CHAPTER 33: CH 33: THE GIRL IN THE BLUE [1]

A moment passed. There wasn’t a single movement from either side of us.

Then with a slight tilt of its shoulders, one of the monsters let out a low, sharp sound as if observing something...as if detecting something with genuine curiosity.

And then it stepped forward. Then almost in an uncertain manner, it placed forward its other foot.

A shrill voice escaped it’s throat as all its tentacles danced behind him and gestured something to the other companions.

Then like an eager child who has just walked their very first steps, it ran forward as its feet fell on the ground in an irregular pattern almost as if it was stumbling throughout the way. And all the while, it let out a happy sound that sounded too humanly for a mere monster.

Encouraged by their comapanion, the others slowly took their first steps as well. In an uncertain manner just like the running monster.

And as they started moving forward, their uncertainty transformed into pure jubilation that exhibited in the form of their dancing tentacles and their gleeful sounds.

The first monster had come close to the tree behind which I was hiding.

*Keh* *Keh*

It came even more closer.

*Keh* *Keh*

My side pressed more into the tree trunk as I peeked slightly towards the approaching sound.

*Keh* *Keh*

My hands gripped tightly onto nothing as I readied the mana inside my body.

*Keh* *Keh*

The creature was right before the tree. I tensed as fear crept up my chest and a weakness spread through my body.

*Keh* *Ke--

A streak of something flashed towards the monster and in a single strike, sliced cleanly through its throat.

And with a flash, it retrafceet back to where it came from.

Meanwhile, the rest of the horde stopped in their steps as they all collectively let out a confused cry, their tentacles raised to the dark sky above.

Suddenly, another flash appeared from a distance and glistening ice covered the land in a narrow path. And swiftly passed through the ranks of the horde.

Instantly a torrent of blood rose high up in the air, forming a fountain of cascading dark liquid that pooled on the ground a second later.

The flash didn’t stop as it zig zagged through the others left in the horde, too slow to even respond to the assault.

I watched in awe as within a few seconds the entire horde of the disgusting monsters were wiped out. Even the ice on the forest floor had vanished with the flash coming to a halt.

As it stopped, a layer of mist formed around the human figure and from out of it, a lady appeared.

Her eyes were blue and matched the coloured of her hairs. She had a petite frame and was dressed in a grey attire. Her stern face glanced over the corpses that has died at her hands.

Then she said, "These are Demons of the First Rank. In other words, a Demon youngling. They have fragile legs but their physical power was comparable to a First Order." Her words carried out in the empty air.

But I knew she was speaking to me. Even then I didn’t move away from my spot and continued to watch her from behind the tree.

Once she was done with the demons, she turned her back to me snd summoned an ice sword.

Wait... ice?! Ohh what a coincidence that I met another Ice Elemental.

She lifted it up in a slow motion and after taking a deep breath, she slashed into the empty air.

A second later, the air froze into thin ice before melting away. Satisfied with her display, she started swinging the sword.

Not in any random manners or anything that was amateurish. But rather in slow, graceful slashed and jabs. Her feet moved with the rhythm of the sword..it looked like a carefully crafted dance done with extreme consideration and perfection.

I burned down the images of all the moves deep in my memory. It looked like a sword technique made especially for Ice users.

The most amazing part of the technique was the dominance of ice that seeped through her every single strike. At first it was limited only to appearances of think ice layers before they melted away.

But soon they stopped and in it’s place, the air of the surrounding started turning colder. And colder.

Unnaturally cold. And soon enough the trees, the leaves on them, the dry grasses, the corpses... everything was covered in a sealing of ice.

She paused and in one single movement, rotated her entire body by an angle of 360°. A blue flash glinted across the surface of her ice sword.

Before the world collapsed into a mayhem of cracking and snapping.

Each and every object enclosed in the ice sealing broke into innumerable particles. Even the tree before me collapsed like it was nothing.

Like it hadn’t been covering me for all this time.

Strangely, I wasn’t covered in a single speck of ice. Sure, I felt the coldness in the air but that was about it.

"If mastered properly, one could expand an entire empire into their domain." The woman whispered, her breaths coming in cold mist.

Then she looked at me and added, "However, one needs to understand something basic but ignored by a lot of people in this world due to their incompetency to do it."

In the spur of the moment and out of curiosity I asked as well, "What is it?"

I even forgot about my reservations towards the lady’s intentions as in that moment I felt that this encounter might not be as accidental as it seemed.

Her stern face melted a bit at my words. She explained,"The difference between mana and your element. While it’s true that you can use your mana to create your element, the fact remains that it is only one way. The inferior way and only to be used when one has no other way."

I frowned deeply and asked, "But isn’t that the standard way of doing so? All the books mention the same."

"How naive. Just because the world agrees on something doesn’t make it any right. In matters requiring deep knowledge and understanding, the world is seldome correct."