Inheritance

The being seemed to inhale slightly, before announcing, in a booming voice that carried across the room "A new gnat seems to have entered my lair, unannounced. Well... Let me give you the grand tour! To your right and left you should find walls of solid fire, while directly ahead you'll see... Your impending and unstoppable doom!" the red being said jovially, while he sat on his throne and widened his smile into one that stretched across his whole face, yet didn't reach his eyes.

"And who might you be?" Robert asked casually, as he tightened his grip on the spear.

"I am the Emperor of Flames! Throughout the universe there are nine elements and me and my companions each embody one of them. I am fire! My bones are obsidian and my flesh is magma! You haven't proven yourself worthy of knowing more, nor will you. Now, prepare yourself mortal, for we have one more thing to resolve... your life!" the being declared it's titles with boisterous joy.

"App? Any suggestions?" Robert asked, wondering how to fell the mad titan.

[Hmm... try murdering him... until he's dead... a lot.]

"..." Robert was silent.

Robert gripped his spear tight and as he braced himself to receive the titan, said titan conjured a huge battleaxe made of obsidian and began to walk towards the Robert. As soon as the titan reached within a few meters of Robert, Robert bolted at the titan and began to continuously jab his spear at the titan, hoping to drive him back. The titan kept out of range of Robert's barrage and Robert began to press forward. The titan attempted to rush Robert and began swinging his battleaxe at him. Robert jumped back while using the reach of his spear to stay out of the battleaxe's range but still be able to parry it.

As Robert swung his spear at the battleaxe, the titan responded in kind. When the weapons collided both Robert and the titan were shocked, as the battleaxe was cleaved in twain! The titan began to step back from Robert in shock, a hint of fear in it's ember-like eyes. The titan gestured with his hand as if pulling something towards him, and a sea of flames followed the gesture. Robert made a desperate lunge at the titan with his spear as he conjured his mana armour.

His armor seemed far more solid in this place, it no longer had that slight transparency which it had held before. As the inferno washed over Robert, he saw his spear connect with the titan's armour. When the surging tempest of fire consumed Robert, he felt intense pain as if a hot piece of iron was being held every to part of him, inside and out. For a second the pain continued, growing in intensity with each passing moment, and then suddenly... it stopped.

Surprised by this development, Robert looked around and noticed that the flames were being swallowed by the snake head that rested on his shoulder. The snake head greedily gulped down the surrounding blaze. When the surrounding fire was all gone the snake head closed its mouth and resumed its previous position. With the fire gone Robert could see the product of his previous lunge, a few metres away, the titan looked at him with cold calculating eyes that didn't suit his earlier boisterousness.

The titan's armour had a slash through it, the edges of which were still red and molten, it would seem that Robert's spear pierced through the armour but failed to touch the titan's fiery red skin.

"App, what the hell just happened?" Robert asked, watching the titan carefully as he did.

[Mana armour resistance increases with its owners mana and affinity. Since your fire affinity has been boosted to the same level as the emperor of flames over there, the fire resistance of your mana armor has skyrocketed.]

"And the snake?" Robert followed

[A personal touch to your armor, it is a representation of me in this world, the energy it absorbs goes directly to my personal quarters within your mind.]

"You have personal quarters in my head?" Robert asked, slightly scared.

[Indeed, I had to clear out some stuff to make room but it is quite cosy]

"What do you mean 'Clear out some stuff'!?" Robert asked, turning to the snake head.

[Oh, just some childhood memories and some empathy. Don't worry you won't need it.]

The titan finally rose from his sitting position. "I was wrong, you do deserve to know my name. I am Efrit and I acknowledge your prowess." Efrit declared, looking at Robert with a questioning expression.

"My name is Robert, and I'm the villain." Robert declared back.

Efrit's eyes opened wide. "A villain? You are one of their ilk?" Efrit asked Robert.

"One of their ilk? I was summoned here by a god of light and told that I was the villain in some game." Robert answered, hoping that Efrit could shed some light on his circumstances.

Efrit looked at him jubilantly, nearly hopping. "Haha, it really is one of you. Robert... I would like to propose a deal. I will teach you mastery over the element of fire but in return you must one day free me from this cage of elemental rulership."

"Cage? What do you mean?" Robert asked, wary of becoming the idiot who had unleashed an ancient evil upon the world.

"This place was designed by an ancient emperor because we neglected his people. At the time we had no choice but the emperor blamed us for his people's lack of power. So he sealed us within these strange crystals that forced us to bestow a blessing upon any that defeated us." Efrit said, with his head downcast and a regretful tone in his voice.

"Very well then, but why not let me defeat you and obtain the blessing?" Robert asked, still suspicious.

"I am bound to face you in combat until one of us is defeated, however I do not think that you will win this fight." Efrit spoke straightforwardly, the boisterousness that had long laced his tone now gone.

"I have one more question, why do you need a villain? Robert asked.

Efrit stared at him for a moment, pondering. "Villains possess systems, considering your feats so far I would wager that yours is fairly powerful. With a system that has enough power, the level that you can advance to is near limitless. And to shatter that emperor's spell, I need something at the level of unfathomable." Efrit said, and Robert could see a glint of hope in his ember-like eyes.

"Alright then, I agree." Said Robert, much to the joy of Efrit.

"Then let us begin." said Efrit, a serious expression coming across his face. "First, reach out with your senses and feel the fire elementals in the area, don't try and influence them, just watch." Efrit spoke in a calm voice, as if watching the fire elementals brought him peace.

Robert had always been a patient person, he was introverted and would often end up watching instead of participating in conversations, especially if the other people conversing knew each other well. Through this Robert had learned to wait patiently for hours until a lull came by. Unfortunately this didn't help him much as he sat, watching the fire elementals for days. He continued watching the elementals with Efrit for days, noticing the way they moved around, how they connected to each other and produced wisps of flame that conflagrated the air for a moment before disappearing. After a week Robert felt like his mind was going to burst and after a month Robert collapsed.

As Robert collapsed he seemed to fall out of his body. When he looked around he saw Efrit looking at him in utter shock. Robert noticed that Efrit was also outside of his body.

"I have been waiting here for three weeks... never... in all my time teaching about, giving blessings of and understanding fire have I witnessed someone with such formidable willpower. At first I thought that you were using the system to push through, but after a week I got bored and tried to wrench you out of your body forcefully, when I did your system used it's full force to repel me and your state remained exactly the same." Efrit was still looking at Robert with the same expression of confusion and the slightest hint of fear.

"Huh," Robert thought "maybe there was something after all to those beliefs back on earth that through sheer force of will humans could accomplish the impossible." Robert thought of those monks that could alter the temperature of select parts of their body, of Alexander Selkirk -the man who had survived alone on a tropical island for four years and four months- and of those who had fought their way through disease and injury to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes and as Robert thought of all this he realized that in this harsh world this was what he would become -what he had to become.

"Okay, now that we are here you will notice that your body has a core, you need to draw in the fire elementals around you to form a body for yourself." Efrit began to draw in the fire elementals around him until he had a body that was very similar to his original one. "Now you." Efrit said.

Robert imagined the fire elementals around him surging towards him but as they did he noticed that the air was being pushed out of the way. As Robert tried to control both particles at once he felt a gargantuan pressure on his mind, it became stronger and stronger as he pulled in more and more fire elementals, until he had a body of glowing plasma. The pressure threatened to overwhelm him and he had a hard time focusing, luckily App was there and as Robert felt himself drift further and further from his body, App set the fire elementals into a looping motion so that the heat coming off of the plasma didn't fry Robert's body.

As the loops came into place Robert saw them and then... he understood them. He could see these paths of molten, roaring fire elementals flowing through the air and as App carved new lines into the universes fabric for the elementals to flow through, Robert felt something stir within him and let out a chromatic burst from his core. Suddenly, Robert could feel his new body of plasma, he could see thousands of tiny paths, perfectly mimicking veins, arteries and capillaries. As Robert wished for the paths to come into being, so they did, as if the universe itself was responding to him. The new paths weren't carved into the fabric of the universe as if by a heavy blade, they were molded into it with a scalpel's precision and a feather's touch.

Efrit stepped back and Robert saw that he had conjured his battleaxe again. Robert looked into Efrit's eyes and Efrit shuddered. Robert took a step forward and Efrit, Emperor of Flames and Embodiment of Fire took a step back, eyes filled with fear and worship. Robert looked upon the universe in all of its infiniteness and then Robert fell. Like a shooting star he fell, through the universe, through everything. As he fell, he cried out in outrage, as the solar winds stripped away his scales he screamed in anguish and as massive spears of light struck him and scattered the light within him, he protested feebly - feeble, for the first time in all time- and as those spears drove his colossal body through the ancient rift he could only begin to whisper... before he was cut off... from life, from speaking and from all he had known and done.

As Robert lived through this exile, his body fell to the ground, and shattered into as many pieces as there were once stars.