Inside a big deserted hotel, that wasn't as deserted now, several mattresses were lying around on the lobby floor, with people casually resting on it.

Even though there was a lot of space, individual rooms and cots for more privacy and convenience, no one dared to move away from the comfort and security of the group they were currently in.

The beds were even huddled together closely, almost as if they were terrified of being left out of the group in case they needed to evacuate at a moment's notice.

And in the midst of such a group, there was a big black wolf casually sitting.

Qin Hua stared at the skill [Nether Gate] for a few more minutes before closing everything and preparing to get some rest. 

No matter how much food and mana cores were consumed, mental exhaustion was still left and it was not something that could be avoided. 

Almost everyone around her was in the same state. Even though many had just dealt with only a few mana zombies, a number far less than what she had put away today, they were all still exhausted.

After all, they were just normal people before things took a turn for the worst. No one probably was involved in a street fight, let alone outright killing another living and breathing creature.

As Qin Hua's eyes swept past the crowd, she saw Lu Chen who was sitting in a corner of the hotel lobby and swirling what looked like a ball of white mist in his hand.

And when she looked closely, she saw that what was in his hand was not a ball of mist. It was rather small specs of ice so cold that it was causing the air around it to mistify.

Qin Hua blinked with interest and watched him carefully. He seemed to be deeply engrossed in his own thoughts and was conjuring and dismissing the small ball of ice particles repeatedly.

[Woof! Is he training?] She couldn't help but wonder after staring at him for a while.

Lu Chen noticed her gaze after the first few minutes and quickly turned around to ask her, "Do you need something little white?"

Qin Hua shook her head hurriedly. She didn't want to disturb him and Lu Chen returned back to his training with a smile on his face.

Not just him, but many people sitting around them were not really sleeping. Some of them had their eyes closed but were still wide awake.

Qin Hua shook her head and tried to not think too much. 

She was also not getting any sleep, so she decided to focus on training some of her skills that were proving quite difficult to be upgraded.

In this one week, she had observed a lot of things. 

One of them was the difference between her physical skills which relied on her raw stats and beast strength and magic skills that relied more on the world's energy or mana.

The physical skills were rather easy to upgrade, at least she didn't have to particularly put any effort towards it and simply had to keep using the skill repeatedly.

However, the other type of skills were a little different.

[Leech Bite], [Chaos Bolt], [Shadow Clone] were the skills Qin Hua was paying close attention to and now she had another new skill [Dark Arrow]. 

She had not managed to successfully upgrade any of these skills even once and the truth was that these skills were far more powerful than her physical skills could ever be. They affected the opponents in a different way, leaving very little scope for defense.

[Woof! Should I also train?] Qin Hua smacked her lips and then very energetically turned her paws around facing upwards.

[Dark Arrow] 

She muttered inwardly and soon small black dots started forming in front of her. They coalesced together in the form of an arrow and, an aura of destructive energy emanated from them.

Qin Hua used one of her toenails to touch this small arrow made of dark energy and flickered her nail in and out of it like she was playing with water.

The ominous black energy did not affect her at all but she knew that if she threw the arrow somewhere right now, the impact would be explosive, to say the least. 

She could feel the weight of it in her mind or soul or mana core or whatever was actually involved. Even holding the arrow like this, in place, cost energy, stamina, and willpower from her side.

Qin Hua exhaled deeply and dismissed the single dark arrow that she had summoned after holding it for a while. She then did a set of breathing exercises, gathering mana in her mana core, and repeated the whole process all over again.

From what she could understand, using the spells and special skills that were accessible to her through the system was relatively easy.

She could just continue using these as a black box, while not wondering what was there within the box, but that would inevitably only take her so far.

She could already feel that she has now reached a threshold beyond which it is going to be difficult for her to improve and evolve further. Her only solution was to understand her skills better.

She needed more training in using this dark energy or shadow energy. She needed to manipulate it better like Lu Chen was trying to do with his ice magic.

Unlike her, he neither had a system nor any of her short cuts but still, he was improving in his skills and strength at a frightening speed, almost matching her. 

In fact, if she hadn't evolved into a higher grade beast when she did, perhaps by now, he would have been stronger than her.

Qin Hua eyed the distant lonesome figure who was busily training and summoned another [Dark Arrow] in front of her as well. 

She then proceeded to twist it and turn it in all different directions and even tried changing the shape of the arrow, interacting more with the energy which constituted the spell rather than the spell itself.