New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 1020: Rebellious To The End



When her party split off from her, respecting her wishes, Kary's expressionless gaze locked on her opponent.

With so much magma falling from above and the mana in this cavern richer than she'd seen in the entire dungeon, she felt like a duck in water.

Raising her arms to the incoming magma, Kary felt it react to her will, albeit with difficulty. She understood that this was because there was more stone than flame in the magma, and her stone affinity had never been great.

But that little difference wouldn't matter to her, since the kobold had already lost control over it himself. She didn't need to wrestle power from him, and the magma reacted to her will freely.

Pulsing out with mana, Kary mentally registered every glob of falling magma and started giving them orders, letting her mana do the rest.

Instantly, the magma started changing trajectory and went from falling straight down and possibly hitting every one of her party members to falling at an angle, directed toward the kobold sorcerer, who watched with a horror-filled gaze.

He had hoped that with such a large-scale attack, she wouldn't be able to react to all of it, and some form of damage would come to the humans. But he had gravely misjudged the human woman's strength.

Too weak to block all the projectiles now flying toward him, the sorcerer focused on the bigger ones. Thanks to the great one's blessings, his scales had some sense of flame resistance, and he could take a few attacks without worry.

Using his control over the magma, which he felt greatly struggled against the woman's empowerment, he swatted aside the larger motes of magma, letting the smaller ones hit his body.

The burning rock quickly tore through his robes, exposing the scales below but otherwise doing relatively no damage to him. Of course, it wasn't to say he wasn't feeling them.

Every hit he took, he felt like a needle had stung him, making his skin crawl with the realization that she was slowly overpowering him.

He knew he couldn't control all the falling magma, and seeing her do so with such ease angered him beyond words.

'Is this all that the great one's gifts amount to?! I can't even overpower a human girl with power only over flames?!' he thought angrily.

Feeling his nape tingle, the kobold snapped his attention back to his enemy, which wasn't in front of him anymore, and barrel-rolled forward as something whistled in the air behind him.

In his pirouette forward, he saw a slim flame lance fly by him quickly, burning through the air before vanishing as it missed its intended target.

His eyes scanned the room in a frenzy, trying to spot where she was now, and he couldn't find her.

He stabilized his flight with his newly gifted wings and shot toward the cavern ceiling, trying to get an eagle's eye point of view. But his hopes were quickly dashed.

Appearing before him was a wall of flames, the size of which he could only hope of achieving someday, as it encompassed the entire top part of the cavern, its thickness enough for him not to see through it.

At first, he wanted to fly through and ignore the flames altogether. But when he got near it, the heat from the flame wall nearly seared his wings, and he swiftly changed direction, gliding back down.

'How can she conjure flames so hot?!' he wondered, in panic, as he returned to trying to locate her.

But it was in vain. He couldn't find the flaming woman, try as he might.

And the reason for that was very simple.

Kary has been hiding her glowing body in the pools below for a while now, using the natural flames of her environment to obscure her own and conceal her presence.

And when she formed that massive flame wall, she immediately burst forward into it, hiding within her flames like a fish underwater. The fire was barely an obstacle for her since she wasn't truly using her eyes to see, and she grinned, making her featureless eyes narrow a bit. "Alright. I've played enough with you," she whispered, happy with herself.

She had vowed to herself earlier to show this darned lizard who was the most powerful fire mage amongst them, and with how he was fleeing from her firewall, it was already evident.

Since there was no point in going on with torturing him, Kary decided to end his pitiful flailing.

Forming another flaming spear in her hands, Kary shot downward, aiming directly for the kobold's exposed back, her speed almost breaching the sound barrier as the spear in her hands pierced through its target, setting him ablaze briefly.

Of course, the fire didn't last long on the kobold's fire-resistant scales, only leaving him with nasty burns and a few scales burnt to cinders. Unfortunately for him, his wings weren't as lucky.

She caught him by the throat before he could move away and stared deeply into his eyes.

"I know you thought of us as only humans, without the power to do anything of our own fate in this cave that you think belongs to the great one. But you were wrong in one deduction, sorcerer."

The kobold, gripping at her forearm as his wings were now rendered useless, trying to catch a breath from her tight grip around his throat.

"And what is that, human?" he asked, his tone still dripping with venom.

"Humans aren't like you, monsters. We aren't born only to follow a single path. Unlike you, we get to forge our own destiny and blaze our own path. Your master was never going to be the end of us. And I apologize in his stead for giving you the wrong picture of the world."

The kobold glared at her.

"You think us nothing more than simple-minded monsters? You are no better than him," the

sorcerer spat.

Kary's eyes narrowed at his words, her grip tightening on his neck.

"Then you should have proven that instead of trying to kill. But you obeyed your master's orders blindingly, and now you die for him. Farewell, sorcerer."

Pushing her mana outside her body, she forced her ignited form to burn up and incinerated the kobold within seconds. But instead of howls of pain, all she got from him was a deathly glare as his body turned to ashes.

'All this rebellious spirit, and he still couldn't say no to a dragon egg. Such wasted potential...' Clicking her tongue in disappointment, Kary flew over to her allies, landing next to Alexander.

"Welcome back."