August
The blacksmith deemed me worthy of teaching and he was named Yatrat, but first, he wanted me to choose a weapon or a fighting style at least. We first tried shield blocking and defending, the idea of using a shield was to use my opponent's energy against themselves, but I didn’t exactly get how that idea worked, then we tried swords, and that wouldn’t work either. We decided to rest for a while, then the blacksmith asked me one important question that I didn’t think about before,
“What are you trying to achieve? Why must you be stronger?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Then, I will not teach a man with no intentions.”
“Don’t leave, let me think!” Then he struck me with a heated fist. I got up from the ground with my stomach steaming, and before I could even ask why he was hitting me, he was already in front of me, ready for another hit. I was blasted back from the face, but this time I got up before he could blow me off again, I threw multiple rocks at him to distract him,
“You can use earth?” Before he knew it, a small hill was above him. I dropped the rock, a bit guilty but he split it in half with a single finger and he punched me, along with the strike, the idea of him also being cocky because of his strength hit me. I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to show the world you don’t have to be rich and powerful to rule others.
“What I want, is to become the king, I want to show this world you don’t need money or strength, I will be the poor king, and you will help me in my dominance of the world.” Yatrat slowly nodded,
“I shall help you then.” We started with the basics, rage empowers flames because your temperature tends to rise with anger, so I have to let my emotions out only when it’s necessary. He insisted that I should start on the normal fire level and then try to master green. I snapped my fingers and flames erupted from them. He did seem intrigued by the fact that his student can use three ki uses now, but he got used to it, and within two minutes, I was juggling fire. He told me to keep juggling while he did some important business, which kind? He never told me, but he came back looking stressed,
“By now, you should’ve mastered flame control, now shoot it in a compact beam shape.” Maybe it was because I’ve had experience mastering lava but the fire came to me really easily, and I had enough control to use green or normal flames. I had mastered fire, but something seemed off, it was too easy, with earth, I had what’s called a mastery test, which was moving the mountain, but here, nothing was hard.
“Now for the test, beat these four fire masters and you shall pass.” I knew it, it couldn’t be easy, because it never is. The men appeared, and they each had different levels of fire, one was normal flames, but his mastery was great on normal, one was yellow, green, then the challenge, blue. They simultaneously shot me with flames, I blasted myself up and shot down at them. The men up to yellow were taken out but green was still standing, barley, but still standing. Blue was unfazed, he looked up at me like I was a fly, of course, none of them had muscles I had from learning earth so they could only damage me with fire. I landed, and the two guys shot more flames at me, and I deflected with a green fiery kick. I noticed green was stumbling, I could take him out but blue was basically guarding him, but from the looks of it, blue wasn’t doing great either. I can do this, I went straight for blue, it would’ve been death to me if I didn’t duck down at the powerful blue blast, I uppercut him with green flames surrounding my arms and he went flying, He’s out! Now there was only the green guy left, I looked at him menacingly, like my gaze could pierce him, I walked with tremendous pressure each step. I was scary. If I wasn’t the one emanating this pressure, I would have passed out myself, but the man stayed, he started walking back and then running but I appeared in front of him, I looked like I was going to kill him. He was really scared now, I lifted my hand, and flicked him with my finger, I won. I immediately realized that this pressure isn’t my power, then there was a voice in my head,
“I hope you do well, if not, I chose this for nothing.” It was a dark voice, I couldn't see him so I closed my eyes and I saw a no legged no armed… thing. His body was like a snail, thin from the bottom but thicker at the top, his eyes glowed red and he was pitch black with little horns at the top of his head. His body, however, had orange cracks all around his body, What is this creature? I opened my eyes, and my teacher was paying something to a bunch of guys.
“I’m telling you, business is going down give me more time!” Then he slapped him hard. I came over to help, the big men said,
“Hey hey, it's more fresh meat, how do you wanna cook this guy?” What the hell? Do they eat people? I couldn’t think about what to do about this situation, I closed my eyes in frustration, then I saw that creature again,
“Yo, need help?”
“No, go away, why are you here anyway?”
“Well, I gotta say, I can’t answer much of those important questions but all I know is that I’ll be stuck in your head for the rest of either your or my life.”
“No, screw you, what even are you?”
“Did the bird tell you what he is?”
“Yeah…”
“Ok so it's safe for me to tell you, ok I am what you call a devil, demon, whatever synonyms, normally we just call ourselves ‘Underworld beings’ but geez you humans just had to name us huh? We haven’t been around for a long time, the last time someone appeared was hundred something years ago.” Now how does this system work? I can go back in time, right? Does he stay? Do I only meet him in this era? “I go both ways, I know about your time curse, that curse is probably why I chose you and not some buff guy.”
“What? It’s a curse? Huh?”
“Oh sorry, did they not tell you? They probably called it a gift instead of a curse if they did.” While talking, I got beat, I opened my eyes when I was hit hard, apparently, they were beating me hard but since I was talking to the “thing” I wasn’t budging. I quickly dispersed some weak flames at them, but they got all riled up and started to use their own ki techniques.
“Ok help, but what can you do to help?” He answered with a mischievous smile,
“Use your flame once more.”
“Why? You already saw its ineffectiveness.”
“Just do it.” So I did, and the flames were yellow inside and had a black aura, What stage fire is this? This fire burnt them down to the bone.
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