Aaron didn't have the time to warn the girls of the impending danger, he just acted.

He moved the Qi within his body to protect his vital points, and at the same time, he jumped out of his liguru. Midair, he kicked Lana away and used that kick as an extra boost to somersault backward and end up above Alys, to protect her.

As fast as he had been, he didn't even touch Alys before the air turned completely yellow and several lightning rays hit the area. One of them hit him directly in the back, and electricity ran throughout his body.

Any One Star Qi Manipulator could handle common lightning. It was painful, but as long as it wasn't three or so consecutive bolts, the cultivator would survive. However, the lightning strike that hit Aaron was unusual, his yellow color being the first sign of it.

The lightning devastated his body and would have killed him had he not already focused all of his Qi around his heart, brain, and dantian, protecting them the best he could. Without the first two, he would die; without the latter, he would be crippled and unable to cultivate, and therefore would end up dead sooner or later.

Despite his defenses, that single lightning bolt was almost enough to go through his internal Qi shields and take his life. The pain was terrible, and only sheer willpower kept him from passing out. Such was the strength of the lightning that his eyes went blind, his ears went deaf, and his touch, smell, and taste were swept away, all in a few instants. The thunder just after the lightning made his whole body tremble, but he could not hear it or feel it on his burned skin.

Aaron fell on top of Alys milliseconds after the last traces of electricity left him. He quickly began to focus Qi on his now blind eyes to heal them.

Now finding himself missing all his senses, he created a mental image of the place and what had happened. He used this image to grab the space he believed Alys would be in and rolled over. The time he took to reach the ground was less than expected, which meant that Alys' liguru had died and fallen.

He kept rolling until he felt the impact of hitting something, probably a tree. Fortunately, at least his internal nerves hadn't burned completely, or he wouldn't even be able to move, let alone feel the tremor of any impact. With his arms and hands, he repeatedly hit the tree to determine its limits. Then he crouched down and took Alys to the side of the tree opposite to where he had felt the previous group of carnifexes. They were still approaching.

With difficulty, he climbed the tree, an impressive feat for someone who had none of his five senses. He couldn't even feel if he was holding to the trunk hard enough and had to put as much brute force as he could to grab the tree. Alys had to stay behind because he wouldn't be able to feel her slipping and falling down, and the fall could kill her.

At least he knew she was alive. A being's internal energies quickly dissipated on death and he could still feel her aura, just as he could feel the auras of the approaching carnifexes. And a much larger aura close by.

It was the dominating aura of a powerful beast. It had descended right where ligurus should be, according to his estimates. Aaron climbed as fast as possible to a branch and did his best not to attract attention to himself.

Then he waited. With a heavy heart, he felt the carnifexes approach Alys and take her away. He could also feel Lana's aura in the distance being moved by other carnifexes. There was nothing he could do.

He hadn't been so vulnerable since he had been enslaved when the original Ironblood clan had been destroyed. His heart was strong enough to keep him calm, but it was close. There was something about being unable to protect himself, about having his destiny completely at the mercy of the world, that lit a primal fear within him.

The images of whips and the memories of screams came unbidden to him, but he forced them shut and focused on the now.

How he wished to have access to Vital Energy to heal himself! Using Qi to heal his eyes, even when focusing as much as possible on them, would take at least twenty seconds. A lot could happen in that period.

But what frustrated him the most was not being able to use any energy outside his body. With his energy sensitivity, he could passively feel the energy within most living things, but they needed a minimum energy in their bodies for that. No vegetation around him hit that threshold, leaving him completely blind. Using energy outside his body would allow him to easily map his surroundings, and he would have been able to get away with Alys, maybe even Lana.

Moreover, with access to some external energy, he would constantly maintain a detection ability around him. That would have allowed him to detect the incoming lightning attack much sooner than his passive senses had. Maybe he might even have completely avoided being hit.

The issue was that cultivating any other energy would decrease his leveling up speed too much. Naturally, he would not be permanently prevented from raising his Qi like the inhabitants of this world, not with his extensive collection of techniques and plentiful experience. But the waiting time between each session of cultivation would at least double, and even he could only level up one energy at a time.

On the one hand, focusing on the long term didn't matter if he couldn't survive the short term. On the other hand, living long without the power to protect himself in the future was a waste of time.

On the one hand, slower cultivation would keep him vulnerable to stronger enemies for longer. On the other hand, access to more energy would give him a versatility that could help him survive in the future, even if he kept weak in terms of raw energy.

On the one hand, nothing was safer than raw power. On the other hand, raw power that he couldn't use at will, like the Qi that was confined to his body, was useless in many situations.

The arguments to cultivate more than one energy or not were many. He had argued against himself before and had decided to focus only on Qi. Now, he questioned that decision.

But he would have time to think about it later. His vision was returning, and he could already see vague shapes around him. The first thing he did was look at the location of the surprise attack. It took some time for his vision to come back completely, but in the end, he saw what had happened.

The place appeared to have been bombed. There were at least thirty points of impact from the lightning bolts, and kicking Lana had definitely not been enough to keep her out of danger. Amid all this, a giant bird feasted on the distorted and burned carcasses of the ligurus.

The bird was twenty feet tall even with its head tilted while pecking at the corpses. Its feathers were long, yellow, and majestic. It was a Thunder Elementalist at the Master level and a Three Star Qi Manipulator — one of the few beasts he had seen in that world with control over more than one type of energy.

Because it is so strong and didn't care to keep its power within itself, random yellow electrical pulses appeared in the air around it. They often hit the beast's feathers with no apparent effect, but other times, it hit the surrounding soil or trees and left small black marks.

Aaron ignored the bird because if it wanted to kill him, he couldn't do anything, not even run at full speed. It commanded lightning, and as Master Beast, it certainly flew very fast. The only thing he could do to protect himself was to avoid disturbing it.

There was not even a reason to hate the beast for what it had done to him. He always considered intent and intellect when judging whether he should seek revenge at a later date or not. The bird was only interested in eating the ligurus and he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could only blame himself for being weak; such was the Truth of the Jungle.

Now that his vision had recovered, he focused his recovery on his eardrums next. Moving slowly as not to irritate the bird, he went down the tree and walked away before heading towards the carnifexes direction. He couldn't feel them anymore, but he found a trail of blood in the forest. The giant beast didn't even look in his direction as he crouched and walked carefully, clearly ignoring the insect that Aaron was in its perspective.

About ten seconds later, when his hearing was returning, he heard Alys's desperate and pain-filled scream. He continued on the trail, and Alys' voice became clearer by the second. When his hearing completely returned, Alys's screams gave him goosebumps.

He saw her a moment later. She was being eaten alive by seven Two Star Fire Elementals, trapped on the floor by a net of blue fire that burned her when she moved.

The elementals themselves were made of blue fire. They moved on all fours and were the size of big cats. The way they fed was by blowing fire from their mouths into Alys's flesh. The affected area then disintegrated into black smoke that they absorbed through the mouth. It looked as painful as Alys's screams indicated.

Lana was a few feet away from them, lying on the floor like a statue, surrounded by a shield of Holy Energy. The shield was like a second skin of golden light that protected her from the single Fire Elemental that was blowing fire on her without stop. Her eyes were open wide, but she seemed unconscious.

Aaron took the view with a tight heart. As weak as these carnifexes were, fighting them in his current state would be lethal. The lightning bolt had devastated his body, and he couldn't use any Qi to strengthen himself until he healed a bit more.

To make things worse, he was naked and unarmed. His clothes had disintegrated and there were only thin pieces of leather left here and there, glued to his blackened and hardened flesh. His skin had practically been burned all over and when he moved, the seared flesh would crack and bleed in some places. The blades of his weapons had melted in some places and became twisted, and the daggers were nowhere to be seen, probably completely melted away in the crater.

Taking something from his spatial ring was also not an option, as it was slightly twisted too. Until he could assess the damage, he would not use it, for there was a risk of the formations having being affected by the damage. He didn't want to have a sub-dimension exploding in his hand.

His current situation was dire. He had easily killed two Two Star Knights when he arrived in this world because they were poorly trained and had underestimated him, but the elementals were eight, and he would not be able to use the surprise factor against them all.

Not to mention they were elementals. Aaron had no external energy to attack them directly, so he would need to hit them several times with physical attacks to cause minimal damage, and long fights were likely to bring unwanted surprises.

And to rub salt on the wound, when he tried to stretch a little, he realized that the way his flesh had cauterized limited some of his movements. He couldn't even move freely to fight.

The positive side was that no matter how much he was injured in a battle, he would feel nothing thanks to the third-degree burns.

He saw four relatively good courses of action to deal with the situation.

First, attack directly. He estimated a ten percent chance of success.

Second, surprise attack the elemental close to Lana and wake her up to fight the other ones, as had been the original plan when he invaded the elementals' territory. The problem was that he had no idea if he could wake her up, or if her skill had an internal timer and couldn't be dispelled until it was over on its own.

Third, try to provoke the elementals and keep them away from Alys and Lana, hoping Lana would wake up, heal Alys, then help him. Again, the problem was not knowing whether Lana could wake up alone before her ability ran its course.

Fourth, heal himself for better chances in a straight fight. The problem was that Alys might die before he was fit enough. The seven elementals had already eaten most of her superficial flesh and didn't look like they were going to stop anytime soon. The only thing keeping her from dying from simple blood loss was that the way they ate also cauterized her wounds. Yet, it was only a matter of time before they ruptured an important artery that was pumping blood to a vital part of her body and she died.

Aaron decided to take the fourth option to some extent and then move on to the second. He would heal himself a little to regain most of his movements and reach a minimum threshold of flexibility, then he would fend off the elemental attacking Lana and try to wake her up. If she woke up, he would order her to both heal Alys and battle alone against the carnifexes, as had been his original plan.

Yes, despite everything, Aaron still saw the situation as an excellent training opportunity. Aaron and Alys's appearance would serve as fuel for Lana to grow. He wouldn't create a situation like that on purpose, but if they were already going through it, why waste it? But of course, if she didn't fight well, he would guide her to prevent Alys from dying.

If Lana didn't wake up though, he would fight the elementals alone and, if he survived, he would bring Alys and Lana somewhere safe. There, he would wait for Lana to wake up while hoping for Alys' survival.

He climbed another tree and watched Alys being eaten alive.

An overwhelming fury grew inside him. He registered the carnifexes' auras firmly in his mind, for if any of them escaped today, he would hunt the bastard as soon as he was strong enough to feel and recognize auras at a long distance.

And if he saw another Fire Elemental Carnifex acting as brutally as these in the future, eating their victims alive, he swore on his honor, he would guarantee that the entire species became extinct.

Aaron focused his Qi on the muscles he needed most and healed himself in silence.

Fury burned inside him.