Chương 70: 1-69 It's but a scratch

Zippa would, in fact, not wake up. No matter how nicely Josef asked him, which was honestly just different volumes of shouting desperately over the flames. The reptile was instead writhing on the ground, tossing and turning, groaning loudly in what appeared like a terrible nightmare from his point of view. Under normal circumstances, he would have just shaken or even slapped the guy awake. But if he wouldn't wake up from being literally on fire, then what were the chances of that actually working?

Considering he couldn't even get close enough to make contact in the first place, not very high at all. Well, hopefully dousing him with water would help because that was the only solution Josef could think of. Now if only he could actually make that happen, as every bit of water mana that left his body immediately slipped from his control, as it turned into steam and wafted away.

Actually, that wasn't the only thing evaporating, as even the mana shoring up his own defence against the heat began slipping, painfully exiting his body as it lost cohesion, evaporating into the air. He was getting steam cooked with his own magic, as he noted with some chagrin. It was ridiculous, after every bog standard RPG had drilled him on elemental weaknesses. Water was supposed to beat fire, so why was this happening to him? Naturally, he understood the issue, which lay in the sheer quantity involved.

Even if his water mana could triumph over the fire affinity in an even matchup, he was currently surrounded by an entire sea of the orange hued mana. It was like pouring a bucket into a wildfire, barely having any effect. Josef had a hard time believing that all of the mana he saw could originate from his friend, and on second thought, it probably didn't. Zippa would need reserves that dwarfed his own many times over to straight up engulf everything like this.

Instead, it was probably like what he had experienced with the ice staff, with the neutral mana getting tinted by the magic, causing it to spread. It sounded very much like something fire magic would do. Unfortunately, he didn't know how to undo that without drowning everything with even more energy of his own, which just wasn't possible with the quantities that would have required. Well, maybe there was a way to brute force it, but that would have taken too long and was a few levels too insane, even for him.

Though he was going to make use of that idea in some small manner. It wasn't like he had to douse an entire forest on his own. Just enough to pour on his friend would be enough, and he knew just how to source the required quantity, while also reducing the strain caused by the environment. Sending out streams of mana, he pierced them straight through the thickest wads of orange he could spot in the nearby fires, forcefully ripping away chunks of the energy to fuel his own magic.

Where those fiery chunks entered his body, they quickly found themselves consumed by a secondary stream, which wormed its way around his insides, feeding his hungry heart. That the latter part of this process barely needed any guidance from him was only slightly concerning. Then, achieving an astonishing conversion rate, and ignoring the searing heartburn settling in his chest, and everywhere else in his body for that matter, he poured it all out into water.

What he created was based on Water Prison, but it wasn't a proper spell, all things considered. It was just pure transformation from mana into water, while attempting to imbue it with the same strength innate to that specific magic. Something about it had always made the water feel more… raw. Its crushing force was more than the small orb should have had, and those trapped inside drowned more quickly than was logical, as if it rejected the very concept of breathing.

In short, it felt like it most strongly represented the extremes of water, at least the ones he was after. As Josef poured out his mana, he couldn't help but wince from the searing pain all over. His current approach had the distinct downside that he had to drop the initial sphere of water, which he used to keep the flames away from himself. Essentially, he had to leave himself momentarily defenseless in front of the fire, which soon tried to consume him whole.

His clothes had already dried, and by now they were no longer merely smoking. The linen finally could no longer resist the heat and turned ablaze. Though it wasn't like the rest of him was faring any better, as his body wasn't built for temperatures like that. The only spot on his body not suffering from the expanding fire was his chest, where the scales provided a margin of relief. Apparently, these were rather resistant to fire, which suddenly made them much more attractive in the moment.

However, that sentiment did nothing to help cover up the remainder of himself. While considering whether it was worth a try to send the burning scraps of his clothes away into his storage, he finally managed to push back the heat by a tiny bit. It was barely a couple of centimeters, but with the increasing amounts of water mana pouring out of his body like magical sweat, he finally bought himself some room to work with.

His current situation was still nowhere near stable, as letting up for even a moment would collapse whatever liquid he had amassed, and his Regeneration was still working overtime to restore the charred skin all over his body, over and over again. It was more like making the jump from straight up standing in fire to getting cooked on a grill. Too much heat in either case, but one was considerably slower than the other.

Which technically meant that he would simply be miserable for even longer if this failed, but that was not a thought he wanted to entertain. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Keeping up the procedure of leeching fire, only to pour it out as water, he fought for every inch on the scales, until they finally tipped in his favor. With one last mighty push, a large stream of water poured out of him and met Zippa's blazing body.

At first, there was only steam, which almost wholly obscured his vision with its own hue of magic. But like water poured into a hot pan, the steam soon gave way to bubbling and churning waters, streaming over the prone reptile. Then, finally, Josef broke through the remaining heat and, ignoring the still raging flames all around, scooped up the sizzling hot lizard. After the fire he had endured before, that much was barely even worth a mention, as his magic had no issues keeping up with those particular burns.

Especially with the new water layer covering him, as it massively increased his resistance. Unfortunately, Zippa hadn't woken up from this much, and was still unconscious to the world. At least he no longer actively produced heat, and his rest had become comparatively peaceful. Sprinting back roughly the way he had come, using the location of his familiars like a compass, he exited the inferno without further incidents, and found an undisturbed spot to put his friend down.

The fire was still burning a ways behind them, but it wouldn't reach them anytime soon. In fact, it looked like the spread was drastically slowed down, now that the origin of the flames had been removed. None of that mattered, though, as he now had to find a way to wake his friend up for good, because he could hardly continue sleeping in the middle of the boss fight. Zippa had been looking forward so much to this that he would be inconsolable if he missed out on it entirely.

As for how he could accomplish it, his freshly upgraded eyes gave him a hint on that. Within the orange hues of the lizard's mana, some sickly gray spots were floating around, like mold sticking to his magic. Despite all the commotion he had caused, Zippa had never managed to push this influence out of his body. Apparently, it didn't care much for whatever heat was on the outside when it was safely tucked away within the fire-resistant reptile.

Considering how the rest of them had broken out of their illusions more or less by their own merit, it implied that his friend had some very rough shit to deal with. It was a good thing he could help him with that, by taking the issue by its roots. Extending streams of mana, he used the guidance provided by his eyes to pierce straight into areas that looked off to him. There was plenty of the fire-attuned orange energy coming back with it.

However, the sickly spots turned out to behave exactly as he was used to from this creature's invasive substance. This time, the sticky stuff stood no chance as it got vacuumed by his gluttonous heart, never even getting a chance to clog anything up.

"I'm sorry. So sorry. Please don't leave me. Please!"

"It's alright. You're safe." Josef consoled his friend, who suddenly shot up, sputtering and shivering, but alert.

"Whatever you saw wasn't real. This boss put us all under an illusion." With no better idea on how to handle the shocked reptile, he pulled his friend into a hug and gently patted his back. For a moment, all seemed well, as nothing but silent breathing existed between them. However, Zippa then suddenly shoved him away. There was little force behind it, just enough to put him at arm's length.

"What have I done?" The lizard cried out, looking the human up and down, before his gaze snapped to the nearby flames.

"No… not again. Why does this always happen? Why do I always burn everyone I care about? Why?" His words descended into incoherent mumbling by the end.

"Hey, look at me, Zip," he tried to get his friend's attention, but found him too out of it to notice. With a resigned sigh, he fell back to his initial method of waking the reptile, and doused him with a generous amount of water. Seeing how the sputtering reptile finally looked at him with wide eyes, he continued.

"I went into that fire knowing what I was in for," he assured him.

"Even when every instinct and functioning brain cell screamed at me not to do it, I still pushed on. Never have I done something so stupid in my life." Zippa was at a loss for words, and before he could even think of forming a sentence, Josef continued.

"And I would do it all again. Because I promised your brother to bring you back. And because I refuse to abandon a friend in need. So what if I have to suffer a little bit of pain. That's a generous trade for your life."

"But look at yourself!" the dam of his emotions finally burst.

"How can you say it's fine after I did that to you?" Josef didn't even need to look down at his body, because he could feel just how bad it was. He did so anyway, looking over his angry red skin, which bore more scars than regular tissue. His magic had been hard at work all this time, but he wasn't some omnipotent miracle healer. Not yet, at least.

The constant charring, breaking down, and even melting of parts of his skin, particularly after his clothes had literally burned off of him, was broken up only by bouts of new tissue pushing to replace the old, only to fall to the same fate in the middle of the process. It was too much to keep up with on a scale as large as his entire body. He didn't even want to check his scalp, knowing there was no more flowing hair to greet his hand.

Strangely enough, now that the worst of it was over, there was little pain to be felt. Were the nerves under his skin damaged as well? At least he had stashed his spare clothes in his hoard, anticipating that he would lose his first set at some point, self-repair enchantment, or not.

"Hey now, no ogling while I'm naked," he jested, the tone coming more easily over his lips than he had expected.

"Besides, it's nothing I can't fix, given enough time." That, he wasn't sure of at all. Just dealing with a little bit of scar tissue was usually a pain, and he would have to peel off practically everything to make it grow back properly. Unless he figured out how to force the body into following his healing instructions more thoroughly, forcing it to get rid of unwanted tissue on its own. He promptly decided to start on that project sooner rather than later.

"But…" Zippa didn't look convinced, and Josef couldn't blame him for that. Honestly, he was right to expect some kind of backlash from him, even if he had willingly entered the blazing inferno. It was normal to lash out after suffering wounds like this. Not for the first time did he wonder what was wrong with himself. Was this some kind of consequence of missing his personal memories, giving him a stilted view of his self worth? Or was he already this weirdly self-sacrificing back on Earth?

Either way, the philosophical musings had to wait.

"Sorry to push you, Zip, but we have to get moving. Bezzo and Linda set off to find Aifreed, and going by what I'm feeling from my familiars, things are bad on their end." The mention of his brother's name jolted the lizard a little more awake.

"I… fine. But we have to talk afterwards. About this..." He paused before adding, "and about my parents. After this, I at least owe you an explanation."