Chereads / Reborn As The Villainess's Knight / Chapter 74 - Chapter 74 - Practical Test [8]

Chapter 74 - Chapter 74 - Practical Test [8]

The Heart of the Sun God that I had inside me was constantly being suppressed by my soul. This meant that so long as my soul was in perfect condition, I could comfortably hold back the strength of the Heart.

However. This meant that any damage that my soul received caused my control over the Heart to diminish.

'My instincts were screaming at me to avoid the arrow. But, I stupidly made the decision to go for the spearman, fearing the artitact more. Damn it... I had no idea those arrows could pierce the soul.'

Using Ignition, I could release a smaller amount of power, however I could control this power. If the restraints I placed on myself broke, then the amount of strength I could draw from the heart would no longer be limited by anything aside from my personal strength.

Begging the Spearman to stay back, I felt a heat inside me swell and rise. My body was being burnt from the inside out. My entire being was slowly covered from head to toe in raging, white flames.

My thoughts were slowly burnt away, leaving only a primal rage within. My skin was charred, my muscles burnt and my blood boiled. However, I could withstand it by regenerating.

My body was constantly being burned, a foul stench filled the air as flesh was endlessly consumed by the raging inferno.

I cast my gaze towards the spearman, who showed no fear. Instead, they held contempt.

"You were holding back.. this much? Weren't you meant to show us what a Knight can do?"

With that, they gripped their spear tightly.

"Divine Artifact, Gungnir, grant me Wisdom."

With that, light engulfed the region as my flames raged uncontrollably. The air was dry, my skin was constantly being charred, dyeing my body in black ash. My cloak of darkness was seemingly fine, which was good. The Artifact was far too valuable to waste in a situation like this.

I tried to control the flame, trying to condense it around my burning body, eventually managing to wrap it fairly tightly around my body and thus limiting it's destructive power. However, this made the flames burning my body even more powerful, and worst of all, painful.

It hurt so much. My body was constantly fighting to regenerate, yet the flames spared not even my mind from pain.

'And.. the amount of Mana this is burning away is insane. I'm releasing Divine Flames at maximum power whilst making my Arcane Enhancement and Arcane Healing work at full throttle. How the hell.. do I put these flames out?'

The air around me was drying from the sheer heat I was releasing. And so, I gazed down at my darkened skin.

'Damn.. I can't even think straight right now. Who cares.. I'll just fight.'

My gaze locked onto the Archer, and using my strength to take off along with my ability to fly and the flames to propel my body forward, I moved towards her at a pace I could barely control.

However, before I could reach her, a spear shot straight through my stomach, sending me into the floor. The wound closed up quickly, but it was followed up by another attack, piercing my shoulder and pinning me to the ground.

And so, I burnt away my arm by halting it's regeneration and allowing the flames to consume it and rolled away. My eyes met with the Spearmans. They could see it.

They could see the movements I was going to make.

The Divine Artifact, Gungnir allowed for the 'Wisdom' of all it's users to be inherited. The experiences from the previous users all rested within the spear and those experiences could be drawn upon so that the user could essentially have generations of combat experience.

That was the reason I had tried to make sure it couldn't be activated.

"But its all gone to shit now."

Regenerating my arm, I charged towards the spearman, using my condesned, Divine Flames to change directions, along with boosting my flying speed.

The spearman once again, predicted what I'd do and moved to the side to avoid me. However, I extended my right arm and released a giant blast of white flames, sending me towards them once more.

Though the flames burnt me, the power they held was truly incredible. I had never felt this unstoppable, even if the pain felt like it was eroding my sanity.

Roots of the World Tree suddenly sprouted from the ground, trying to wrap around my body but they were incinerated almost immediately. Although I was functioning mostly on instinct rather than thought, it was fine. The flames burnt away anything that tried to stop me.

***

I held my arm out, willing Gungnir to return to me. I was burning through Mana to maintain this state. The stronger I was the further back, and therefore the more, the experiences I could draw from my Divine Artifact.

At the moment, I could only harness a few generations worth of experience. However that alone made me a better combatant than everyone, save for that Arthur freak.

Breaking me out of thoughts, I felt an insane amount of heat condense and coalesce before watching a blast of white, hot flames rush towards me.

Holding my hand out, I conjured a large, earthen wall, and giving it a curved shaped I deflected most of the flame into sky. However, what was really scary was that I constantly had to reinforce the wall. The flames held physical force.

This wasn't normal at all. Though pressure was exerted by Fire Magic due to pressure being altered by environmental factors such as temperature, for a flame itself to exert physical force didn't make sense

***

A/N: BTW this, to my understanding is true and not WN mumbo jumbo. The way fire works normally is that it causes gasses to expand which increases pressure. And because pressure is P=F/A if P increases then F increases too so hotter flames = more force but the flame itself isn't exerting the force.

P is pressure, F is force (Newtons) and A is area. Hope this makes sense.

***

Before I could put more thought into it, I saw a flash of white before seeing Reinhardt. I watched as the flames behind his elbow intensified, and so, his fist was propelled towards my body.

I stumbled back and fell, barely dodging the attack. Reinhardt's fist was embedded into the rock wall I had conjured. His arm quickly disintegrated before growing back almost immediately.

'He's using those flames to manoeuvre his body. Because those flames actually exert a physical force, as opposed to how regular flames work, he's much more ferocious than any other Flame Magic user I've ever fought.'

I watched as he leapt into the air, using his flames to cause rotation before intensifying the flames behind his ankle and aiming a powerful blow at my head. However, I managed to create a pillar of rock that was shattered immediately, but that gave me enough time to raise my spear to guard against the blow. His charred legs made contact with my spear, I watched as blood leaked from his body and was rapidly evaporated.

I then jumped back, and our eyes met. I understood that he probably wasn't fully conscious or thinking properly at the moment. His body was acting almost entirely on instinct.

As I was in the air, I watched as he bent his legs and jumped. He was flying while simultaneously propelling himself using those force exerting, white flames.

"I'm so fucked.."