Ignis

As Caspian finally decided to jump down, now having enough reach to make the water connect with the lava, it quickly cooled down and turned into Obsidian.

The moment he touched the ground, the "real" Trial started. Out of the lava pools that were left, crawled out more knights out of magma, which surrounded him from every side

'Shit, too many. Gotta group them up together first and then drown them all.'

Since the creatures were programmed to just kill Caspian, they were also kinda mindless so grouping them up by just running in a circle once, making the beasts all follow him.

Just before reaching the lava, he turned right as the Creatures followed him. He then turned around and held his arm infront of him before shooting out all the water he could, the force slowly pushing them into the lava. Of course, since they were made out of Magma, the Lava couldn't hurt them but that wasn't his plan.

Since they were now in Lava, he shot water into it, making it also cool down and become obsidian, making the Creatures bodies get stuck. He then walked onto the obsidian and just thrusted his Weapon, which was a spear, into the heads of the creatures multiple times.

[You have slain ...]

[You have slain ...]

[You have slain ...]

...

Caspian thought that he was done and started to relax before but just then, he heard a loud rumble as more Creatures appeared. The ones from before were just the first wave.

Two enormous Magma Creatures now towered over him, both holding a large hammer and slowly moving towards him.

"They are too big... I won't be able to push them with my water. Curses!"

Caspian ran behind them and they took a while to turn around because of their size, before shooting water in the place behind their knees, making them fall onto their knees.

'Shit ... what now ? Isn't there anything I can do to?'

The golems growled as the turned around on the ground and slammed their hammers at him.

Caspian dodged, his mind working at full efficiency, trying to come up with a plan.

'Guess, I have to use him ... Dad said to only use him when necessary and I think that time is now.', thought Caspian while summoning an Echo his father, a high member of the House of Night clan, gave him.

Infront of him manifested a weird creature. It had a fish, or rather mermaid tail, the torso of a bird and the head of a horse. It's skin shone blue as it flew into the air and attacked the golems, giving Caspian time to take a breath.

'Go get them. I want to see what you can do.'

As the Echo now floated infront of the golems, it started screaming loudly, attacking their soul directly.

The golems started growling as their cores started aching and cracking.

They had no defense against soul attacks and because of that, they died in just a few seconds.

And yet, the Trial still hadn't passed as one last ominous creature appeared.

***

Back at the small cohort, Ragna, Layla and Celeste were just chilling while Cera flew around with a dry flower they randomly found.

Seeing how Cera played with the dead flower, Ragna suddenly got an Idea. Plants were also living beings, no ? So would the Crimson Strings also work on them ?

(Hey, Cera. Come here real quick and bring the flower ?)

Cera complied but hesitated slightly before giving him the dead flower.

(What are you doing with it ? You're not gonna destroy it, right ?)

(No .. the exact opposite actually.)

As Ragna manifested the rings and augmented them, he shot out only one string since he didn't need multiple to only keep it alive. He also didn't need to move it so there was no need for multiple strings.

As the string connected, the Flower started to grow greener and greener as the energy of the Flower returned. He then gave the Flower back to Cera.

(It's alive ! It's alive ! Thank you, Papa.)

Cera now started playing with the flower again, this time with a bigger smile. Ragna needed to keep up the string since the flower would just turn back dead again if he didn't but it was okay since keeping the string up wasn't really hard. He just needed to pour blood through the rings.

Celeste and Layla had watched everything and now Celeste was grinning.

"Oh, what a charmer ~ When are you gonna give us flowers too ?"

While Celeste had teased him, Layla looked interested.

"So the Memory also works on plants ? Makes sense, I guess. They are also living beings that can die.

"The only time I will give you flowers is at your funeral so don't get your hopes up."

"Ahhh, what a gentleman, saying that to a woman, Ragnaboy."

In the meantime Layla just looked into the horizon, thinking of how Ragna could theoretically use plants to their advantage.

***

After two more hours of rest, they broke off again.

Ragna still kept the Flower alive for Cera so she had something to do. She seemed to really like nature.

They went further south, the annoying heat making things hideous.

On their way, his second flaw made him attract Nightmare Creatures. This wouldn't have been nice for other sleepers but for him this flaw was maybe actually a boon.

He had a strong cohort and could probably kill most of the creatures that would meet them. And he really needed to fill his Blood Core so this was very beneficial.

Right now they were getting by a rather large horde of beasts, eight to be exact.

The beasts were all of the same race, looking like scorpions with hammer arms.

Each member of the small cohort was taking on two scorpions, Cera having it the easiest since she could just fly into the air and attack them from up there. She was also Awakened so kinda the strongest.

Ragna dodged under the Tail of one of the scorpions and thrust his sword up.

The Exoskeleton was too hard tho to inflict a big wound, even for his Ascended Weapon but the following blood slash that came from augmenting the sword with his Aspect, appeared right inside the creature, slicing through its vitals and so falling dead.

Celeste used a different tactic. Because of her gravitational power, she just made the Scorpions slow down and then slowly chip them away by hitting them at weakpoints.

And Layla used her Aspect to make her pair of scorpions grow physically weaker, making her able to actually strike through their exoskeleton.

And just like that, eight awakened creatures were now dead.

"They look like they'd be pretty useful as mounts. Should we use one or search for something better ?"

"Can one of those things even carry us all ?"

"Mnhnm, I'm not sure but in the worst case we can just make Celeste continue walking normally, no ?"

"What ?! Why me ?"

Ragna laughed before summoning the Crimson Strings and making one of the scorpions come back to life as a marionette.

The three humans climbed onto it's back while Ceta sat down on Ragna's head.

The scorpion was big enough to hold them all and so, they decided to use it as a mount.

***

Back to where Caspian was, the last wave had just started.

Out came a red knight with a two handed longsword, looking ominous and confident as it slowly walked left, the sword hitting the ground with each step as it just pulled the sword with it.

Caspian's weird Echo shot out a wave of soul attack but the knight just stood still, seemingly unaffected before suddenly, in just a friction of a second, appearing infront of Caspian, swinging his long blade up from below.

Caspian dodged in the last second by tripping backwards. He quickly rolled to the side and stood up.

'Fuck, he's strong.'

Caspian commanded his echo to change it's tactic. Soul attacks weren't the only thing it could. It was also connected to water, just like how Caspian was.

It shot out slow bubbles from it's horse mouth, covering the whole arena in them.

The tall knight got hit by one of the bubbles and it suddenly exploded, shooting it backwards.

Caspian used the opportunity to shoot out a beam of water at the unstable creature, pushing it into a lava pond and then burying it in obisidan.

But, suddenly, cracks started to appear in the obsidian as the Creature just stood up and destroyed the hard material. It's leg was still stuck tho and so, Caspian's Memory shot out more bubbles, each one of them exploding against the large Knight.

The Creature didn't even have a scratch on its armor as it just pushed its way through the bubbles.

Caspian shot out more water but nothing worked for now against that ominous creature.

The large knight jumped out and swung at Caspian again. And this time, he sadly couldn't dodge completly as the longsword hit him from the side, making him fly multiple meters to the right snd crashing against the wall. After crashing, he started falling down, the lava under him. He quickly shot out water and made the lava transform into Obisidion.

His Echo was fighting the Nightmare Creature as Caspian started preparing his final move.

——-Author's Notes——-

Words: 1557

Again, nothing much to say

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