A few more days.
We had finally reached the foot of the mountains he had pointed out to .
And already, the world around us had changed.
Even the air burned the lungs. Every breath left a taste of iron, as if the air itself had been forged in so ancient forge.
The air was heavier, hotter, saturated with a tallic, almost acidic sll.
Our nostrils sotis bled without warning, eaten away by the acidity in the air. An invisible, constant bite, slowly gnawing at every exposed organ. Even blinking beca painful, as sulfur particles clung like burning sand.
With each step, the ground grew darker, more cracked, streaked with fissures from which reddish vapors escaped.
But that didn’t stop us.
The training... continued.
Without respite.
Each day, I made her run, jump, dodge, strike.
In the rocks.
Under the ash rains.
Against the remaining Gorvaks, now rarer, but also fiercer, mutated by the environnt.
And at night?
I hunted her.
No rules. No breaks.
And she held on.
She bled. Often. But even pain seed to have given up on her.
She endured my assaults, deflected my claws, reford her stances even on the ground, used her reach with increasing surgical precision.
And I... recovered, tested, prepared.
Because here, the shadow was no longer enough.
The scenery had changed completely.
The rocky paths had given way to high volcanic plateaus, where the ground glowed beneath our steps.
Rivers of thick, yellow sulfur flowed through the valleys, releasing an unbreathable vapor that forced us to stay at higher elevations.
Despite the stifling heat, twisted forests still grew: trees with black bark, leaves scorched at the edges, resistant to the furnace.
Their roots dug into the rock like claws, exuding a thick, black sap, sotis phosphorescent. Sotis, a sinister crackle rose, like the rasp of a tree being strangled. Nothing here grew without screaming.
And sotis, in the distance, perched on the cliffs: Cities.
Angular structures carved into black stone and molten tal, shining like frozen magma.
Suspended bridges linked smoking towers, and obsidian columns rose like ancient watchtowers.
It was a harsh, inhospitable region.
But alive.
And we... delved into it, day by day.
Stronger.
Harder.
Climbing into the mountains, as the wind bit our faces and the rock seed to moan beneath our feet, we encountered a beast unlike any we had seen since the beginning of our journey.
It erged slowly from a gaping underground tunnel, as if expelled from the burning bowels of the world.
It was a massive reptilian creature, standing on its hind legs, nearly four ters tall. Its skin was a nightmarish blend of blackened scales and mineral spikes, like sharp shards of basalt. Viscous lava oozed from its joints, dripping slowly onto the ground where it sizzled the stone. Its grotesquely arched back was dotted with small, smoking craters, pulsing with an unnatural breath, as if a miniature volcano beat beneath its skin.
Every step it took seed to awaken the mountain itself, and the air around it shimred from the suffocating heat.
I remained hidden in the shadow of a rocky outcrop, my presence erased by my stealth skill. The slightest sound, the slightest movent could have offered up to the creature like a sacrifice.
My eyes stayed fixed on Lysara.
She, motionless, tangible, a silhouette frozen between two heartbeats of the universe. She watched the beast without blinking, as if she had been waiting for it.
The silence was total. Not a breath. Even the mountain seed to hold its breath.
As a precaution, I cast Identification.
Identification (Adept) – Na: ???? | Race ???? | Level: 49 | Suddenly releases a plu of fire from its back.
Lysara could handle it on her own. I was sure of it.
Her training had pushed her to her limits, to go beyond them, to sharpen her reflexes to instinct. She had beco faster, more unpredictable, able to adapt to countless situations. And this mont... this was the test.
The monster spotted the girl who slowly stepped toward it. A deep growl rose from its gut, then it dropped to all fours, like a primal predator. Jets of lava burst from its dorsal craters with a geyser-like roar, spraying burning gouts all around.
Lysara stepped back just in ti. Parts of her skin were hit, her kimono burned through in places, but she had avoided the worst.
She attacked.
Instantly. Without warning. A flash of calculated violence.
Her body was nothing but a vessel of destruction, sculpted by repetition and pain. Every muscle moved without hesitation, without wondering why, as if doubt had been torn from her along with her first tears.
Her first blow struck the creature head-on, pushing it back despite its massive bulk. Then a second. A third. She pumled her opponent with surgical precision, an infernal rhythm that gave the beast no respite. Each impact seed to make the mountain-beast stagger a little more.
But the abomination, cornered, dropped back to all fours, ready to unleash another destructive eruption.
That was what she was waiting for.
While she struck, I had noticed the fragnts of flesh she had discreetly detached from herself, subtly shaped, moved, fixed. A silent strategy in full execution.
Every move had been planned. Every scrap of flesh beca a tool. She didn’t hit harder. She hit smarter.
As the craters prepared to spew their hellfire, a dull thud rang out. Every conduit was blocked.
Lysara had sealed the lava vents with her own extensions, using her latest skill evolution. Her malleable flesh had transford into an almost mineral material, capable of withstanding extre pressures.
The result was imdiate.
Trapped, unable to vent its overheated energy, the creature convulsed, its innards compressed to the point of implosion. A muffled roar echoed, then the Monster exploded from within, spraying smoldering chunks all around.
A scene of pure carnage.
Lysara stood there, amidst the smoking remains, unscathed.
She had watched, analyzed, anticipated.
And she had adapted.
rcilessly. Unhesitatingly.
My student was clearly more talented than I.
I attacked her.
Bursting suddenly from my stealth skill like a specter from nowhere, my hand lunged at her without warning.
But she didn’t try to trade multiple blows.
She knew.
She knew the power gap was still there, tangible, brutal. That in a prolonged duel, she would inevitably fall. But she also knew I would never seriously harm her. That these assaults, even violent, were nothing but disguised lessons.
So she played only one card. One.
The decisive strike.
Every ti, she bet everything on a single attack. Blinding. Unexpected. A flash of ingenuity in a world of muscle and blood. And each ti, the blow was bolder than the last. More dangerous. More surprising.
She didn’t dodge, she didn’t retreat.
She read.
She predicted.
And she struck where I wasn’t looking.
But once again, she failed.
She collapsed, panting, her hamr still extended in the void where my head should have been.
I stood above her for a mont, staring in silence.
Then I dropped a flask at her feet before vanishing once more into the shadows, as if I had never been there.
One day, that strike will land.
And I’m already glad for it.
Climbing ever higher into the volcanic mountains, the air grew more acrid, heavier, saturated with ash and threat.
Around a bend in the path, a natural arch stood, split like a petrified jaw.
On its flanks, ancient marks: maybe runes, maybe claw marks.
Under the arch, frozen in black rock, a human figure, mouth wide open, arms outstretched.
A statue? No. A petrified being, trapped in an eternal scream.
Lysara paused for a second.
Our eyes t. Then she resud walking, as if nothing had existed.
We encountered more reptilians.
Creatures similar to the first, all from the depths. But none stood a chance. Lysara dispatched them, relentless. In each encounter, she repeated the sa pattern: observation, adaptation, annihilation. Always one step ahead.
Always more precise.
I had finally understood.
These beasts had rudintary senses. No conventional sight, no acute hearing. They must have relied on heat, ... sothing primitive. That’s why they never reacted to Lysara’s extensions: without heat, they passed completely under their radar. And that’s probably why they didn’t even understand how they were dying.
Between battles, I never let her rest.
I attacked her. Again and again.
Always without warning. Always faster, harder, more vicious. The goal wasn’t to defeat her. The goal was to make her fight constantly out of breath. To make exhaustion her normal state. To have her perform even when drained, burned, exhausted.
I fed her every three days.
Water, drawn from the magic flask, rationed to the drop. And the dozens of Gorvaks I had stored in my enchanted pouch took care of the rest.
No comfort.
No pause.
Just efficiency.
And so several weeks passed.
Fire no longer burned us.
Silence no longer weighed on us.
And even death, up there, had finally looked away.
The monsters evolved.
Their strength, their speed, their techniques. Each encounter was more perilous than the last, more demanding. And Lysara... she kept up.
More than that: she stayed ahead. Her body changed before my eyes. Her instincts sharpened. Her gaze beca more... profound. Cold, sotis. But alive.
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