The birth of an elemental and its environment were tied together by an inseparable relationship. For example, a fire elemental can only be born in a place of flames while a water elemental can only be born at a point where a river flows towards or a giant body of water. The strength of an elemental is decidedly in large part by the environment it grew up in because of the vast amounts of elemental energy needed while growing up. Naturally, a purer source would produce better results.
The elemental production rate of such a special location was fixed on a daily basis. An elemental subsisted by absorbing a certain level of pure elemental energies from their environment. Only after meeting the basic requirements would any further absorption lead to evolution. However, that wasn’t to say that merely absorbing energies was enough to evolve, other requirements still held true as well.
———–From <<An Observation of Elementals>>
“That Fire Elemental Core you speak of, what does it do?” Mo Na jumped onto my neck and curled her lips as if it was the most natural thing for her to do. “Just two? Isn’t that too little?”
“Those are the relics of the former head and the former former head!” The elemental cried, clearly agitated by her callous disdain. However, he immediately suppressed his anger upon realizing it: “There are a wide variety of uses for a Five-stars Fire Elemental Core. If you give it to your two subordinates over there, they will probably evolve right away into an Infant Flame Demon. Not only that, they would also gain the ability to transform into flames.”
“Transform into flames?”
“You don’t even know that?” The elemental scoffed at me. “Once a Flame Demon reaches the level of Eight-stars, he gains a new ability called Flame Transformation. It allows the devil to temporarily transform his body into that of a fire elemental’s, gaining unimaginable destructive powers in the process.”
“Such a perk exists?”
“You really didn’t know about that?” He threw me another disdainful look as if not knowing that was some sort of sin.
I, however, wasn’t one to suffer such nonsense: “If that’s how you’re going to act, then I’ll just leave with my subordinates.”
“…”
Naturally, things settled down from that point onwards and an agreement was reached with the promise of two such elemental cores as a reward. Honestly, such a show of generosity on their part truly exceeded my own expectations.
With the deal settled, I asked the elemental if he knew about a method to reach Abaddon. His answer was a disappointing one to say the least but at the same time, it was only to be expected.
The entrance to Abaddon was most likely a closely guarded secret. The fire elementals themselves spent their entire lives in Purgatory, not because they couldn’t leave the place but because they couldn’t survive in areas with scarce fire elements.
Like how fish needed water and how humans needed oxygen, fire elementals needed a suitably rich environment of fire to live in. Thanks to that, these elementals rarely left their territory. Even if they were left it, they had to first ensure that their destination possessed a sufficiently dense level of fire elements in order to support them.
Naturally, such denizens were clearly not cut out to be travellers so was it all that strange that they didn’t know the entrance to Abaddon?
Normally, the mission of escorting the fire elementals would have been done by the Demon Fire Salamanders. However, their hands were tied at the moment and they could only spare that one salamander to be a messenger. If they needed an escort, it would have to be that lone salamander. Should they encounter a large pack of Fire Devouring Fishes in the interim, they were doomed. As such, the head of the fire elementals had no choice but to plead with us.
The temporary head of Raging Flames Lake was that fire elemental whom Mo Na beat up. His name was Arca, an insufferably arrogant moron.
In total, there were over one thousand two hundred fire elementals living in Raging Flames Lake. Arca was one of the few Four-stars present in the settlement. Because he wasn’t able to evolve into a Five-stars yet, he could only be considered a temporary head of the settlement. Should another fire elemental make it to Five-stars before him, Arca would then be replaced by this new elemental as the official head of the settlement.
However, that had nothing to do with us at all, zilch. As long as we ensured Arca’s safety up till the moment he coughed up those two elemental cores, our mission was complete…ahem, I meant Arca and his tribe.
With no time to lose, Arca immediately summoned his fellow fire elementals upon closing the deal. Just like before, a majestic pillar rose into the air and over a thousand fire elementals spewed forth from it.
Strictly speaking, the fire elementals were running for their lives right now and had no time to dally about. Thus, the salamander promptly led the way to the safe zone while Arca marshalled his tribe.
That salamander was to be our scout for this journey. Should it discover any signs of fishes, it would immediately let out a cry to warn us. That cry would then be translated by Arca after which we would act. Unless we encountered some kind of large group, it was mostly No.3 and Big 4 who took care of the fishes along this journey.
Like that, we safely made it through three days of fleeing. Suddenly, Arca stepped up to me and sighed: “You truly are an unusual devil.”
I was playing horsey with Mo Na at that moment so I didn’t pay much attention to his comment and merely asked: “Was that a compliment?”
“You can take it as that.” Was his irrelevant reply. He then shook his head and continued: “Honestly, I was extremely worried that you would go back on your words…after all, with your Fire Devouring Fish weapons, our powers…don’t even come close to yours.”
He finally admitted their weakness. Even though I hadn’t been with him for long, I could tell that he was a prideful elemental and admitting such was a big concession on his part. Truth be told, I knew their distrust of me as well. The fact that he even asked this of me was borne out of pure desperation. Besides, he most likely thought that if we really harbored any ill intent towards them, we could have done so by ourselves without waiting for the Fire Devouring Fishes to attack them.
Naturally, I would never do such a thing. That wasn’t me at all. I would never use my superior strength to bully the weak unlike the other devils. Normally, the most efficient method would just be to trick the elementals into coming out and holding them hostage for the cores.
With enough strength, most devils would have probably done that.
Even with that salamander vouching for us, Arca was still worried about us reneging on the deal. That’s why the elementals adopted a scattered formation at the start. With such a formation, they could at least avoid a complete loss should we decide to ambush them.
Perhaps in the eyes of others, I was some kind of unique devil but it wasn’t so for me at all. Because I never considered myself a devil from the very start. From the standpoint of a normal human being, all I was doing now was accepting a mission, collecting the reward, that’s all, nothing but a daily repeatable quest in a RPG.
In fact, my little baby suggested just such a thing with a wink of her lovely eyes. Her intentions were clear: rob them of the reward. She even tabled a viable plan of action to which I promptly rapped her on the head.
I told her then: “Do unto others what you would have done unto yourself.”
Mo Na rubbed her little noggin while giving me a wrong look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I tried to explain the underlying logic then: “If I am stronger than you, does that mean I can have my way with you?”
Mo Na nodded her head as if it was the most natural thing to do and answered: “If it’s Mama, she can do whatever she wants to Mo Na.”
My mind was blown the moment she said that. ‘Can I really do anything?’
Ahem…what I meant to say was that’s how a normal devil thought of things. The strong ruled and the weak served —that was their instinct. After all, not serving meant death.
The gathering spot the salamanders decided upon wasn’t that far off from the Raging Flames Lake. It roughly took a week of travelling for us to reach it, during which we didn’t encounter much problems. From time to time we would encounter some fishes but they were mostly lone wolves and easily taken care of.
For the most part, the terrain we passed through was a simple mix of giant sea of fire plus black stone and lava.
After spending time with that salamander, I learnt that other than the Demon Fire Worms, Fire Devouring Fishes and whatnot, there was also another race living in the lava lake, the Dark Flame Snails. My inherited memories spoke of these black-shelled gastropods, which were basically infinitely tougher versions of the common garden snail, but because we didn’t see any on our journey, I assumed that they were some kind of rare species. It turns out that wasn’t true at all.
The snails were a food source for the Demon Fire Salamanders and were often found at the edges of those strange platforms in the lava lake. Speaking of those platforms, they came in a variety of sizes from big to small. The smallest could fit about ten people while the large ones were about the size of a basketball court. There was a wide gap between each platforms so they didn’t look connected at all.
It was there the snails frequented, soaking in the lava while staying near the edges of the platform. Thanks to their shells being of the same color as the platform, along with the natural barrier of lava, doing so afforded two layers of protection from their predators. That camouflaging was the very reason why I wasn’t able to spot any snails till now.
Having seen them for the first time ever, I found them to be surprisingly large. The smallest I saw so far was about the size of a human head in fact.
Because their shells were known for being hard as rock, the Fire Devouring Fishes rarely preyed on them. While the fishes had a formidable set of teeth, it would still take them quite some time to chew through the shells of the Dark Flame Snails. Moreover, the snails themselves weren’t very meaty or large once you removed their snails so the reward simply didn’t match the effort required. With that much time spent, they could have just hunted down several worms.
If even the Fire Devouring Fishes wouldn’t touch them, it would seem like they had no natural predators within the lava lake at all. In reality however, that was simply a misconception on my part. Every living creature always had a nemesis. For the snails, it was the Demon Fire Salamander.
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