An Owl's Rise

So far, she had simply been dodging the six-armed fire elemental's barrage of flaming arrows, but now she was ready to counterattack.

As she approached her opponent switched up the flaming weapons in its arms into the spears, wielding one in each of its hands. Flames then erupted from the feet of the molten wolf the grand fire elemental was using as a mount and it flew to meet Evelyn head on.

Nevertheless, she did not falter and tucked in her wings and went into a full nosedive.

Bright crimson flames erupted from her body as she fell and tempestuous wind wrapped around her. With her gravity magic she increased the force on herself to the greatest degree she could, effectively increasing the speed of her decent by several times.

Using the combination of her three magic affinities Evelyn became like a blazing comet about to strike with tremendous impact.

The grand fire elemental and its mount showed no hesitancy and continued to rush towards Evelyn. Her attack appeared to be mostly fire-based and they figured they would never lose to the fire magic of a mere beast.

Yet, when the grand fire elemental lunged with all six of its spears, it found its blazing white flames being consumed by Evelyn's crimson flames.

A massive explosion followed their clash. But in the end the winner was clearly Evelyn as her crimson flames overtook the grand fire elemental.

Still, after coming out victorious from the clash, Evelyn's momentum continued to propel her towards the ground.

It took a great deal of effort to prevent crashing into the earth and crushing her body, but Evelyn managed to pull up at the last second.

Quickly she was soaring back into the sky with the flames and wind that had been surrounding her cast off.

'That was a lot more difficult than when I practiced that move. I need to remember that coming into contact with another powerful force makes the magic become unstable.' Evelyn thought while breathing heavily.

There was no doubt that the maneuver she had just executed had taken a lot out of her both physically and mentally. Even with the recover items she had preemptively taken it would take her a couple of minutes to return to peak condition after exerting herself to such an extent.

She had felt that she had utterly destroyed something, so she was pretty certain that her attack had eliminated her target and now she only needed to collect her bounty.

However, as she looked around, she found that the white flamed grand fire elemental had not met its end. Before being overwhelmed by Evelyn's surprisingly powerful attack, it had sacrificed its mount in order to escape with only light injuries.

'I guess they don't usually have sovereign rank beasts deal with grand fire elementals for nothing. I shouldn't have expected to take it out with one attack even if I caught it off guard with one of my best.'

Evelyn was a bit bitter that it had survived her opening strike that had combined all three of her magic types into one incredibly powerful attack. She had not only expended a great deal of energy, but also revealed her greatest advantage. The grand fire elemental now knew that her fire magic could hurt it and would not so brazenly meet her head on again.

As she expected the grand fire elemental backed away from her and showed no signs of meeting her in close combat again. Instead, it combined all six of its arms into what looked like the barrel of a giant cannon.

In a shocking show of power, it then unleashed a rapid-fire blast of blazing spheres that were each around a hundred meters wide.

These fire cannonballs moved quite a bit slower than the arrows it had fired earlier, but the wide area they encompassed and sheer destructive force were on another level.

'It's definitely far more intelligent than the weaker fire elementals I encountered on my way here.' Evelyn internally grumbled.

While these enormous spheres of white-hot flames would be easy enough for Evelyn to avoid or outright tank thanks to her fire immunity, the same could not be said for the valiant members of the Inferno Field Rangers that were locked in a fierce fight against a swarm of fire elementals the grand fire elemental had led into battle.

Dozens of the wardens that prevented the energies of the elemental rift from expanding were in the line of fire of the grand fire elemental's attacks. If Evelyn ignored them, there were surely going to be casualties.

Of course, with her quarry already in front of her, Evelyn no longer needed to endear herself to the Inferno Rangers to get what she wanted and contemplated letting them get burnt to a crips. However, she ultimately decided that this would be disadvantageous for her in multiple ways.

'If a bunch of them start dying Yulbok will almost certainly intercede. He's been letting me draw the grand fire elemental's attacks while he crushes the small fry, but if he joins the battle there is a good chance he will steal the kill from me.'

The last thing Evelyn wanted was for the Head Ranger in charge of this area's fortress to target the grand fire elemental. She was almost certain that he would not let her have its heart if he was the one that killed it. Especially if her inaction caused several of his subordinates to end up dead.

Letting out a deep sigh, Evelyn got ready to disperse the grand fire elemental's blazing cannonballs and strike back once an opening presented itself.

'I wonder which of us has stronger fire power. Well, time to find out.'

Evelyn began psyching herself up and forced as much magical energy as she could through her body at once. Then she turned all of that energy into a gigantic blaze that should have been beyond a mere awakened rank beast.