A test of passion.

Salamander was still hovering around, visibly annoyed by the fact that she had nothing to do but watch the two of them fuck around. Her expression changed to panic for a moment when Nathalia clawed her out of the air, the motion from her kneeling on the ground to the heel turn barely followable by John’s eyes.

Then Nathalia bathed Salamander in a breath of fire. John felt the intense heat where he sat, unable to interject the whole scene was over as quickly as it began and Nathalia let the fire elemental go again.

‘I mean, Gaia, you placed her in my path or not?’ John asked the deity, not expecting an answer as he closed the window. “Thank y…” “What the fuck?!” Salamander wanted to know and quickly distanced herself from the dragoness, who let it happen without a care. Instead, Nathalia said “Follow me,” and walked towards a pool of lava.

John obeyed and, with Salamander hiding behind his ear, he explained what just happened. “Well, I guess I feel that it worked,” the fire elemental said and low-key stuck out her tongue to the dragoness, “but a warning would have been appropriate.” ‘I do not disagree,’ John sent her mentally, he was certain that Nathalia heard every word they spoke.

Whether or not she did, Nathalia didn’t let them know as she arrived at the edge of the pool and then just kept walking. Underneath her feet a path formed, the magma solidifying so that they could traverse deeper. John gulped as he glanced behind him and realized that the path disappeared. He quickly caught up with Nathalia, noticing the scales slowly growing over her body again.

“What do you plan to do?” he wanted to know, he had a bad feeling about all of this. Well, the person that was happy about running over a path of lava in a landscape so hellish the ashes of distant volcanoes blocked out the sun was probably hard to find. “Helping you realize the lesson of your fire elemental,” was all Nathalia had to say before coming to a halt. John looked around, they had walked for a while and were several hundred meters away from any land. He was sweating all over, and he was pretty sure that, if Nathalia hadn't been around to regulate it, the heat would have burnt him to crisp.

Nathalia stomped once, and the earth started to rumble. The small platform they were standing on grew as a multi-faceted area formed around them with a forest of spikes made from black and grey stone, caverns, slopes and risings, all of it isolated from everything else by the pool of lava. It looked like an arena. ‘It IS an arena,’ John realized and Nathalia, completely hidden underneath her scales again, grabbed one of the spikes and broke it off like a kid snaps off a dry twig.

She weighed the long, thin thing in her hand and swung it a couple of times before nodding, “This will do,” she said and then thrust it towards John without any further explanation. He had seen something like this coming and had already turned to run, dodging the thrust by tumbling underneath it before sprinting into the forest of spikes, Salamander in tow, hiding to analyze the situation.

Obviously, Nathalia was holding back; there was no way he would have dodged that attack if she wanted to kill him, her using something as a weapon was probably a way to limit herself in the first place. She had stated the purpose of this whole thing, so the question he had now wasn’t for Nathalia, whose intent was clear, but for Salamander. ‘What are you trying to teach me that needs to throw me into such a **** situation?’ he wanted to know. ‘The situation doesn’t matter it’s just….URGH, over-thinking fucknugget figure it out yourself!’ Salamander sent back a pissed off answer.

That didn't exactly help him as he ducked behind a particularly thick weave of stone and carefully peaked through, Nathalia was aimlessly walking around in the forest, she hadn’t spotted him yet. ‘Time to get the bit of equipment I still have out,’ he thought, pulling the Necklace of the World Ender from this inventory. He was about to throw it over his head when he heard a scratching noise. Worried he threw another glance through the weaved stone.

Only to quickly throw himself to the side when the black spear penetrated the network where his eyes had just been. “I may be going easy on you, John Newman, but I am not going to be merciful on your mistakes,” he heard her husky voice penetrate through the air, followed by a cruel cracking noise as she tore down the whole line of weaved stone with a horizontal strike. “You think I wouldn’t be able to feel something that is clearly modeled after my own power even if I tried my best to ignore it?”

Nathalia was about to stab at him again, her orange eyes burning with glee at this different kind of entertainment, when she noticed that the spear had shattered as well. She clicked her tongue and searched for a replacement, giving John the moment to distance himself that he needed. Maybe this was one of those tests in anime that Rave was always on about where he needed to land one hit?

He aimed his palm at Nathalia and used Mana Ray. The dragoness had turned her back to him as she thoughtfully picked between two different spikes. A moment before the Mana Ray fired she broke the one she liked less off and pointed it at John, it blocked the attack, the top of the spike melted off in the process but Nathalia had not been hit. She gave him a crooked grin, revealing her sharp teeth, “You should cover your mana better,” she said and broke off her new chosen spear, “Now: RUN!” John was very happy to oblige that suggestion and turned tail, putting the necklace away again as he did.

‘Stop running aimlessly!’ Salamander shouted at his mind. ‘What do you suggest I do then? She is immune to fire and can block my Mana Ray somehow, I don’t have a plan, I NEED a plan,’ John shouted right back as he ran up a hill, taking a moment to look behind him when he arrived at the top. Turned out to be a big mistake, “Run faster!” Nathalia hissed with a wide grin, her face directly in front of his. Pain exploded in his side as an obsidian clad leg buried into him and catapulted him right off the hill and sent him flying towards a weird formation of rock slides carved into a tunnel.

He had no landing strategy, even though the pain quickly subsided he had absolutely no idea how he should manage to… ‘Trust your instincts!’ he heard a whisper and the time seemed to slow down for a moment. ‘My instincts? I am about to crash into the floor after being kicked by a dragon; I think my instincts aren’t particularly helpful here!’ ‘JUST TRUST ME THEN!’ Salamander screamed at him and violently tried to grab for his mana. He had never felt that before, they always waited for him to give it out. It felt like a hand made of hot iron tried to grab for his soul and whisk it away, Salamander didn’t succeed, their contract stopped her from doing so, but it made John shove her out instinctively.

He rolled over the hard ground, naked skin ripping open and being fixed a moment later by Gamer’s Body. Notifications of damage rolled in, too many small ones to count but John saw his HP bar shrinking to a mere fourth. When he finally came to a halt, he quickly searched for Nathalia who was slowly walking down the hill with a smile on her lips. The dragoness was not in the slightest bit of a hurry even when John picked himself up and started running into a cave, filled with fear. What if Nathalia was unable to interpret his lack of wounds correctly? Would she kill him, would it even be an accident?

‘What is this fucking lesson?’ he thought as he turned corner after corner inside the cave, uncertain where it would even lead him. ‘Just…urgh, you are such a difficult guy!’ Salamander groaned, clearly frustrated, ‘do whatever, just die, I don’t care anymore.’ Salamander turned in the air and flew back the way they came. ‘What are you doing?’ John asked. ‘Following my passion!’ came the answer just a second later.

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ ‘If you don’t get it think about the important fights we had up until now!’ she gave him a cryptic hint and then, silence. Salamander was still there but clearly uninterested in speaking with him anymore. John only was able to see what she saw, which was her finding Nathalia and engaging her in combat.

John, in the meantime, hid inside a deep corner, feeling like a coward. ‘But what can I do?’ he asked himself. There had to be something between his own inability and Salamanders brashness, something that actually worked. John needed to analyze this step by step. The win condition of this fight was realizing and embracing whatever lesson Salamander had for him; everything else was just speculation. How did he do that? How did he do it with Gnome? He had reached a state where he felt like he was part of the earth, he had listened to her voice, she had guided him. He had the feeling that this wouldn’t work with Salamander.

‘Not the guiding part at the very least,’ John thought, however, he could try to become one with fire, he closed his eyes and took deep breaths. There was a feeling, a calm and deep feeling, one that didn’t in the slightest resemble fire. No, all he was doing was tapping into earth again. If that wasn’t it then what was? Salamander had told him to think about the important fights, the ones that came to mind were against the Bloodfallen.

Then he realized what she meant. It had been completely obvious; it had always been part of him just not really awake. He smiled and pulled out the Necklace of the World Ender again. Watched as Nathalia, who had been fighting Salamander with a bored expression up until now, suddenly reared her head and sprinted into the cave he was hiding in. Salamander hurried after her.

Nathalia didn’t even bother with running through the windings of the cave. Instead, she broke and melted a direct way through the stone, “I warn you, and you are stupid enough to do it a second time?” she growled in an amused tone. “You better surprise me…” the last wall in front of her broke apart with a punch of her black fist, and she came to a rather abrupt halt when she saw the necklace. It just lied there, on the floor.

‘Salamander, the answer, it’s the passion for fighting, isn’t it?’ John asked as he sent her 887 points worth of his mana. The answer was so easy that it was just too far away. The way he had beaten first the **** and then beat Igor, despite how terribly wrong it had all gone in the end, beating, outsmarting or even just overpowering an opponent in a fight, finding ever new applications for his powers, that was his passion now. To put it bluntly: It was fun. ‘Yes, finally!’ Salamander laughed and basked Nathalia and the whole branch of the cavern in flames.

John had never enjoyed fighting as much as Rave did, which is why she and Salamander had gotten along so well from the start, they shared this passion. Himself, he had been more calculating, always more focused on grinding, but when that grinding paid off in the end, that was the moment of reward. It was all about realizing what he had and what he wanted. He turned from the corner he was hiding behind and pointed at the inferno, exactly at the point where Nathalia was supposed to stand, and Mana Ray counted down.

One, the flames stirred as Salamander quickly burned through the mana, the goal was clear: The mana used for the fire had to mask the mana pulsating in John’s hand from Nathalia’s senses. Two, a silhouette became apparent in the flames, a figure with glowing orange hair broke out. Three, Nathalia grabbed his hand, turned it to the ceiling, the attack flared up and uselessly vanished into the stone above, the dragoness face got dangerously close, mouth open to bite him, or so John assumed.

Nathalia kissed him wildly on the lips, her blessing sharpening his senses and it helped at refilling his depleted HP bar. He relaxed, most of him anyway, and at the same moment the window popped up.