Chapter 197: An Escort Mission (2/2)

I was playing horsey with Mo Na at that moment so I didn’t pay much attention to his comment and merely asked: “Was that a compliment?”

“You can take it as that.” Was his irrelevant reply. He then shook his head and continued: “Honestly, I was extremely worried that you would go back on your words…after all, with your Fire Devouring Fish weapons, our powers…don’t even come close to yours.”

He finally admitted their weakness. Even though I hadn’t been with him for long, I could tell that he was a prideful elemental and admitting such was a big concession on his part. Truth be told, I knew their distrust of me as well. The fact that he even asked this of me was borne out of pure desperation. Besides, he most likely thought that if we really harbored any ill intent towards them, we could have done so by ourselves without waiting for the Fire Devouring Fishes to attack them.

Naturally, I would never do such a thing. That wasn’t me at all. I would never use my superior strength to bully the weak unlike the other devils. Normally, the most efficient method would just be to trick the elementals into coming out and holding them hostage for the cores.

With enough strength, most devils would have probably done that.

Even with that salamander vouching for us, Arca was still worried about us reneging on the deal. That’s why the elementals adopted a scattered formation at the start. With such a formation, they could at least avoid a complete loss should we decide to ambush them.

Perhaps in the eyes of others, I was some kind of unique devil but it wasn’t so for me at all. Because I never considered myself a devil from the very start. From the standpoint of a normal human being, all I was doing now was accepting a mission, collecting the reward, that’s all, nothing but a daily repeatable quest in a RPG.

In fact, my little baby suggested just such a thing with a wink of her lovely eyes. Her intentions were clear: rob them of the reward. She even tabled a viable plan of action to which I promptly rapped her on the head.

I told her then: “Do unto others what you would have done unto yourself.”

Mo Na rubbed her little noggin while giving me a wrong look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I tried to explain the underlying logic then: “If I am stronger than you, does that mean I can have my way with you?”

Mo Na nodded her head as if it was the most natural thing to do and answered: “If it’s Mama, she can do whatever she wants to Mo Na.”

My mind was blown the moment she said that. ‘Can I really do anything?’

Ahem…what I meant to say was that’s how a normal devil thought of things. The strong ruled and the weak served —that was their instinct. After all, not serving meant death.

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The gathering spot the salamanders decided upon wasn’t that far off from the Raging Flames Lake. It roughly took a week of travelling for us to reach it, during which we didn’t encounter much problems. From time to time we would encounter some fishes but they were mostly lone wolves and easily taken care of.

For the most part, the terrain we passed through was a simple mix of giant sea of fire plus black stone and lava.

After spending time with that salamander, I learnt that other than the Demon Fire Worms, Fire Devouring Fishes and whatnot, there was also another race living in the lava lake, the Dark Flame Snails. My inherited memories spoke of these black-shelled gastropods, which were basically infinitely tougher versions of the common garden snail, but because we didn’t see any on our journey, I assumed that they were some kind of rare species. It turns out that wasn’t true at all.

The snails were a food source for the Demon Fire Salamanders and were often found at the edges of those strange platforms in the lava lake. Speaking of those platforms, they came in a variety of sizes from big to small. The smallest could fit about ten people while the large ones were about the size of a basketball court. There was a wide gap between each platforms so they didn’t look connected at all.

It was there the snails frequented, soaking in the lava while staying near the edges of the platform. Thanks to their shells being of the same color as the platform, along with the natural barrier of lava, doing so afforded two layers of protection from their predators. That camouflaging was the very reason why I wasn’t able to spot any snails till now.

Having seen them for the first time ever, I found them to be surprisingly large. The smallest I saw so far was about the size of a human head in fact.

Because their shells were known for being hard as rock, the Fire Devouring Fishes rarely preyed on them. While the fishes had a formidable set of teeth, it would still take them quite some time to chew through the shells of the Dark Flame Snails. Moreover, the snails themselves weren’t very meaty or large once you removed their snails so the reward simply didn’t match the effort required. With that much time spent, they could have just hunted down several worms.

If even the Fire Devouring Fishes wouldn’t touch them, it would seem like they had no natural predators within the lava lake at all. In reality however, that was simply a misconception on my part. Every living creature always had a nemesis. For the snails, it was the Demon Fire Salamander.

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