much more powerful than any of the two skills alone. At that time, it was obvious that neither of the two hunters could have used that merging skills alone. To cast two skills at the same time, and make sure they merge, isn't something one can do without enough control over spiritual energy. That group of hunters was definitely an old one that had gone through a lot together.
For now he was going to try the blazing wind blade, he had already used two different skills at the same time before like the earth spikes and wind blades, but they were doing their own things, earth spikes are earth spikes, wind blades are wind blades, they didn't have anything to do with each other at all, each one had their own place and objective when he used them.
First, he needs to understand how to cast a fireball, or better, he needs to know how to create fire to start with. One must remember that Krune had learned how to used his skills alone. He had no manuals or teachers to speak of.
Since he didn't know how to do that, he used his own idea. By elevating the temperature in a single point to a ridiculous degree while using spiritual energy as fuel, he finally was able to understand the principle behind it. Of course, it took him two entire days to figure out how to convert spiritual energy into something that could be used as fuel for the fireball. It was the fire element of spiritual energy.
After learning how to create a fireball, he started to practice with it. There would be no point in trying to merge his wind blades with the fireball while he barely knows how to control it to start with. He went outside to hunt a few 7th or 8th stage Qi Condensation beasts and made sure to try to use it in battle. Krune kept at it for an entire week, every time he killed a demon beast, he would return to the spiritual vein and ponder over his experiences. As for the demon corpses and demon cores, he simply threw them at the Lizard Dragons. He had already grown used to feed them anyway.
After a week of practice, he had finally got an initial control over the fire element, so it was time to apply it to his other skills.
'I have two ideas in mind. The first one is the blazing wind blade. The attack power of this thing is bound to be several times higher than any normal wind blade. As for the second...'
Krune's mind lit up. He might just have found a way to immobilize strength or defense type beasts completely. But he still needs to try it out, though.
'Let's start with the blazing wind blades first.'
And just like that, Krune started to practice merging one fireball with the compressed air that the wind blades were made. Sure enough, the ability to merge two skills together turned out to be terrifyingly difficult. More often than not, Krune would lose control over the fire element energy, and it would eat away the wind element. The air compressed of the wind blade would then be released all around, throwing fire everywhere. After a few tries, Krune gave up practicing beside the spirit vein. He is turning the cave room into a mess, it might even affect his spiritual vein at this rate.
After another two weeks of trials and failures he finally found the trick behind the issue.
It turns out that to put both the fire and wind elements together was a fool's idea to start with. At least, Krune definitely doesn't have the ability to do so at the moment. The correct path was first to convert the spiritual energy into the fire element, and then use the wind element to compress the air around the fire element. After taking the shape of the wind blade, he would release it, and at the same time, ignite the elemental fire energy. They would then merge together the moment it was released, creating a terrifying blazing wind blade that cut everything on its path. It was like a hot knife cutting through butter, and even Krune was a little scared of the results.
'Holy sh*t! It was good that I was practicing it from some distance away. If I had missed the release direction and it came to me, I would find out if a wisp can be burnt to a crisp or not. Not only the power has increased several folds, but even the speed of the blade is also at least three times faster than before.'
'I guess it is because the high temperate burns the air around, eliminating the resistance, and adding to the power of the blade itself. At my level, I refuse to believe I couldn't have cut through the Lizard Dragon leader back then.'
In fact, Krune didn't know, but the grand part of the attack power of the blazing wind blade was because of his Spiritual Energy Meridians. There is no way someone else at his level would be able to control those two types of elements at the same time. Perhaps, only members of big clans or sects would have the necessary knowledge to pass down such abilities. Krune is still underestimating the usefulness of his Myriad Energies technique, maybe even its name came out to be because of its unbelievable support at the control over the elements.
Krune was in the middle of his practice outside the Lizard Dragons cave when suddenly, he noticed that the oldest Lizard Dragon came out of nowhere with a demon deer in its mouth. Soon, he could see that its brother and sisters were behind it with some lower-level demon deers too.
Krune was a little taken aback. He had never taken those guys out for hunting before, but it turns out that they can already take care of themselves. Krune hadn't paid any attention to the lizards in the past weeks, he simply brought back the demon corpses to feed them and threw the demon cores for them to eat.
Turns out that without him knowing, their big brother was already at the peak of the 6th stage. While the youngest Lizard Dragon was in the middle of the 5th stage. As you know, Lizard Dragons have a faint Dragon bloodline. Even though it's very little, just this much is enough for then to be able to battle ordinary demon beasts of a higher level than themselves. And the proof is right in front of Krune since he could feel that the demon deer in the moth of the oldest Lizard Dragon was at the beginning of the 7th stage. The big guy also had quite a few injuries on his body, the same could be said for his brother and sisters, but those were nothing serious.
Krune was happy for them. It seems like they already have the power to fend for themselves. When he leaves this place, he won't need to worry about them not being able to eat or defend against enemies.
But Krune couldn't expect to see what happened next. All of them bit their demon deer heads and took away the demon cores. After that, they came in front of Krune and used their tongs to offer Krune their demon cores. Krune was really astonished seeing that, those gluttons are offering their demon cores to himself.
"For me?"
The big brother nodded his head and his siblings followed suit, Krune couldn't help but feel a little emotional in his heart.
"Haha! At least you guys know how to be grateful, after all. Very well, I accept your gifts."
Krune grabbed the cores and put them away. Although he had no need for those cores anymore, it was his first time receiving a gift out of gratitude. It felt really good. He would make sure to use those cores when he cultivates next time instead of using the spiritual vein.
Krune then changed the form of the spiritual energy of his body into the hands of spiritual energy and patted the head of the five little big ones.
The Lizard Dragons seemed very satisfied with this.
"You guys go back to the spiritual vein and rest. You need to heal your injuries, and the spiritual vein should help with that."
Their Big Brother brought them away into the cave, and everything came back to normal around Krune.
'To think that they would gift me with their own demon cores. This oath to be the first time that a demon beast presented a wisp with demon cores. Hahaha!'
Just like that, day after day went by. Krune didn't have to go out hunting to feed the Lizard Dragons anymore either. So he basically spent his time on his merging skills. He got quite skilled at it now. The formation of the blazing wind blade only takes a second, and he didn't fail their compressing time anymore.
What Krune didn't expect was that his cultivation had already stabilized at the 8th stage of the Qi Condensation. This came as a surprise for him, he can now finally attack the 9th stage barrier. With the help of the spiritual vein, it shouldn't take him more than a month to reach the peak of the 8th stage.
Krune then went back to the cave. Just when he was about to enter the cave room where the spiritual vein was located, he noticed the Lizard Dragon apprehensively staring at the direction of the spiritual vein lake. Krune was puzzled about what was happening. There is no way someone would have entered the cave without him noticing. He spent a few weeks in front of the cave entrance practicing his new skills after all. Since it couldn't be an intruder, then it was definitely something else.
When Krune entered the cave room, the Lizard Dragons noticed him and quickly rushed to his side. Above the lake, one could see the spiritual energy rotating at high speeds, it was quite a sight to behold.
"How beautiful! What could cause such a thing to happen?"
The waves of spiritual energy had all colors of the rainbow. They went up and down like they were dancing. It felt like the descent of a deity, and it was truly amazing. After an hour, the dancing energies started to assemble into a single point in the middle. That mass of spiritual energy that was the size of a spec of sand began to grow up, Krune could only think about one thing at this point.
'It couldn't be that it will explode, right? If this amount of energy explodes, it will definitely ruin the spiritual vein in the lake!'
Fortunately for Krune, that wasn't going to happen. Time slowly passed, and more energy was gathered at the center. At some point, that mass of energy started to take form, and it looked just like a sphere. At first, it was as big as the head of a bull, but slowly, it started to shrink again.
Another hour passed, and the sphere of energy took the size of an ordinary energy core. At this point, Krune started to feel somewhat familiar with this type of spiritual energy. Still, he couldn't remember exactly where he had felt it before.
Suddenly, Krune's mind lit up!
"Wait! Could it be?!"
Finally, spiritual energy started to revolve around that small energy core. Slowly, it started floating over the lake. The progress was almost complete, and by now, Krune was virtually sure.
"Is that a wisp?"
Sure enough, everything calmed down the spiritual form of a wisp took place, the just born little guy was now floating there.
"So, that's how I was born, right?"
Krune might have found quite a few wisps during his life. But this is the very first time he saw how a wisp was born.
'No wonder wisps usually can't live past a day. With all the tumult that their birth generates and the time needed, any demon beasts or wisp hunters in the surroundings would definitely notice what's going on. By the time that the wisp takes its form, the beasts and hunters wouldn't let it go. A just born wisp has no memory to speak of, so they simply don't know how big is the danger when they first see the world around them.'
The little guy looked around, everything is new for him. He couldn't understand what's going on, just that he somehow, he appeared here, and that was all.
Krune looked at him and just sighed while approaching the other wisp.
"You can't understand me just yet, but I know way too well how you are feeling at the moment. Don't worry, though. I will take care of you for a while until you can at least understand what danger means."
Krune's birthplace was just like most of the still alive wisps. It was in a secluded place where rarely had any beast passing by. That was all he could remember. Krune can't even say where that place is anymore since he left after a few days. Still, at least, those few days were enough for him to understand if he was in danger or not so that he could flee if necessary.
Inside Katiu Forest, what determines if a wisp will live past a day or not is... Luck!
That was all.
The little guy still didn't know, but he could be said to be one the luckiest wisps of all time.