Book 6, chapter 22

Even battling the rough terrain, unforgiving heat, and savage monsters, it only took several weeks to search all seven volcanoes.

Exploring the lava fields had been much smoother than expected, with the heat and terrain being the biggest headache. Even so, they were quickly reaching their deadline, as the planet was being dragged deeper into the endless storm. They had killed hundreds of beast kings, ransacking their lairs, and yet hadn't found a single fire-attuned natural treasure above peak quality. 

Even after a harrowing battle with a peak stage beast king, they hadn't found a supreme quality treasure. A peak-quality treasure could still be used to form a shard, but it would make forming a core in the future more difficult. 

Allison didn't seem too upset about the lower quality, as they all stood inside the slain beast king's cave. The peak quality treasure was by far the best one they had found, right at the limit of peak quality.

 It was a large flower, with ash black pedals with red veins growing at the edge of a pool of magma.

Even with Yukna's arrays placed around them, the heat it radiated was suffocating. The flower had wide pedals, with a thorny stem and thick vines. 

It swayed in an unseen breeze, each twitch of its leaves causing the lava pool to ripple. The group stood there for a few minutes, recovering from the fight. Zee watched the flowers dance from within the protection of the arrays, finding its movements oddly hypnotic. 

Malden didn't seem to share Zee's thoughts as he turned to face Allison.

"Well, you are up. Hurry and go collect that thing, this heat is killing me," Malden said, looking miserable in the heat despite the cooling arrays. 

Yukna glanced at her wife nervously, then back to the flower that radiated more heat than a blacksmith's forge. 

"I know you are resistant to heat, but can you handle it?" Yukna asked.

"Shouldn't be too difficult," Allison replied confidently.

"Are you sure you want to settle for a peak quality treasure? Forming a shard with this thing will have impurities that will make forming a core more difficult at middle D grade," Zee said.

Allison nodded slowly, determination lighting up in her eyes.

"Absorbing this peak-quality treasure might be for the best. Based on what I can tell, this energy level will push my limits already. It might kill me if I tried absorbing the essence of a supreme quality treasure," Allison said.

Malden's ears twitched thoughtfully.

"You could always wait, and absorb it later. It's only been a few months in the endless storm, who knows we might find something better," Malden said. 

Allison shook her head, gesturing towards the flower. 

"I considered that, but I don't think it's the right course of action for me. If we harvest this thing and take it from this environment it will lose most of its unique essence," Allison said. 

"I think you should go for it," Bastion said. "If you absorb that thing, your flames will become even more terrifying. Having the extra firepower while we search the storm couldn't hurt our chances," 

"Loverboy has a point," Malden conceded. "That oversized turtle monster was a lot harder to kill than I care to admit. My full-force sand hammer hardly even did more than crack its shell. If we have to kill something stronger to get a supreme treasure, we will need some of us to rank up first," Malden said. 

Everyone shared glances, with most of them in tasid agreement. Noting the hesitant nods, Allison took a deep calming breath. 

"Alright, I'm going in. Taylor, keep an eye out, but don't interfere unless it looks like going to die," Allison said.

The tall lanky healer stepped forward, hefting his staff. With that, Allison handed her sword and spatial ring to Yukna, grabbing only what she needed before stepping passed the outer line of the arrays. 

The heat was like a slap to the face, much hotter than the outside. Only a few steps passed the arrays, and her heat-resistant clothing caught fire, burning away in seconds. It wasn't too big of a concern though. Allison let the heat wash over her as her aura blanketed the cave, adding her own heat to the mix. The cave turned from an oven to a furnace as she took the dense flame-attuned energies and altered them to align with her own. 

To the others, the heat might have been hell, but to Allison, this place was like coming home. It was like she could finally breathe, after years of suffocation. The energy was so pure and abundant that it didn't need to be refined at all. 

Without any effort, she dragged it in, her body greedily absorbing the dense flame-attuned energies. It was so dense that her last remaining inner gate was broken open simply by rotating the energy through her body. 

It was a welcome surprise, though not what she was aiming for. 

Holding a mortar and pestle, she took a seat on the rock next to the flower. The lava pool sloshed in front of her, radiating enough heat to turn the others to ash in seconds, with her skin smoking and turning red. 

It was a good thing she had left her spatial ring back inside the arrays, as everything else on her body had either melted or turned to ash. Allison didn't didn't care about her nudity, focusing on her marble tools. 

Ignoring the pain, she delicately plucked the petals from the flower, grinding them all up into a paste. Even the stem was ground into the mix, its energies mixing with the pedals to create a holy unappetizing concoction. 

It was the crudest method to absorb the energies, but they didn't have an alchemist on hand to refine the treasure.

Some of the fire lily's efficacy would be lost, but there was still more than enough for her needs. Sitting at the edge of the pool of lava, her skin glimmered, her body like a sponge as it drank in the energies the crushed flower emitted. She could already feel her affinities improving, her body changing on a fundamental level and she hadn't even drank the treasure yet. The benefits were obvious, but there would be risks to ingesting this thing.

If she failed to properly form a shard able to withstand being compressed into a core, she would be forever stuck in middle D grade. If that happened, she would journey would be cut short, and ended by a tremendous explosion as she failed to form a core. Allison shook aside the unhelpful thoughts.

Enduring the hellish heat at the edge of the magma pool, Allison downed the concoction in one go, blanching at the foul taste. The other watched on with a mix of anxiety and trepidation, as her aura spiked. With the crude concoction drank, her body radiated immense waves of heat, turning the stone around her molten. 

Dark red veins spiderwebbed across her pale skin, her white hair dancing in an unseen wind as heatwaves rippled around her. The lava pool sloshed against the rock, creating waves that splashed one wall. No one said it, but they were all thinking the same thing. This process was much more intense than they had been told. Forming a shard and stepping into the D grade was supposed to be tough, but they hadn't expected it to be this rough. 

Time seemed to drag on, as Allison's body pulsed, releasing waves of heat that turned the cave into a molten hellscape. The heat was so bad that the cooling arrays couldn't shield them, and all but Taylor were forced to flee the cave. 

Taylor stood like a guardian, pouring canteens of water over his head one after another to endure the growing heat.

His clothes smoked, and his skin was an angry red but he didn't complain. From outside the cave, Zee paid close attention to her friend inside, ready to act if something went wrong. She wasn't sure what she would do, but thankfully, nothing too bad happened over the next ten hours. 

It took longer than expected, but she could feel the tumultuous world river settle as Allison's aura condensed.

Even after nearly ten hours, it wasn't over just yet. The sweltering heat in the area was suddenly dragged into the cave, rivers of heat sucked in as Allison's body became a whirlpool. Like a sponge, she absorbed it all, her aura growing deeper and denser. 

The absorption lasted for ten minutes, upon which, the energy in the environment was sucked dry. An exhausted Allison collapsed onto her back, wrung out and exhausted. 

Even so, she was grinning as the other rushed in, the air cool now that the energy was sucked from the area.

"I did it," Allison said, raising a hand, and clenching it into a fist.

Zee smiled down at her best friend."Damn straight you did. Look at you leaving the rest of us in the dust," Zee said. 

Allison laughed weakly, her eyes drooping in fatigue. "Hold that thought, I'm just going to rest my eyes for a few minutes," Allison said.

Wrung out, Allison fell unconscious.

They all glanced at each other, with Bastion stating the obvious. 

"So, who is going to carry her? We can't wait around here while she is unconscious," Bastion said. 

"I got her," Malden grunted, and leaned down, easily hefting Allison on one shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes.

Yukna fidgeted nervously, glancing up as the sky flashed a myriad of colors. 

"Hey guys, I'm not sure we have time to get back to the ship," Yukna said.

Zee furrowed her brows, as another brilliant flash of light lit up the lava fields. It wasn't a battle, no, the light show was much more ominous than that. 

It was the incredibly turbulent energies of the deeper regions of the endless storm colliding. As if to accentuate Yukna's words, another tremendous flash lit up the dark landscape.

"That doesn't look good," Bastion said.

"We need to go, now," Malden said, urgency in his voice.

Bastion furrowed his brows. 

"It is going to take at least a week to return to the ship, we might not make it in time," Bastion said. 

Malden glared over at Zee. "I thought you said we still had over a week left?" Malden accused.

"That's what the information crystal I bought told me. The damned merchant must have stretched the truth," Zee scowled. 

"Stupid, unreliable bugs," Malden grumbled, looking upward, as the sky brightened further. 

Looking a bit haggard, Taylor gulped several mouthfuls of water from one of his canteens his hair a bit singed. 

"So, do we run for it, or do we risk our emergency escape plan?" Taylor asked.

Everyone glanced over at Zee, who was still eying the light show above. 

She stared back at them blankly.

"I think we would be better off running for it. There is a reason that opening a gate is for the emergency escape plan," Zee said.

Malden scowled. 

"And why is that? What's the point in being a spatial cultivator if you are too afraid to open a gate?" Malden asked. 

Zee gave him a deadpan stare.

"Opening a gate in the endless storm is only if we are desperate. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to leap head-first through an unstable gate unless absolutely necessary," Zee replied.

"I guess let's start running then," Malden said. 

Zee nodded, glancing up as another bright flash lit up the sky. "Let's go," Zee said. 

To come here, they had taken their time, moving cautiously to ascend the steep slopes of the volcanoes. The way back down was much quicker, where they practically ran down the rocky terrain. 

Several monsters attacked them, but were quickly killed as the group didn't hold back. With the increasingly frequent light shows above and the growing energy levels, none of them dared to draw out the fights. 

For two days, things went smoothly as they ran across the lava fields, moving at a clip that no mortal could hope to match. As Peak E-grade cultivators, they could sustain a casual pace that would look like a blur to mortals. 

Even pushing themselves to exhaustion, returning to the drop ship would take at least five days. Judging by the rising energy levels, and the increasingly bright flashes that lit up the sky they didn't have that much time. 

To make things worse, the monsters in the lava fields were going mad as the energy levels rose to suffocating levels. The monsters attacked without fear of death, throwing themselves at anything nearby including other monsters.

Zee wrenched her sword from the side of a winged salamander, blood and gore splashing her as she panted. 

Around her, the others looked exhausted, covered in ichor, blood, and sweat. 

They looked ready to keel over, having pushed themselves hard over the past day. 

Malden set Allison on the ground, gasping for breath.

"I can't keep this pace up for much longer," Malden gasped, wiping his gore-stained hammer on the fur of a monster.

The others shared that sentiment, though not in so many words. 

Resting her hands on her knees, Zee looked up at the sky, as a tremendous burst of light lit up the world. They had definitely miscalculated. There was no way they would get back to the ship before they reached that raging tempest. 

Unless... Unless, she did something very risky. There was a reason ships didn't open gates in the endless storm, and that was because it was extremely dangerous to do so. 

The intense and chaotic energies made gates highly unstable, which could make them unpredictable at best. If she wasn't careful, she might accidentally open a gate somewhere unintentionally, like back at the academy when she opened a gate to the abyssal plane. 

Even so, now wasn't the time to hesitate. It was either she opened a gate back to the ship, or they would find out what entering the deeper and much less friendly areas of the endless storm was like. 

"Dern, help me draw the ritual markings, I need them to be as precise as you can make them," Zee said. 

In conjunction, with summoning him, she pulled out one-half of an anchor stone from her pocket. It was on half of a whole, connected to an identical object back on the ship.

"Everyone get ready, but don't go until I say. I'm going to open a gate, and there is no telling how long it will stay stable," Zee said. 

With that said, she tuned everyone out, her sole focus on the book floating in front of her. A ritual diagram formed in the air around her, some lines being carved into the rock and others floating. Each had a purpose, combining together to form a ritual to stabilize space. 

In under a minute, the ritual snapped into place, the energy much less chaotic around her. Taking a deep breath, she clenched the anchor stone tightly and focused on a single point in front of her. 

Nothing happened at first, but then the air crackled. Realizing she needed more power, Zee channeled more of her energy into the vortex. Ominous blur arcs flashed in front of her, growing brighter until a small tear in space formed. 

Intense waves of spiritual energy gushed from the vortex, as the gate connected one location to another through the spiritual plane. 

The gate grew to twice as tall and wide as she was, before settling. The vortex swirled, its edges crackling with chaotic energy. Zee glanced from the clearly unstable gate, then to the lightshow above.

Well, it was either risk the gate or something much worse. Zee gestured. "Ill try it first, the rest of you follow me closely," Zee said.

She didn't give the others time to argue, before leaping headfirst inside.