His white hair was suddenly coated with a red flame that appeared yellowish to the sides and it seemed to compete with the scales of the dragon.
The heat coming from the dragon reached him but it was repelled before it hit him. His robes caught fire and the marble on the ground too started to burn as a black smoke seeped from the sole of his feet, his shoes having been burn out.
The dragon let out a roar as its full body started materializing and its ears started appearing. Lyren felt his head start looking below again but he was not going to fall here.
He finally had a fire that could fight back the dragon's pressure and that was what he was going to do. He could not control it but in this state, letting it out of control was of more merit to him and that he did.
He looked for that rage that was buried deep within him. A rage he had not had an outlet to release. A rage that these ruins had been piling inside of him since he got here. The several times they had tried to kill him but he had been unable to react because he was just a weak boy who could not even read their language.
He recalled how he had been sent flying when he tried to climb the stairs and he had ended up vomiting blood. He had taken the damage and continued forward with their scheme. He had gone ahead and started studying these patterns which turned out to be arrays he was supposed to be afraid of. The arrays that seemed to want to take his life every time.
The mental assaults and how he had been forced to free ride using trial and error with his life always on the line. No guardian at all and the only reaction he got were laughter when he showed some crazy thoughts.
So that was it? They wanted crazy people as their disciples?Well, they had not recruited a crazy one but they had made him realize that he was crazy.
Maybe in another timeline, he would be a normal person but he had taken on the journey of masochists. He recalled the first time he had lit up the first face and he had been able to climb to the 250th step but where was the warning that that was not all? Why did they let him get excited?
He recalled the lump that made him shed tears and his anger seemed to burn even fiercer. He recalled how he had been forced to use the pattern for cultivation.
He was not being ungrateful or anything but if they were going to do goodwill, they had to put their heart into it. He could not help but think they had given once channel on purpose.
Why was it? What were they hiding? Why did they not give him several or even tell him how to create one. That was better than leaving him to continue blindly without knowing what was coming. He felt some hidden rage build up as he recalled they had hidden the truth that he had been interacting with arrays.
They made sure there was no going back for him before they let him on the truth. He had even contemplated on committing suicide but they had stopped him.
He recalled the four faces of the whole array. He had spent all his time on the first face only to give him a slap in the face that he had been fooling around all this time and he was so far from done.
His rage kept rising and even after giving him a technique, it turned out it was just another pain that was waiting for him. So, they made him mad. They gave him everything through pain and that he had come to accept. The technique was a very high tier but they forgot something important.
Since they wanted to teach him pain and he had already chosen it, he had not yet vent at all and here, all his rage wanted to spill out. The fire in him burned fiercely as his core was suddenly engulfed with flames
He could feel the flames wanting to spill out like his Elyria. He stretched his hand out and he did not even realize that his Elyria had been filled to where it had been when he advanced.
A burning sensation washed over his channel as he felt the Elyria turning into flames. Even as his hand threated to burn from within, guided by his rage, a sudden heat surged from his palm as his palm released a jet of flames that burned towards the flame dragon standing before him. His smoldering eyes not leaving the dragon's.
Lyren felt some intimacy with the flames as though they were his best friend and he had been suppressing them all this time. They had been aways wanting to work with him but he had not even realized they existed. He could feel the betrayal in the flames and this seemed to make them burn even hotter.
His palm turned a deep crimson as the pain seemed to tug at his heartstrings. His mom. He had forgotten about her… No, he had stopped thinking about her. She who loved him and believed… if Lyren had any mental blockades anymore, they were nonexistent. His flames burned so hot that they made him sweat but the sweat quickly evaporated.
Those close to him writhed in pain as they felt the heat want to scorch them and not the flames. Lyren's flames reached the dragon and as though coming from an endless source, the started burning at the dragon. Seeing that it was being attacked by an ant, the dragon s blew flames from its mouth and countered Lyren's flames.
The collision that followed sent shockwaves all around and the illusion barrier seemed to waver. The stairs seemed to get charred black and those behind him were sent flying by a gust of wind resulting from the collision. There was a dreadlock that showed it was a draw but the dragon did not accept this as its throat glowed with a burning yellow light.
Its flames seemed to increase their intensity and Lyren's were easily extinguished, rather say absorbed. This came as a surprise for Lyren as he watched the flames burn everything in their path even the air. This was its embodiment of flames and he was impressed. But he had not lost yet.
He closed his eyes as he used his mind's eye to look inside himself. He wanted to know why the flames felt that he had betrayed them by not releasing them sooner. Was there something that he was forgetting?
And then he recalled it all.
When the pattern was imprinted, he was subjected to so much pain that he had ended up screaming for his life in pain. Then he recalled that his hand had not burned away.
This was something he had ignored but now that he thought about it, it appeared that the only thing that happened was his palm being subjected to heat but it had survived the burning.
That was the hugest clue of his attribute but he had not even thought about the mechanism that enabled him to succeed then and he had taken it for granted. He looked at his core and he saw the flames that surrounded it. The core world was so hot that it would melt at any moment but it only appeared to burn even hotter until it was crimson.
Lyren suddenly stretched a hand inwards to the core and he placed it on. He screamed loudly as he knew this were his senses that were being burned but he was not going to avoid it anymore.
He had to show his resilience and acceptance of the flames. And in a few seconds, the flames seemed to have cooled down but only he knew just how dangerous they were.
He stretched his hand out and the color of the flames he released was darker than that released by the dragon and when they met, there was no collision at all as the dragon's flames were wiped away and so was the dragon's as it was sent back into the void…