Chapter 92: Setting a Mountain on Fire.
92 92 - Setting a Mountain on Fire.
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All of the humans had chosen not to go through the portal; even BigBull who was being treated by the group"s healer decided to stay. He said he would not be able to sleep knowing that he had abandoned a helpless child. According to him, even if he needed to sacrifice his own life, if it were to save an innocent child it would be worth it.
Noah heard what he said, and by reading the body language of BigBull, Noah found that he was actually speaking the truth on the matter. This surprised Noah very much; he knew that BigBull had a good heart, but evidently not quite how much.
BigBull didn"t want to be a hindrance to the group, so the healer was doing her best to heal him so that he could be useful to the team again, even though she was spending a lot more energy than usual to do so.
While BigBull was being healed, the group was sitting on the ground around him while discussing their ideas for what was going on in this Fortress, and what might potentially happen that could be dangerous.
Something they unanimously agreed to, something that even Muf.a.g agreed to without a second thought, was that they should definitely burn all of the present corpses before going to the next car. They"d already seen how dangerous it was to leave the monsters" corpses intact, since the Boss they encountered had the ability to bring normal monsters back to life. If they left the large number of dwarf corpses scattered around, if any necromancer appeared and was able to revive those dwarves as zombies to attack them, it would probably spell disaster for them.
Since Noah had already stated that burning these corpses would not affect the amount of energy he had to deal with the monsters in the next room, the group decided to move forward only after Noah had finished burning every last corpse in the car.
Noah, of course, loved the idea. He gained a lot of exp for his skill, not to mention that as these dwarves were apparently similar to humans, when Noah burned them he would get a fragment of divinity and turn that into statistics.
Burning a small number of dwarves gave Noah only a small fraction of strength stats, but seeing the large pile of corpses in front of him, Noah imagined that it would be impossible for him to burn all of this without adding a single point to his profile.
And so he started the job. Since he didn"t have to worry about running out of energy, Noah used [h.e.l.l Flames] to create dozens of small flames which stretched and spread over the corpses, consuming energy from the corpses and using that energy to grow in size, increasing the amount of energy that they could consume, consequently increasing even more in size, and creating an infinite cycle of energy consumption and expansion of the flames that Noah found extremely beautiful to observe.
The other Blessed already knew that Noah loved to burn things when they were in Fortresses,l. Of course, Noah"s reason for burning the corpses was always plausible, this was not the first time that they were saved because of Noah"s decision to burn the bodies in a Fortress, so they didn"t judge him for it. It was just weird for normal humans to see Noah with such a strange smile whenever he burned a corpse. It was as if he were feeding a child, but they knew it was just a flame from his Blessing.
But over time they learned to ignore this strange side of Noah, and just deal with his imperfection. After all, there is no such thing as a perfect human being. Noah was already very handsome, powerful, intelligent, sociable; if he had no defect Jasper would have fought him long ago out of spite, but at least seeing such a strangely human side to Noah was something that didn"t displease anyone in the group, as if it was his right to be that way.
Even though Noah understood a lot about body language and things to read from someone without saying anything, he had no idea that the group thought that of him. Not that he was going to stop, of course, since it was very difficult to control a smile in this type of situation where exp was practically raining on him from the sky.
Noah"s flames that grew exponentially took a total of 18 minutes to burn all the corpses. He never tried to look at the status window, let alone try to read the multiple notification windows that appeared in front of him at a very high speed, so he just ignored it and waited for everything to acc.u.mulate to see it all at once, and he couldn"t fail to be satisfied with the result.
[User: Noah Stern
Level: 03, 131/1600 exp
HP: 14/14
Strength: 20
Agility: 14
Stamina: 14
Skills:
(h.e.l.l Flames Lv 03, 537/2500 exp: A technique that consists of invoking the flames of h.e.l.l itself. The flames of h.e.l.l did not differ from normal flames, but after purifying so many sins and so many sinners, it became the most powerful flame, having even burned the flame G.o.d himself, making him beg Lucifer to extinguish the flames before he died.To increase the power of h.e.l.l"s flame ability, the user must burn sins or sinners.
\\\ * \\\ * After reaching Lv 03 the user"s body adapted better to the flame and control over it became even more natural, in addition to making it possible to purify humans corroded by sin. The greater the sin of a human, the greater the benefits. \\\ * \\\ *)
(h.e.l.l Tunneling Lv 02, 0/1500 exp: A technique that consists of opening a tunnel to h.e.l.l and leaving somewhere else in a fraction of a second. The greater the distance, the greater the energy used.
h.e.l.l has harbored the souls of sinners since the beginning of time for all eternity, and to support the great number of demons and souls, the area there is many times more expanded than the world of the living. Whenever Lucifer pa.s.sed through these tunnels, people a.s.sumed he was teleporting.
\\\ * \\\ * After reaching Lv 02, the user learned to reduce the cost of each teleportation, in addition to speed. As the user used the ability to move spatially so often, the user partially received a spatial perception even with his eyes closed.) \\\]
"What the f.u.c.k?..." Noah couldn"t help from cursing out loud, which startled some of the Blessed Ones who were close to him without understanding why he was cursing apparently for no reason, but Noah couldn"t care less.
Firstly, his skill which previously had just over 100 exp points, had now pa.s.sed 500 points just by burning this big pile of corpses. Noah had burned so many dwarves that his skill that needed 2,500 exp points now needed just under 2,000 points...
And the most important factor in this was not only that Noah had gained so much exp on the [h.e.l.l Flames] skill, but that he had earned 6 STRENGTH POINTS!
"This is approximately a 43% increase in my strength... In just a few minutes, I became approximately 43% stronger..." Noah thought, impressed as he stared at his fist without believing that he had become so strong in such a short period of time.
Whenever he clenched his fist, Noah felt that the strength he was able to exert was truly much greater. " I can"t quite make sense of it... I need to test it somehow..." Noah thought, as he was extremely excited to think about what he could do with his own strength to get to know how much stronger he had become without alerting the other Blessed.
"Wait a second... If I gained 6 strength by burning these dwarf corpses, then it means that if I burn Blessed with agility Blessing like Jasper"s, would I get an increase in agility stats too?!" This was a very important revelation for Noah.
This meant that his cleansing ability not only absorbed sins to become stronger, but could make him as strong as a Blessed S Rank if he had any chance to come in contact with hundreds of human corpses. "Maybe I should pay a visit to the cemetery...? Nah, I may want strength, but not to the point of desecrating the rest of the dead... But, wait! When someone bad dies, he goes to h.e.l.l to be punished by the Devil... but according to the system, I am the Descendant of the Devil himself, that is, these people technically belong to me...?" Noah was shocked by this potential further revelation.
[Only the residual divine energy in the human body will be converted into statistical points. People who have died more than 24 years ago are no longer able to maintain this energy in their bodies, as the deity will recover that energy to give to another human. Visiting a cemetery will only turn the user into a tomb defiler. The system does not advise an att.i.tude so disrespectful that it would not give any practical benefit to the user.]
Reading the system message, Noah couldn"t help but be disappointed. He thought he could become as strong as a Blessed S Rank just by setting a cemetery on fire, but unfortunately the reality was too harsh for someone as creative as Noah.
"Okay, I"ll just continue on my way to kill monsters and burn the corpses available to me for now. Maybe in the future I can think of a better alternative..." Noah thought with an evil smile on his face.
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Please read the author"s notes down here! :3 ↓↓↓