Only when everyone contributes wood will the fire burn brightly.

A Chinese proverb.

“I smell filthy Death Qi. An intruder is among us, my darlings. Find him.” Seph heard the fairy queen say. He assumed she was the fairy queen because she was 100 times bigger than the rest of the fairies he saw before him.

He had entered the last garden in the alchemy trial. There were big red trees all around. Something had scorched the ground in many places.

To his annoyance, it was another boss fight; a fairy queen, with about 100 fairies surrounding her. There were the old ones he saw in the first room, and there was a male counterpart that had little melee weapons. He didn’t know what kind of danger they posed with their little weapons. At best, they would prick him.

The fairies answered the order of their queen and flew in every direction, trying to find him.

He had ducked under a rock once he entered, when he saw their vast numbers.

He threw out five hedgehog bones away from his hiding spot, wanting to thin out their numbers before he fought them.

The bony hedgehogs tried to scream, but discovered they couldn’t with their new skeletal bodies, and they launched their nails at the fairies.

The hedgehogs seemed to focus their attacks on certain enemies while the rest of the nails shot, randomly targeting no one in particular.

A male fairy got killed immediately with the nail going through his body, and hitting a female fairy behind him, killing her as well.

Seven more fairies died from the barrage of twenty-five nails flying everywhere.

And three were severely injured.

The rest of the nails missed by different degrees.

A few fairies carried away the three that were injured to a haven.

The fairies launched their own attack next, and each three fairies ganged up on a hedgehog. The male fairies’ weapons were causing some kind of burning on the hedgehogs that kept eating at their bones.

And the female fairies’ bright lights made them spread further on the hedgehogs’ bodies.

The hedgehogs had nothing else to attack with, as their quills were part of their hair that they lost when they became skeletons.

But they had one last move, and each chomped a fairy, dying by burning along with the fairies they had trapped in their mouths.

Seeing that the hedgehogs died already after taking out twelve fairies, and not wanting to enter the fight yet, as he was wary of the fire attacks, Seph launched four skeletal warrior bones into the fray.

The skeletal warriors attacked with new bone swords they didn’t have when they were “alive”.

The fairies flew around the sword slashes and dodged them, but three weren’t that lucky.

They went back on the attack, thinking they were safe already, but the warriors made backward slashes from where their swords ended up, changing the course slightly.

This caught the fairies off guard, and eight died in the attack.

A group of male fairies snuck behind the skeletal warriors, and each flew into the chests of the warriors, and they set them on fire from the inside.

All the other fairies flew back, giving the skeletal warriors a wide berth, while the male fairies inside the skeletal warriors continued setting them on fire, in what seemed to be a suicidal attack.

The skeletal warriors, to save themselves, started stabbing their own bodies, and their bodies collapsed in a heap of bone and fires on the ground, and the male fairies died in the fire with them.

Seph noticed he had taken out about a third of the fairy army, but he still wasn’t confident or willing to put himself or his companion in danger, not when he was so close to finishing the trials.

He thought the hedgehogs were way too weak to continue with him in the future fights anyway, so he threw the rest of the bones in the middle of the army.

Three skeletal hedgehogs got out, and they tried to scream again. It was like déjà vu, and again they launched their nails at the army.

Seph tipped the odds in his favor by throwing the bones each time in the middle of the busiest spot where the fairies gathered.

The hedgehogs killed six of the fairies with the initial attack, and died again the same way the initial hedgehogs died, after taking out three more with them.

Seph thought to try out the mage skeleton, which probably wasn’t such a smart idea in hindsight, since he only had two of them.

Once the mage was out, the fairy queen screamed, “This must be their infernal leader! Kill him, my darlings, KILL HIM.”

Seph thought it really weird that she stood silent so far after watching a third of her army die, but maybe it’s because she can breed them fast enough to replenish her population again.

The skeleton mage looked around him in alarm, with his empty eye sockets, and started chanting a spell.

The fairies attacked him with their fire, but weirdly enough, they didn’t do any damage, the mage took two minutes to finish chanting, and when he was about done, the queen billowed out with a shrill scream, “NO, RUN, RUN MY BABIES.”

But it was too late. The mage had cast a firestorm spell on himself that killed him along with every single fairy in the vicinity, except the queen, who was watching from afar.

The fairies flew around screaming, while burning, falling out of the air after their wings got consumed by the fire. Some were flying over to their queen, while crying, but their tears were made of their own melted skin.

The queen was furious to see everyone she ever cared about die. Tears fell down her face, melted mascara running down with them, which made her even more horrifying.

Seph used the eye of the veteran on her.

Name: Deadly Queen of the Fire Fairies

Class: Fairy Queen

Cultivation stage: Body Dismantling (III)

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The young cultivator didn’t even get a time to analyze the words he saw, because he realized that suddenly, the fairy queen was looking straight at him.

Oh shit! She must feel magic somehow. That’s probably how she knew how big an attack the mage used, and now she felt me using a magical skill on her. Get your shit together Seph, and fight.

Seph thought these words to himself, psyching himself up for the fight.

He got out from behind the stone, but was already holding two lumps of pestilence that he threw at the queen back to back.

Both lumps hit her, and she screamed at him.

The fairy queen was about as big as Seph, but in different proportions.

Her body was really slim like the small fairies, but her hips were really wide, and her chest was huge and naked.

Seph thought most of her weight was probably in those two areas. She also had big wings on her back, but they couldn’t lift her to fly.

So, she was just sitting where she had been all this time, chanting a spell to attack with.

Her nakedness surprised Seph, even though her body was ugly compared to that of a human, or at least that’s what he imagined would be the case.

He had his eyes wide open. Even though he saw the little fairies’ naked upper bodies before, he never saw a naked chest like that in real life, let alone a pair as big as that. Each one was bigger than his own head.

Seph was shocked by the scene. He didn’t even know what his mind was thinking, but he had a buddy who would save him from the allure of seeing his first naked breasts.

Sun jumped in the air and hit him flat on his face with the staff.

Seph got a comically red staff imprint on his face. “Aww, why did you do that?” Seph asked him.

Sun just stood there, tapping his foot on the ground in annoyance.

“Oh damn it, okay fair enough, you are right, I was out of it for a few seconds there.”

Sun just gave him a thumbs up in solidarity.

Before they both felt a gust of hot air coming their way, a huge fire storm was quickly headed their way. Seph knew immediately that the only way was to dodge.

While Sun had already jumped to a nearby tree, swinging from its branches to another tree, and had gotten away fast.

Seph was mesmerized by how fast Sun had abandoned his ass, and how fast the monkey was. That brief delay made it impossible for him to dodge the firestorm, and he found himself smack-dab in the middle of it.

The defensive charge of his earring got consumed immediately. He didn’t know if it would save him the entire period of the skill, so he ran straight towards the queen, through the storm.

Surprisingly, for Seph, the charge lasted him till he was out of the firestorm. He needed to figure out the limitations of his defensive accessories because it was literally the first time he ever depleted one of them.

The queen was surprised when she saw him come out of the firestorm right in front of her. Her vast body gave a slight spasm, like she was trying to get away, but she was immobile.

The lumps of pestilence were eating away at her, but very slowly, she was immune to the decay to some extent.

Even though she looked tired from the last spell, she started chanting another one.

Seph walked towards her slowly, an evil grin on his face.

Once he was in front of her, he jumped on one of her hips, and lifted his arm up with his gourd following suit, then he brought it down on her head, a sickening scrunch was heard, and he repeated the process until her head was paste on the stone her body was leaning on.

Her wings went limp, but they were still shining with light.

Seph thought her wings must be special, so he looked in his spatial sack for a sword to cut the wings with, but there was none left. He took an arrow out instead and carved the wings out of her back slowly, and stashed them in his spatial sack for later.

After Sun returned to his shoulders, they could both hear the whimpering of fairies coming from somewhere.

Seph headed towards a hollowed out upright tree trunk, and inside was a bunch of injured fairies, looking around at the lack of ingredients in this part of the garden, he decided the fairies might be ingredients, and caught each and everyone of them, sucked the life out of them, and put ten fairies in his spatial sack.

He started looking around after that for ingredients, and found that on most of the red trees, a single leaf on each tree was on fire, it didn’t look like it was being consumed by the fire, but the fire was instead part of the leaf.

He used the eye of the appraiser on one of them.

Appraising…

Name: Fire Leaf

Type: Ingredients

Quality: Uncommon

A unique leaf that is rich in fire Qi. It’s orange with distinct lines that look like there is fire coursing through its veins.

Used in various alchemical formulas.

Location: Found in forests rich in Fire Qi, with distinct scorched patches in the ground, that show the effect the Fire Qi has on its surroundings.

But that’s the only hint, as the trees that grow in these forests coexist well with the Qi, and cultivate using it.

He cut out each leaf and put them in his spatial sack. They were hot, but surprisingly not to the point of injuring him or making his hand catch on fire.

He collected twenty fire leaves.

Seph felt stumped after finding the fire leaves, and stood there thinking where could be the other ingredients, when Sun pulled at his collar and pointed up, then he pointed with two fingers at his own eyes signifying seeing something, and pointed up the trees again.

“Well, if you are trying to say an ingredient is up there, and since you are so fast you left me to die in a firestorm, you little shit…” Sun cut what Seph was saying by laughing, of course he didn’t mean to abandon his master, but he thought it would be better to run on his own, freeing his master from worrying about him.

Seph smiled, watching the monkey laugh, then continued, “Why don’t you go up there by yourself and extract whatever it is we need, so we can leave?”

Sun nodded his head seriously at him, like he was a soldier who just got an order from his superior, and climbed on top of the trees fast, and came back with a couple of fire stones, before going back up the trees fast.

Seph used the eye of the appraiser on the stones.

Appraising…

Name: Fire Stone

Type: Ingredients

Quality: Uncommon

A unique red stone that is rich in fire Qi, with swirling fire inside it. It’s very dangerous. If thrown, it will explode on impact with a solid object.

Used in various alchemical formulas.

Location: Fire creatures can use their combined energy to make these stones. They use them to cultivate even further, for a much longer time, which is positive energy than what it took to make these stones.

“Wow, really interesting. There is a fire Qi theme going on here. We will probably make something that has to do with fire this time, maybe a weapon? Or fire resistant pills? I would rather if it was a weapon, honestly.”

Sun kept coming down with two stones each time until they had 30 stones. That was the most of any ingredient that they got so far.

Seph walked around the area until he found a storage area filled with bottles that were filled with some white liquid.

He used the eye on them.

Appraising…

Name: Fairy Fire Queen Nectar

Type: Ingredients

Quality: Uncommon

A highly flammable liquid, handle it with caution.

This is the urine of the fairy fire queen. It’s very popular among the fairy population. They take baths using this liquid where they soak themselves in to cultivate.

Extremely thought-after ingredient for many flame-based weapons, to the point that some merchants deal with the fairies to buy the leftovers of this liquid that they can spare.

It’s a much better solution for them than sending adventurers to kill their nests, and then wait for them to appear elsewhere.

What they trade with the fairies is a tightly kept trade secret.

Location: You know from where…

Seph just stood there wide-eyed, not believing what he just read. He looked at the bottles with disgust and trepidation, because if one falls, he loses all this stash of bottles.

He started stashing them one after the other until he had fifty bottles in his spatial sack.

“Hmm, we might make some cash selling what we don’t use of these bottles, but I am not taking a bath with them.”

Sun looked at him quizzically.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know, anyway let’s get out of here. I am sick of this trial already and ready to move forward to win this whole thing.”