Chapter 309: Level Up At Last

"That’s... wow," Emma finally said, seemingly unable to find anything more appropriate to say. Her words broke the silence, and everyone immediately began questioning Alex about what had happened.

Some wanted to know what kind of spell he had used, while others were more interested in how he had generated enough power to cause such widespread destruction. Alex didn’t explain the complicated details of his spell, but he told them that he had combined several types of mana to increase the attack’s destructive power.

That explanation only made their expressions more interesting, particularly Joseph’s, who seemed to be having trouble understanding how combining elemental mana could produce such an enormous increase in power.

"So you’re telling us that you combined different types of mana and somehow created an attack powerful enough to destroy half a hill?" Joseph asked, looking between Alex and the distant destruction.

"That’s basically what happened, although controlling the different types of mana simultaneously was considerably harder than I expected," Alex replied.

Emma stared at him for a moment before shaking her head helplessly. "We barely defeated a fatally injured Basilisk yesterday, and today you’ve already defeated a perfectly healthy one by yourself. At this rate, forget about surpassing you. Even catching up with you is going to become impossible."

"Well, work hard in that case. We can’t afford to be weak in a place like this," Alex replied with a smile.

Emma rolled her eyes at his response, but smiled at the same time.

After exchanging a few more words, everyone began digging through the debris to retrieve the Stone Basilisk’s corpse and the Gene Potential buried beneath the landslide. However, before Alex could join them, Petra approached him and gently tugged at his clothes.

The little girl didn’t speak much, as usual, but she stood beside him and stared at him seriously, making it obvious that she wanted to heal his injuries.

Alex smiled and patted her head before explaining, "Thank you, Petra, but I want to practice my own healing spell this time. My injuries aren’t too serious, so I should be able to handle them myself."

"You have a healing spell?" Sarah asked, immediately turning toward him.

The others also stopped what they were doing and looked at Alex with varying degrees of surprise.

"Did I not tell you about that?" Alex asked, looking genuinely confused by their reactions.

Sarah opened her mouth, closed it again, and eventually let out a helpless sigh.

"It’s my fault for expecting something normal from you. At this point, I should probably stop being surprised whenever you reveal another ability," Sarah said, shaking her head.

Alex smiled wryly, understanding what she meant. Learning to control even one type of elemental mana was incredibly difficult, so his ability to use several elements and still learn healing spells probably seemed ridiculous to them.

He didn’t bother explaining further and joined the others in digging through the debris. After some searching, they finally uncovered the Gene Potential left behind by the Stone Basilisk, which Alex immediately absorbed.

[Your species level has increased. Level 13 → Level 14.]

[+3 Mind, +1 Mana, +2 Free Stat Points.]

Alex smiled when he saw the notification, pleased that his species level had increased again.

’I’ve reached Level 14 now. If my previous guess was correct, reaching Level 15 should improve my attunement to Life Mana and Fire Mana once again.’

He was eager to discover whether the previous improvement in his elemental attunements had been a one-time benefit or something that occurred every few species levels. If it happened regularly, increasing his species level would become even more valuable than he had initially believed.

After absorbing the Gene Potential, Alex returned to the top of the hill while the others continued digging out the Basilisk’s enormous corpse. Nobody complained about him leaving, since he had already done most of the work by killing the monster, and everyone knew that he still needed to recover from his injuries.

Once he reached the hilltop, Alex found a relatively undisturbed area and settled down to wait for the Star Plum Arasia fruit to appear. While keeping his Mana Spheres spread across the surrounding area, he began using Life Mana to repair the damage caused by overloading his brain.

He proceeded extremely slowly, carefully controlling the amount of mana entering his brain and observing how the damaged tissue responded. Unlike ordinary muscle injuries, mistakes involving the brain could have disastrous consequences, and Alex knew that accidentally causing abnormal cell growth might create a tumor capable of killing him.

As he continued healing himself, Alex recalled the information about elemental mana that he had learned from the Rune Compendium. He now understood why Life Mana could strengthen his muscles and improve his physical abilities, even though he had previously assumed that its primary functions were increasing vitality and enhancing recovery.

According to what he had learned, Life Mana could act as both a fuel and a source of vitality. Under normal circumstances, it functioned as fuel that increased existing vitality upon coming into contact with it, but when compressed to a sufficiently high concentration, Life Mana could transform into vitality itself.

The realization of the distinction explained several things that Alex had previously struggled to understand. Improving stamina and recovery resulted from the former process, while strengthening muscles and improving other physical attributes were primarily associated with the latter.

Vitality, in its purest sense, represented life itself, and highly compressed Life Mana could become a concentrated form of that life. When this concentrated life fused with his muscle cells, it improved their fundamental properties rather than merely providing them with additional energy.

’In other words, reinforcing my cells with concentrated Life Mana is somewhat similar to species evolution, except that the changes happen on a much smaller scale, and it’s temporary,’ Alex thought.

This also explained why Life Mana could improve senses and physical strength instead of simply accelerating healing and stamina recovery.

Although the improvements weren’t comparable to evolving into a higher species rank, they followed a similar principle of enhancing the quality of the body itself. If he could improve his control over concentrated Life Mana, he might eventually be able to reinforce his body much more effectively.

Throughout the night, Alex continued carefully healing his brain while occasionally practicing his Soul Recovery Spell. He avoided rushing either process, especially since he couldn’t afford to damage his brain or soul while trying to improve them.

When the morning sun finally rose, two notifications appeared before him.

[Minor Heal Spell has leveled up. Level 3 → Level 4.]

[Soul Recovery Spell has leveled up. Level 1 → Level 2.]

..

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