Chapter 103: Crystal and the Young Fox

In an instant, the climate of Free Heaven turned bizarre beyond measure. At one moment it was bright and scorching; the next, damp and cold; then a violent gale would rise, with lightning and thunder, and then the earth would convulse, the ground sinking away beneath it.

In short, the whole of Free Heaven had fallen into chaos.

The eight powerholders of the High Council were already gathered together. Naturally, a meeting of that rank had nothing to do with Venigo. Still, he could roughly guess what they were doing.

They were probably summoning mages from across the nation, trying to discover some way to destroy the Escaton Crystal, or at the very least to keep it from becoming any more active than it already was.

While the mages circled around the Escaton Crystal like moths about a flame, Venigo led the Prism Mercenary Corps to a small town south of Free Heaven. The spatial vortex connected to the Plane of Fire lay about a kilometer south of that town.

By then, the place had become a lake of lava. The fire element surging out from the Plane of Fire was so violent that it had burned the original gravel bed into molten rock.

Venigo wore a rather bulky padded cuirass and a helmet. The strange ensemble had come from Nanoka's miscellany alchemy: a firefighter's uniform fashioned from some kind of ore.

In addition, his belt was loaded down with bottles of potent fireproofing potion.

"I'll go in alone. You lot stay outside and keep watch. Don't let anyone interfere," Venigo instructed them. "For now, follow my plans and dig the guiding trenches and holding pits. When the time comes, break through the last section of the trench and channel the molten iron out of the lava lake to cool over there."

"My lord, what use are these lava flows?" Yuri asked, puzzled.

"This gravel contains crystal and gold. But the concentration is low, and refining it directly is difficult," Venigo explained with rare patience. "Once it's turned to lava, though, some of the impurities can be driven off. Besides..."

Venigo bent down and, with a sweep of Azure Sky's currents, lifted a great globe of blazing red lava from the lake, holding it suspended in empty air.

"Purification alchemy," Venigo murmured.

The strange scholar's purification alchemy drew a scattering of crystal-laced molten rock straight out of the lava mass, and under the force of Azure Sky's currents, it hardened rapidly.

"The purity isn't high, and there are too many bubbles. It won't do for jewelry," Venigo said. "But as a low-grade magical material, it's more than enough."

Under Venigo's orders, the mercenaries drew off part of the lava, then doused the channel mouth with water to extinguish it and let it solidify. Taking the chance, Venigo used purification alchemy to extract the golden-red crystal grains from the molten rock and put them away.

Because of the constant seepage of fire element, these poor-quality golden crystals were rich in fire essence, giving them a faint reddish hue. They were perfectly suitable for making potions or low-grade magical items.

Before long, Venigo had gathered a wagonload of gold-red crystal grains and sent his men to haul them back to the manor.

"I'll go inside and have a look," Venigo said. "You pull back first. Yuri, Iru, take two squads and wait over there to cover my retreat."

The mercenaries answered and scattered to their tasks. Venigo watched the wagon disappear into the distance, silent for a long moment.

"Yuri, tell me. If someone saw a wagon full of materials worth over a thousand gold coins, do you think he might get ideas?"

He turned and looked at Yuri.

Yuri's expression shifted slightly, and he inhaled in short, involuntary breaths. "I... don't think so."

"I think so too. But if someone really can't help himself..." Venigo glanced toward the gate to the Plane of Fire. "I hope he won't regret it. Ah, though perhaps he won't get the chance."

Quietly, Yuri wiped at his brow and the nape of his neck, where a fine sheen of sweat had appeared without his noticing. Iru, however, remained expressionless, looking about with complete composure.

"I'm going in."

Inside the Plane of Fire, the world was made of searing lava and leaping flames. The entire space held almost no air at all, only waves of blistering heat.

In such an environment, human beings could scarcely survive.

Venigo drank down a mouthful of potent fire-resistance potion. Without it, even if he wore the fireproof outer layer of the firefighter's gear, the superheated air he breathed into his lungs would still scorch his organs and kill him within moments.

The terrain was like the inside of a gargantuan volcano. Beneath his feet there was only a path barely half a meter wide, and between countless narrow pathways ran streams of lava that poured down from the summit.

"Just as I imagined. This volcano must be ten thousand meters high," Venigo muttered, looking up at what seemed an endlessly unreachable peak.

He scratched his head.

"I can't go too deep in, or I may never make it back."

Looking around, his Eye of Insight flashed with a gold-red light like molten rock itself.

There were many good things in the Plane of Fire.

Even without purification alchemy, one could directly pick up gems imbued with immense fire essence, as well as certain special metals found only here. One such metal was called falling iron, though it was not produced by meteorites. It was a high-performance metal formed when the prolonged accumulation of fire essence slowly transformed ordinary minerals through mutation.

Venigo's only regret was that his backpack was not large enough. As for Ramen, summoning it to a place like this would not be a good thing for an underage sky-sea whale.

So Venigo could only pick and choose, taking only the most valuable items and putting them into his pack. Before long, it was full.

At once, Venigo turned back, sliding swiftly toward the gate on a current of Azure Sky's power, and leapt through.

Before he could even look back, he felt a savage wind rushing in from behind. Venigo immediately flung the backpack aside and rolled away in the opposite direction.

Boom!

It turned out that several fire element creatures had spotted Venigo as he ran and followed him out through the gate.

"Flare Pouncers?" Venigo scratched his head. "Good. Not hard to handle."

The words were barely out of his mouth when one pounced through the air, both massive claws sweeping down in a torrent of flame. Venigo slid back, brought his hands together, and drove them outward in a sudden thrust.

The cumbersome firefighter's gear slipped right off him, and Venigo sprang free of it, revealing the martial attire he wore beneath.

Character build: Abel, instinctive wrestling style, ready.

"First enhancement: speed," Venigo intoned softly, and a trace of nearly invisible sparks rose over his body.

"Second enhancement: accuracy," he said again. In an instant, his eyes became golden-red vertical dragon pupils, with a flash of blue-violet light passing through them.

"Third enhancement... fire resistance."

In the imaginary construct of the enhanced persona, the first and second enhancements were like slight adjustments, mere minor corrections. Only the third enhancement could drastically elevate a character's abilities, turning decay into marvel.

Venigo faced the leaping pouncer and reached out with a lightning snatch. Though the body was broad and powerfully built, his hand was swift as electricity.

Like a slow mountain turtle, which could still strike like lightning when it stretched out its neck to bite. Abel was far swifter than any turtle.

He seized the pouncer, flames blazing over its whole body, and smashed it heavily into the ground, sending sparks flying in all directions.

Using the force of the motion, Venigo kicked out as well, sending the other flare pouncer, which had been hoping to snatch an opening, flying into the air. When it came down, Venigo looped both arms around it and drove it headfirst into the gravel with a back bridge throw.

Through the whole series of movements, he never once hesitated. When two more pouncers lunged at him, Venigo used Azure Sky's jetting current to slip nimbly beneath them.

Then he reached up toward the enemy in midair, seized one, and hurled it down hard.

The two pouncers struggled to rise, only to meet Venigo's foot, lifted high and brought crashing down.

One step... sparks burst, the ground shattered, and they were crushed underfoot.

"Personally, I would rather the enemy be weak. But beneath Abel's body, there is a voice crying out..." Venigo murmured to himself. "Very well. Let the enemies come more fiercely."

He took a bottle of potent fireproofing potion from his belt and poured it over himself, then tilted his head and looked toward the gate.

Venigo pointed at the lava lake on the ground and flicked his hand up into the air. Azure Sky's currents swept up a great plume of lava, which he lightly used as paint to draw six magical sigils around the edge of the gate, forming a ring.

Venigo himself had no talent for spellcasting, but with the aid of Azure Sky's power, he could do it. Sir Newton's masterpiece, a creation carefully made and improved by the chief mage, how could it possibly be compared to an ordinary magical weapon?

And the spell pattern itself was something Venigo had copied. He did not fully understand the secrets or essence of magic; in fact, because of some suppressing influence, he was unable to learn any technique or spell directly related to combat.

But that did not stop him from copying it, from drawing the diagram of the spell pattern.

Then he activated it with Azure Sky's magic. Naturally, the efficiency would not be very high, nor could he use advanced magic, but for Venigo that did not matter.

This was only a key.

To open the gate a little wider.

The next second, a blaze leapt from the gate. It was a three-meter-tall fire-essence golem, an elemental being made of stone heated to a white heat.

"Heavy, powerful, but not slow," Venigo's Eye of Insight told him at once. If he wanted a more detailed reading, he would need to study it a little longer.

But the fire-essence golem clearly had no intention of giving him that chance. It strode forward and flung out its heavy arms to seize him.

"A grapple? I'm the expert at that," Venigo snorted.

He lunged in and wrapped himself around one of the golem's arms, coiling his whole body around it, then heaved with all his strength... The golem swayed, but did not move.

A weight advantage...