Andric followed the giant flaming chicken, but his path varied widely. With the use of its large wings, the monster could fly across hundreds of feet of buildings in only a second, and Andric’s movement couldn’t keep up. Whenever he reached within a few dozen feet of it, the monster flapped its wings and increased the distance between itself and Andric by a large margin.

Andric couldn’t simply follow the monster; he also needed to stay hidden. At any moment, the monster could discover him and eat his whole body in one bite. To make sure that didn’t happen, Andric ducked behind whatever cover he could find. If not for the sense of wonder Andric felt from looking at the uncontrolled beast, he would have fled long ago.

As the monster flew across a greater area of the town, the flames that originated from its landing points spread into new territory. Wherever the monster traveled, lines of flames would appear, and they would become regions Andric couldn’t travel through. In just thirty seconds, entire buildings caught on fire from the small flames dropped by the monster passing overhead.

Over the course of the time he spent around Boele’s forge, Andric developed a way to withstand intense heat, but he had never directly charged into a wall of flames. Eventually, while chasing the monster, he found himself surrounded by collapsed buildings and burning wood.

In front of him, the only path that existed was over a pile of burning rubble. He looked behind himself and at the alleyway he just ran through, and a wall suddenly collapsed, leaving that exit blocked. His water magic wouldn’t be potent enough to extinguish the flames, and no body-modification would allow him to bypass the flames.

The only remaining option: to pass through the flames.

“Dammit, I should have just stayed at the forge,” he cursed and muttered, then looked down at his feet. His leather shoes were already black from soot, but they didn’t show any signs of falling apart. Andric couldn’t speak for the flame resistance of them, but he didn’t expect them to catch on fire after only a few seconds of being in flames.

Besides his shoes, Andric also had his pants and shirt to worry about. Both were made from cotton and undoubtedly flammable, but Andric didn’t have a good way to preserve them. He could drench them with water, but he risked not having enough mana to heal any injured he later sustained.

He thought of a second way to wet his clothes, but he shook his head and tried to forget about it. At the present time, he couldn’t bring himself to use such drastic measures. Instead of thinking about it any longer, Andric faced the thin alleyway that led to the main road and ran forward.

When three feet away from the flames and rubble, Andric scanned his eyes over the path and squinted as tightly as he could. He needed to have some vision available to him, but the bright flames hurt his eyes and face. With his arms, he covered his forehead, and he dashed into the tall fire ahead of him.

Instantly, Andric knew he made a bad decision by entering the alleyway. The flames ripped at his clothes and flesh, and he tumbled out of the fire without any sense. Once he laid on the flat ground outside the alley, Andric knew things were even worse than a minute ago, because his clothes had indeed caught on fire.

Andric tore at his clothes and rolled on the ground, but his skin quickly melted from the flames. In his heart, he swore at the daredevils that made running through flames look easy. Without any other options, Andric activated magic of his affinity, and the flames around him were instantly extinguished.

Then, without holding back, Andric screamed from the pain caused by several gallons of blood rushing out of his body. The blood never ran through his veins, but the blood he created from magic skill belonged to him. With pain equivalent to a layer of skin being cut away from all around his body, Andric writhed on the ground for over half a minute. Slowly, the magically created blood vanished, and so did the intense pain.

For a few minutes, Andric laid on the ground and breathed heavily, unwilling to stand up. He used a large amount of mana to heal his burns, and he eventually crawled toward an area where flames from the buildings around him were not blowing into. From the look of him, nobody would guess that kind of anguish he just felt.

Temporarily creating blood, as opposed to permanently creating blood, required hardly any mana from Andric. If not for the intense pain that came with it, Andric would have covered his body in blood before he ran through the flames. However, now that his clothes were in tatters and he had no other viable options, Andric didn’t hold back.

Andric stood up and began running, intending to flee to safety, but he stopped at a fallen, burning building and looked inside. On the floor, a woman’s burnt body only remained enough for Andric to see its facial features. There was no saving her, and she probably died from an impact rather than the fire that now consumed her.

But, just because she couldn’t be saved, it didn’t mean there wasn’t saving to be done. Andric looked around and thought about the things most precious to him in his new world.

His own life came first. Then, closely behind it, came his magic. Then, behind that, came the people he cared about. He thought about Wolter, Lieve, and Hedy, and then Cato Susanna and Heiko. He liked some of them more than others, but they all had a large value. Certainly, compared to the little bit of pain he felt from extinguishing flames with blood, they were priceless.

Again, perhaps thinking about his options less than he should have, Andric took off running, headed toward his home, where he had separated from Lieve and Hedy earlier in the morning.