Rebirth of the Phoenix God

Chapter 120: Liquid Fire

Once again, it wasn't something that Fen could point out as the source of his worries. Rather than a concrete reason for him to worry about, the entire atmosphere of this place somehow seemed threatening.

'First, let's get what I came here for'

There was no point to linger motionlessly in one place, waiting for some miracle to happen. Given how Fen was clueless about the reason for his guts going awry, there was absolutely no point in standing in place and trying to uncover it with the power of his mind alone. If the information he had on hand wasn't sufficient to bring an answer to this strange question he had, then no amount of straining his mind would do the trick.

Step by step, Fen inched closer to the small lake filled with that pristine liquid. And the closer he got to the puddle, the higher the temperature became All the way to the point where it suddenly dropped down completely, bringing Fen's extended hand to the bring of freezing up! 

'Wha'

Pulling his hand away in the very last moment, Fen instantly covered it with a blanket of his flames, saving his skin from turning into ice Only for all his flames to suddenly get sucked inside this puddle! 

"Just what the hell"

Surprised to the point where his thoughts escaped from his lips, Fen pushed his hips backwards, forcing his body to lose stability and fall to the back. Only once the distance between his hand and the puddle increased did that strange suction disappear, freeing the young man from the insane pain of having his hand frozen and being unable to do anything about it.

Using the heat of the surroundings, Fen took a few moments to let his hand recover, before raising his sight back towards the puddle. There was definitely something strange with the liquid contained inside! No matter how much dust fallen into it, completely ignoring the slight gust of wind that Fen could feel on his face, the liquid inside it didn't move at all. Only once Fen's flames got sucked inside, the surface of the small lake rilled up, only to calm down right in the next moment.

'Could it be it reacts to my flames?'

Forming the first thought about the potential reason behind what happened, Fen instantly sat at the verge of what he remembered the range of the puddle to be, before invoking his fires and focusing them on his right hand. 

After properly forming his blaze into a small ball, Fen took a small swing and threw this small fireball in the direction of the lake Only for his temporary construct to sizzle away as soon as it crossed the barrier where the influence of the puddle started to reach!

'So that's what it is'

This wasn't the first time when Fen saw this phenomenon. To speak frankly, he was the one that caused it several times all the way back in the forest under the city of Akhaz! The difference lied in fact, that he was the one that absorbed foreign flames, while the puddle took this role now!

'Does that mean that this lake is a monster itself?'

Taking a random guess, Fen created two more fireballs of his, throwing them at the puddle just to see how it would react. Sadly, each time he tried to learn something new, exactly the same process happened of the fireball suddenly deflating and disappearing as all its flames was sucked into the puddle. Both of those times, the surface of the small lake vibrated for a moment, only to calm down the next instant.

"Just how the heck am I supposed to reach this flower?"

The puddle surrounded the small island on top of which the flower grew from all sides. Unless the young man would find a way to overcome this strange barrier, then no matter how close he would be to achieving what he wanted, he would still ultimately fail!

Unable to cross the lake physically as this strange liquid would suck his flames in one instant, Fen couldn't attempt plucking the flower petals with his arcana as he already learned how it would end. The last option was to use his spear to try to unroot the flower from beyond the barrier of the puddle, but doing so would most likely only result in the wooden part of his spear freezing and breaking apart once the coldness would be replaced by the heat of the rest of the area!

"Just how the heck am I supposed to reach this damned flower?!"

Smashing his fist against the ground in a volatile expression of his annoyance, Fen stared in front of him in hopes that doing nothing for an extended period of time would force his mind to come up with some kind of solution.

'Wait what if'

With a sudden idea appearing in his head, Fen moved up to a standing position before taxing the lake with his eyes. With how pristine the liquid in the puddle was, just by moving around the lake for a few moments Fen quickly learned that there was absolutely no sign of core that could be the source of the power of this lake, and the reason behind Fen's flames disappearing. 

It seemed as if this puddle was fire all by itself!

"Liquid flame that would explain why all the heat is instantly sucked away."

Muttering to himself, Fen recalled the memories from the encounter with the monsters. Back then, the fire monster was capable of manipulating his fires to a degree way beyond anything that Fen could ever imagine as possible, yet turning his fires to a liquid form

If not for the memories coming from his bloodline, Fen would never believe that creating tangible fires like that would be possible!

"Wait a second"

Contrary to the past few moments, Fen's mind was now exploding with the ideas. So far, all he did was throwing the simple fireballs at the lake, hoping to learn more about its nature. But what if he were to infuse his intent into his flames?

After all, he was hired to fulfil this task not as an arcanist from the Empire, but as the student in the Gauna academy! With that said, wouldn't using the techniques that he learned at the said academy the most obvious thing to do?

While it was a fact that so far, Fen failed to maintain any form of a construct over the pool of liquified fire, so far he limited himself to using the pure craft, devoid of any intent. As for what would happen if the young man were to use the teachings that he received in Gauna

Fueled by this new idea, Fen fixed his position for a bit, before invoking all the knowledge that Nadia managed to infuse his head with over the past few meetings of theirs. 

Instead of just going off to create a fireball, Fen focused at creating the intent behind said fireball first. Only when he could almost feel the idea of the fireball turning tangible, did the young man infuse his flames into it, preparing a piece of fire that looked exactly the same as all the fireballs that he threw just a few moments ago!

"Go"

Rather than swinging his hand and overexerting himself with all those unnecessary movements, Fen simply wished for the fireball to launch itself forward. Given how moving around was part of the concept that the young man used to create the intent in the first place, just his thoughts alone were enough to control the fireball and guide it in the exact same place as all its intentless brothers before!

Sizzzzz

At first, Fen thought that his guess simply failed. Given how he still had some clever ideas that he was willing to test out, it wouldn't be the end of the rope for him but rather a minor setback. But as if disregarding how ready Fen was to accept yet another loss, his fireball actually managed to fly over the entire puddle, over the flower on the small island in its middle, only to end up falling into the liquid fire near the opposite shore, creating a huge disturbance as it did so!

All at once, the relatively calm surface of the puddle suddenly rose up, as if the intent behind Fen's fireball was the thing that managed to disturb the peace of the small lake filled with liquified flames. But just in the next moment, amidst all the chaos and protruding waves that Fen's fireball created by falling into the puddle This liquid fire, for a briefest of moments, turned quite familiar to the young man!

"Wait It can't be true"

Stunned by the possibility that appeared in front of him, Fen didn't dare to move an inch, as if even the smallest vibration of his body would break the current situation and stop the young man from pushing forward with the idea that this familiar feeling of the liquid fire birthed in his mind!

"But what if"

Slowly working at convincing himself to make the small leap of faith, Fen focused all his mind power at creating his catalyst once again. Starting with the simple intent of condensing his fires serving as the core of his catalyst, the young man quickly enriched it with another focal point aimed at accelerating any power that was infused in it. Yet, even this wasn't enough. Only once the third focal point was added, one focused at diffusing any arcanist power or its derivative back into the simple and unfocused energy, did a small tingle deep in his soul appeared, marking that his idea was actually right!

At the same time as Fen reached the limit of the complexity behind his own catalyst, the liquid fire in the puddle, disturbed by his fireball filled with intent, started to accelerate its waves, as if a part of the liquid flames longed to return to the person behind the intent that it swallowed!

"NOW!"

Screaming openly to add himself some courage, Fen reached with his hands forward, covering them with a thin layer of flames created through the first and main focal point of his faulty catalyst.

But this time, instead of his energy getting sucked by the potent flames below the freezing area, the droplets of the liquified fire energy actually started to raise, converge and gravitate towards Fen's hands!

Touch.

The first, small droplet fell right on the delicate barrier of flames that surrounded Fen's hands. In one instant, Fen's senses exploded. His entire body turned red from the sudden wave of heat that coursed through his veins as if the energy contained within just a single drop of the liquid fire from the puddle was enough to overwhelm all the power that he already governed as the chosen descendant of the Phoenix itself!