Chapter 40: The Pebble.

The dragon's body disappeared into my green realm, and I stood up.

"Disciple, are you okay?" I asked Jasmine what seemed like the highest level of empathy she could demonstrate.

"Yeah, it's just a pity, that's all." I replied with a wry smile on my face while I gritted my teeth. I then patted my robes and looked at just how much blood I was covered in.

I sighed. "Whatever, let's go take the seed."

"Good, this took a lot of time already." She continued, making me take back my mental comment about her showing empathy, not that it was any news.

We walked in silence, as I felt the sensation inside of my body grow more and more powerful as I walked toward the sole cause of my presence here, and I couldn't help but think about this whole situation.

"Do you think we can find out who those guys outside are?" I asked after a few tense seconds of contemplation, the blood on my clothes still warm, covering me in a sticky and nauseatingly smelly reminder of what had just happened.

"What then? You want to hunt them down?" She asked with a raised eyebrow in confusion, "That goes against everything I've seen you do since I've known you."

"No, the perpetrators of this disaster are already dead; I just want to know who to not associate with in the future." I replied, Justice was done. I had no idea if any of them had escaped during the fight, but I couldn't really care less.

She looked at me as she floated by my side, an expression that I couldn't read marring her face, a mixture between incomprehension and interest. "They were cultivators that used fire techniques; that emperor realm's veins still held that kind of imprint, but you should know for sure if you look inside of their spatial artifacts."

"Oh yeah, those rings, right?" I replied, "I guess I should get those other corpses as well; I can still learn a lot from them."

She chuckled, which earned her a glance of curiosity from me; this was hardly a situation where someone should laugh after all.

"I don't think you would have said something like that when we first met." She replied to my unasked question with a wide smile that I didn't like in the least.

"Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't have; we'll never know," I replied with a tired sigh, knowing perfectly well that the seed was now right behind the corner. "What matters is that I don't want what happened today to repeat itself."

"Then I hope you know what you need to achieve that, right?" She said, her smile deepening as I, while maintaining my silence, removed a massive rock with the same ease I would have used in moving a pebble.

Behind it, scarlet light erupted, and the item I had come here for finally came into my view, a pebble in size with the appearance of the most beautifully cut ruby I had ever seen in my life.

I hadn't seen many, but the point still stood.

"There is a flame dragon's inflammatory imprint." She remarked.

"And what is that?" I asked back, bringing my outstretched hand back, waiting to know if it was dangerous or otherwise.

"It lets the one who put the imprint know if anyone is touching it, but since it's almost completely faded already, the owner was probably the dragon, so there is no danger." She explained.

That seemed incredibly useful; I would have to research how to replicate that feat on my own eventually.

"So I can just take it?" I asked.

"There shouldn't be any problems; I don't sense any traps other than the faded imprint."

"Good." I looked at the seed and took it in my hand.

And I looked at it.

For several seconds.

Finally, I turned back to the little girl and asked, "How do I use this?"

She unblinkingly replied, "Eat it, probably."

"Probably?" My voice tone shared exactly how much I didn't like that word in such a situation: "I'm not going to trust a probably."

"Stop being a kid and just eat it; I'm sure it will be fine." She silenced me with a motion.

"A kid is someone who would put some random rock into his mouth, not someone who refuses to!" I protested her flawed logic: "And this is a pebble, not a seed."

"It's a seed if I say that it is, and do you have better options?" She asked with an exasperated sigh, as if she were the reasonable one for telling me to eat a rock found in a dragon cave.

But she did have a point; I didn't know any better than she did, so while I did find it exceedingly weird to just munch on a rock, I had no alternatives.

Wait, was I actually supposed to munch on it? "Should I chew it?"

She looked at me with a lost expression but didn't reply.

I didn't chew it; there was no need to. It melded into my own energy the moment it came into contact with the inside of my mouth, and then I felt more.

An enormous flame appeared around my body, engulfing me and the room I was in in flames that almost seemed as hot as a glass furnace, except that they weren't.

It was a light show; really, the flames didn't interact with anything, and the floating Jasmine herself seemed more surprised than in agonizing pain from being burned alive.

And I just felt comfortable, as if I had finally gone back to my bed after a long winter day, under layers of covers and with hot chocolate in my hands, with whipped cream on top.

The very energy in my veins assumed the color of the fire that surrounded me. I recorded every single instant of it for future review with my glasses and observed every change.

I saw the veins behavior as the veins themselves turned crimson, their existence turning a tiny bit different in nature but different nonetheless.

They were vibrating, seemingly expanding in size while occupying the same space at the same time, as more and more energy began flooding my system, power like never before surging through my veins, and it was crimson in color.

I felt like a generator that suddenly received a new influx of material to turn into energy, and effectively, I might as well have been, as I felt a tiny, very little bit of my existence change into something else, something more.

Power.

Shortly after the dramatic surge of power died out, so did the flames.

"That was something." I mumbled, flexing the muscles of my arm, trying to get used to the new and immense surge of power that I was in no way used to possessing. I felt as if whatever I was able to do before, I could do better now, and not by a little.

"Incredible, the seed of the Evil God probably possessed some of his power as well, so it increased your cultivation too, other than just giving your profound veins the fire attribute." She replied with a curious expression.

"Fire attribute?"

"Yes, your veins now possess the fire attribute, and the purest fire attribute there is; if you decided to become a fighter, you would have unmatched power right now; nothing can stop you with both the Evil God's Profound Veins and the Great Way of the Buddha." She replied, going on a whole thing that didn't actually answer my question.

So I specified, "I was asking what this fire attribute thing is."

"What do you mean?" She replied, confused.

"Fire is a complex thing; what does it mean for my veins to be of the fire attribute?"

"It means that you will be more attuned to fire, obviously." She said this while looking at me as if I were stupid, and I most certainly wasn't, since her explanation truly made no sense to me.

"Are we talking about natural fire or energy fire? Because those are two completely different things, you should be more specific." I replied, starting to get annoyed that there was this much difference in understanding.

First of all, how did the people of this world even categorize fire? I had my normal chemical explanation of fire, but if my experiences in this world taught me anything, it was that magic was a wacky thing that didn't obey anything except the intent of the wielder.

As long as the wielder had enough wacky energy, of course.

"Why would we care about natural fire? It's too cold to do anything to any powerful cultivator; all that matters is fire generated from energy." She replied with the same annoyance I had.

"On the contrary, Jasmine, to make the distinction is very important!" I protested, "What if I expect a result and throw myself into a volcano, because I think that natural heat will behave the same way as profound energy-generated heat, and die for it?"

"Why would you even throw yourself into a volcano?"

"To have a sauna?" I replied sarcastically, "I don't know; there could be many reasons!"

To which she shouted back with a very annoyed, "What even is a sauna?"

I calmed down immediately, my behavior doing a complete flip as I abandoned my annoyance and changed the subject, so I replied with a genuinely surprised voice, "You don't know? I'll make one for you then; it's not that difficult, I think, and it's not bad."

She looked at me with a fed-up expression, clearly impressed with my ability to change my mood at a moment's notice, because how else could she possibly interpret my ability?

Surely, she didn't realize that I was purposefully trying to piss her off; no, sir, I just had to play it down after the whole dragon fiasco, and messing with her was my favorite past time.

As for whatever that fire attribute thing was, it just shot up to first place on my list of fucking around to find out, because there was no way I'd be happy until I understood how this magical, rock-eating, seed-powered fuckery worked.

After that, I guessed that it really depended on what kind of limitations this "fire attribute" thing had.

Because it was one thing if it just worked on the classical fire that even cavemen knew about, but if it included all the physical stuff, such as the distinct and separate components of heat and light, then it was an entirely different thing.

Magical lazers.

That kind of power was a disaster waiting to happen, but thankfully I was a very responsible person, not at all someone who would often end up building stupid things just because of a fancy, just like I hadn't built floating chairs during a manic episode.

Or tried to put a divine AI inside of a wooden puppet, which failed and blew up.

"Okay," we don't talk, nor think about that nightmare of a puppet, "have we done everything here?"

"I think so, but there is a lot of Fire Spirit Grass in this cave, so you might want to gather it." She replied, giving up on pursuing the previous argument as well.

"And what is that?"

"A precious herb, it sells for a lot and can refine your body if you refine it with your Sky Poison Pearl."

"That's interesting," I muttered before going on a completely different tangent. "I need to find some spicy herbs now; do you know any?"

She looked at me, blinked, then started massaging the bridge of her nose. "How did you come to that thought?"

"Fire herb, fire burns, spicy food burns; I like spicy food; I want more spicy food, but the people of this world haven't even developed the Scoville scale as far as I know, so I might just start a decade-long project for spicy food." I explained that my flawless thought process was too much for a human mind to handle.

So she disappeared, rude as always, the little princess. I had to spoil her less.

I might just develop California Reapers and have her eat one, just for fun.

I gathered every fiery-red blade of grass that I saw with my magical tattoo and left the cave, when suddenly, Jasmine's voice reappeared in my head: "Oh, and congratulations on reaching the fourth level of the True Profound realm, foolish disciple."

I chuckled. My girlfriend used a word for this kind of character. What was it?

Ah, yes, "What a tsundere."

Gimme the stones pls, i got addicted.

Comment too pls, they get me going and give me the motivation to write more.