I felt like my skin was about to burn while sweat poured heavily down my face.
Even the special shoes I was wearing seemed like they would start melting at any moment and stick to the black ground.
It felt like I was walking inside a giant oven... though of course, I had never tried walking inside an oven before.
"This is hell, apparently."
Leona’s words echoed as we walked between fields of lava that illuminated this place and pushed away the darkness of the night.
Columns of smoke rose from everywhere while the smell of sulfur filled our noses along with various gases.
The lava burst from the ground and flowed, forming large winding paths that stretched for several kilometers like this.
Every step here made breathing harder while slowly cooking us alive.
"Isn’t there an end to this place? We’ve been here for a month already." Izel’s complaint echoed out, and honestly, she had a point.
Even after a whole month of moving, the ash field still hadn’t ended, and now it was turning into rivers of molten rock.
The good thing was that the hardened paths we walked on were wide enough to leave a few meters between us and the lava.
Ahead of me, both Izel and Leona moved with exhausted bodies, as if they would collapse at any moment.
"If I had a wish right now, I’d wish for a lot of ice cream." Leona spoke in a tired voice, only for Izel to look at her after hearing that.
"It’s a good thing you said that now. I’d make someone shut your mouth if that somehow happened so you wouldn’t waste the wish on your stomach."
Leona clicked her tongue, ignoring her friend. "Tsk... whatever, maybe I can make some later somehow."
"Yeah, that would be great after we get out of here."
While the girls talked at the front, I focused on what was around us.
Even though these rivers were made of molten lava, even places like this had their own life.
The magma cracks stretched deep below, filled with many souls moving here and there.
Most of them didn’t care about our presence, or didn’t even notice it in the first place, so for several hours we walked peacefully through this.
I turned my head to the right where the glowing stretch of lava was. There, I saw it explode upward while something rose to the surface and moved away from us.
One part of me wanted to jump at it and kill it, while the other wanted to avoid fighting in this place.
Well, I didn’t want to jump at it because I was thirsty for killing... of course not.
It was just that I was close to a breakthrough... so close that I could barely endure waiting for it.
Maybe the few remaining essence stones would be enough to do it, but I needed them badly for any dangerous situation, so all I could do was wait... especially since falling into this magma wouldn’t be pleasant.
I felt a pair of eyes digging into the side of my face. "Is something wrong... why do you look so tense?"
I turned my head and raised an eyebrow toward Elliot. "Tense?"
"Is something about to attack us?" Ellen asked from the other side while I answered,
"No... not yet at least."
Izel turned her head and looked at us over her shoulder while sweat covered her face. "I bet he just can’t wait to jump at something and tear it apart, that’s why he’s this tense."
I tilted my head slightly. "And what makes you think that?"
She raised her hands dramatically. "Come on, seriously? We all know you can guide us to avoid most fights, but you make us jump into them like a bunch of lunatics."
I rolled my eyes at her words... well, that was kind of obvious, but it seemed Izel still wanted to talk.
"Do you remember that huge swarm that trapped us?"
The moment she said that, everyone’s bodies trembled... well, not everyone.
Kyle walked indifferently while staring into the distance with focus.
"Please let’s just forget that." Leona’s pleading voice echoed out.
Izel shook her head while staring directly at me. "Maybe you didn’t see it, but he was smiling like a lunatic while we were almost dying."
Elliot nodded from the side. "Yeah, I think I saw him doing that at some point."
What were these idiots talking about now?
"So what’s the point of all this?" I asked while staring at Izel in front of me.
"The point is, if you’re thirsty for battle right now, then please don’t throw us into some random fight."
She raised her hand and pointed at the distant thing swimming through the lava. "Look, even monsters can live peacefully... again, please don’t do anything here... none of us wants to accidentally fall in there." Her tone was exaggerated, like she was performing in some comedy play.
I shook my head while letting out a disappointed sigh at her childish behavior. "Believe me, you’re the only one thinking I’d do something like that."
I felt several gazes stop on me only to find everyone looking at me without exception.
Elliot smiled apologetically at me. "No... she’s not the only one thinking that."
I shook my head in surrender.
...
For several more hours we moved between the volcanic lava and the scorching heat.
It was boring, especially since the monsters here seemed sluggish.
The others walked with exhausted, reddened faces from the intense heat while the conversations had stopped a while ago, probably because their throats had already dried out.
"Elliot, isn’t it time to spoil us a little?" Leona spoke while throwing a tired look at Elliot.
The latter sighed while raising his hand into the air, then in the next moment flakes of snow began falling around us.
"This really consumes a lot of essence," he muttered.
Throughout our time walking here, Elliot sometimes did this to lessen the heat, even though he constantly complained about it.
"Haaaa... amazing." Leona let out a relieved breath while opening her arms toward the falling snow.
Suddenly I felt something strange.
I stepped forward, passing the others and leaving them behind while essence surged through my body.
In the next moment, before any of them could speak, the lava exploded several meters away from me beside the path and scattered into the air, nearly hitting me.
From there, a huge four-legged monster emerged, blocking our path.
Magma dripped from its body, revealing thick black rocky skin.
Its eyes were two circles of glowing red, with a head nearly my size and a body several meters long.
It was a Rank 3 monster.
It stared at us with furious eyes before opening its mouth wide... maybe it was going to roar or something.
But before it could even do that, I had already closed the distance and arrived beneath its head while my essence-covered sword was in my hand.
Standing beneath its rocky neck, I swung toward it with all my strength.
With some resistance, my sword passed through its rocky skin and into what was behind it as the slash continued.
In the next moment, its head separated into the air and I jumped to the side to avoid being crushed beneath its massive corpse.
With a loud sound, its body crashed down, sending faint tremors and cracks through the black ground, while its soul faded before my eyes.
I stared at the massive corpse while hiding my sword back inside my ring with a wide smile on my face. "Finally."
"You see? You’re always like this."
I turned my head toward the source of the voice to see Izel.
I ignored her while extending my hand toward the monster’s corpse, then with some concentration essence flowed into my body rapidly.
I ignored every voice around me while pouring all my focus into absorbing the essence.
I was only a hair away, so I hoped this monster would be enough.
And it was.
After some time, I felt an invisible barrier shatter and something new spread inside me while power surged through my body and reached every cell within it.
Along with that, I felt faint pain, and my body became lighter while my mind became clearer.
My sense expanded and surpassed its previous limit, covering a greater area than ever before.
Like every time this sudden expansion in my senses happened, a powerful headache spread through my head from the new amount of information flooding in at once.
I closed my eyes while trying to adapt to this quickly as I felt the others’ gazes nearly piercing my body.
I opened my eyes and let out a satisfied sigh while a happy smile formed on my lips on its own.
I turned my head toward the gazes only to see everyone staring at me with shock drawn across their exhausted faces.
"Did you really just advance?... Again?" Elliot asked with surprise written all over his face.
I shrugged indifferently. "As you can see."