Chapter 5: Fighting Qi and Enhancement Tricks

The growth of the physical body is also crucial.

After finishing its meal, Lai Ang returned to its own dwelling within the dragon's nest, pondering.

Although giant dragons are magical creatures, their physical bodies are their strongest aspect.

For the vast majority of giant dragons, magic is merely used to deal with fodder.

Against true experts, giant dragons rely more on their powerful bodies.

"Besides natural growth, is there any way to make the body stronger?"

Lai Ang had been pondering this question for several months already.

And when it 'reviewed' the Black Dragon's inheritance, it actually found methods, and not just a few.

More advanced ones, such as consuming the essence blood of a same-attribute giant dragon with stronger bloodline.

Less advanced ones, combat and slaughter. After a giant dragon recovers from injuries sustained in battle and slaughter, its physical strength, power, etc., often see a slight increase.

If the number of times is large, the resulting improvement should not be underestimated.

For Lai Ang, these two methods: the first lacks the necessary conditions, the second is too dangerous.

Letting a hatchling dragon less than half a year old go through battle after battle of life-and-death slaughter, just to obtain that tiny bit of improvement, is pure madness.

Because a hatchling dragon is inherently one of the stages where power increases fastest, its natural eating and sleeping almost daily brings some change.

Only those giant dragons whose power growth has stalled, or fearless hotheads, are more suited to this dangerous method.

Besides these two methods, there are also some relatively normal methods.

Among these normal methods, Lai Ang selected two that it could currently do, and began studying them.

One is Fighting Qi.

The other is enhancement magic.

First, talk about Fighting Qi.

Fighting Qi is a widely disseminated cultivation system in this world.

It is essentially the same as spellcasters cultivating strong mental power.

Spellcasters hone their mental power, then use it to capture the omnipresent elements in space, refining them into mana marked with their own exclusive imprint.

The process of casting a spell is to use one's mental power to 'sketch' the spell pattern in the mind, then drive the elements in external space with the internal mana, ultimately achieving the spell's release.

And what about warriors cultivating Fighting Qi? They use willpower to capture the elements in space, nourishing and strengthening the body along a specific circulation route; when the body becomes strong enough, a pure and extremely destructive energy—Fighting Qi—is born.

When Fighting Qi is still weak, it can only circulate within the body, enhancing physical strength and speed.

When Fighting Qi is strong enough, it can extend to weapons, and even leave the body to erupt with terrifying destructive power.

Some who cultivate Fighting Qi to an extremely high level can, with their external Fighting Qi, split mountain peaks and sever great rivers.

Lai Ang suspects that the individual who left several deep bone-deep sword-mark wounds on the Dragon Mother is likely an expert who has cultivated Fighting Qi energy to an extremely high level.

Even the black dragon adult's scales, which are many times harder than fine steel and possess various strong resistances, were split open, penetrating deep into bones and organs; such destructive power can be called terrifying.

Perhaps splitting a mountain with a single sword is impossible, but Lai Ang absolutely does not doubt that it could split a small hill.

"I have been cultivating Black Water Fighting Qi for a while now, yet I still cannot enter the gate." Lai Ang thought silently.

Only after entering the gate can it be turned into a rune and then loaded into the idle slot for improvement.

Cultivating Fighting Qi does not depend on talent as much as mental power does, but it still requires sufficient time.

Simply put, one must put in hard work, tedious work.

Day and night, using willpower to capture the wandering elements in space, employing them to nourish the body until Fighting Qi is born; spellcasters must do the same.

But becoming a spellcaster requires two thresholds: one is strong mental power, the other is elemental affinity.

If you do not meet these two prerequisites, no amount of effort will give you a path forward.

Otherwise, there would not be the noble title of 'magic grandpa'.

But cultivating Fighting Qi requires no prerequisites; it's merely a matter of talent level, speed of cultivation, and upper limits.

And giant dragons, as top-tier magical creatures, will naturally increase their mental power with time, and their elemental affinity is even more so, comparable to absolute geniuses among humans.

For example, Lai Ang, as a black dragon, can extremely clearly observe the wandering water-attribute elements in space regarding water elemental affinity.

With strong mental power plus top-tier water elemental affinity, once the corresponding spell knowledge is learned, casting spells becomes effortless.

But Fighting Qi is different; even if you can clearly observe elemental power and successfully capture elements, using elemental power to nourish the body is hard to speed up.

Nevertheless, Lai Ang is still a giant dragon; although it does not have a particularly huge advantage in cultivating Fighting Qi, its progress is also quite fast.

"In another ten days, or perhaps twenty days—roughly this timeframe—the Black Water Fighting Qi should be cultivable."

After cultivating Fighting Qi, not only can it be used to enhance one's own strength and destructive power, but Fighting Qi itself, as pure energy, will also gradually nourish the body to become even stronger.

In the inheritance memories, even a frail human, once they cultivate Fighting Qi to an extremely high level, pure physical strength can allow them to engage in melee combat with magical beasts.

"There is also enhancement magic." Lai Ang's heart stirred.

Besides selecting a Fighting Qi suitable for black dragon cultivation from the dragon inheritance, it also chose a trick named 'Weak Power Amplification' to study.

Lai Ang's current mental power strength is still a bit away from being able to cultivate a first-ring spell, so it can only select from tricks; among tricks, the number of enhancement spells is not large.

Those that increase strength, agility, and speed are just a few kinds.

Moreover, their effects are all very weak; otherwise they would not be called 'Weak Power Amplification'.

However, with the improvement from the idle slot, a zero-level enhancement trick might be rather weak, but a ten-level enhancement trick should be different.

Lai Ang closed its eyes, its mind sinking into the void space, and saw that hexagonal recess.

In the void space, besides the hexagonal recess, there were two runes.

One is the 【Zero Ring Trick·Small Water Ball】 that cannot be improved after reaching level ten.

The other is the 【Zero Ring Trick·Weak Power Amplification】 that has been at the entry level for a while. -【Zero Ring Trick·Weak Power Amplification】

"Level: 1st (2/10)"

This enhancement trick has not been improved via the idle slot; the reason it could rise from zero level to the current first level is naturally Lai Ang's own effort.

Also precisely for this reason, Lai Ang discovered that the cultivation of magic truly is quite a torment dragon.

Getting into magic may not be difficult, but wanting to continually deepen one's magic, shorten casting time, and increase magical power truly requires talent, time, and effort, with talent accounting for a large degree.

Here, talent does not refer to strong mental power or elemental affinity, but rather to the understanding and application of magical knowledge.

Whenever Lai Ang studied this magic, a sentence would always arise in the mind:

If you can't learn it, you just can't, just like a math problem you can't solve.

Lai Ang, relying on his fairly tenacious character, after spending not a short time raising this enhanced trick to first level, then it discovered.

First level is more difficult than first level.

First level is more brain-burning than first level.

(End of chapter)