Second Book of Chaos

"I now understood why it needed me to be at the late Mana Compression realm to be able to open this book. It needed my mana core and chaos core to be in perfect harmony for it to open."

"And it also now made sense why the first book I got felt like it had missing pieces. Like it was an incomplete piece of work." He said.

"Now let's see what we have here."

He turned on the first page and started reading the first line.

"Chaos is natural. There is no order without Chaos." Krios read the first line of the book.

"But I have found out that unlike mana, chaos has no physical manifestation. It can only assert its influence on the elements of mana."

Krios read some more and he found out that this book contained the steps on how to fully integrate his chaos energy with his elemental affinity.

Up to this point, Krios has only been imbuing a little bit of his chaos energy to his flames, thus it having a slight purple hue. The book on the other hand, had instructions on how to use the same amount of chaos energy to match the mana output.

"This changes everything." This might even make his attacks even more powerful as imbuing it with even the smallest amount of chaos energy gives it a more explosive power.

"I need to train on this as soon as possible." This was a great boon for Krios as he felt like his chaos energy was severely underutilized given the fact that he was only able to use so little of it because of his lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of chaos.

The following day, Krios went to his training room right after eating breakfast to train on his chaos energy. He did not want to waste any time so he instead chose to us all his weekend to train.

"Now, it says here that to perfectly assimilate my chaos energy with my mana, it needs to be on equal grounds with each other."

That meant that the amount of mana and chaos energy used should be the same for it to work.

Because if mana was more dominant

*Boom!*

The fire in his hand exploded.

*cough* *cough*

"If I imbue it with even a tiny bit more chaos energy than what I usually use, it immediately becomes so erratic and explosive."

Krios then tried to release chaos energy first then imbue it with mana, but then again he failed.

"Now that there were more chaos energy, my mana can't come together to manifest the flame as the chaos energy dispersed them fast." He said.

"Then the only choice is to release them together, at the same time." He deduced.

He tried to do as he imagined but he failed time and time again. It alternated between the fire exploding on his face, to it never manifesting altogether.

"This is just too hard." Krios sat on the floor exhausted.

"How did Antares do this anayway?" He wondered.

It's such an admirable thing to think about, knowning that his ancestor, Antares, not only discovered chaos energy, but was able to dig deeper and develop it to this extent.

"He must have been an increadible cultivator and philosopher to be able to come up with all the things he came up with thus far."

After some time of rest and contemplation, he stood up again and continued on with his practice.

This time, he tried slowly releasing his mana and chaos energy slowly together. He noticed that unlike the first time he had used his chaos energy, it no longer acted like it was repelled by his mana. They flowed together, inside one mana vain, fluidly and efficiently.

But his mana veins were not used to having two different energies flow through it at the same time.

"This process hurts even more." Krios spoke through gritted teeth.

Every part of the mana vein that get touched by the combination of mana and chaos energy felt like it was stabbed and ripped and hurt all at the same time sending blinding waves of pain all over Krios' body.

But when it finally came out, a small purple flame floated on Krios' palm.

"Hah! Hah!" Krios breathed heavily as the pain continued to wreck his body. But he neglected it to marvel at the beauty of the floating purple ball on top of his hand.

It only lasted a couple of seconds before Krios lost control due to the pain and fell on his back.

"T-that was all w-worth it." He mumbled.

He toom some time to rest his body while popping a healing pill to help him with the pain. After a couple of minutes, the pain subsided and Krios stood back up, more defiant and motivated than ever.

On his second try, the pain was still overwhelming, but he noticed that it was a tad bit less than the first time.

"I guess it would only get better after enough tries." He mumbled.

Krios then decided to let his mana and chaos energy to flow through every single inch of his mana vein to help them get used to it.

One could say that Krios was torturing himself with what he was doing but he knew that it was necessary.

He knew whay it meant to be strong. Because being strong does not mean being immune to pain. Being strong is to feel the pain but having the courage to push through regardless.

After mid day, Krios has practiced on it a lot of times, and consumed multiple healing pills that the pain became bearable enough for him to maintain the flame for a couple of minutes.

His mana veins slowly but surely grew used to the new concoction of potent energy flowing through them.

"Let's see if we can increase the size of the flame."

Krios increased his power output slightly. The pain was immediate but he knew how to ignore it. The flame manifested om his hand and it was indeed bigger than the first couple ones he managed to conjure.

"So it bahaves just just like mana, but a more chaotic one. I'll probably just call it chaos mana while I use it in this state to make it simpler."

He condensed the purple flame into his usual fireball and threw it to the wall of his training room.

*BOOM!*

A loud explosion reverberated through out the training room and the defensive formation protecting the walls flickered on and off for a while before returning to normal.

"That was hella strong!" Krios was elated by how much power his new chaos mana provided.

"Although I think I should only use pure mana when training with others in the academy because I might seriously hurt one of them if I use my Chaos Mana."

"But nonetheless, this would be a great help for me if I ever faced a significantly stronger opponent."

He practiced some more, trying out his chaos mana on his other battle, movement, and defensive arts and dound them to be compatible as well.

He called it a day after a few hours and happily went out of his training room. After walking out of building seven, he saw that it was already near dinner time as the sun had started to sink in the west.

But what caught his attention was the campus grounds buzzing with life and movement. There were people running and shouting, going towards one direction.

The atmosphere seemed tense and dangerous. Like something bad has happened. But he can't be so sure as he knew the academy's defenses are not to be taken lightly.

"What the hell is going on?" He asked himself.

He started to run towards the direction where the crowd was also going.

"Hey, do you know what's going on? Why is everybody running?" Krios asked one girl who was also running nearby.

"I don't really know. But someone said something bad happened at the clearing right before the forest." The girl answered.

'What could've happened there for it to cause this much rucku?' He though to himself.

After running for sometime, Krios arrived at the clearing. There he saw a crowd looking over something. He scanned the crowd and saw familiar faces.

The crowd was in a state of shock over something, but Krios couldn't be sure of what it was as he was at the very back if the crowd.

"Please students, give us space. Don't crowd around here!" A voice shouted.

"Professor Leila please call a healer and inform professor Ashburn about this." Another spoke with a voice tinged with panic.

"Krios!" A voice called out to him.

He looked towards the direction of the voices and he saw his friend Loras. He walked towards his direction and saw some of their classmates from class two also there.

"Were have you been all this time?" Loras asked.

"I was training. What the hell is going on?" He asked.

"A student was attacked! And another is missing!" Loras answered.

"Who the hell would dare attack a student inside the academy?"