The Burning Fiend

"Well that is disappointing, but I guess there is normal for her to escape if you did not know she had the 'Pearl of Life' with her. Either way it would no have changed the fact that you are going to die." The gentle voice sounded again as giant eye opened on a glacier near the entrance to the tunnel that was suddenly covered with a thick wall of ice.

The glacier took the form of a 100 meter tall giant that looked down at the now 40 meter long snake. "I will first capture you and torture you for a few years before killing you". The gentle voice sounded again as a golden light beam shot from the eye that immediately reached the eyes of the red Ba-Serpent. Reynolds felt as if his soul was painfully thrown in ice but there was no real damage to him and the fire construct was not affected at all.

He understood that this was a powerful soul attack but it had limitations, it seemed that eye contact between attacker and prey was necessary for it to work and he had felt discomfort because his fire body was connected to the fire snake and he could see through the Ba-Serpent eyes, but the connection was also limited and the soul attack lost most of its power before reaching his soul. Reynolds did not wait anymore and charged towards the giant cyclops who was annoyed after realizing that his soul attack did not have any effect on the invader.

The body of the red snake crashed against the c.h.e.s.t of the giant cyclops and pierced through without effort making Reynolds realize that the body was just an ice construct just like his Ba-Serpent and the real body should be the giant eye. The ice construct broke into pieces and a moment later it reformed reducing its size to 20 meters and Reynolds understood that the new body should have higher density.

He also reduced the size of the Ba-Serpent to 30 meters that was the maximum density that he could manage with his current understanding of the elemental laws. Both elemental constructs charged at each other and the collision made the ice on the floor cracked and both constructs were repelled almost a hundred meters but the Ba-Serpent disappeared replacing a snowflake that was behind the ice construct that found itself restricted as the fire snake coiled around its neck and arms and the sound steam rising from the contact of the two elemental constructs was disturbing for both combatants.

The surprised 'eye' felt anger at founding itself in such situation but before it could react a humanoid fire creature appeared behind the neck of the ice giant and pierced it with a staff artifact as if it was a spear beheading the monster. The heat released from the spear thrust was disturbing to the 'eye' delaying a moment its reaction only to find out that the giant mouth of the Ba-Serpent was already closing over the severed head, the red Ba-Serpent dived to the tunnel breaking through the ice wall and coiling itself, as if preparing to sleep, within the stairs where the ice from the 8th floor could not invade.

The 'eye' found itself on a world of fire that constrained its every move and was forced to struggle to change the cyclops head into an ice armor surrounding the 'eye', forming a humanoid ice body, from the terrifying heat. The ice that the 'eye' could control was limited to he severed 'head' that had been swallowed along with the 'eye' as he felt his contact with the ice world outside had been severed, it felt a hint of panic that soon transformed into rage as a blue spear appeared on the ice arm. At this time Reynolds had appeared in front of the 'eye' with his eyes closed, this was his own fire world and he did not need to use his eyes to see.

"You have succeeded in making me angry and you will be soon wishing for death, you will understand what it means to anger a Beholder King!" the previously gentle voice had turned vicious as anger and humiliation grew on the 'eye'. His armor-body could barely keep the heat at bay and it started showing signs of melting. The Beholder King, knowing that he could not wait as the fire humanoid advantage would grow the longer they remained in this world of fire, charged with its spear and started battling Reynolds.

The mental attacks of the Beholder King were practically neglected as Reynolds was using his fire body reinforced with fire elements and kept his eyes closed, his control of ice was also reduced dramatically as they were inside a extremely dense fire construct that could burn Magma Demons and as the red Ba-Serpent had already left the 8th floor he had lost the advantage of the environment.

Reynolds control of the spear was a level higher than the one the Beholder King was showing and it started to grow nervous realizing that he might not survive this battle, he started thinking of ways to improve its advantage. "This battle is useless, neither of us could kill the other in a short time. Release me and I will not stop you from entering the passage to the 9th level". His voice was once again gentle as he tried to convince Reynolds to release him in hopes of gaining the terrain advantage again.

"I don't think that there is anything of value for me in your proposal as we are no longer within the 8th floor". Reynolds mischievous voice seemed to mock the Beholder King who now was panicked as he was not allowed to leave the 8th level of the Necropolis of the Gods and also understood that not been surrounding by ice he was in a much greater disadvantage that he had realized before.

Reynolds smiled and started teleporting and attacking from different directions making it more difficult for the Beholder King to block his fire spear, that used the staff artifact as a nucleus, and the ice armor body started to melt at higher speed. "No! You cannot kill me! I am the ruler of the Beholders from the Bintelan plane!" The Beholder King was frantic now as its armor was crumbling and its body started to take damage from the heat making him feel faint and dizzy.

The spear thrusts did not stop as Reynolds's smile grew knowing that victory was approaching, after a couple of minutes the ice body-armor was practically destroyed with only a melting arm remaining struggling to parry Reynolds's attacts, noticing that the Beholder King was being afected by the heat Reynolds used a mental storm the way Livingston had taught him paralizing the Beholder King for a short moment but that was enough to pierce its body several times with his fire spear.

The Beholder King screamed in pain as his body started to burn and soon turned into ashes leaving behind the blue spear and its interspatial ring. Reynolds was panting after an exciting but difficult battle and seated cross-legged to meditate and recuperate his energy, he was surprised to find that the Beholder King soul was extremely powerful perhaps due to its innate qualities that allowed it to produce soul attacks.

Reynolds found for the first time how important a powerful soul attack could be and started to remember the soul attacks used by the bear on the 4th floor and comparing it with the soul attack employed by the Beholder King. 'Perhaps I should spend some time creating my own soul attack, I could take the Beholder King as a base to start... an attack that burns the soul? I guess a could try to add fire elements to the mental storm but that would be too dispersed and the pain produced will negate the paralyzing effect wasting too much energy'.

Several ideas started forming in his mind remembering the light beam used by the Beholder King. 'That was obviously an innate ability that I cannot replicate but... what would happen if instead of a mental storm I condense my spiritual power into a spear? Perhaps something smaller to increase speed in preparation and the attack release... a knife? A needle?'

Reynolds started concentrating in forming a needle with his mental powers, he found that it was not a difficult task for a Saint Magus. Then he started willing the fire elements to fortify the mental needle finding that the task was slightly more difficult but still easy enough, after a few tries he felt he succeeded but not satisfied he started to add the properties of the fire body to the fire element fortifying the mental needle which had turned into a bright burning purple needle.

He smiled satisfied thinking on trying this new attack on the next floor, but before that 'how should I release it? If I use my fire body then releasing the burning needle from my forhead should be no problem but should I try releasing it from my eyes like the Beholder King? Then I would need to create two burning needles for every attack but the effect should also improve... I think'.

Reynolds smiled mockingly when he realized that he was going to release the attack from his eyes not because it was practical and possibly increased the power of the attack by using two burning needles instead of one, but because it had looked cool when the Beholder King attacked with his eye beam without warning. His eyes turned bright red, looking as a metal would when exposed to high temperature, and two thin red beams shot from his eyes at extremely high speed.

Feeling satisfied with his new attack and having determined that he would use it in whatever creature he find next he turned his attention to the spear and the interspatial ring. The spear had ice attributes and it will create conflict with his attacks so he threw it unceremoniously into his interspatial ring thinking that the spear might be useful for Jenne and the scimitar might be a good weapon for Windsor.

Then he cut his finger to draw a drop of blood and bounded the interspatial ring, he was pleasantly surprised when he found that the space within the ring was several times larger that the one on his own interspatial ring and decided that this would be his personal ring and kept the other for Windsor as she was sure to became a saint before Jenne. Inside the ring he found some strange materials that might had been valuable or useful for the Beholder King but Reynolds could not identify them at all.

He sighed reminding himself that he should not be too greedy as he had already achieved a great harvest during his exploration on the Necropolis of the Gods, he took another bottle of wine from his space ring and started to drink slowly as a woman made of fire suddenly appeared in front of him dancing in a graceful way, this woman was the beautiful saint that was currently training on the 5th floor. Reynolds laughed out loud for a moment mocking himself while enjoying the now seductive dance.

Within the third floor a certain divine beast was extremely amused as he watched the human kid seating over the head of a fire Ba-Serpent while drinking wine and making the fire woman dance, the giant snake smirked and then focused on the 5th floor looking at the saint magus on which the fire woman was inspired. 'Youth... how nostalgic'.