Chapter 700: Flame

'Kay!' Silvi sent back to Derek. So far, she had been floating around the many with the darkness affinity and charging at him occasionally. The man was strong enough to give her a challenge but hadn't made her feel any of the same danger the bad guy with the erosion had, so she was having fun stretching her legs.

Silvi was a good bunny and companion and also very smart. She already knew not to use her void skills much. Just because she always got to eat delicious food when she met with the tasty-looking elf didn't mean she didn't listen. Silvi was a good listener—she just didn't care to remember most things she heard unless they were really important. Things like avoiding the really strong man until they were strong enough to hunt him or anything that included ingredients—those were the most important.

But, since her best friend and companion had given her the go-ahead to go all out without using her aura, the fun would have to end soon. The man was like one of those Vortex Drifters from the raid dungeon—but his octopus arms just disappeared when she broke them up and didn't stay whole, so she couldn't use them as ingredients. She couldn't help but wonder what darkness tasted like. She had never had that before.

She was disappointed because some people had tasty-looking skills, but they always disappeared after use, so she couldn't use them in any of her dishes. But none of that mattered at the moment. She knew how to beat the dark octopus man. He was durable and flexible, but also cocky. Everyone was cocky when they fought Silvi. Everyone was cocky, then they died.

So, when Derek gave her the command, she switched tactics. After burning the other people with her dragon cooking flame, she'd slowly recovered her mana. Every once in a while, she would stop spinning her cleavers and act like she was going to spit fire, and that made the octopus man retreat each time. That made sense to her. She liked to cook, but she didn't want to be cooked. The man didn't want to be cooked, either.

So far, the monsters and the people that she'd faced on the other planet they were on were stronger than the ones from the other system. One Void Lightning Bolt wasn't enough—it didn't do enough damage all at once. But her companion was very strategic and had showed her how to use the void in all their fights.

Silvi rushed in with her spinning cleavers and cut through all the dark tendrils trying to stop her. When she got close to the man, he covered his entire body in darkness, just like before. She found that she could grind through this darkness, but it was a tough and long process, and it kept leaving her open to being hit by the tendrils, which wasn't fun, so she had only done it a couple of times to make sure she could.

This time, she kept going. Her cleavers stripped layer after layer of darkness off the man as she dodged tendrils trying to wrap around her and tanked the ones trying to whip her. Her cloak was getting beat up, so she made a mental note to have the crafting maniac fix it later.

Finally, she acted like she was going to retreat again, and just as she thought, the dumb human took it as a chance for him. It wasn't. It was a chance for her. So, using Derek's greatest strategy, she struck when the man was least expecting it.

A bolt of void lightning shot out of her horn and hit the man directly on the head. The attack made him pause long enough for her to fire another one. It was the best strategy. Void hitting brains made things stop moving, even if it didn't kill them.

With the man locked in place, she continued to fire her Void Lightning Bolts at his head to keep him still. Her skill was even better now that it had reached 100% and could be upgraded. The cooldown time was almost perfect. It lasted just long enough for the man's facial expression to change between bolts, but that was it. The man looked very confused while he stood still.

Since Silvi was such a good cook, she could multitask. Usually, it was multitasking by using her two telekinesis skills together so she could float on a pot lid and use her knives, or so she could chop and julienne at the same time. This time, she was going to use a combination that she hadn't tried before.

So, she shot another bolt of void lightning at the man's head—which seemed to slowly stop working as well each time. When the bolt hit, she activated her Dragon Flame and breathed in. She was able to launch two more bolts of void lightning at the progressively scared man as she charged her flame. Finally, from only a couple of feet away, she let her Dragon Flame out in a small, concentrated burst.

Needless to say, her bright, pretty cooking flame beat his yucky, not tasty dark affinity. The concentrated flame ate right through the dark shield protecting his body and head, then hit his nose. It ate through that, too. Then, it ate through the rest of his head. Cooking flame sure does eat a lot, she thought as the man's head disappeared and his body crumpled to the ground.

Good fight, she nodded at the body, then hopped over and chopped his hand off before taking his bracelet. It was her bracelet now—along with any ingredients it had in it.

***

Just a couple of minutes after Derek sent Silvi the message to stop holding back, a kill notification appeared in his vision. She really stopped holding back, Derek thought with a smile.

"Why are you smiling?" the woman asked with a frown. "You're being toyed with and beaten over and over again, yet you can find the time to smile? Are you a masochist?"

"Me? Being beaten?" Derek snorted. "Since when? We've already established that you can get through part of my body's defense, but the attack stops at the bone. The only way for any of your moves to really hurt me would be if you could fillet all the meat off my bones or get through to a very vital organ. And I'm not letting you do either of those things. You can hit me in the places that I allow all you want, but I'm just going to heal through them. This little dark haze you have going on isn't anything nearly as great as Nikolai's erosion skills. Those were hard to fully heal through."

Original publication matters: the author posts this chapter on the NovelPhoenix site, not here with approval.

"Whatever you say," the woman clicked her tongue. "Nikolai wasn't that much stronger than I am. I just had to stay out of his erosion field. Sure, he was able to heal through all my attacks because he was evolved, but I could only use my lesser ranged attacks sparring with him. As long as I avoid those fire and spatial skills of yours, what else can you do?"

"What else?" Derek asked rhetorically. "Well... I guess I could actually start fighting back."

"That's some big talk for someone who has been taking a beating for almost ten minutes," the woman replied.

"We'll see," Derek said. After that, he activated Absolute Nullify. As soon as the wall of nullification was up, it sucked all the haze around Derek into it. "That's much better," Derek chuckled as his entire field of vision cleared up.

"What is that?!" the woman suddenly shouted. "That's... spatial? Nullification? A mix? How does it have this magnetic effect? How did it pull my entire skill off of you?"

"Don't know," Derek replied with a shrug. "I had only expected it to take away the surrounding haze, not the entire skill. But that's even better," he laughed. "But, look down there." He pointed toward the ground, and the woman couldn't keep herself from glancing down.

"What?!" she shouted as her eyes landed on the body of her nephew being looted by the small bunny. "August!"

"Yeah... it's too late for him," Derek said. "It's also too late for you." Suddenly, he channeled the void into Harbinger, and a purple projection of the blade began to overlap the weapon. The woman's eyes grew wider and wider as he did so.

"That's..." she started, but Derek released his attack before she could finish her thoughts.

The woman knew from watching before that the skill Derek used shouldn't be blocked. The guards had blocked it and ended up crippled because of it before they died. However, she couldn't move freely through the haze like before, so her ability to evade was much worse. Still, she managed to get out of the way of his Sweeping Slash and the void that followed.

But Derek wasn't finished. He used Void Shift to move to the place that she was dodging toward before she got there. When he reappeared, it was at the tail end of her dodge. He covered his fist in his Draconic Flame Aspect, then punched out with Multi-Strike.

Derek's fist connected directly with the woman's side. Her armor and durability easily stopped any physical damage, but not the Draconic Flame Aspect. Since he wasn't hiding it any longer, Derek had put everything he could into channeling the void flame into his fist in the short time he had to prepare. The flame detached from his fist and attached itself to the woman's armor.

Since he'd used Multi-Strike, the amount that was transferred was beyond what he'd expected. The draconic void flame that was transparent and burned through the guards' mana system was nothing compared to the fully visible flame that spread throughout the woman's cowl.

"What... what is this?" the woman shouted as all the runes on her cowl started lighting up, then turning purple. In moments, every etching on the cowl was glowing deep purple. Then, the entire cowl turned to ash and fell to the ground. "No!" she yelled as the flame didn't stop there. Next, it worked its way into her armor.

The same thing happened. The draconic void flame traced the mana routes through the armor as it devoured all the mana inside. Derek gulped at the scene and looked down at his own armor. He'd almost activated his armor skill to see if it could absorb the haze and any attacks she threw at him, but he'd gone with his new skill instead—Ancestor Sheen had told him it was a very dangerous skill, after all.

Now he was thinking it was a bit too much.

Suddenly, her torso armor crumbled into pieces, then her forearms, then leggings. Finally, like a hound, the draconic void flame sniffed out the mana in her storage bracelet and shot toward it.

'No!' Silvi's voice echoed in Derek's head as she appeared in front of the woman and chopped. The woman was so stunned by everything that she couldn't even move or realize what was going on as her wrist fell from the rest of her body. 'Stop destroying storage items!' Silvi sent to Derek as she shot down to chase the wrist with the bracelet still attached to it as it fell.

Derek's mouth went wide, and the flame on the woman's body stopped. She floated in the air in nothing but her undergarments as the flames found their next source of mana to consume—the woman's own mana channels. Then, the flame disappeared inside her.

It didn't take long for the streaks of darkness that had appeared etched in her skin to rapidly begin to light up in a purple glow. The woman clutched at her chest—still not even noticing that one of her hands had been detached from her body.

Derek deactivated Absolute Nullify as he watched it, no longer doing anything. The woman was finished; she just didn't know it yet. Finally, she fell out of the sky, and Derek followed. She crashed into the ground, and Derek landed gently beside her.

Her face twisted in agony as her eyes lit up purple. Even her hair started to change colors. What the hell is this flame doing? Is it eating all her mana or converting her to void? This... I don't know about this. Derek wasn't really one for torture, and that looked exactly like what this was. So, to finish the fight, he placed Harbinger by her head and then activated Material Drain.

The skill took a bit to get through her natural defenses before it finally took her head. But as soon as she died, the flame stopped. Then, like it had a mind of its own, some of it jumped to Harbinger and tried to do the same thing to it as it had her armor.

However, Harbinger was already used to holding the void affinity, so it held firm, but Derek still wasn't having that. He held his hand over the flame and willed it to go away as hard as he could until it did. But that was only one part of the problem.

The rest of the flame had jumped out of the woman's body and was burning through the ground around her and spreading. It was like a brush fire, but Derek got the feeling it was eating and spreading through the ambient mana in the area.

Suddenly, a huge wave of Dragon Flame came from above and smothered the purple flame. Derek looked up to see Silvi there.

'Why did you do that?' he asked, but as he looked around, the flame wasn't there anymore.

'Don't know,' Silvi said. 'It got rid of the one on the guards. That flame is nasty. Where did you get it? Don't cook with it.'

'Oh...'Derek shook his head. Silvi's pure draconic flame did have anti-magic properties, and it had gotten rid of the purple flame and the bodies earlier. It made sense that she could smother the small amount of his flame with the massive blast from her flame.

Derek was already panicking about how to control the flame because he didn't think it really listened to him all that well at its current level. So, Silvi doing so took care of a big problem. Derek let out a sigh, then looked in the direction they'd come from. I hope Sheen is doing okay.