I was hopping along merrily, my new crystal friends thankfully also covering my tentacles, trying to figure out where to go. As far as I could tell, there weren’t that many spaces around here that I would give a good safety rating. Lava was flowing freely almost everywhere, the few spaces between the raging rivers the only solid ground far and wide. Since falling into the lava would mean assured death for almost all of the monsters around here, these solid footholds were fiercely competed over.

The space I’d arrived in was relatively small, a lava river splitting before rejoining itself after some twenty meters, forming a thin, pointed oval. The space was probably reserved by the system for new arrivals, which was why nothing had made it its home. The river on both sides was about five meters wide, and while to one side was only a thin piece of land before another, even bigger lava river cut through, the other side had a decent chunk of walkable land. It looked to me like a good third of the volcano's circumference was spared from the lava, and there were plenty of monsters milling about.

Then, towards the base of the volcano was a space of maybe two to three hundred meters before the shore of the lava lake. Three volcanoes towered in a triangle formation around the lake, each of them feeding into the lake via several streams of lava. The lake itself was massive, at least several kilometers across, and strangely round. It was then, that I realized water might become an issue. For the past few floors, I had my fruit stockpile for just this issue, but I’d used up almost all of them in the underwater temple and had neglected to restock.

I cursed at the mere sixteen fruit left in my inventory. Finding a source of water would be a priority from now on. There had to be water around somewhere, I was sure of it. The system might make it hard to find, but as far as I could tell, it wanted the monsters to fight each other, not starve to death or die of thirst. Worst case, I’d just have to go back to drinking blood.

For now, I was on a safe platform. I took the opportunity to dump the entirety of both my mana pools into my seed of the void. My new ability, Seed Analyzer, revealed to me things like the condition of the seed, how much mana I’d already dumped into it, and how much was needed until it advanced to the next tier. It also told me things like which mana types were used to fill it and other miscellaneous info I didn’t know what to do with. To upgrade it from the fifth to the sixth tier, I needed a whopping one million mana. Albeit, void mana seemed to count a tiny bit more toward that goal.

Assuming that the requisite mana would only get higher with each reached tier, I would be spending tons of time on this floor simply pumping the seed full of mana. And to that end, I needed corpses. Tons and tons of corpses to help me regenerate my mana and add more points to wisdom in the process. I took a few out of my inventory to restore my bottomed-out mana pools while eyeing the monsters milling about on the volcano’s side. The space was extremely limited and fights about territory broke out all the time.

There were a lot of fire-themed monsters around, which I assumed to be system spawned on this floor. But there were also quite a few monsters of other types around, and all of them seemed to be struggling with the massive heat. I once again appreciated my new crystal friends, since they made the heat on this floor bearable. I watched a fire gorilla fight a fire lizard for a while, thinking of the lower-tiered fire gorilla I’d fought on the fourth floor. I wondered how the two of them compared to each other, and if that particular line of evolution was particularly common, or if it was just coincidence that I saw another one here.

Be that as it may, my mana had finally topped up again and I was ready for battle. I needed experience and corpses, and if I waited too long, the monsters would just kill and eat each other, leaving nothing for me.

I pushed off the ground, snapping open my wings in order to safely cross the lava river. What I didn’t expect, was that I shot up several meters almost instantly. I struggled to stabilize in the air as I was pushed higher and higher before things calmed down a bit. I finally cleared the river, looking back at it suspiciously. I noticed that I wasn’t losing height nearly as fast as I should be when it finally clicked.

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Hot air!

The air around here was incredibly hot and, while I wasn’t exactly an expert in the field, even I knew that hot air rose up. Hot air balloons were a thing, after all. It would seem like I could use this to my advantage somehow. Well, that, or I could just use a void jump to go as high up as I wanted. Still good to know.

With that little revelation out of the way, it was time to start my gruesome work. I locked onto the nearest monster, a kind of overgrown hamster that wasn’t dealing with the heat too well, and rained hellfire down on it. The poor guy stood no chance against my superior firepower and soon joined the graveyard known as my inventory. It was time to go wild!

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I’d cleaned up the thirty-ish monsters that were hanging out on the side of the volcano, stuffed them all into my inventory, and gained four levels. The monsters here didn’t prove to be particularly challenging, most of them falling to my bombardment before they could even think of hitting back. Even if they managed to get an attack in, I just dodged or tanked the damage.

I did some testing with my newer abilities as well. Rush and Maximum Fortification were pretty handy skills, while my MP Drain skill wasn’t much to write home about. Sure, it was another way to restore my MP, but needing to be in contact with my chosen target made it a lot less viable. I should still try to use it as often as I could to upgrade it. Who knows, at some point, it might become crazy good. I might have to try to stealthily attach myself to some big monster and hitch a ride while constantly draining it.

For now, I’d gotten curious about the volcano. I sometimes forgot how amazing some of the sights were that I got to see in this new life of mine. Volcanoes had always been this far-away thing that you’d occasionally see a video or two, maybe hear about another eruption on the news. But now, I had access to tons of them, all of which were active. I would be remiss if I didn’t take advantage and explored the place at least a little, even if just to satiate my curiosity.

I rushed up the now empty volcano, wondering what I’d get to see up there. I eventually made it to the top, where I carefully peered over the edge. Unsurprisingly, the volcano was filled with bubbling lava, spilling over the lip of the volcano to form the great rivers. The heat up here was even more intense, which made me only slightly uncomfortable. My little crystal buddies were working overtime and I thanked them for it.

There wasn’t anything particularly beautiful or exciting about looking down into an active volcano, in fact, it was pretty bright and was starting to hurt my eyes a bit. But the experience was amazing nonetheless. Something deep inside me was in awe at this behemoth of nature, and I couldn’t help but stare down into the bubbling lava. It was like watching a fire burn, magnified a hundredfold. It was when I saw something large stir within the lava that I finally took a step back.

I may be incredibly powerful, but challenging something huge that was just chilling inside of an active volcano seemed like a bad idea… for now. Out of curiosity, I activated my hunter radar skill, but the closest hunter seemed to be somewhere else entirely. This meant that I could probably challenge this thing and win, but I was worried that it’d just blow up the entire thing, sending lava raining down everywhere.

A new idea formed inside my brain, a kinda stupid one, but I went for it on an impulse and jumped over the lip of the volcano, toward the boiling pool of lava below. My fall was short-lived, as I almost immediately snapped open my wings and rocketed upwards. Since I knew what to expect, I managed to stay pretty stable as I ascended higher and higher, pushed upwards by the immense heat.

I took a look around, seeing much the same sight I’d seen when I descended with the platform. This time, I had more time to analyze it all. Volcanoes spread out in all directions, the glowing red of the lava ever-present on the entire layer. Some of them were small, and some of them were big. I noticed that there was a spot quite far away where not a lot of volcanoes were. I banked in that direction, eager to see if there might be some water to be found that way.