For a brief, extrely brief mont, Kael ’hoped’ that that thing was dead. Not in the heroic sense, more like the tired, desperate kind of hope a man allows himself when he’s done everything "right" and he wants the universe to just... pay him back once.
He stared at the mound of shattered concrete and twisted rebar, listening for anything that sounded like movent, anything that sounded like breath.
Nothing.
Dust drifted in lazy sheets through the heat-haze. Small pebbles rolled off the pile and clicked down into the street like timid footsteps. The air slled like scorched stone and burnt tal, the aftertaste clinging to the back of his throat.
A brief mont it was.
A mont he didn’t trust.
His fingers tightened, then loosened, then tightened again, like his body was trying to decide whether to celebrate or sprint. Kael didn’t give it the choice. The second that false calm tried to settle, he ripped himself out of it.
Kael jumped back from the rubble.
Screw checking the creature’s life sign, screw hoping that it would be this easy.
When did things ever beco easy for Kael? The Tower didn’t hand out clean wins; it handed out lessons, and most of them ca with teeth.
"Bastard, couldn’t you just give a notification that it’s dead. You think’ I’d fall for this?" Kael muttered not to himself, maybe to the tower, or whoever was watching.
His voice ca out rough, half laugh and half spit. He didn’t even look away from the pile as he backed off, eyes tracking every crack, every shadow between the blocks, every place fla could hide and burst out from.
His hunch was, in fact. Extrely correct.
The rubble blew up, blasted in every direction, and that mont where he had jumped away from the range of the explosion was impactful to a degree only the sweat on Kael’s forehead could explain.
The shock hit his chest first, like a hamr punch of air, and then the debris ca, the real danger.
After all, walls and pillars the size of cars went right through where he was standing a mont ago. Had he gone closer to check, he’d have learned the aning of becoming a at patty.
Chunks of concrete scread past. A bent beam scythed through the space he’d abandoned, trailing sparks as it scraped the asphalt. Fine grit peppered his helt and hissed against the leather. Even with his resistance, the heat flared hard enough to make his breath stutter.
Fire and more fire tore through the rubble as the Ifrit erged out.
It didn’t "climb" out so much as erupt, as if the street itself rejected the idea of holding it down.
Stone fists punched aside collapsed slabs like they were paper. Flas surged through gaps, licking at the air with hungry impatience.
The creature’s silhouette reford, horned stone head, jagged torso, and that infernal core of fla stitching it all together with spite.
A loud, explosive roar that would wake the dead if need be echoed through the block.
It wasn’t just sound. It was pressure. The kind that makes your teeth vibrate and your ears ring and your instincts scream move.
Kael didn’t move; he steadied himself, boots scraping for grip on loose gravel, because panic wasted ti and ti was now the most expensive resource on the floor.
Kael noticed it imdiately on the map.
Mass convergence of both red and green.
The minimap started blooming with motion like spilled ink. Red dots shifting from buildings. Green dots are turning toward the noise.
Even distant specks began drifting in, as if every scavenger and predator within earshot had been handed a written invitation.
Those who heard the noise, be it climbers or monsters, were prone to co and check. Loud noise always equated to an event happening, a monster slaying, a climber dying, in either case. There was always loot involved for the climbers and leftover at for the monsters.
Kael’s jaw clenched.
’Damn it, I’m on a tir now,’ Kael said as he locked eyes with the Ifrit.
The Ifrit looked... wrong.
Not weak, never weak, but unstable. Like a furnace that had been cracked open and was still burning anyway. Massive cracks appeared all over its boulder-made torso, the flas making its body sputtered and its stone gauntleted fists were half broken, revealing sputtering flas deep inside. The fractures glowed faintly, ember-light bleeding through stone seams.
The hole that Darkness created in its lower body was no longer there; enough ti had passed that the disappeared flas returned anew.
That made Kael’s stomach sink. Darkness didn’t leave scars the way a blade did. It wasn’t a wound you could point to and say that’s where it’ll fail.
It was an interruption, and interruptions ended the mont reality caught its breath again.
The Ifrit howled as it raised both fists high up and slamd them into the rubble.
It wasn’t aiming at Kael. It was punishing the ground, as the street had personally offended it by trying to bury it. The slam was heavy enough to jolt the surrounding debris again, and Kael’s instincts scread before his brain even finished processing the motion.
"Shit!" Kael cursed as he realized what was going to happen.
He still rembers the two abilities the Ifrit has.
And one of them was happening right now.
[Minor Inferno]
It’ll release a shockwave of pure fire outward. Burning anything in sight.
Kael didn’t waste ti pretending he was tougher than physics. He dropped imdiately, body folding in tight and practiced, leather armor squirming as he made himself small. The posture wasn’t dramatic; it was survival math.
Without hesitation, Kael hunched down, raising both fists forward, elbows above kneecaps, and arms in front of a tucked-in face.
The flas hit like a wall. Not a blast that shoved him back, more like the world becoming fire for the span of a heartbeat. Heat slamd into his gear, into the cracks and seams, into the tiny gaps where air still existed. The street flashed orange-white, and the air itself tasted like tal being cooked.
The flas seared the street and tore away at everything in the vicinity.
They went right into Kale and behind.
The heat from the direct contact was powerful enough that Kael felt his lungs were about to sear. Every inhale felt wrong, like breathing through an oven door. His skin didn’t blister the way it should have, but his body still registered the stress, the pressure, the dryness, the way sweat vanished before it could even form.
And it all took but a second, but it felt like the longest second he had ever lived.
[You have resisted the [Burn] Effect of Minor Inferno]
[You’re now [Overheating]. Reduce your body temperature as quickly as possible.]
[Overheating increases susceptibility to [Burns] and magnifies the effects of Conflagration]
Kael cursed inwardly as he stood up.
The relief of "not on fire" lasted exactly long enough for the next problem to land. Overheating wasn’t just a warning; it was the Tower politely telling him his "99%" wasn’t a shield, it was a delay. His body felt thick and heavy, like the heat had crawled inside the armor and decided to sit in his bones.
A quick glance at his surroundings gave him a clear idea of the power the Ifrit had.
And made him quickly realize that 99% resistance was not enough to challenge the Ifrit head-on.
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