689 Elemental Hunting (1/2)

The entire world was filled with red flames, scalding magma, and an active sea of fire.

At a great distance, this would feel like a sauna, but at a close distance, it would be no different from being baked in flames, and if you tried to walk through here, you would burn to death unless you had fire-resistant equipment and potions.

The sea of fire wasn't quiet at all. Various strange creatures of fire were crawling out from within. They furiously attacked everything before them, including their own kind. And when their short lives reached the end, violent explosions and a return to the sea of fire would signify the end of their lives.

Fire element creatures were everywhere. Fire lizards, low-level fire elementals, magma monsters, flame wolves, and so on were all cruelly killing each other. The victor would be able to devour the loser's elemental core for swift growth.

If it wasn't for the fact that I knew how all of this came about, it would be quite difficult to imagine this taking place in the famously frigid Northlands. This seemed just like a nightmarish scene out of a story about the Fire Elemental Plane. But, in a way, this place really had become a part of the Fire Elemental Plane due to elementalization.

However, amongst all the flames, there was a throne of ice and snow that attracted a great deal of attention from all the fire element creatures.

This throne was more than 10 meters tall. It was enveloped with an aura of ice and snow. Even the sea of fire would instantly be frozen upon coming in contact with this aura. Any fire element creatures that approached would also be instantly frozen solid.

There was a figure that appeared to be thinking about something while wearing heavy ice armor. It seemed almost as if he had fallen asleep on the throne of ice. However, his bright eyes shone with the light of intelligence, proving that he was still awake.

Obviously, it would attract a lot of hate for someone to be summoning ice in a world of fire. Countless fire element creatures charged over, yet they all transformed into popsicles the moment that they got close. In fact, the ice-armor-clad person had yet to be forced to personally attack.

The ground was already covered in shattered ice shards. Those had previously been shards from the fire element creatures. Being able to kill and defeat such fire element creatures in such large numbers was more than enough evidence of the ice-armored man's strength, even if this was still only the very outskirts of the volcano.

He remained silent on his throne, ignoring the fire element creatures roaring at him from below. His thinking pose made him seem like he was waiting for something that never came. Finally, he spoke when dusk began to set. His words were quite simple and meaningful, and his voice was deep…

”…Damn it, my butt's frozen to the throne!”

Ahem, ahem, at this moment, I finally had a realization. No wonder why a certain prince could sit on his frozen throne for so long! He was probably in the same condition as me, having gotten stuck to his throne from sitting for too long, and when his home was invaded, he probably had to helplessly stand up… which likely hurt his butt immensely.

I made up my mind to stop cosplaying as that unlucky prince, and that I should find a new look as I began to analyze my harvest here. But of course, before that, I first tossed out a signal flare to transmit a message to the outside world.

10 or so minutes later, two gigantic red dragons appeared in the sky and charged at me with the speed of lightning.

Since red dragons were of the fire element, they wouldn't be viewed with hostility by the denizens of this elementalized area which had the traits of the Fire Elemental Plane. Red dragons also had incredibly high fire resistance, so they completely ignored the fire elemental creatures' fire attacks against them. The two red dragons simply dived down, grabbed the throne which had retracted its aura of ice, and then turned around to fly off.

And since I was hunting on the outskirts of the volcanic area to begin with, we soon returned to the regular Northlands. The moment that I started breathing the cold air again, my harvest was obtained by me as a tremendous amount of ice magic mana poured into my body, chilling me to the bone and almost killing me from frostbite. It took nearly half an hour for me to finally slowly recover.

”…It seems that I need to hunt less next time. I didn't expect the Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm to be so generous, giving me this much again.”

The Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm had just given me ice magic mana as a present. As for the reason? I would have to first talk about elemental wars and dimensional wills.

Dimensions had their own wills. Although this sounded ridiculous, it was a fact that was accepted by all mages. Dimensions would be the amalgamation of various rules. Although dimensions were simplistic and mechanical, they would indeed follow those rules… The exception would be the will of the Chaos Abyss, which was an unreasonable bastard that constantly cheated.

Most of the time, the great majority of ordinary people wouldn't even notice the existence of the dimensional will. They would also be unable to come into contact with the dimensional rules.

Every dimensional will would set different rules. Treating all of its residents equally was the only rule in common (with the will of the Chaos Abyss again being the only exception as the Chaos Abyss was controlled by an individual). Still, even the Chaos Abyss had its rules, such as the law of the jungle where the strong preyed on the weak being one of its basic rules. Killing an enemy would mean obtaining a reward from the will of the Chaos Abyss, and the swift growth obtained after demonization would be an even stronger lure for you to follow the rules of the Chaos Abyss and continue to kill in order to become ever more powerful.

Perhaps some people would say that devouring was the source of all growth. However, allowing… no, creating the rule of ”devouring” was something up to a dimensional will.

In the mortal plane, if you made a contribution that benefited the dimension of Eich, the dimensional will would also support you. For instance, back when I successfully transformed the power of Law into a brand-new Concept, the dimensional will (the Source of Order) had given out great rewards and support. Not only did the Source of Order incorporate the Concept of Law into the power of Order, it also rewarded Wumianzhe with divinity and Divine Concepts. That was a tremendous reward, the ability to become a God.

The mortal plane's rewards were rarely actual items. The rewards were usually special abilities and invisible preferential treatment. You could take advantage of them if you knew about it, but in most cases, you wouldn't even know what you had been rewarded with. Of course, the most common type of reward would be a mysterious amount of good luck (blessed by the heavens), while the most obvious punishment for invaders and those who endangered the dimension would be mysterious bad luck (this was actually one of the true reasons why demon kings would always be defeated in the end).

Damn it, I felt like I finally discovered why my Luck rating had always been E…