I really wanted to scream, though. The pain was way worse than anything I had ever felt before. Even that day in the alleyway couldn't hold a candle to the amount of pure agony I was bathing in right now.
My mind was seemingly fracturing, not being able to deal with the pain that streaked through my body. Over and over, I dipped in and out of consciousness, the pain always throwing me back in as soon as my mind surfaced again.
There was no sense of time here. It might have been only a few seconds that had passed, but it might just as well have been days, weeks, or even months already. I was completely unable to tell.
As time passed, the pain ever so slowly began to fade. It was still there, but it didn't affect me as strongly anymore. Maybe I had grown numb. With the pain not strong enough to throw me into unconsciousness again, my mind finally returned to clarity.
It should have killed me, but I was still alive somehow. I had landed in some kind of insanely hot, extremely viscous substance that burnt away at my very being with every second that passed. Probably something like lava or magma, I still hadn't learned the difference. I decided on calling it magma for now. Not that it mattered much right now, though.
The stuff was all around me. I couldn't see a thing, even though it should be extremely bright if I was truly inside of a pool of magma. Maybe it had burnt away my eyes, and that's why I was blind. I couldn't breathe either, and any air I must have had inside of my lungs was long gone. It was extremely uncomfortable, but I couldn't get any air even if I wanted to.
I didn't die though, at least not yet. Something in me was fighting back against the encroaching death.
I opened my status screen, the window still visible to me even without any eyes to see it. System shenanigans, I figured. Aside from that, what I read in there basically confirmed all the guesses I made. Which, to be clear, is not really a good thing.
[Name: Hanah Mayflower
Race: Human
Level: 13
Mana: 280/280
Achievements: [Hero Candidate] [Predator I]
Class: Firefly (Uncommon)
Active Skills:
[Candlelight Lv. 5]
[Flash Lv. 2]
[Minor Fireball Lv. 6]
Passive Skills:
[Photo-Thermic Synthesis Lv. 14]
[Minor Fire Affinity]
[Minor Light Affinity]
General Skills:
[Identify]
[Heightened Senses Lv. 3]
[Pain Resistance Lv. 12]
[Fire Resistance Lv. 6]]
It was [Photo-Thermic Synthesis] that kept me alive, it had to be. It reached level 14, a level way higher than any other of my main skills and even higher than my class level, which inexplicably jumped to level 13 as well. The skill description when I identified it had literally said 'slowly regenerate Vitality and Mana through light and heat'. I was banking on the vitality here. The immense heat of the magma surrounding me burned away at my body but served to heal it at the same time.
This constant regeneration against the unending tide of burning magma must have rapidly shot up its level. I must have been losing at first, slowly dying as the magma broke me apart bit by bit. With increasing level, the skill became better, slowing the destruction of my body as it did so.
I noticed that there were two new skills among my general skills as well, namely [Pain Resistance] and [Fire Resistance]. Pain resistance must have been the reason I finally escaped the unending loop of pain and unconsciousness.
However, [Pain Resistance] was not [Pain Immunity], and it didn't reduce the amount of pain I felt either. It did, however, stop the pain from affecting me mentally. I could still feel the hot magma shaving away at my regenerating body, the pain so strong it could literally kill people. And yet, I didn't really mind anymore. I had always been more tolerant to pain than most others, especially because of the torture that Blake made me go through, but nowhere close to this extent. It felt like I was just an external observer for the pain, its intensity a way of telling me where my body was damaged and nothing else. That's all it was ever meant to be anyways. It hurt, but it didn't hurt. At this point, pain was just another type of sense, just like hearing or sight was.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Where [Fire Resistance] came from was pretty obvious. I was literally surrounded by a liquid inferno, the molten stone eating away at me in its primal rage. Having withstood its continuous attack time and time again, my body and soul were slowly adapting, reducing the damage the heat did to me.
While I wasn't exactly sure about the rise in my class level, the only viable explanation was the behemoth of a spider that fell to its death next to me. I must have gotten a large chunk of the experience generated by its demise, which catapulted me from level 4 to level 13.
Identifying the new achievement [Predator I] that I got basically outright confirmed my guess.
[Predator I:
Slay an entity one tier above you.
x1.5 Experience from higher tier kills]
Even though I didn't know if this had counted retroactively to the experience I gained from the spider whose death resulted in the acquisition of this achievement, I would certainly make the big jump a bit more reasonable. I wish I knew the level the big spider was actually at, maybe to do some quick approximations on the elusive experience gain from it, but with its real level unknown to me, that was a pipe dream at best.
Time ticked by as I continued thinking. I kind of enjoyed it in here in some sort of twisted way. The incredible heat I was feeling started feeling a bit comfortable under the secondary pain, like a lit fireplace on a chilly winter's day.
The achievement was titled [Predator I], did that imply the existence of [Predator II], [Predator III], and so on? If so, they probably corresponded to slaying an entity who was two and three tiers above me, respectively. Anything else wouldn't make sense.
I also wondered about my lack of breathable air. I was down here far longer than I had any right to be, even if the magma was replaced by water. My only explanation for this was the mysterious vitality that the description of the skill [Photo-Thermic Synthesis] was talking about. It reconstructed my body unnaturally fast, so rapidly that I could even survive in a pool of scorching magma. If it could do that, it could probably also heal any damage that a continuous lack of oxygen would do to my organs, including my brain.
Eventually, some sensation returned to my limbs. Not fully yet, but enough. When I willed my fingers to move, something answered.
The effort was monumental, though. Every motion felt like pushing through solid stone, even if it was technically liquid. I was tearing myself free from a molten grave that didn’t want to let go of its meal. But inch by inch, I moved. The magma resisted, clung, and burned, but it no longer erased me faster than I could exist.
No, instead I was slowly regenerating. I had won. The only thing remaining now was getting out of here.
I couldn't tell up or down apart, but it didn't really matter. As long as I moved forward, I would hit something eventually. I didn't care if that was the surface, one of the walls, or the ground of the pool. All options were acceptable. As soon as that happened, I'd have an actual direction to go in.
---
Well, maybe I shouldn't have been talking big so soon. I'd been at it for days now, but progress was so incredibly slow that it might as well have been nonexistent. I didn't even know if I was actually moving forward or just wiggling in place. I had been trying to swim like one would do in water, but maybe that was a mistake. I had never been in any liquid as viscous as the magma was, maybe a different technique was required to actually move?
As I continued mulling over my next steps, it felt like a brick hit me. Was I stupid? I hadn't even tried any of my abilities yet. What if they could deal with the magma in ways that I couldn't?
And so, my experiments began. After a quick test, I immediately ruled out [Flash] and [Minor Fireball]. They wouldn't help me here. [Flash] literally did nothing, and neither did [Minor Fireball]. Well, if it actually did something, it was beneath my notice.
That left me with [Candlelight], the malleable flame I had. In this pool, thanks to [Photo-Thermic Synthesis], my mana reserves were practically infinite. I was regenerating mana so quickly that it seemed like it never even went down. Quite practical, if I may say so myself.
I tried a lot of different things with this skill. While it was hard to do anything with the flame in its normal state, that changed as soon as the density of the flame exceeded the density of the magma. Presumably that is, I didn't actually know. Moving the flame now also moved the otherwise stagnant magma. I could feel it flowing lethargically over my still charred skin. It was progress, but far from enough.
With the amount of fire that I had available to me, I just couldn't generate enough movement to overcome the binding of the viscous molten rock.
I had tried it before, but I was never able to make more of that fire, which became more and more usable to me the longer I had the skill. It's a way better skill than I thought at first.
After trying hundreds of different things, facilitated by the unending tide of mana my passive skill brought me, it finally clicked. From the beginning, I think I misunderstood the skill. I had always tried to change the way the skill appeared whenever I cast it. I wanted more fire so I tried making it summon more fire, which obviously didn't work. Every other thing I wanted to do, I tried to achieve similarly. If I wanted it hotter, I tried summoning fire that was hotter. But that had never been the intention of the skill.
The focus here lies on the word 'malleable', which was used in the vague description of the skill. The only thing I got working with it was increasing its density. However, that didn't work because density was special in some way, but because I only ever manipulated the fire's density after I had summoned it. Instead of manipulating the way it existed from the beginning, I had to mold it to the way I liked after it already existed.
It was a minute distinction, but it made all the difference. If I wanted more of the fire, I just had to intend the fire to grow. And that it did. With my heightened mana regeneration, the increased mana cost that probably came with the higher amount of fire was nothing more than an unimportant side fact.
The dense fire rapidly expanded outwards as it cocooned around me. I then just chose a random direction and started moving the fire forward, pulling me along in the process.
It took a while, but something changed eventually. I hit rock. Not the molten stuff I was swimming in, but the actual solid rock that surrounded the pool. The chance that it was the floor of the pool was quite high. As long as I picked a direction angled downwards in any way, and provided that the pool was large enough, I'd inevitably hit the ground first. Only if the pool was unexpectedly small with a depth that was just as unexpectedly deep would I hit the walls first.
Not that it really mattered in any way, but it was fun to think about. Using the rock I found as a guide, I soon noticed a slight curvature in the rock as it slowly started sloping upwards. I would be out soon.
And soon it was. With a last burst of movement, it finally happened. I had reached the surface and successfully escaped this harrowing deathtrap.