“Come on…” the good looking guy said as he slowly approached me. “I’ve heard of people able to kill Gods. If you’re going to lay down there and die like that, then… that would be a real disappointment.”
‘Kill Gods…’ he said… That would be Althy. She was the one that killed Salrak in her world, and despite both of them dying, they both claimed that it happened. I was still not sure about how ‘Godly’ Salrak really was, or how powerful Althy really was, but one thing I remember was that she really did suffer a lot when she fought with Salrak to the death, and that she didn't stop; that there was nothing that could stop her from achieving her goal.
And now that I think about it… didn’t she say that she lost an arm and leg, and that even then she would stand up and fight? Looking at my clenched hands and complete body right now, even if I just got beat up a little, there really wasn’t a reason for me to allow myself to die. This good looking guy was right. I couldn’t just lay here and die.
“Urg…” I let out as I slowly lifted myself up from the floor. The backlash from using too much mana was still giving me a bit of a pain all over my body, but I could still fight back.
The good looking guy was standing a few steps away from me, still smiling with that creepy cold smile, as if everything going on here was nothing more than just a kid’s game…
Y’know what?! Althy was out there, probably working as hard as always to get things done, and I shouldn’t disappoint her by dying here! I was going to show this guy that I was fire!
I gathered my magic once more, and I could feel my body saying that I shouldn’t do that anymore, but hey! If I don’t do this, then I would really die, so there’s no way I was going to complain about it!
The Fire Phoenix Battledress set aflame once more, and a burning aura that shook the air around me surrounded me. I turned a glare at the guy, who still just stood there waiting for me to get back up and pointed a finger at him.
“Come forth Miss Pepi!” I shouted, and from the tip of my finger, a ball of fire the size of a wrecking ball appeared.
Miss Pepi quickly formed and cawed once more before turning a fierce glare like mine to the guy.
He, on the other hand, just looked… for a moment, before he pointed a finger as well and a ball of water with frosted parts appeared, just like the fiery one I made to summon Miss Pepi. Was he imitating me? Well, unlike him, I wasn’t just going to allow him to do his summons and let him get the better of me.
Miss Pepi understood my intentions and quickly flew unto the ball of water. Her wings and beak fired up, and in an instant, she crashed with the water ball in an explosion of orange fire.
However… it hardly did anything! The water ball didn’t even lose its shape as it continued to form, now having a somewhat elongated shape. I had to get rid of it somehow…
A ball of fire to the caster, of course!
While I formed a quick fireball on my hand, Miss Pepi rose to the air and then turned to the guy. She opened her beak and quickly shot a fire beam. I followed it up by throwing a fireball. Her beam covered him, and my fireball exploded in a mess of fire.
“Come on, girl,” he said from within the fire. “You’re not really putting yourself into it. Perhaps if you pray to Narumi, She’ll give you Her blessings of Fire and Brimstone to defeat me, though… I’d doubt it.”
The water ball then exploded, clearing away the fire that was surrounding him, and causing a few droplets to come closer to me. They weren’t strong enough, so my Fire Aura was enough to vaporize them, allowing me to see what happened.
The water ball was replaced with a serpent dragon, just like the ones I’d see in, like, Chinese mythology. A long blue body with light blue scales on top that looked just like ice; two front legs and two back legs with claws that appeared more like icicles; and its face was long, closed shut, with a pair of slanted dark-blue glowing eyes.
It looked… real… somehow. No summon I’d ever seen, not even the ones that Althy made, looked like that. Even Miss Pepi, fluttering not too far away, had a certain transparency to herself that made one realize that it was a Mana Beast or a summon, but this one… it was solid, just like an animal.
For now, it was just looking at me. There was no threatening growl, or displayed fangs that caused me to step back, but the look… that look that it gave me somehow made me shudder. It felt like a dragon just popped in here, but I knew from looking at the guy making it that it was just a summon.
There was no backing down now anyway, and I was fairly certain that Miss Pepi should be able to deal with it. With enough temperature, any ice melts and all water boils away into the air. I just had to do the same to this one.
“Tell you what,” he calmly said, his eyes on the softly floating dragon. “I won’t fight at the same time, so… you’re free to do as you please—even just attack me if you want, but I can’t say if the creation won’t do the same to you…”
Huh? He was going easy on me? That only pissed me off! I mean, sure, if he’s going to make an opening for me like that, then I was going to take it, but—but that just means that he’s making fun of me! No way. I was going to turn him from a good looking guy to a—a dead looking guy! Yes!
Maybe if Miss Pepi distracts the dragon, I can go straight for the guy and go all out on him; turn him into a charred body like all the other knights and criminals before him.
Miss Pepi cawed and then dived into the dragon, who in turn, looked over to her. My summon surrounded herself with fire, and then crashed into the dragon. She wasn’t able to move it from the spot as the dragon simply grabbed her with the front claws. Thankfully, Miss Pepi was fast enough to also grab on to the dragon's claws with her own claws, so she was free to bat her wings, open her beak, and shoot a torrent of fire point blank at the dragon.
The dragon was likely going to be alright, just like this guy had been with everything I’ve done so far, but it didn’t matter, as what I wanted was to bypass it and go straight for the guy. So with an explosion of fire behind me, I leaped over the struggling summons and went straight for him. He looked at me with the same cold smile, but refused to move. Your loss, buddy.
I pointed the soles of my boots right at his face, and right before landing, I created an explosion that sent me flying back up to the air. But with a glance, I knew that, again, he was perfectly okay.
Gosh! What was up with this guy!? What kind of rank was he for him to just take everything I throw at him like it’s nothing?! Is he, like, indestructible or something? Or was there something else going on here?
Well it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had to defeat him, so once I started dropping from the air, I charged another Fire Jet to my hand. This time, I went for something stronger; something that was dangerous for how close I had to get, but since the guy was, supposedly, not going to do anything, I was going to risk it.
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I landed on the ground, and then rushed over to him. However, there was an explosion of water and icicles at the place where Miss Pepi was supposed to be keeping the dragon down, and I immediately felt how she was destroyed. Argh, I hated when that happened!
But it didn’t matter, I had to take the opening, so I rushed to the guy’s back, my right hand covered with a jet of pale blue fire. I took one, two, and three steps, and then, I was stopped by the sudden appearance of the dragon’s face right in front of me.
“Wah—”
Was all I could exclaim before I crashed with it. It didn’t do anything other than just push me back with its snout. But now that it was standing in my way… I guess I would have to get rid of it with the spell I was going to use on the guy…
Once I recovered from the push, I readied my arm and then… slashed at the dragon. It didn’t retaliate as it simply moved back slightly and away from my jet of blue fire. I pushed in, and pushed my hand in, but once more, it just retreated slightly. So I leaped forward with my fire pointed straight at its face, and it… moved to my right side, causing my hand to just push forward into the air, and right to the guy’s back!
I was going to take it. So I used a bit of flying magic to launch myself at him with the jet of fire pointed straight at the middle of his back. Suddenly, I felt a powerful slap in my back from the dragon’s tail.
“Ack!” I exclaimed when I hit the floor.
I felt the air leave my lungs, and a burning sensation from the slap covered my back right at the spot where it hit me. While I was trying to recover, the water dragon used that same tail to wrap it around my waist, and then harshly throw me to a wall, right over the hallway that Althy took to go deeper into the base.
There was a cracking noise when I hit it, but I was in so much pain from both the slap and this crash that I wasn’t sure if it was the wall or me—Not that I even had the time to consider it, as now the dragon was forming a large ice spike right in front of its snout.
I quickly tried to get my bearings and as soon as I did, the ice spike flew right out of the dragon's front with a torrent of water pushing it even faster. With scrambling movements, I created an explosion of fire from my hands, over my head, and used that explosion to push myself down to the floor. The ice spike immediately crashed into the wall where I was just a millisecond ago, impaling itself into it, and causing it to crumble, right over me.
After landing, I turned to look at the large rocks that were about to fall on me and leaped forward. With a boom, they crashed on the floor, covering the hallway that Althy took. The ice spike followed the rocks, landing on them, and then exploding, creating a mist of snow and dust.
I coughed as I covered my face, but quickly turned my attention to the ones I was fighting, the guy and the dragon, with my breath ragged.
They were… doing nothing. The dragon just floated in the air with its eyes set on me, and the guy slowly turned to look at me. “Are you really just going to die like that?”
W-was I? I was really outperformed here… Nothing was working, and I wasn’t leaving even a mark on either the guy or the dragon. If things kept going like this… I was actually going to 'die just like that’.
Though… There still was something else… One time, Master Asteora gave me the option to pick certain skills from skill books. At the time, I didn’t feel the need to get any of those because Althy insisted that I learn how to use magic on my own… but… out of curiosity, I quietly picked the one thing that I’ve refused to acknowledge… A spell to summon one of their phoenix… Something called ‘The Imperial Golden Phoenix’. It was supposed to be an S rank Holy Magic summon, but… well… since I can’t do Holy Magic, it might be something different, and right now, I might not have another option.
I set my eyes forward and focused on the skill. I never learned to do it myself, but once I focused on it, my magic moved on its own. The spell activated and I lifted my hands forward with my palms facing the guy.
Motes of fire started floating up from my wrists for a second, before my hands were completely engulfed in flames. The fires kept growing brighter and brighter, and I felt my magic pool draining further with each passing moment.
Once the flames in my hands were completely white, they moved forward, just like a solar flare, all going to one spot a few steps away from me. Like whips, the flares of fire were giving shape to the summon… and I felt a wry smile forming on my face.
The summon was made of a pair of thick legs, with thin fingers; a round bottom with a lot of golden flames that appeared to be feathers, extending to a long tail; a fat chest that proudly puffed out; a pair of thick and wide wings that were… far too short for a bird that fat to fly; a couple of fiery flaps under the beak… and a neck with a small head that had a large golden comb that stood out proudly with several pointy bits.
This was an enormous, golden, fiery chicken…!
Once it was fully formed, it crawed just like one to the sky, before turning to look at the dragon with one side of its face. Ugh… this wasn’t at all regal like Miss Pepi! And… It took way too much magic power to summon, so my legs were shaking already.
I looked over at the guy, and this time, the cold smile was gone. Was this golden chicken really that scary…? What is it with the people of the other world and taking chickens so seriously…?
“Bwok-cawk!” the golden chicken let out, and in an instant, it was on top of the dragon.
I looked with widened eyes as the chicken’s fat leg stomped on the dragon, causing it for the first time to open its mouth to display a set of ice-like fangs. I feared that the dragon was going to wipe out the chicken with a water beam, but before it could do anything, the chicken’s head snapped in several fiery pecks.
The guy was also frowning as he looked at his dragon being pecked to death by the chicken… but that didn’t matter, that moment of distraction gave me an opening, so I gathered whatever remained of my magic, creating one last Fire Aura, and with the feeling of the golden chicken summon still present in my hands, I launched myself to the guy.
He was so distracted looking at the chicken, that by the time he looked over at me getting closer, I was already just a step away. He raised his hands, and I quickly grabbed his wrists. I wasn’t going to let him do anything anymore!
My hands burned with the same white flames that summoned the golden chicken, and I poured everything that I had into it; every single little bit of mana remaining in my body was going to my hands.
For the first time, the guy’s face turned to a painful frown, and then—
“Ahhh!” he shouted.
I was finally burning him down, so I pressed my power as far as it could go, the white flames covering the rest of his body. Slowly, his suit, his tie, his blue hair, and his pretty face were burning down.
This was it! I had him! His confidence was his doom.
Then, right as I thought that he was a goner, a creepy smile returned to his face, and I widened my eyes in return, but then, it turned once more into a painful shout as his body started to crumble to ashes, until eventually, that smile and pretty face were nothing more than charred skin and bones.
I finally let go of him and stopped using magic. His body stood for a moment, before leaning backwards and falling to the floor in a pile of fire. I turned to look at the golden chicken, and under it there was nothing more than a bunch of burning holes in the ground with steam coming out of them.
“Hah…” I let out. I couldn’t believe that in the end… Master Asteora and Althy were right about these—chickens—these ‘Phoenixes’.
The golden chicken looked at me with a side glance, then its head snapped to look proud, and finally, it walked over to me, the head bobbing forward and back just like a… well… a chicken.
It stopped right at where the burning corpse of the guy was, it lifted its head, and as if it was trying to dig something out, it scratched the floor, tearing the burning body to pieces. If the guy wasn’t dead by the time I let go of him, then he certainly was now.
I looked for a moment at the golden chicken with a wry smile as it pecked the few pieces of the guy left on the ground. I guessed there was no other choice other than to make use of it now, especially since I’d used so much magic to summon it. So, I made my way over to it, and with a hop, got on its back.
It was just like Miss Pepi, it seemed, since it still understood what I wanted when I got on top of it, allowing me to ride it. I looked over at the collapsed hallway that Althy used and considered blowing it up to get through, but after looking at another hallway not too far from where I was, I decided to go that way and see where it led.
The golden chicken walked over to this other hallway, the same one from which the good looking guy came out of.
“Hmm…”
I considered the place for a moment.
There was nothing here other than just another wide hall like the place I just fought and a door at the back. I wasn’t sure if the golden chicken could fit through it, so I decided to turn back, but as I did, that door opened, causing me to once more turn to look at it.
“N-no way…” I let out, the blood of my face draining and losing my stability on top of the chicken. “S-she shouldn’t be here! S-she should be with—!”
Althea…