Chapter 212: Underwater Breathing

The impact reached the Voltserpent and struck its head with enough force to completely destroy it. Before the second creature could recover, Emma fired another Mana Arrow and finished it off.

For a moment, Alex simply stared at them. Then he noticed Petra moving her hands, and several Gene Potentials began rising from the monster corpses before flying through the air toward the raft.

Alex was stunned into silence, but a smile slowly appeared on his face. Of course, they had become stronger after spending hours surviving the Hell Difficulty without him and Frank.

They had not simply survived by hiding either. They had fought the monsters while protecting their own bodies and the bodies Alex and Frank had left behind, which meant they had been forced to grow stronger much faster than they would have under normal circumstances.

This was a place where you either died or became stronger.

"Here!" Alex shouted as he waved toward the raft. The group began moving toward his tree, and although the current remained dangerous, the raft slowed considerably as it entered the area around the tree.

Alex watched the raft approach while keeping one hand near Frank, making sure the unconscious man remained secured on the trunk. The crashing water made it difficult to hear anything clearly, but he could still make out Emma’s voice as she shouted toward him.

"Come down! We need to get moving before the water rises any further!"

"Okay!" Alex replied before picking Frank up again. The paralysis had completely worn off by now, so his movements were no longer stiff, and carrying Frank was easy enough even though he had to climb down on a trunk.

By the time Alex reached the raft, the water level had increased by another two meters. The current was stronger than before, and the raft shook whenever a large wave struck it, but Joseph managed to keep it from turning over while the others made room for Alex and Frank.

"What’s the plan?" Yulia asked, raising her voice over the noises of water.

"We need to move toward higher ground. There are aquatic monsters in the water, and we do not know how many more of them are coming, so it would be better if we reached land as quickly as possible," Alex answered while placing Frank down carefully.

The others nodded, and Joseph immediately began guiding the raft through the flooded forest. Alex remained near Frank for a moment before looking toward Joseph, who was controlling the raft with an unusual application of kinetic mana.

Alex watched him for several seconds.

Kinetic mana was fascinating because it could be compared to a battery. It could store kinetic energy, and the more compressed the kinetic mana became, the more energy it could contain before being released.

Joseph was using that stored energy in a clever way. He was releasing the kinetic mana in waves around himself, causing anything that entered its range to have its kinetic energy absorbed, which made it much harder for the aquatic monsters to approach the raft at full speed.

He was also using kinetic mana to move the raft and occasionally prevent it from turning over. Whenever a wave pushed against the raft, Joseph absorbed or redirected part of its kinetic energy, allowing the raft to remain stable even in the increasingly violent water.

Alex found himself becoming increasingly interested as he watched. He would focus on his own spells and elements first, however.

He already possessed three different types of mana, and there were still many spells on his status screen he had yet to learn to use properly, so trying to learn something new like Kinetic Mana along with everything else at once would only stretch his attention too thin.

That did not mean he would stop observing Joseph. Alex liked seeing different types of usage of mana, and watching Joseph gave him several ideas that could potentially improve his own combat methods.

Lightning suddenly crackled beneath the surface. Two more Voltserpents were approaching through the dark water, their bodies becoming visible whenever electricity ran along their scales.

Alex did not move this time. He simply watched as Emma raised her bow while Yulia prepared herself, and within moments, the two women dealt with the creatures before they could reach the raft.

Alex nodded slightly after confirming that neither monster had survived. They were only around Level 12 to Level 16, which meant they were no longer strong enough to pose a serious threat to his group.

If these monsters were all Hell Difficulty had to offer, there would have been no reason for Xithali to warn the Ascendants to return early. There was likely something much more dangerous waiting beneath these waters.

Alex sat down on the raft and closed his eyes. If they were going to survive whatever was coming, he needed to become stronger as quickly as possible, but increasing his combat power was not enough.

He had already encountered one major weakness.

Breathing underwater.

Alex took a deep breath and held it while beginning to generate life mana. He carefully guided the mana toward his lungs, focusing on the blood vessels where oxygen was normally transferred into his bloodstream.

Life Mana represented vitality, and Alex had already seen how useful it could be. If Fire Element Mana could embody fire and Lightning Element Mana could embody lightning, then Life Mana should be capable of affecting the fundamental vitality of living things.

Alex slowly fused a small amount of life mana into the blood moving through his lungs. He did not immediately feel any dramatic change, so he continued observing the process while paying attention to how oxygen entered his blood.

The idea was simple, although Alex was not sure whether it would actually work. If life mana could provide vitality directly to his blood cells, perhaps they would no longer need oxygen in the same way.

..

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