MaeveMcCarthy
patreon
Chapter 70
🕑 Added 2025-02-05 21:55:34 +0000 UTCMonica collapsed to the ground, body half-charred from the inside out by the Divine Fire Mana she had just inhaled. She summoned her Golden Flame in full force, letting its healing warmth flow through her chest and arm. Slowly—excruciatingly—she felt some relief as the fire began rebuilding the blackened tissue in her ribs and restoring the seared muscle fibers in her arm.
Yet, the ache of that terrifying process still radiated throughout her body when she heard a notification chime inside her head.
Ding!
You have learned a new Skill!
Utility Skill - Charred Masochist (Rare) – Level 1
Ding!
Utility Skill - Charred Masochist (Rare) – Lv. 1
You have discovered a bizarre harmony with destructive Fire Mana through equal measures of pain, perseverance, and healing. Whenever you suffer damage through Fire Skills, your ability to withstand damage will be amplified.
#1 Base Effect: 5% reduction against damage from your own Fire Skills. This effect goes up by 1% per level.
Current Effect: 6%
Warning: Overuse of this Skill may cause severe strain to the body and mind.
Monica blinked away the last of the pain. She read the new Skill’s description twice, her lips curving into an incredulous frown.
“Charred… Masochist?” she muttered.
She shot a questioning look at Dworsul, who stood nearby, arms folded over his chest. The dwarf’s thick eyebrows rose.
“That’s the strangest Skill name I’ve ever heard,” he said drily, “but—perhaps it fits. You did just roast yourself from the inside out and then started healing with unbroken focus. You must enjoy the punishment.”
Monica managed to stand, wincing as her newly healed muscle protested.
“Is it even remotely useful?” she asked, flexing her half-mended fingers. “I was hoping for something more… I don’t know, grand. Like Fire Communion. Instead, I get this stupid-sounding Skill?”
Dworsul grunted.
“No telling yet. You'll have to level it through practice if it’s anything like our Fire Communion. Keep it up, and maybe it’ll evolve into something more refined. Or…” He shrugged, lips twitching into a half-smirk. “Maybe it’ll stay as weird as it sounds.”
Monica huffed, torn between frustration and a hint of amusement at the ridiculous name. But she had no other choice. If Charred Masochist was her path to controlling destructive Fire Mana—and eventually unlocking the dwarven forging arts—then so be it.
Despite the harrowing agony that had just killed her once and nearly destroyed her body multiple times, Monica resolved to keep at it. She formed another tiny sphere through Fire Transmutation—merging Golden Flame and Obsidian Flame into a single spark.
This time, she used Meditation more deliberately, slow-breathing her way through the process. Every fiber of her being hated it, but an insidious thrill coursed through her veins whenever she guided that micro-thread of superheated Fire Mana into her body. It was like peeling a scab off a fresh wound—horrible in concept, appallingly painful in practice, yet carrying a strange release that left her wanting to push further.
She inhaled a fraction of the flame. It singed her throat, and she gagged, tears stinging her eyes. Internal sizzling made her heart pound in terror: the blood in her veins actually boiled for a second, sending a scorching jolt of adrenaline through her. Yet even as her cells screamed, some deeper corner of her mind rejoiced. A primal part of her liked defying the threshold of death and then knitting herself back together with Golden Flame.
Ding!
Utility Skill - Charred Masochist (Rare) – Lv. 2
A faint tremor of power nudged her. The burning in her chest receded a fraction more quickly than before. As she kept going, letting the Mana travel through her left arm, something new stirred within her—an acute sort of hyperfocus that pressed her to keep pushing.
“This is insane,” she rasped, but it only goaded her to continue.
Not half an hour later, she found herself systematically circulating Fire Mana from her left arm to her right, then from her torso down one leg, slowly rotating the path through her entire body. Each route left behind fresh destruction, but each route also triggered the Charred Masochist Skill. She also kept using the Golden Flame to rebuild her scorched tissues. She died two more times in the process—painful, abrupt collapses.
But each time, she rose from the ashes, stronger and more attuned to the lethal current of fire blazing through her veins.
Ding!
Utility Skill - Charred Masochist – Lv. 3
The moment she saw that notification, Monica gritted her teeth and redoubled her efforts. The more she practiced, the more she realized the Skill’s name was apt—Charred Masochist truly rewarded her for enduring the agony of Divine Fire Mana. A twisted cycle of destruction and healing battered her body, yet gave her an addictive jolt of power each time she succeeded.
Soon, the notifications came at a steadier pace.
Ding!
Charred Masochist – Lv. 4
Ding!
Charred Masochist – Lv. 5
Her body smoldered in half a dozen places. Red welts studded her limbs, but a tendrils of Golden Flame wove itself across the injuries, sealing them just enough for her to continue.
Dworsul occasionally stepping in to observe, correct, or simply watch with undisguised bafflement. In the process, Charred Masochist keeps leveling.
By the time Monica paused to rest, she had died more times than she could count and angry black burns clung to her shoulders like jagged tattoos.
Ding!
Charred Masochist – Lv. 10
Her entire body radiated a faint warmth as if the Fire Mana now clung to her cells more permanently. She breathed carefully, feeling less raw pain and more a humming tension that coiled under her skin.
She checked her Golden Flame. It had leveled as well, responding to the repeated cycles of healing each meltdown.
Ding
Healing Skill – Golden Flame Level 67 -> 70
Her progress soared in leaps—a direct result of repeated destruction and reconstitution. And to her astonishment, that manic craving to push her limits only grew stronger every time Charred Masochist leveled up.
“Enough,” Dworsul’s voice broke in, sharp and firm.
*
Dworsul stood a short distance away from the redhead, arms folded, expression torn between horror and fascination. He had trained countless dwarves—young apprentices bright-eyed with ambition, older veterans forging their life’s masterpiece—but never had he witnessed anyone embrace pain like Monica did.
Golden Flame pulsed along her arms, weaving itself into half-melted flesh and muscle over and over. Each time that wave of self-immolation coursed through her, she looked ready to collapse—only to hiss, arch her back, and thrust her Mana deeper, almost as though chasing the next wave of exquisite torment.
He expected revulsion. Or pity. Or a stiff, formal reaction that dwarves often had when confronted with such extremes
But Dworsul felt something else entirely.
It was envy.
Dworsul's saw the absolute pain on the Avatar's face and wished he could have inflicted it upon himself without dying, just like the redhead in front of him.
He turned away from her, staring straight at one of the magma wells that connected the Ashen Archive to the rest of Viscera.
I have hidden myself when I should have been out there, fighting with my brothers and sisters.
Dworsul had not lied when he had said that the reason his father died was because he had ascended to Godhood. And now, the son of (name of Dworsul's father) was the only Dwarf made of flesh and blood in Viscera.
He remembered when life had been had been different, before the war with the Old Gods. He remembered having fun—he remembered forging beside his kin, pouring sweat and blood onto his creations.
And now, look at me.
Dworsul shook his head.
A bitter, old bastard who has nothing—no one.
He had retired in seclusion after mastering the Blacksmith Class. He had managed to create a Divine Weapon, a feat not even his father, (name of Dworsul's father), had been able to accomplish.
Once he had touched the apex of Blacksmithing, he had decided to hide himself. Those who become too strong become targets and the only way for him to ensure that his kind would prosper was to record all the knowledge he had.
And instead, the Queen of Stone plundered my sanctuary while none of my people knew it even existed.
Dworsul had sculpted the Ashen Archives in the depths of Viscera, between the second and third level. He had placed countless wards to make sure no one but him could have access to it. Dwarves didn't tamper with the magma flows, considering it terrible luck, which meant he had not had to worry about someone casually jumping in puddles of magma until they found the Ashen Archives.
He had thought he would have done the greatest service to Viscera, that he would have been remembered as the greatest Blacksmith, as the one to truly cement their legacy.
He hadn't wanted to turn into a God, like his father had, because Gods couldn't just give knowledge out for free. Gods had to trade and stake their Divinity on each trade, more worried about maintaining the balance of Divinity than truly contributing to their own people.
That was why Dworsul had refused to become a God.
He had wanted to give everything he had to his people.
In the end, however, while his father had lost his life while fighting the Queen of Stone, Dworsul had been hiding away, scared that the great Blacksmithing knowledge of Dwarves would have been lost.
How pathetic, Dworsul scoffed.
As he was commiserating himself, he felt a disturbance in the Mana of the chamber.
Dworsul knew that to learn Fire Breathing, the Avatar would have probably have to take about one month of this terrifying practice. There were no shortcuts. You couldn't just cheat your way to the Skill. It was too powerful and unruly, too unstable, for you to just learn it on the spot.
But when the legendary Blacksmith turned toward Monica, he felt a chill down his spine.
There's Fire Mana in one-fifth of her body at once.
That might have not sounded incredible to an amateur, but Dworsul was currently speechless.
A Dwarf starting the process from scratch might have been able to fill perhaps a pinky with Fire Mana by the end of the first day of training. And that was if the Dwarf in question had a boundless talent.
The fact that Monica had already so much Fire Mana across her body—not to speak of the fact that she was using a much more devastating form of Fire Mana...
Dworsul saw Monica's mouth suddenly shoot open together with her eyes. A scream died on her lips before it could come out and her irises became glossy.
She just died.
Dworsul was stunned.
She just killed herself during the practice. Does she have no self-preservation instinct?
Before she could come back, Dworsul took her wrist and put two fingers on it, closing his eyes and focusing. His magic didn't come easy in this state, and he had to fully focus to see exactly how much progress Monica had made.
He almost recoiled on the spot, seeing the terrifying extent of the damage that Monica had inflicted upon her own body.
Monica wasn't focusing on having Fire Mana in one part of her body at the time and making it acclimatize to it. No, she was taking the destructive Mana only she could generate by fusing her two Divine Flames and she was circulating it through her body.
"This is actually very smart," Dworsul said. "And crazy."
Dwarves would usually keep the Fire Mana in only one spot of their body in order for it to get more and more acclimatized to the ravaging force. Circulating it all at once would mean inflicting too much damage onto the body.
Dworsul, however, understood what Monica was doing.
The Avatar of the Twin Phoenix had access to one of the strongest healing Skills in existence. Instead of reducing the potency of the Fire Mana she was inhaling, she had decided to move it as fast as possible throughout her own body so that the damage to one specific part of it wouldn't be too great. By following in the tracks of the Fire Mana with her Golden Flame, she was effectively putting her body through a fast cycle of healing and destruction.
But not even she can heal all of this.
Not even Monica could heal all the damage in time, meaning that at each cycle, she would move closer to death.
Dworsul felt the powers of the Twin Phoenix kick in and saw, inside Monica's veins, wisps and crackles of Golden Flame starting to repair the damage and starting to extend to the superficial layers of her Skin, slowly enveloping the entirety of her body.
The Dwarf sighed and took a step back, now eyeing the bracers that the Avatar had on.
Divine Equipment, he mused.
He squinted and raised an eyebrow.
"It's tied to her powers," he smirked. "Smart. But that's why they cracked. She's underleveled and she keeps fighting monsters too strong for her."
But that also meant the repairs of the bracers wouldn't be so hard.
Maybe she's good enough.
Maybe...
She will free my people.
