"So, does that mean I don't have a real gift?" Kyle asked, changing the topic. "I mean, if you can also eat beasts, what's the point of my gift?"
"There must be something to it," Sebastian said, going along with the new topic. "Have you really tested your gift?"
"I mean, yeah," Kyle said.
"What can you eat?" Sebastian asked.
"Beasts, humans, and metals," Kyle said.
"Dwarves can't eat metal, right?" Sebastian asked.
"I don't think they can," Kyle said.
The next moment, Kyle summoned a bit of iron and pushed it to Sebastian.
"Down the hatch," Sebastian said, crunching down on the metal.
Kyle could hear the sounds of crunching metal from several meters away.
The more Sebastian chewed, the more his face distorted in disgust.
Then, he spat the wet globs of crunched iron to the ground.
"Nope," he said.
Kyle summoned some iron and put it over his tongue.
Sebastian could see how the iron immediately dissolved.
In less than a second, it was completely gone.
"Crazy," he commented. "I can't do that. Have you tried eating something else?"
"I tried eating earth," Kyle said. "It kinda works, but not really. I just use more Ether to digest it than I gain out of it."
Sebastian raised a brow. "Maybe that's because you don't have an Affinity for it."
"Affinity?" Kyle asked. "You think I can eat fire and wind?"
"Have you tried?" Sebastian asked.
Kyle looked at the ground. "No."
"Well, let's go!" Sebastian said, shooting into the ground.
Kyle followed him, and after just a couple of seconds, they found a stream of magma.
"Try it," Sebastian said.
Kyle grabbed a bit of magma and put it into his mouth.
It broke down almost immediately.
"It's weird," Kyle said. "I think it's because it's made of Earth and Fire Ether. Wait a sec."
Kyle shot out of the hole they had made and returned a couple of seconds later with several trees, which he dumped onto the magma.
The trees immediately burst into flames, and Kyle opened his mouth.
'How the fuck am I supposed to eat fire? Am I supposed to just snap at it with my teeth?'
Yet, as soon as Kyle wanted to eat the fire, the flames changed direction.
They became more intense, and the wood almost immediately burned into ash as all the flames entered Kyle's mouth.
Kyle opened his eyes in shock.
"What the fuck?" he said. "I didn't know I could do that!"
"See? It's not that bad!" Sebastian said with a smile.
"I want to try something, " Kyle said before he shot further into the ground.
Sebastian followed him, and a couple of seconds later, he realized what Kyle's plan was.
After about a minute of digging, the two of them reached the stream of Deepwind, Anti-Wind, or Yin-Wind, depending on what word one wanted to use.
Kyle opened his mouth and willed the Yin-Wind to enter his mouth.
A moment later, little black streams came out of the Yin-Wind and entered Kyle's mouth.
When Sebastian saw that, his eyes widened.
"You can even eat that?" he asked.
"Apparently, I can," Kyle said. "Anti-Wind is just another form of wind, right? It also has a ridiculous amount of Ether inside of it."
"I could probably become a Transcendent just by eating this for a couple of days or so."
"That's crazy," Sebastian said. "You don't even need to kill a Nature God to advance."
"If I can eat this," Kyle said, "I can also eat Anti-Fire."
"That's actually amazing!" he said with widely opened eyes. "The main reason I managed to learn so much about metal so quickly was that I could eat it as well. If I had known that I could also eat wind, I might have saved an entire year of comprehension!"
"Now, who's the one with the bad gift?" Sebastian asked with a smile.
Kyle snorted. "Alright, maybe my gift isn't so bad."
"Anyway, now that I know that I can also just eat fire, I want to get onto my last Law," Kyle said.
"Understandable," Sebastian answered. "I also want to get back to learning about Yin-Lightning."
"Speaking of," Sebastian added as he looked around. "You got a couple of minutes to reconstruct the machine here?"
"Sure," Kyle said.
The two of them quickly recreated the machine in this place. It was much easier to construct it here since they didn't need to isolate all the water and deal with the brutal pressure.
Sure, earth and metal would create even more pressure, but earth and metal could be pushed to the side and solidified. As long as there was a tunnel to the surface, they only needed to deal with a slightly increased atmospheric pressure.
Eventually, Kyle left, while Sebastian returned to comprehending Yin-Lightning.
Kyle stopped above a huge lake of magma.
'The Law of Fire is the last one I need,' he thought, 'and I already know which of them is the Base Fragment and which are Auxiliary Fragments.'
'Friction is not the only way to create fire. According to Sebastian, there's also Compression, Impact, chemical reaction, and just straight-up adding heat. '
'All of these added up should give me the Base Fragment, the Fragment of Fire Composition.'
'Fire's Focus should be a heat beam, laser, or whatever.'
'Fire's Expansion should be an explosion. Although, now that I think about it, an explosion might be a mix of Focus and Expansion.'
'The Element-specific Fragment should be just heat.'
'I think I should start with Focus and Expansion. After all, I learned a ton about them already when I was younger.'
The next moment, Kyle summoned a black piece of metal.
As he looked at it, he remembered Theodor's trial.
This stone was one of the minerals that exploded.
Kyle put the stone into his mouth and cracked down.
BANG!
A big explosion appeared in Kyle's mouth, but the explosion was immediately digested as soon as it appeared.
'This is much easier,' he thought as he created another black ball.
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