Chapter 172 - Blink
After finishing talks with the military camp, the rest of the night was pretty much uneventful.
Qin Hua's clone laid on the ground above the tunnels keeping a watch on the surroundings, while she laid next to a mana ore and silently meditated, absorbing the thick swirling mana.
She still was not confident enough to use the special item, so she decided to first improve her strength a bit before attempting it, especially when the way to do it was right in front of her eyes.
Qin Hua's plan was to absorb as much mana as she could from these ores and upgrade her mana core if possible.
This was essentially the base of all her magic skills which were several times more powerful than her physical attacks.
Being a beast, her innate skills leaned more towards physical attacks, but she was determined to integrate magic attacks along with this.
Now that she had experienced a spell which made a dozen people completely unable to move, how could she still underestimate the power of mana and the spells and attacks that used mana?
So she worked hard trying her best to gather all the energy in her core, constantly trying to enhance it and compress it.
She relaxed her body and her mind and calmly breathed in and out to gather more mana in her body's center.
However, because of a certain someone, she, unfortunately, couldn't afford to be too relaxed as well.
Earlier in the day, Qin Hua had surprisingly found two mana ores in the mines to be shrunken a bit more than the others.
And it didn't take her long to zero in on the reason for this anomaly.
After all, the said culprit had been sleeping in the same place for a while now.
Qin Hua cried inwardly as she realized that Su Yan's unconscious mana absorption rate was still quite high even though he was not physically next to a mana ore.
So despite putting some distance between him and the mana ores, he was still being a greedy leech and passively absorbing a significant amount of energy.
So inevitably this had ended up becoming a race to see who could absorb more faster!
The only way for her to get a win would be to take his body and dump him somewhere in the next town but unfortunately, she loved him a little too much to do that.
Qin Hua was completely at a loss. She couldn't do anything about it, except to participate in the damned race. So she breathed in and out as calmly as she could and sucked in the mana like a maniac.
Sitting next to her Lu Chen was pretty much doing the same thing.
But this didn't last long, as after a few hours Qin Hua started feeling as if her mana absorption was becoming less and less effective.
Hmmm… The wolf silently pondered and flashed her eyes open.
She had a vague idea why this might be the case, and a perfect opportunity had presented itself before her, giving her the chance to test out her theory.
Qin Hua's black figure blurred in the darkness that was yet to dissipate and she appeared on top of the ground, switching places with her clone.
She had sensed a beast wander into their vicinity, so she dashed towards the sound of the distant snap of twigs and rustling of dry leaves.
Once again, the trees and plants around them had grown a lot in the span of a night. Even to just move around freely, she had to tear through thick bushes and brambles.
It looked like they would have to get used to living in this type of environment with a lot of forests and wilderness around. Everything was already different, so this particular change wasn't really that shocking.
In fact, it sort of felt refreshing to live like this, after living for so many years in suffocated and polluted cities. So this particular change was rather a welcome change for her.
In a couple of seconds, she stopped moving on her paws and blended into the shadows sprawled around as she didn't want to frighten whatever had walked into their zone.
Before they were the ones being hunted, but for now at least when only one or two weak mutated beasts wander in, the situation was reversed.
This was also the difference between hunting mana zombies and mutated beasts.
Even though both of them seemed to have undergone some sort of change because of mana, one group was mindless and was unable to react while the other reacted to some extent.
While mana zombies would continue to waddle towards her irrespective of how strong she was, some of the mutated beasts run away at the sight of a stronger predator.
Qin Hua moved through the shadows on the ground and as she neared, she could finally see the beast. It was a small fawn, much smaller than her in size.
It also seemed very weak and fragile and Qin Hua had no idea how it survived so long. [Oh! Is this guy also lucky like that Coco bastard? Mmm… I wonder if I can steal its luck attributes from consuming its core.]
Qin Hua licked her lips in delight.
She had only wanted to fight with some random beast to see if combat could improve her stagnant mana circulation, but unexpectedly she had come across something far more interesting.
[Inspect]
[Ding. Silver Fawn; Level 30]
[Huh? That's it? I need more details! Woof! And how is this guy Level 30?]
[Ding. Inspect skill proficiency is not sufficient]
[Ah… This fawn is definitely a special beast. Woof!] Qin Hua was now more convinced that she had to get her hands on this beast.
She had expected a far more dangerous beast, but this small fawn didn't look like it was capable of fighting back from any angle. It was clearly completely harmless.
All she had to do was probably attack it, so she jumped up, but to her surprise, the beast instantly found out her presence and turned around to look at her.
Qin Hua saw the gentle fawn innocently blink at her and she immediately felt a bit bad about killing it. [Should I maybe…]
However, before she could finish that thought, the small fawn blinked and the next second, it appeared several feet away from where it had been previously standing.
[Woof?] The big black wolf's jaw dropped to the ground as it stared at the helpless fawn in disbelief.
[This guy… don't tell me…] Qin Hua quickly dashed forward again to catch the fawn using all of her agility without holding anything back.
However, the fawn once again blinked innocently and its figure disappeared, now standing several feet away again.
Qin Hua wasn't as surprised this time and continued running towards it. While still moving, she tried to cast a dark arrow at the animal.
She had wanted to cast [Dark Shackles] but the distance was too huge between them, so she decided to go with [Dark Arrow] instead.
An arrow made of black wisps of energy immediately materialized in front of her and it quickly shot forward towards the fawn.
As if it could tell what she was doing, the fawn started panicking. It stared at her as if it was staring at a pair of bright headlights of a vehicle.
[Almost there. Almost there. Stay still. Woof!]
She held her breath as the dark arrow raced towards the animal but unfortunately, it let out a small sound, and the next second, its figure completely disappeared this time.
Completely missing its target, the arrow only struck a tree trunk nearby.
GROWL!
Qin Hua roared in disappointment. She ran around here and there to search for the fawn but she failed to even catch a glimpse of that little fawn.
[Argh! This is so frustrating. I was so close! Woof!]
First, it was the creepy female ghost and now it was a baby fawn. She was sick of still being weak and played around with, despite all her strength.
She let out a sigh and walked back kicking whatever rock was in her path and ripping apart the leaves and branches blocking her.
Because of all the ruckus she was making or perhaps because of the dense mana wafting out of their camp, another couple of beasts showed up.
These were just normal beasts so there was no surprise there.
One was an overgrown rat that had five heads and had grown ten times the size of a normal rat.
The other one was a huge insect with a long body and a head that looked like an odd triangular shape. It had four sets of wings and its body was a deep violet color.
The insect also looked scary as it had sharp metal talons on its front legs, sharp metal spikes on its back, and a long tail like a scorpion.
Its pair of large black eyes with a large white spot in the middle stared at Qin Hua viciously.
Someone else might have been scared at the sight of this monstrosity but Qin Hua decided to vent her frustrations on this guy.
[Woof! What are you looking at ugly?]
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