Brian Carter knew that such a heavy weapon as the greatsword was completely useless, so he put the greatsword back into his spatial pouch. Without the greatsword, Brian Carter moved even more fluidly. The kitten’s attacks were gradually becoming ineffective, and so the two sides simply wore each other down. Brian Carter deliberately shifted the battlefield toward the waterfall, and when he got close, he once again jumped into the cave where he had spent three months.

Brian Carter sat down to rest—the recent battle had been extremely exhausting, as he had used all his speed to dodge. He couldn’t understand how that little kitten, despite its small size, had so much stamina. He took out the remaining sashimi from his spatial pouch and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly. This sashimi wasn’t processed, but simply raw fish sliced after deboning.

Eating this every day had made Brian Carter sick of the taste, and he blamed Ethan Harris for not bringing any fire-starting tools when going into the wild. If only I had Princess Xuerou’s fire magic, he thought. Wait... it seems there’s a beginner’s magic book in the ring. With my genius brain, learning this shouldn’t be hard.

Brian Carter took out the only normal book from the ring—Introduction to Magic. After reading it, Brian Carter found that the book only talked about the essence of magic and how to sense magical elements, but didn’t explain how to actually cast spells.

So Brian Carter had to give up on learning magic and started practicing qi. While cultivating, he noticed that during the recent battle, his body had absorbed a lot of fire elements. Having just read the magic primer, he understood that magical elements were essentially energy substances in the air, and if one could absorb and understand them, one could use them.

Why do mages chant spells? It’s probably to hypnotize themselves and enhance their control. Meditation for mages is likely a way to train their mental strength. In short, magic is about using the mind to control the energy in the air—the greater the mental power, the more material one can manipulate, and the higher the mental control, the greater the proportion of energy that can be controlled.

But to use these things, the mind must synchronize with them—in other words, the mind must resonate at the same frequency as the magical elements. When a mage senses magical elements, they are resonating with them, and gaining affinity with the elements means successful resonance. Most people have at least one such resonance frequency.

Brian Carter’s mind was different from others; he easily found the frequency to resonate with fire elements, meaning Brian Carter could use these fire elements, though he didn’t know how to actually use them.

Brian Carter decided to use the method of circulating battle qi to manipulate the fire elements, because he believed that, in essence, battle qi was also a form of energy, only it transformed the body, and at a certain level, battle qi could be released externally like magic. Brian Carter slowly released the fire elements in his body in the form of battle qi, gathering them in his palm. Success—flames appeared in his hand.

Brian Carter placed the fish on his palm, and it was instantly charred. He hadn’t mastered the heat yet, so he tried again. Soon, Brian Carter was able to skillfully control the size and temperature of the fire, and finally enjoyed cooked fish.

After eating, Brian Carter meditated to rest, preparing to continue fighting the kitten the next day. He needed to improve his martial skills, and he had just used up all the fire elements. Since he was inside the waterfall, there were no fire elements here. If he wanted to eat cooked food, he’d have to replenish the fire elements, and the best way now was to go outside and absorb the kitten’s fireballs.

Meanwhile, the kitten was outside, sulking over what had happened today. When something emerged from the waterfall, it had been very excited, having waited by the water for three whole months. It couldn’t leave, because if it did, the human would surely escape—it could sense that the human was always looking for a chance to run.

When the kitten pounced on the thing, it realized it wasn’t the human, and just then, something else flew out from the waterfall. It knew it had fallen for the human’s trick again. So it immediately turned to chase the human, firing fireballs from an effective distance.

It finally caught up to the human, but what it didn’t expect was how troublesome this human was. Although it dodged all of the human’s attacks, none of its own attacks hit any vital spots. In the end, it couldn’t even land a hit. Clearly, the human was slower than it, but every time it attacked, the human seemed to know in advance and dodged accurately.

The kitten was a high-level magical beast with a certain degree of intelligence. It was now considering how to improve its combat tactics, which proved it had intelligence—and not a low one.

And so, Brian Carter fought the kitten every day, improving his martial skills and movement techniques, while the kitten also progressed. In the end, both Brian Carter and the kitten forgot why they were fighting, and simply honed their skills day after day.

Brian Carter’s control over fire elements became more and more proficient. Eventually, he directly controlled flames to melt the greatsword, and together with some metals from his spatial pouch, he used his formula for making superalloys in America to forge a Tang sword. The tip of this Tang sword was also shaped like a sword’s point—Brian Carter’s favorite Tang sword design after learning about them.

Although this Tang sword didn’t have the super-strong properties of a true superalloy due to lack of materials, it was still quite good. He even gave the sword a name: Chui Xue (“Blowing Snow”), because he liked the character Ximen Chuixue.