Ray envisioned a roaring flame that engulfed his entire body, as he opened his eyes, he could see the shocked and amazed looks of the others, he looked down at himself and saw what looked like an aura of flames flickering around, however immediately as it appeared it disappeared. “it's a lot harder to control then I thought, this is gonna take some getting used to.”, Ray thought, he tried again and this time the flames that engulfed him appeared and lasted longer than before, however it spiraled out of control and began to expand, resulting in the others having to quickly evacuate the cave.
“If I want this power to beneficial and not a hinderance, I'm going to have to master this ability and quickly, I’m the only person with this power so I’m going to have to figure it out all by myself.” The next week followed a similar path, they continued their hunt for the floor boss, killing monsters on their way, whilst they rested Ray taught Ken how to speak Demi-lang so he could better communicate with the others, he was a fast learner, whilst also trying to improve his control over both manipulating flames and empowering flames. He found Manipulating flames easier, it relied heavily on imagination and creativity, he could already increase and decrease the sizes of them, turn them into basic shapes like circles, squares and triangles, what he was working on now is how to launch them and make them linger in one space, he was still only on the basics, nothing crazy, but he could see almost unlimited potential with what he could achieve with this free will over fire, thinking about it made him almost giddy with excitement. However, he was having more trouble with the “empowering bodily flames.”, which he called “flame aura.”, whereas flame manipulation was to do with creativity and freedom of thought, flame aura was more disciplined and about staying in control, if he didn’t then his flames would either diminish or explode out and so, he had resorted to often meditating whilst activating his flames, at first he couldn’t keep his concentration which resulted in a few accidents, however over time he was able to achieve this slowly, and although not perfect, Ray was eventually able to obtain a bit of control, over his flame aura outside of meditation, it was only a small layer of flames, nowhere near as great as he had seen the Phoenix produce, but this small layer still boosted his strength, speed and Durability. He was slowly but surely making progress, which made him both happy and excited.
“Time to test out this new power.”. Ray had spent most of his time whilst searching for the boss of the floor looking after and playing with the Kids, this was due to multiple reasons, one being that he wanted to give the other two a chance to level up, the ordinary monsters no longer gave him a significant amount of exp and to top it off, he wasn’t in control of his new powers and didn’t want to risk getting anyone hurt, but now that he had a bit of control, he wanted to test to test some things out.
The next day, Ray woke up earlier then everyone else, who were in a food coma after indulging themselves on a banquet of wolves. Ray stepped out of the new cave they were camped in and cloaked himself in the small amount of flame aura he could muster, he ran over to a giant rock he had spotted the other day, it was about 2 mile away however it took him only about 2 minutes to run all the way over to it. The rock was truly massive, it was about 10 meters wide and 20 meters tall, Ray took a deep breath and punched the rock with all his might. Where his fist collided with the rock, a small crater appeared in the, sending cracks all through the rock, causing chunks of it to fall to the ground with a clattering thud, so this was the extent of his current physical power, it was impressive, he could never have imagined doing anything like this in his old world, and he was sure many other level 70’s in the world couldn't either, but this wasn’t enough, if the fight for Demi-humans resulted in a war against the humans, he’d need more power and if he was going to defeat the being that brought him here, he was sure that this power wasn’t enough, he need to grow stronger, he needed to get better control over these Pheonix flames and keep on evolving, only then will he be able to achieve these goals. Ray, had never felt so motivated before, in his old world everything seemed so dull, so black and white, but here in this new world, although bad things were happening, although he was brought here against his will, this world felt colourful, more alive, this was the life he wanted to live, a life full of magic and adventure, maybe he was wrong for feeling this way, maybe in his real world he gave up too soon, but right now that didn’t matter, he was finally living the life he had always wanted and he wasn’t going to waste it.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“I’m going to grow stronger and stronger to the likes of which this world has never seen before.”.
Ray took a few steps back and turned off his fire aura, at this point of time, he still couldn't use fire aura whilst manipulating flames for all that long, about 2 minutes at most, it drained his energy too quickly and rendered him incredibly exhausted, it was something he’d have to work on. He created a ball of flame about the size of a baseball in his hand, he then made the flames spin and rotate in a circle, faster and faster and faster, then, like a baseball pitcher, he raised his leg and threw the spinning ball of flames, it flew at incredible speeds into the rock. SNAP, ray snapped his finger and the ball of flame exploded, causing the already fractured and chipped rock to crumble to the ground, “Exploding pitch. It's got the size of a fire ball, the speed of fire bolt and the explosiveness of fire blast, I have taken my knowledge of those spells and spent the last week crafting my first special move.”, Ray thought as he stretched briefly before he activated his flame aura and made his way back to the cave.
The group were walking around, killing monsters left and right.
“UGH, where the hell is this monster, it feels like we’ve been down here for AGES.”, Ray complains. They had been in this cave for about 10 days now and there had still been no sight of the mosnter
“Are you sure it's not dead?”, Ken replied in Demilang, Ken had picked up the basics of the language in these past 10 days and was able to hold basic conversations, though in high pacing conversations he still got a bit lost.
“According to the humans it was still alive... Though if the Phoenix was in here, maybe it had killed it.”, Lilly said as she carved another arrow out of the wood of one of the dead trees they had sliced down. During this time Lilly had made it to level 46 and Ken was at level 61, it had been really hard for them both to level up now, having to take down more than 15 wolfs just to raise 1 level. As for Ray, in all this time since he had awoken, he had made 1 measly level, this was partially due to him sitting out on hunting for a while, but he had still killed a large number of monsters. It was about time they moved on from this low levelled dungeon.
“Look at that big cave.”, sky said quietly pointing at a giant gaping cave entrance that kind of looked like the jagged jaws of a wolf.
“If that boss thing is still alive-”, molly began when she was interrupted by her brother jumping on her shoulders, “Then it's probably in there!”, Tom said pointing and laughing. Leo and sara both nodded simultaneously in agreement.
“It's worth checking out.”, Ray said excitedly.
10 minutes later, the group stands in front of the cave.
“Let's split into 2 teams, 1 team stays out here with the kids and the other 2 go into the cave.”, the other 2 nod in agreement.
“But how do we decide who goes and stays?”, Lilly asks.
“Rock, paper, scissors, we go till we have 2 winners.”.
“Rock, paper, scissors?”, the other two asked confused. Rays jaw dropped in shock, do they not play rock, paper, scissors in this world? And so, Ray explained the very basic rules of the game and once they all understood they went.
“ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS... SHOOT!!”, they all shout.
Ray who had been playing rock paper scissors since childhood knew that most 35% of people choose rock as their first throw and so chose paper, winning the first round.
“YES, I chose group 1.”, Ray said excitedly, they had spent this whole time looking for this damn boss, he would have been so angry if he had lost. It was a fierce battle against Lilly and Ken who had drew twice in a row with paper and then scissors however, with the third go, Lilly through rock as Ken through scissors. Lilly jumped up in the air excitedly whilst Ken looked flabbergasted.
“Alright Lilly now let's go again, to see who gets to be main and support.”, Ray was confident he would win, after all, he wouldn’t lose to a couple of beginners, he chuckled to himself. Ray through scissors, Lilly threw rock. Lilly jumped up in the air excitedly whilst Ray looked flabbergasted and so, Ray and Lilly adventured into the giant cave, whilst Ken sat back to baby sit. They walked into the cave and looked around, it was pitch black and although their eyesight was boosted by the fact that they were Beast-men, they couldn’t see a thing, Ray created a ball of flame and shot it upward into the cave, which hung there, illuminating the cave and that's when they saw it. They were now surrounded by what looked like 100 wolves lead by a wolf which toward 10 meters above them, fangs bared, growling.