Chapter 9

*BOOOOM*

Right now I'm in a battlefield. It's not unusual for me to be in one anymore if I'm honest, but I want to tell you that I've come a long way. It's been 500 years since I entered this universe and I live on this planet. Azeroth, to say it is almost like saying the "Prodigal Planet" or the "Promised Planet" and not because it is the most beautiful or the one with the most abundant life, no. I say it because it is the most important planet in the universe. I say it because it is the most important planet because of what lies dormant within it. But I'll leave that aside.

*BOOOOM*

In these 500 years I have grown a lot in power, but I will tell it in an orderly way. When I turned 200, with a few unimportant months, days and hours, I accomplished something. I finally gained basic control of my mental powers.

*BOOOOM*

I was euphoric for days and I'm sure my enemies felt my happiness in their bodies, hahaha. Yes, I can't let go of my sense of humor and now with my mental powers in use, even less so.

*BOOOOM*

I continue. When I woke them up I realized that they were kind of like how it's explained in Harry Potter fanfic, the occlumency. I say fanfics because I've never read J. K. Rowling's books. So, when I woke them up I spent 5 days organizing my mind. Not because I couldn't collect all the memory fragments I had inside my mental space, but because there were a LOT of them.

*BOOOOM*

Imagine the amount of memories a person who has lived in peace for 80 years has. Now imagine the amount of memories I have between the two lives. I died relatively young, but it depends on the perspective of the age of each one, I will not go into that topic, in the end, now as an elemental I am not exactly young, but I am certainly not old. Maybe from the point of view of the elemental lords I am a 7 year old boy and they are 80 year old lords.

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM*

So, 200 years of memories, in which I was involved for practically the entire 200 years in territorial battles that I knew would never end. When I managed to organize my mind I had to wait a few more weeks of fighting in another battle to be able to pay attention to my mental powers again and thus start building my mental defenses proper. I already had a practically perfect memory.

*BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

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*SIGH*

Ragnaros is too loud. I get that he wants attention and all, but it gets tedious after a while. The amount of times he's hinted at burning everything, drowning us in lava, purifying us, turning us to ash, crushing us, calling us an insect and almost growing a long spiky mane on his head... could be, considering it would be made of fire. In the future I'll be sure to force him to do something like that, hahahaha ---

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM*

...I'll make sure, definitely. Anyway, I think it hurts Ragnaros that Therazane doesn't care about any of his empty threats. I mean, since I've seen his battles and it's 500 years, I know something. Therazane hasn't said a word in response to his provocations, but I have to give credit to the "Great Fire Lord" and that is that he has an extensive vocabulary and his handling of threats is almost perfect. Almost because everything he says has to do with fire... He needs to change a bit.

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM*

Anyway, I doubt Therazane or Ragnaros will change. Customs die late...

Continuing with my story. Since my mental defenses had a lot to do with my imagination I wanted to exaggerate. Unfortunately I couldn't... Not that much, hahaha. I implemented what I like the most in fantasy, Dragons. But only dragons would be boring, so I added monsters and then I added other life forms. I must say the little world in my mind was beautiful. I made it so that if they tried to corrupt me it would be obvious. My memories would be safeguarded...

*BOOOOM*

They would be sheltered in the "sun" of my "mental world". More precisely in its core. To get there they would have to go through a lot before they could find a way up to the sun. It wasn't hard to get there, but it was certainly going to be painful for anyone. My memory would be encoded with specific beams of light. In order to read it you'd have to go blind first, which is ironic, haha. It would be something like the reading the moth priests have in Skyrim. Of course, getting to the core of the sun wouldn't be easy. The heat is no joke. Besides enduring the constant heat and purifying light they would have to read multiple books that they had to translate. Each book would be a letter, so they would have to play around and see which letter goes in which order. If they get it wrong they start over and only if they somehow manage to beat me at my tedious game, then they will be able to access all of my true memory.

*BOOOOM*

With my defenses done, I then gained control of my other power. The empathic power I possessed. Although it sounds like a joke, that power had a lot of potential. No one could hide their true emotions from me and I could understand every nuance of them like reading a book. A terrifying ability, if I do say so myself. Those two abilities were barely at a basic level of control. There were still a few more levels left, I don't know how many if I'm honest. Besides that now the amount of elementalists had almost no effect on me, I felt them, but they wouldn't influence me. Maybe the higher ranks could do it, but I don't want to try. I'm not suicidal...

*BOOOOM*

50 years later I gained basic control of my bodily ability. This is the part I like the most, because I could finally evolve from a simple earth elemental. Although it was only a basic level, at my level no elemental could face me 1vs1. At least the fire and earth ones. I haven't faced the water and air ones yet. But I'm curious about them.

*BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

*BOOOOM*

I evolved into what I am now, a lava elemental. I'm a fusion of an earth and fire elemental, but I'm different from regular lava elementals, that's for sure. My appearance now is volcanic rock with lava, not that I can be anything else, hahaha. I differ from the others in that I have 4 tentacles on my back. They're not very thick, but they do the job.

*BOOOOM*

To evolve into who I am now I have to explain a little about my basic control of my body power. First of all-

*BOOOOM*

First of all, adaptability, which is a passive ability or skill, so to speak. But I didn't have that ability 100% active, before I had basic control over my bodily abilities. Still, in those 250 years I was slowly adapting to fire and was evolving into a lava elemental. It would just take me that much longer to do it.

*BOOOOM*

As far as my ability to evolve, it's also almost a passive ability, and it's activated when I'm, well, adding new elements to myself, so to speak. And the most important part of my body power is, I have a control over how I want my body to look.

*BOOOOM**BOOOOM**BOOOOM*

Unfortunately I still can't change my color to one I want, or do very complicated things with my body. I guess it's partly due to my small amount of body mass and my low power. Even if I evolve, I still possess very little mana compared to the mages of the future. Or at least the really good or important ones in a city.

*BOOOOM*

My evolution was painful. And when I say painful I mean VERY painful. To change I had to gather a lot of fire essences, which thanks to everything good in the world, I had stored in a cave.

*BOOOOM*

I've been collecting essences throughout my fights. I love my foresight, not to say I can't let anything go to waste. I also learned that essences have a shelf life if left in an unfavorable environment towards their elemental type. Some of the essences were already so old, the internal fire element was dying out. But by gathering so many essences together, they would eventually regain energy and turn the place where I stored them into a furnace....

*BOOOOM*

Earth essences are simpler. You leave them on the ground and they will stay there, for a long time with virtually no energy loss. Logical, I guess.

Anyway, I used all the fire essences I had to make sure I completed my evolution. But the process was horrible. The fire energy from the essences entered my being, changing my former stone core into a lava core by increasing its temperature by absorbing fire energy. I had to guide the process. I instinctively knew how to do what I wanted to do... Very magical. And I felt the lava emerge from me, changing my torso and filling with fire and lava the spaces that were floating before, like my arms, my legs and my neck.

*BOOOOM*

But the pain of the process I still remember clearly. Like being baked and having my blood turn into boiling water that slowly moves through my body. But when the process was over I felt, not only more powerful, but also faster and more agile. Since I could change my body shape, I decided that I would change the thickness of my arms a little, so that they would be easier to move and attack faster. They didn't become thin, just not as bulky. I was a practically unnecessary mass of stone.

*BOOOOM*

I also added 2 tentacles on my back that would help me cast spells. Which were now more powerful as they involved two elemental energies together. And they would also help me cast my "cannonballs", as I started telling them a few years after I started using them. But the best thing, according to me, I could do with the tentacles is to grab enemy arms and prevent them from escaping or prevent them from using that arm to attack.

*BOOOOM*

It all sounds cute in my mind and looks good in my imagination. The truth is that I had a hard time using them well. They are new limbs that I'm not used to and that the common lava elemental evolution doesn't have, so I had to struggle while training their use. The best training I would say. I had to get used to my new body in a life and death struggle.

*BOOOOM*

Luckily for me, now my attacks also do "Periodic Damage" or "Dot", from lava, a powerful elemental combination, but the one that does the most damage is fire, the earth just makes the duration of the effect longer, logical I guess. I became proficient with my new limbs about 30 years later, and then added 2 more tentacles. I thought it was better to step out of my comfort zone by adding 2 instead of one. The mass I used to create them came from parts of my body that I was changing in each battle, testing which form suited my fighting style and where else I could add a bit more to do more damage or be more forceful.

*BOOOOM*

The rest of the dough, I got from the essences of fire and earth that I plundered from the corpses of the elementals. Luckily, being made of lava in some parts more than others helps me mold my body more easily. It's not as hard as stone but it's more flexible and also more moldable, because of the density. With the increase of my body mass many things changed.

*BOOOOM*

I got bigger, one of those advantages. The disadvantage is that now I was facing other lava elementals that were part of Ragnaros' army. Too bad I don't care and I like Therazane's side which is more "calm". Still, my fights are tough, but with the amount of versatility and utility I possess and the new spells I can use. Like fireball, from the fire elementalists.

*BOOOOM*

Fire shield, also from the fire elementals. Lava balls, as a spell from my evolution. Lava column, also from my evolution. "Lava cannon" by creating a spherical ball of volcanic stone with lava inside that would explode on contact. That was more of a weapon of sorts that I built and not a spell per se, at least for now.

Thanks to all that, now fighting me was something elementals shouldn't want to do, but they still did it. They would fling themselves like a moth to the flame at me, hahaha. Well, more like a moth to lava, hahaha.

*BOOOOM*

Anyway, I've been having fun with this elemental for a long time while I've been thinking. It couldn't have hurt me more and all that's left to do is to give it one more touch. I wonder, how should I finish it...?

Author's note: I hope you liked the chapter. I'm totally tired, I wrote 6k words today. 4k in my original novel and 2k in this chapter to try to keep up with a daily update. So I don't give for anything anymore. Tomorrow there will be a fight chapter and maybe one more chapter, only if 8 people comment on the next chapter. I invite you to comment, because every comment is a motivation to continue writing. I wish you all the best ^^.

By the way, I want to thank reader "the_fat_taoist" from the WebNovel site, who gave me the idea to call the "stone balls" that the protagonist used before, "cannonballs". Thanks for your contribution to this story. I invite you to do the same with any useful skill you can think of. I have imagination, but I'm just a drop in the bucket, I still have a lot to learn as a new author. So I invite you to give ideas for skills (please be consistent) and names for skills. ^-^

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