Life is beautiful.
'I love you, Mama.'
And unfair.
"Mama is gone?'
Like I'd done many times before, I looked back on that little girl standing at the rim of a caldera with her father. Steaming tears rolling down a polished face of gray and orange.
"Come, Ro."
Her father, a pillar of a man who had always been the epitome of strength, honor, and everything right in the world, beckoned her into an amber pit with him. His face, a flaked bust of scalding water and hellish light. A literal shell of the most important being that remained in her life.
"It's not your fault."
Her mother had been sick since the day she was born. It took her years after she was gone to learn the reason why. Nativity Infusion Syndrome.
"Nor is it the Witch's fault."
A child with a body infused with steel passing through the birth canal caused as much damage to the spirit as it did to the flesh.
"The fault lies with none of us mortal souls."
No magic or science could've healed something like that. No matter how hard they tried.
"It's the Gods who left cruelty in this world!"
Only a Divine being could've healed her.
"Do you feel it? The pain burning like the magma around us?"
Yes.
"Grasp on to it."
But. It hurts.
"To live is to hurt, my sweet. To die is to spit in the face of your mother's wish for you to live. To live is to suffer still."
Her father, wise and strong as he was, didn't want his daughter, nor any child for that matter, to fight. But she had to. Everyone had to. For the laws of the lands that the gods left us dictated we do nothing less to survive.
"Here."
He pulled a short sword of iron from thin air and placed it in her hand. And he drew a hand axe from nowhere to place in her other hand.
"Gather the pain this unfair world inflicts upon you in the furnace of your heart, Ro. Smelt it into anger. Forge it into rage. Strike at your enemies until you can strike at the heavens themselves, Ro. That's the only way.
"And if you ever think it hurts. Remember, Roheisa."
***
"Steel glows hotter than magma."
'What the fuck?'
After growling that red flag for all to hear, Roheisa burned the slip of paper she'd been staring at and darted through the portal at full speed. The screen flickered. And a moment later she was sprinting through a wildfire. Seemingly uncaring of the smoke and roiling flames flanking her sides.
Instead, she just ran. Without purpose, my peers assumed by the account of their faces. But I could see the spell I taught her doing its magic.
With each stride, the magnetic fields fluctuating around her body added to the charge in her steel. Increasing her speed, heat, and perhaps her anger as well.
Suddenly, the cameras or enchantments or whatever it was hidden in the forest switched to a chase cam at Roheisa's rear. They flicked between perspectives like a choppy video as she took powerful strides through the forest until a flicker of motion triggered the camera to pan just before a loud smack rang through the common area. The screens flashed red and Roheisa was seen tumbling across the ground in the next instant.
In her place was a six-meter-long serpentine human covered in red scales of what appeared to be steel. Its frilled face and spine coiled in what I interpreted as disgust as it slithered forth, burning the ground and igniting charred pine from meters away as it closed the distance to swing a large spetum across Roheisa's back.
The spear, forged with dagger-like protrusions at the base of the spearhead, dug into her back with ease, sending scalding blood and magma trailing in the wake of the weapon before it lurched down with blinding speed to stab the protrusion into the top of Roheisa's shoulder.
Her scream was more one of rage than pain. The mana imbued in it ignited the air itself and she turned, swinging her a short sword and axe of crystalline steel one after the other.
The creature let out a blowtorch of a screech as it slithered back, negating Roheisa's onslaught to a mere nick across the chest before it lunged forward in an attempt to intercept her follow-through.
A spark traced down Roheisa's arm and her body blurred, but the creature was already on the move. Ducking out of the way of her attack, it writhed and coiled around her body and let out an infernal laugh as it began to constrict and taunt her in a voice that sounded like wood crackling under a flame.
Roheisa screamed and the creature squeezed again. Her back arched in pain and the flow of mana within her stopped. Then bloomed enough for it to show through the creature's flesh. Rising up into an opalescent glow that swelled in her jaws just before rows and rows of crystal shark teeth stretched her mouth wide.
And then she clamped down.
'So stupid.'
Without even trying, the beast slithered away and snapped back like a rubber band equipped with a spear.
The blade panged against Roheisa's jaw in a burst of flame, crystals, and spittle. Sending her head reeling back hard enough to decompress her spine and free her organs to be constricted further.
The creature's snicker was like a bonfire caught in the rain. A roaring inferno of cracks and the soft hisses of collapsing ash petering out.
Roheisa's enraged growl sent electricity through the creature's body just before she roared. Releasing a cluster bomb of magma, electricity, magnetic fields, steel, and crystals to explode along the innards of her opponent. As it screamed in pain, Roheisa reached high to grow a broken sword with a crystal sharded pommel and brought it down with a feral scream. Sinking it through the eye to the hilt.
The beast twitched and writhed to get away from the current and magnetic field shocking it in place while Roheisa screamed again, flailed, and shanked the creature in the other eye.
Clutching its eyes with one hand, it thrashed its spear with wild abandon and attempted to double down on its constriction.
Screaming all the while Roheisa, wiggled furiously. Sending more and more cobalt sparks to skip across the serpent's writhing body.
She wiggled and writhed while the beast thrashed and swung its weapon. For seconds and nearly on to a minute until glowing clusters of serrated and bloodied stalactites and stalagmites began to appear on Roheisa's body.
And when she fully emerged, I could almost feel the creature's fear from here.
She ripped her ankle free with an animalistic grunt and stomped down in the same motion. Releasing a wave of crimson mana that dug hellish cracks into the stone at her feet. She pivoted with another grunt, collapsing the ground into a boiling field of lava that quickly began spreading a crimson glow up her legs, across her body, and up to her head.
Eyes blazing with volcanic fury, Roheisa arched back to send a vengeful scream to the heavens. Her magic reached critical mass and was split into opalescent gray masses that swelled into her hands to take the shape of a crystal-tipped hammer and sword.
Then she charged.
In two strides, she crossed the 25 meters to the edge of her caldera and weaved under the creature's wild swing to deliver a backhanded swing with her hammer to its lower torso.
The creature keeled forward as a dull metallic pang echoed through the hellscape, opening up its neck for Roheisa's short sword to slice across as she followed through. Without slowing down, she reeled around to slice at its neck from the other side before her hammer trailed behind it to smack the beast in the back of the head. Forcing an infernal cry from its assumed lungs as it was brought to its arms.
Its head shook, snapped to the side, and quickly froze upon seeing Roheisa dropping her hammer with a guttural scream.
A final crackling cry rang through the screens before the creature's head shattered in an explosion of magma, steel, and crystals. The serpentine body undulated like a wave from the force of the impact. Sending tidal waves of lava sweeping over the surrounding forest for what appeared to be miles.
And still, Roheisa screamed. She gripped her sword overhead with both hands and brought it down on the creature's nape, dug her feet into the ground, and stomped forward to sever it through the tail. Roaring animalistically all the while.
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
"Who is that!?"
"No one." I chuckled with nary a look to Els.
"Yeah, she's angry as fuck!" Zakira droned on the word in the way she always did.
"Yeah, well. Her dad's a Berserker." I shrugged.
"What's your dad?" She asked.
"A Rogue. Yours?"
"A Vampire Lord, duh!"
"Yeah, duh." I snickered.
But still, that was amazing. What was more amazing was the implications of the Salamander she just slew. A sentient creature born from the Elemental Plane of Fire.
It implied that our teachers sent reports to the Optimus Regni. Details about our abilities. Firstly for the sake of recruiting. But also to have them get their hands on creatures that had immunities to our powers. In Roheisa's case, living metal in the form of a serpentine human.
In other words.
"Sink or swim."
"Huh?"
Fuck.
"That's the name of the game." I turned to Zakira, Peter, and the others who heard me. "Whatever it is we'll be fighting, they'll be immune or at least resistant to our abilities. And they'll be strong enough to do that to us." I threw my chin to Roheisa. Covered in blood and bruises rather than metal and crystals.
"I accept the challenge." Kao stepped in with Slate. "But I'm also curious. What's strong enough to do that to you? What's immune to your powers?"
"A minotaur, right?" Peter asked. "That's what you said?"
"That was before I awakened my cores." And before I had any undead. "Besides, they aren't immune to my powers. They're just hard to kill."
"So then, what?"
"Hmm." My eyes traced the room as if an answer was written on the walls. Although it could've been. If I had one. But eventually, my eyes landed on Urshure, listening in silently from the corner. Which may as well have been the same thing.
"What do you think?" I asked the dragonborne.
"I would say you're as strong as a young a-"
"HOLY SHIT! Uh!" Turning with everyone else, I saw Toni sheepishly hiding behind her seat. "Sorry! But, I mean. LOOK AT THIS!" She threw her finger towards her screen, prompting us to turn to the many copies spread across the common area.
And I couldn't blame her reaction.
On all of them was a creature that made my inner child leap with joy. A T-Rex in the roaring flesh. But not the leathery flesh seen so often in the late and early 20th and 21st-century media. It was a Rex covered in feathers that gleaned with the luster of blackened steel.
And standing in front of it as if it wasn't even there was a boy with yellow-tan skin and jet black hair tied back into a ponytail.
"I remember him," I said to no one in particular.
But Zakira replied anyway. "Who is he?"
"Don't know his name." I shrugged. "But I kicked him in the face once."
If Zakira wanted to reply, she was cut short by another roar from the Rex before it charged to deftly pivot on its feet.
Its tail came sweeping through the air not a moment later. Felling trees and knocking swathes of shrubs flat as it rocketed towards the Monk-to-be at blinding speed.
And with similarly blinding speed, he pivoted to meet the tail with his fist and blow it away in a powerful shockwave.
Wasting no time, he kicked off the ground to rush forward and slide up beside the Rex's leg, jump and deliver another air-shattering spin kick to the dinosaur's ankle, and quickly leapt back before it toppled to the side like a feathered, screaming and thrashing felled tree.
And again, without hesitating, he bounded up to the Rex's nape and raised an open hand before it blurred.
The ground quaked a split second later. Ejecting a plume of blood, dust, stone, earth, and a curious flash of black into the air before the shockwave was sent echoing through the forest.
Just before the echoes faded into silence, a soft rainfall rose to pick up where it left off. Soon after the dust cleared to reveal a patch of woods covered in a thin film of dusty blood. Scattered here and there were small hills of shredded flesh and upturned earth. And standing in the midst of it all was a young man with a stone rod draped by his side; a stone stick suspended by a black chain that connected to the matching stick held in his hand.
'It seems I found another point of interest.' I grinned and took a moment to study the annotations clouding around the screen. 'Rua Nun. Zankoku's master.'