Wolf

“Papa, I think I’d like to try going out on my own to fight at some point,” Sapphire suddenly says while I’m flying through the air above the endless ocean of lava with a bubble of icy air around us to keep us cool. I turn my head to look at her as she sits on a little boat of ice I made before attaching it to myself to carry so that she doesn’t have to stay in my shadow all the time, but right when I’m about to respond, she adds, “After we leave this floor of course.”

I raise an eyebrow at that before shrugging and facing in the direction I’m going again while saying, “Sure. It would probably speed up our progression rate through the floors if we both split up anyways.”

Since our EXP is shared between the two of us, she can just go off onto the floor to fight things on her own. It’ll also give me some alone time again, considering how clingy she’s been since getting a bipedal form.

Not that she wasn’t already clingy beforehand, but it’s different when they have the appearance of a human and can talk than when they’re a mute and tiny spider.

For some reason, I catch Sapphire pouting at me from on her little boat, but I ignore it as I send a bolt of ice straight at the gaping maw of a large, molten fish that I sensed approaching.

Not sure what I did wrong this time, but it’s best to act as if I didn’t notice. She’ll stop pouting eventually.

I continue flying for several more kilometers before coming to a stop as I hear the faint buzzing of an EXP orb somewhere in the lava.

“Stay here,” I tell Sapphire while plopping her boat onto a random obsidian platform. Then, before she can complain, I jump into the lava while enhancing the sphere of icy mist around me and decreasing its temperature to the degree that it actually pushes back the lava.

It doesn’t take long before I find the EXP orb and touch it, claiming the EXP inside of it for myself as a notification for a level-up appears in my vision. I then quickly climb back up to the surface, just to find Sapphire in her spider form piercing one of her clawed limbs straight through the face of a strange, scaled creature. One that looks quite similar to kobolds in games, albeit some sort of fire version of them, what with its red and black scales, draconic head – which is now split down the middle by Sapphire’s leg – and long scaled tail.

And just like with a lot of the other monsters I’ve run into, when I identify it, it turns out to actually have kobold in its name.

A molten kobold?

Haven’t seen one of those on the floor yet. And I surprisingly didn’t sense it with my life sense.

Which I’m very happy managed to merge into my species as well, despite it not being mentioned in my species description before.

I wonder if this monster is some sort of undead creature?

Out of curiosity, I approach the creature before dragging it off of her claw and holding it by the head with one hand to examine it. But what I find actually surprises me quite a bit.

“What is this thing?” I can’t help but mutter, just for Sapphire to answer in a proud manner, “A molten kobold!”

I ignore her stating of the obvious as I focus on the creature’s insides via running my ice element through its body. For some reason, it has literal magma flowing through its veins. No blood at all. Almost as if this creature were some sort of golem and not a living being at all.

Curious. Very curious.

I toss the corpse into the lava before glancing at Sapphire, who is once again pouting, and saying, “Get back in the boat. We’re heading back out again.”

She does so without any hesitation, the pout clearing off of her face in the process as I pick up the boat again with my ice manipulation and begin flying off.

While we’re flying though, I open the System Forums out of curiosity.

The last time I looked, I just found a bunch of rather embarrassing stuff. Both for me and Sapphire.

Although just thinking about the time I showed Sapphire her fan pages brings a smile to my face. She acted so shy that she ended up turning into her tiny spider form and growing even smaller than normal – which I didn’t even realize was possible – till I could barely even see her and then hid in my coat’s pocket for half an hour.

It was adorable.

And I think it also made her situation worse, considering the videos of that that ended up appearing on the forums not too long afterwards.

I learned my lesson about teasing her for it though when she immediately turned it around on me and opened the System Forums – which I didn’t know she could even do – to show a thread about my worshipers. And to make matters worse, she then moved to show a thread about some sort of romantic fan club about me.

One that still sends shivers down my spine to this day.

I just hope my admission towards having no interest in romance during the interview nipped that in the bud.

Also, that situation raised a lot of questions in my mind about what exactly Sapphire is looking at on the forums…

I glance at her, just to find her randomly looking around the lava ocean with a bored look on her face. One that turns into a smile after she sees me looking, only to turn bored again when she looks away.

Then again, it’s not like I can stop her from looking up stuff like that. She’s her own person.

I focus on flying again while navigating the forums to look for any news on Aegis but fail to find anything interesting.

This floor is so boring.