Fire Trial [Lee POV]

Lee received the golden orb from the hands of the tall native man. She was vaguely aware of who he was, though she had to admit that the most she knew about the king was that Goku’s main move was named after him.

The orb was smooth – too smooth. Holding onto it felt weird, like the curvature of the object disagreed with being in any set place. Lee’s superhuman sense of balance helped to offset this somewhat, but not completely.

“Begin at your leisure,” Kamehameha told her.

Lee would have scratched the back of her head, had she trusted herself to hold the orb with one hand. ‘How do I do this?’ she asked herself.

Her target was clearly visible on the far wall of the cavern. According to what John had said, Mo’o had a quirk where they turned to stone upon ****. The ancient Mo’o, therefore, must have been the huge, statue-like remnant of a gecko-dragon embedded into the volcanic rock. It stood out both in its shape and its colour, being a bright red surrounded by porous black.

Obviously, there was a lake of magma between them – which was a problem that Lee did not have tools to solve outright. She did not have any level of fire resistance nor was her magic useful in this challenge. Well, that wasn’t quite true. If she had put her barrier control to it, she could have probably just portalled her way over there and been done with it in seconds.

The instruction, however, had been to use only her feet… which she was technically in violation of already. “When you say ‘only your feet’ what does that mean exactly?” Lee had to ask. “Because I am carrying this sphere with my hands right now.”

Veridion immediately provided her with an answer. For the first time, he sounded like he had been asked a reasonable question. “You may only move using your natural locomotion. No portals, no catapulting yourself with outside devices. You may use your magic to attempt to make a path through the magma lake.”

“Alright, that’s much clearer.” Lee shifted her weight from one leg to another. Could she use Barrier Control here to just materialize what she needed? Not really. Anything her mind could create was necessarily flimsy. Manipulation of what was inside a barrier could not really go beyond concrete. It was one of those things that separated Fateweavers from actual elemental mages. Plus, it was slow, especially with two gods pushing against her control of the barrier. It being a very old Natural Barrier did not help the problem either.

So, using her magic was essentially out. All that was left was simple physical ability… which she had. Really, this seemed to be an example of the easiest solution also being the most effective. If she moved fast enough, she should have been able to just skip across the surface of the lake without sinking. If she did sink…

Lee really did not have fire resistance. If she was submerged in magma, chances were that she’d die a slow and highly agonizing ****, courtesy of her superhuman endurance. However, with Nathalia there, she was certain enough that she’d get saved before she got more than a couple of burns. Nothing Gnome or Undine could not fix.

‘I am expected to lose this,’ she thought. There was no way Veridion had picked her so quickly otherwise. Annoyingly, she couldn’t confidently say that he was wrong. ‘There’s probably some nasty stuff in the lake that will make this harder… and I’m not a fighter. Sparring with the others only prepares me for so much.’

Forcing the nervous shifting of her weight to stop, Lee looked to her beloveds. There was a pleasant mixture of expectation and leniency in their eyes. Though they expected her best, they wouldn’t be horrifically upset with her if she failed. It was a nice intersection of being relied upon without being pushed to a breaking point.

‘Gaia, how do I deserve this?’ she thought, then took a deep breath.

Her Aura ignited, granting her muscles additional strength. She launched herself forward at a shallow trajectory. Distrust of the simplicity of it all made her unwilling to sail through the air for any prolonged distance. It was just a gamer’s paranoia – there was never a challenge that was just this simple.

The bubbling lake burst open in three different spots. Flame spirits shaped like sharks launched themselves at her, immediately validating her fears. Her feet made short contact with the magma. Speed and Martial Artistry allowed her to push off the viscous fluid swiftly enough to move without sinking. The trio of fire spirits arced by under her.

Lee couldn’t really follow what they were doing. She was too busy juggling the golden sphere. Her reactive jump had made the slippery thing move from her grasp. “No! No! No!” She repeatedly tried to get a hold of it, only for it to keep slipping away from her. “Stay!” A double-armed hug finally succeeded in keeping the sphere in place again, just as gravity decided it was time to come back down.

The molten lake beneath her swirled, a vortex forming by the might of circling sharks. Lee was dropping right towards its centre. Keeping her breathing steady, she prepared herself for what had to happen next.

The sharks did not wait until she was at the bottom of the vortex. One jumped at her from the diagonal magma stream, only to be met by Lee’s heel. She used the contact to drag herself up and forward. A second shark came for her side. Even though it wasn’t weak, it moved at a perfectly traceable speed for Lee. Sometimes she forgot just how absurdly powerful her relationship had made her.

Another kick delivered by her thunder thighs carried Lee over the edge of the vortex. It began to subside, the sharks following her along the length of the magma lake. They weren’t alone. A multitude of obsidian-made tentacles burst through the surface of the lake, coming straight for her.

‘Of course there is a kraken!’ Lee thought, to be immediately followed by, ‘YOU SLIPPERY ORB OF SHIT!’ when the object of her trial popped out between her arms.

Reining in her gamer rage, Lee locked in. At least she had her hands free to smack aside the first of the tentacles coming for her. The second, she used to change her trajectory, allowing her to land on the side of the third, running down its heavily angled surface. She leapt towards the falling orb and tried to get a handle on it. An abject failure. The smooth surface denied her hasty grab. All she managed to do was toss it higher into the air.

‘Good enough!’ Lee decided. If the stupid thing decided to be so difficult to hold, then it would be juggled towards the destination like a religious redhead with a commitment phobia!

The only problem: Lee had borderline no idea what was going on anymore.

More tentacles were reaching up around her and the sharks were back, jumping at her between the grasping limbs of the hidden kraken. Lee didn’t know where to look. She wasn’t entirely inexperienced in combat, but things on this scale usually happened to her on a screen. She didn’t know where to turn her head.

Reactive, she kicked another shark, launching herself at one of the extended tentacles. It did not do her the favour of remaining still, whipping around while she did her best to gain altitude by climbing up its segmented length. A bit of obsidian cut into her palm. She ignored the pain.

A quick leap put her in the trajectory of the sphere again. Putting her hand to it for just a brief moment, she made it bounce forwards. It moved at objectively rapid speed, but for her the arc it was now travelling in was relatively slow. She just had to get where it would fall next!

Searing teeth caught her leg. Lee let out a choked cry, then twisted her upper body around. Her fist crashed into the nose of the fire shark, causing it to release her. That left her bleeding and in freefall.

‘This is not wholesome chungus… WHY IS THAT WHAT I THOUGHT RIGHT NOW?!’ Lee used her frustration at her own vernacular to fuel her resistance. The maw of the kraken burst up from the magma lake now, extending towards her like some disgusting fusion of rubber and teeth. Inhaling deeply, Lee pulled her intact leg halfway up. She kept the ankle loose, the muscle relaxed. Ki gathered at the hip in vast quantities.

The triangular teeth of the creature enveloped her, swallowing her whole. Internal muscles clenched, attempting to crush her alive. As they closed in, Lee brought her foot down. The Ki rushed down her leg with the **** of a gravity hammer, blowing the sole off her boot as it made impact with the obsidian flesh of the inorganic creature.

The Seismic Step blew the kraken into more bits than a million Twitch chatters could have donated to even the sluttiest of Vtubers. Excess **** catapulted Lee upwards. She just barely managed to turn enough to catch herself with her right limbs against the cave ceiling, then launched herself at the orb.

The sharks were already leaping into her path. In a move of pure instinct, she managed to execute a cartwheel over the back of one. ‘I have been hanging out with Jane too much,’ Lee told herself, while narrowly flying under the second one. ‘What am I thinking? Jane is awesome!’

Lee intersected the orb's path just a few metres above the magma line. Launching it like a volleyball put it at the correct trajectory again. Even the short contact of the magma on her exposed foot was incredibly unpleasant. Gritting her teeth, she launched herself back up into the air all the same. She was two-thirds to the target now.

The kraken was dead or out of commission, Lee did not care which. That left her with the sharks to worry about and to use as her jump-off points. ‘Though, if there’s one random encounter per third…’ her pattern recognition warned her.

The swarm of lesser fire elementals exploded from the surface of the lake, filling Lee’s field of view with a sheer endless number of differently-sized motes. They launched fire projectiles at her, large and small. Individually, they were nothing. As a whole, they were blinding.

‘Use that spatial imagination!’ Lee told herself. In her mind, she had a clear 3D model of the entire cave, including where the orb was dropping and where it was supposed to go. What she didn’t know was where the sharks were now. She would just have to trust in their established behaviour and…

A random kick connected with something solid. She sailed through the red-gold inferno, the heat remaining stuck in her hair as she sailed forward. The fire spirits stopped one spell and immediately began charging the next wave. Under these circumstances, juggling ahead would be simply impossible. All came down to one play.

Lee pulled her good leg back and kicked the ball with as much power as she dared. The sphere flew forward, cutting a straight trajectory towards the open maw of the ancient Mo’o and the socket in its maw.

The aim was ever so slightly off. Rather than in the maw, the sphere connected with its snout, bouncing off. ‘Still got a shot!’ the gamer girl told herself. It wasn’t over until the last card had been top-decked!

Fire engulfed her once again. She closed her eyes, shielding them from the heat. There was only the map and the couple of seconds she had to act. She landed once more on the surface of the magma, launching herself in the direction she knew the sphere had ricocheted in. The heat diminished, her body emerged from the flames, she opened her eyes once more, peering right into the approaching maw of a fire shark.

The Flying Step was a move of desperation. She had never quite grasped that Technique. It worked just well enough to get her over one shark and right into the trajectory of a second one. Its nose slammed into her side. Helpless, she could only watch as she was dragged away from the sphere. The golden thing dropped into the magma and melted like a piece of butter on a stovetop.

Lee did not experience the scorching heat of the magma lake. The second she slammed into it, the molten rock had already been put under the benevolent control of the orange-haired hotness that was her fellow haremette. The warmth around her was more of a reassuring embrace. Magma caressed her, forming a protective cocoon around her as she was carried back to the shore. Confused sharks were slammed back by Nathalia’s magic.

“Sorry,” Lee groaned once she was back on solid ground.

“You tried your best.” John lovingly brushed her singed hair back, while the others surrounded her at all sides. Gnome immediately began to channel her magic into a gentle, green light. It would take a minute for her to heal what would have taken Undine seconds, but she would be healed all the same.

“And her best was not good enough,” Veridion stated. “One loss. Three more and you are obligated to leave these isles, John Newman. I believe I can expose similar incompetence among your women that number of times.”

‘…Don’t call him slurs… do not call him slurs…!’ Lee called out to herself. She wasn’t in the habit of doing that even during her worst moments in League of Legends, but this turbo-cunt was really pushing her patience. ‘Well, Layla and Aclysia got enough of a **** glare for ten.’

The obsessed maid and the yandere were unified in giving the god of oaths a wide-eyed stare that absolutely could have killed some people.

Once Lee could put all of her weight on both of her legs again, she got up. There was a little more healing she needed, but she didn’t feel like receiving it in the middle of the enemy’s attention. Plus, magma lakes were not her preferred biome.

“We can leave,” she told John.

“Then we are leaving,” her man declared, shooting one more glare at Veridion himself. “I don’t need to listen to the taunts of a cowardly god.”

Veridion just shrugged.

Kael cackled.