Ch: 120.4

I knew it was dangerous, but I was starting to get my hopes up.

After a few hours of searching and prepping what little I had and a lot of cutting on Tabitha’s part, my stack of roots had quadrupled in size, and everything was essentially ready. I had fuel, a forge, a crucible, a workstation, and metal to work. All my tools might as well be on another planet back in the village, but I wasn't focusing on that now.

It was all well and good planning everything out in my head, but now that I had the essentials in front of me, I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The small amount of water we discovered while gathering roots was just the icing on the preverbal cake. I just hoped the tunnel wasn't boobytrapped.

I had already taken a quick nap and meditated to draw in as much ambient mana as possible, so I was brimming with energy—I just hoped it would be enough.

“I’m ready,” I said aloud to pump myself up even further and to tell Tabitha that I was finally starting.

Tabitha nodded back at me, her support unwavering. She knew what was at stake and didn’t so much as crack under the pressure.

Slowly, I added the driest roots to my forge, interweaving them around the crucible. The metal fragments we scavenged from the skeleton were already inside, waiting to be melted. I was hoping the drier roots would ignite easier, and once I got the fire going, I'd add the others as needed.

“Here goes nothing.” I place my hand over the forge.

 “Llaif gamfr ol e nnamse!”

A small flame sprouted from my fingertip. It was comically tiny and produced very little light in the dark hallway, but it didn't stay small for long.

Mana Manipulation, Inject Mana, and Empowered Spell synchronized simultaneously, turning the minuscule flame into a roaring inferno.

I didn’t hold back; I couldn’t. While I spewed fire, Tabitha dropped her light spell to conserve mana.

I could feel my mana pool emptying rapidly, but I didn't stop—I didn't even slow down. The grey bricks were gradually turning red under the magical fire. It was working; they were absorbing heat like I hoped they would. However, they weren't my focus; the roots were. Their outer casings were charring, but none of them were burning yet.

I expelled more and more fire from my hand, quickly burning through half of my mana pool, and not a single root caught fire.

“Come on!” I shouted over the roar of my empowered spell. It would all be over before it even began if the roots didn’t light. I couldn’t melt the metal fragments with my mana alone, not even if I had ten times the amount of mana I had now.

My fire mana was trying to break through the roots steal like exterior, but the mana in the roots snuffed out every tendril that did.

Off to the side, Tabitha stood like a statue in the face of the heat I was producing. In her hand was our last mana potion. If my mana pool dropped to twenty percent before the roots started to burn, I would have to drink it, but that was my last resort. Along with the one health potion, we only had a single mana potion, which we needed for our fight against the winged serpent.

Sadly, the choice wasn’t up to me. If the roots wouldn’t ignite, I would have no other choice but to drink it. We could plan around not having a mana potion; the same couldn’t be said about Tabitha’s shield. That said—

“Light, damn you,” I grit my teeth as my mana dipped below 600. In another few seconds, I would reach the 20% cut-off mark Tabitha and I agreed on. I couldn’t afford to go any lower than that and risk passing out. If I did, I could be out for days, which was basically a death sentence.

Light

Light

Light!

As I was just about to lose hope, I felt it, a spark not sustained by magic. The tip of one of the roots was burning.

It started slow, but I could sense it spreading. That said, I wasn’t going to risk stopping prematurely.

I kept channeling my magic until it wasn’t wise to do so any longer. By that point, a handful of the roots were, to my immense relief, burning brightly.

Sweat dripped down my face, both from the heat of my spell and from exhausting 80% of my mana pool in under a minute. My legs shook, but that didn't stop me from grinning like a loon.

“I did it,” I mumbled under my breath.

“You sure did,” Tabitha placed a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"They're burning well," I noted, staring into the slowly expanding flames in my forge. The dense mana from the roots mixed with the fire mana in spurts, causing the fire to dance wildly and fluctuate. When they were low, it felt like the forge back home, but when they fluctuated, it felt like I was standing next to the sun.

Mana Skin struggled to cope, even with the improvements I made since entering the mana-dense region. But it wasn’t enough— regardless, I didn’t back away.

“Alright, let’s see how hot we can get this.” I waited a few minutes for the fire to stabilize before I started adding more roots to the blaze. One by one, I fed more wood to the fire, to the point it felt like I was the one burning.

Tabitha had long since stepped back, unable to tolerate the sheer amount of heat my forge was putting out.

The rust on the metal scraps had already vaporized under the inferno, but other than that, they were still whole. “It needs to be hotter,” I talked to myself while I worked, partially to narrate for Tabitha, who was watching me work from a distance, but mostly to keep my mind from how hot it was standing next to the magical fire— and it was magical.

Adding magical substances to the forge wasn’t new to me, but this wasn’t simply adding magicite to an already raging fire. The roots didn’t have the mana density of magicite, but they were close, and this wasn’t mixing two substances together to create something new.

The roots and the mana within them were one structure. As the wood burned, so did the mana inside it, as was the opposite. It created a perfect feedback loop, producing powerful, magic-infused flames.

The force-absorbing bricks I used to make my forge were bright red now and couldn’t contain all the heat they were absorbing. In the bright light produced by the magical fire, you could see the air twisting and shimmering around each brick like the air was about to catch fire.

At some point, while I was working, Tabitha pulled out our waterskins and held them in front of her with the caps off. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see faint traces of steam coming out the tops, meaning the water inside was either boiling or close to it.

My body screamed to step away from the flames, but I ignored its warnings. I pushed through the burning sensation and added more roots until it happened. A single bead of liquid metal ran down the side of one of the metal fragments as if it were sweating.

I wish I could say the same about myself, but my sweat vaporized the moment it left my skin.

But that didn't matter; the fragments were melting, and with them, an unimaginable weight was lifted from my shoulders. My crazy plan was working, but I couldn’t celebrate yet.

I had to keep tending to the fire, which was difficult without tools. I used the longest tree roots as makeshift fire pokers. However, they only lasted a few seconds before they, too, burst into flames, and I was forced to add them to the forge as kindling.

More metal fragments began to liquify, and soon, a puddle of molten metal was at the bottom of my crucible. At the same time, my pile of roots was steadily vanishing into the flames.

I kept working, ignoring the burning sensation that had now seeped into my bones. I couldn’t stop— I wouldn’t stop.

This shield would be our salvation; I had to tough it out.

Then, a cool sensation briefly washed over me before the heat returned in full force. It happened so fast that for a second, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, but then I felt the trickling sensation of experience points fusing with my soul.

I didn’t even need to pull up my status page to know what skill I just unlocked. Ever since I started apprenticing under Del, I wondered if I would ever unlock this skill. I thought I would never get it because of Mana Skin, but enduring these magic flames was enough to do the job.

I finally acquired Heat Resistance, my tenth tier 3 skill.

At level 1, it basically did nothing against the heat I was currently facing, but I was happy to take whatever I could get. Resistance skills were some of the most coveted skills in the world, and some of the hardest to obtain, and I just got my third. What did that say about my life?

Grinning through the pain, I kept tending to the fire.

“You aren’t going crazy again on me, are you?” Tabitha’s deadpan voice called out to me over the burning hell pit that was my forge when she noticed my wild expression.

“Not this time,” I hollered back in glee. “Just unlocked Heat Resistance.”

“You hadn’t already?” Tabitha seemed genuinely baffled.

“Never needed it before,” I continued to smile through the pain. My lips were so dry, I could feel them cracking in real time along with my throat and lungs, so I added another round of roots to the fire and finally stepped back towards Tabitha, if only for a moment.

I didn’t care if the water was boiling or if all the bad stuff hadn’t been purged yet, I grabbed my water skin and started chugging. There was a noticeable drop in temperature away from the forge, but it was still scalding. All the grey bricks around us were absorbing the ambient heat and dispersing it amongst the greater structure, but they couldn’t keep up with what the forge was putting out since they weren’t connected.

After guzzling half my boiling waterskin and thinking it felt cooling as I drank, I handed it back to Tabitha and forced my way back to the roaring inferno. Most of the metal fragments had liquified, but I could still sense chunks stubbornly refusing to melt suspended in the liquid metal. They needed to melt before I moved on to the next step, or I risked the structure of the soon-to-be shield.

By this point, the majority of the tree roots we gathered had been fed to the fire and turned to ash. It was going to be close.

One by one, I added the remaining roots to the fire until I was down to my second-to-last one. Carefully, I placed it where I thought the forge needed it most and stepped back, as there was nothing more I could do.

I needed the last root, and Tabitha couldn't afford to use up more energy to cut down more, meaning I had nothing else to add to the fire besides my hopes and dreams, and those didn't burn easily.

Using Sense Mana, I monitored the liquid metal in the crucible and the slowly shrinking fragments within. The flames were decreasing, but their heat was still intense. The temperature was slowly dropping, but the heat loss wasn't too bad, thanks to the grey bricks holding it in.

“How is it?” Tabitha asked as she joined me at my side, once again able to handle the falling temperature.

“There’s a few more fragments in the process of melting,” I told her without taking my eyes off the forge.

"I take it that's bad," she said with little emotion, but I could see the signs of worry in her eyes.

“If they don’t melt fully, it could lead to a critical failure in your shield. I don’t have to tell you how bad that would be. Two fragments left,” I noted.

Neither of us said anything more as the fire dimmed. I didn't tell Tabitha when one of the fragments finally melted.

We stood there until the last flames went out, and we were again plunged into darkness.

“Tikth idwessgh fral nhtig!”

Tabitha slowly recited her country’s version of the light spell, pushing back against the abyss but not fully conquering it.

“Well?” She asked.

After a moment and a massive sigh of relief, I gave her the good news. "It's done—barely." I gave her a thumbs-up.

“And that’s okay?”

"Should be, now, for the fun part." Rushing forward, I glanced down into the forge at the still-glowing pool of liquid metal. Things were in the process of cooling down, but I couldn’t wait for that.

Gritting my teeth, I dropped Mana Skin on everything but my hands, channeling the small amount of mana I recovered from doing so also there. Without my skill protecting me, I was forced to bear the brunt of the remaining heat with nothing but my physical stats and LV 1 of Heat resistance.

Scratch that, LV 2 of Heat Resistance.

Needless to say, my already red skin started to blacken as I was cooked alive. Holes started to form in my clothes, and I could smell burning hair. Not wasting any more time, I leaned in, grabbed my makeshift crucible with my bare hands, and pulled it out of the forge.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," I repeated over and over as I rushed to my impromptu workstation nearby. The air between the layers of Mana Skin protected my hands, but it did nothing for the rest of me.

“Do you have my hammer?” I called over my shoulder, sensing Tabitha behind me.

“Ready,” Tabitha replied.

“Good, because we only have one shot at this. Don’t blame me if it doesn’t look very nice,” I told her.

"As long as it works, I could care less what it looks like," Tabitha deadpanned.

“You say that now, but what about after we escape? What will people say about my work then?”

“We’ll deal with it then; now hurry up; you're starting to smell like a well-cooked steak.” In a rare showing, Tabitha joked.

“That’s not funny,” I whined as I started to pour the liquid metal into a circular divot on the top of my workstation—a stack of grey bricks.

“I wasn’t joking,” Tabitha shot back.

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or not,” I told her as the divot filled up with molten metal. As soon as the last drop fell, I chucked the glowing grey stone that was my crucible like a hot potato. It crashed against the wall across the hallway, shattering into a million angry red fragments.

Even the grey stone couldn't hold up against that kind of temperature for that long.

Now that I wasn’t holding a crucible straight out of the hottest forge I'd ever seen, I could again use Mana Skin to cover my entire body. The relief I felt doing so was instant.

Checking my status page quickly, I frown at the 500-odd health points I lost on that little stunt. I wish I could’ve done things differently, but no matter how you sliced it, it was the only way I got the crucible out of the forge before it started solidifying again. There was no way I was moving it without proper tools, but I couldn’t focus on that now.

The skin on my arms was flaking off in patches, but my hands were okay, which meant I could work and needed to hurry.

Unlike the forge I built on the exposed patch of earth, my workstation was connected to the rest of the colosseum, so it was pulling the heat out of Tabitha’s shield, which was exactly what I wanted. My mana pool was still floating barely above 20%, so I needed help to bring the metal down to a more workable temperature in a controlled manner.

I waited for that crucial window where the metal was hot enough to temper with my hammer, but still malleable enough to hit. I had no way of heating it back up again, so I only had one chance at this.

I could sense the mana structure inside the metal settling into place as it cooled. Once it was fully formed, that was the time for me to start hitting it with my hammer.

Now!

Holding my hand out, Tabitha handed me my hammer. It was a good thing I had practiced using it to fix her armor, or else I might be more nervous than I already was.

I didn’t hold back and used every one of my physical skills to swing my hammer down on the glowing disk. When my hammer met metal, a ringing noise so shrill that it cut into my eardrums filled the empty tomb. The result was a crackling sound from the bricks supporting the shield, and my hammer flew back at me with almost as much force as I had swung it.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” I dumbly commented as my brain processed what had just happened.

I saw it all with Sense Mana. Like the gray bricks around us, the shield absorbed a part of my hammer strike, but unlike the stones, it didn't hold onto the energy and release it over time; it did so all at once, back the way it came.

Holly shit, it was magic Vibranium! It was missing a few of the qualities I remembered from comic books in my past life, but the comparison was close enough.

I couldn’t help but cackle maniacally as I swung my hammer again. On the surface, my hammer strikes were doing nothing, but that wasn’t true. With each swing, the metal and the mana structure were refined— With each swing, more of my hammer’s force was transferred back at me.

Three, four, five; on the sixth swing, my arms feel like they're about to fall off. Taking that as my cue to stop, I grab the remaining tree root and press the end against the still semi-pliable metal. Like the grey bricks, the metal wasn’t the best against constant force, so I could feed a few inches of the root through it where the root wouldn’t damage the internal mana structure of the shield, creating a way for me to craft a handle for Tabitha.

When the last of the heat was sucked out of the shield and dispersed around us, I picked it up to examine it.

It was only eighteen inches in diameter, making it more of a buckler than a shield. The edges were jagged and irregular, and the metal was unevenly spread. What little weight there was was noticeably off-balance.

Now that it was cool, the metal had turned a sickly greyish/green color. It had no embellishments or any other defining features other than how horrible it looked up close—

It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Tears welled up in my eyes as I gazed down at it in my hands.

“I think….” I struggled to say. “I think we have a chance.”

Wiping the tears from my eyes with my shoulder, I looked up at Tabitha, who had subtly relaxed upon hearing my words. “Let’s kill a dragon,” I proclaimed.

My arms hurt, my skin was flaking off in places, and my ears felt like they were bleeding, but even so, I grinned crazily.

The fuckin snake wasn’t going to know what hit it!

**********

Author’s notes:

Here you go, another chapter. Up next, a fight years in the making.

I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think I'm going to write the next few chapters in the third person. I’ve been getting a lot of experience writing AMSL, and I feel it’s the best way to do it. Writing everything from Aaliyah's point of view is interesting, but it’s also limiting.

I want the following chapters to be outstanding, so I'm switching things up. That said, I won't rush things, so I don't know when the next chapter will be out. I’m aiming for Friday, but I won't limit myself by promising that.

I hope you all understand. I appreciate your patience, reading, and commenting. As always, stay safe.