As the blue ball of fire landed on Alex, it opened like a blossoming flower into a massive fireball that only grew larger to cause a great explosion.
Alex was sent flying away into the distance with terrible pain in his chest. When he landed on the ground, all he could do was writhe in pain.
He placed his hand on his chest and all he felt was head and blood. This was a terrible wound.
It didn't end there. His arm, face, and legs had been scorched as well. His hairs were singed all over his body. His clothes were still burning with the terrible blue flame, which he quickly tore off and threw to the side despite the pain.
When he stood up, all he could do was limp. Fortunately, he hadn't suffered anything permanent, but he had taken a lot of damage.
The wound, the pain, the fire, it all told him one thing that he couldn't believe at all.
"That monkey is not an ordinary True Lord 6th realm beast at all. No way something like that could have done this much damage even when I was fully defending myself," he thought.
He coughed a bit in pain and felt a salty taste enter his mouth. 'Dammit! I'm bleeding internally too,' he thought.
Alex looked around and brought out the sword he had kept in his ring. He felt some sort of happiness in this tragedy when he saw the marks on the tree.
While constantly being aware of ambushes and attacks, Alex wrapped the remaining bit of cloth around his waist to hide his naked body.
Then, he walked— nay, limped back towards the cave.
Once he was inside the cave, Alex slumped to the ground and immediately started cultivating. That was the only way to heal himself right now.
While healing pills would've been instant, cultivating was also a good way of doing so. The only problem was that it took quite a long time to heal a non-serious injury this way.
Alex cultivated continuously for a whole day so that he wouldn't die from his injuries. While he wasn't healed a lot, he was healed to the point where the proper movement was possible.
On the end of the 2nd day when his wounds were healed to a point where cultivation needn't be his only focus, he brought out a giant, orange mango from his storage ring.
At the very last moment, he had been able to snatch this fruit and drag it into his storage ring.
'Dammit! There were so many of them, and I only got one,' Alex thought. However, this one fruit alone was quite coveted by many humans too.
So, Alex didn't beat himself over it. Not wanting to waste any part of the fruit, Alex took a bite out of it with the skin and all.
Suddenly, all sense of fatigue and sleepiness he had been feeling from the pain and days-long cultivation was immediately gone. Alex felt as if he had woken up from a 12-hour sleep, fully alert and ready.
His mind processed things so quickly, that everything started feeling like they were moving in slow motion.
At the same time, the pain became quite intolerable under his fully awake mind as well.
So, Alex's mind decided to switch to something else. Whether it was because he was hating his defeat, or because the pain reminded him of the event, the final scenes of his fight with the monkey ran past his head.
Unconsciously, Alex took another bite of the mango, and the vision seemed as real as if it was happening right at the moment.
He watched the tiny blue ball of fire slowly open up, expanding itself… no that was wrong. It was a shrunken ball of fire, so it was returning to its original size.
At least, that was what Alex thought at the moment. However, his next moments of thoughts were plagued by his panic and skill employment.
He didn't see what happened to the fire next.
He took another bite of the fruit as he mulled on why that tiny ball of fire had done so much damage. He thought he understood it while he replayed the event in his mind, but that didn't really work once he didn't have it in front of him.
Also, the main part of the attack, the part where the blue fire actually attacks him was missing from his memory. Without it, Alex doubted he would never understand why.
'Why am I so fascinated by this?' he wondered t himself while taking another bite of the mango. The mango slid directly into his stomach, turning into cool energy that flowed up to his brain.
His thinking churned again. Even though he couldn't understand why the attack did as much damage as it did, he still wanted to learn about the first half of the attack where the ball of fire was small.
That felt like a sneaky little attack on him. A fireball that looked innocent but suddenly turned large in front of the enemy could take them by surprise.
So, Alex thought about it while eating the remaining mango. He felt like he was getting somewhere with his thought process when he tried to take another bite of the mango, and nothing entered his mouth.
When he looked at it, there was only a pit remaining in his hands. Then he wondered, could he perhaps grow it?
He had no idea, but he could try it sometimes after leaving this place. So, he kept the pit in his storage ring and continued thinking about the fireball.
Without the mango, it was hard, but Alex still struggled to understand what was done and how it was done.
He felt like he was on the verge of understanding, but then his thoughts would go astray. When he felt like he was in a zone, his pains would bring him out of it.
This happened so often that he decided to not care about learning anything for now and concentrated on healing himself.
About a week later, he finally left the cave once more. He had been fully healed, his body ready to go fight back and kill the monkey.
However, Alex didn't want that. He only wanted two things for now. To steal a mango, and get attacked by the monkey so he could understand how that happened.
So, he went towards it.
Half an hour later, Alex returned back to the cave, without any fruit. He had been attacked not soon after the fighting started.
After a week of healing, he went back once again. An hour later, he returned back again.
This time, he had nearly lost an arm, but hadn't. Also, he had managed to snatch two mangos.
He hoped this was enough to do what he wanted. Alex focused a week on healing and then ate the fruit.
Once again, as if diving into a cool pool, formless energy went up to his mind, getting him fully awake.
Once Alex was awake and alert, he started thinking about the attack. This time, he had been ready, so he saw what happened when the monkey attacked him.
Alex was positively happy to realize that the small ball of fire had indeed been condensed before leaving the monkey's tail.
When Alex took the hit, the small fire got big, as if unfolding to its original size, and then, as if suddenly heating the air around it to a million-degree, the air was what expanded around the fire, before the fire even arrived.
Alex hadn't realized that while he was learning this, he had fallen into a trance, forgetting to eat his mango at all.
'The ball of fire unfolding is just to hide the amount of fire the monkey put into the attack. It has no other purpose at all,' Alex understood.
'The true damage arrives when the fire is suddenly increased in temperature to a very high degree, causing air itself to act as an attack.'
'When temperature changes, air expands. When air expands, it hits everything around it. Not just the air either, the sound waves and the flying debris do a lot of damage too.'
'Explosion… is the rapid destruction of everything around it. I see.'
As such, for the next 2 days, Alex remained in a trance of Enlightenment. When he woke up, his eyes shined with understanding.
He hadn't known it yet, but he had done something that most people would need to reach the Saint realm to even hope to do.
He had learned one of the many worldly Daos. The Dao of Explosion.
