Too Many Elements

Kang De had a dream.

A very, very frightening nightmare.

He dreamed that one day in the future, he had finally dispersed the white fog surrounding the residential complex. But when he returned home, excited and overjoyed, he found despair beyond despair.

The outside world was empty too.

Only one human being remained on the entire Earth.

His body jerked violently, and he opened his eyes in terror.

He was drenched in cold sweat.

Cold stone lay beneath him, and overhead was a glowing cave ceiling. The surroundings were completely unfamiliar, and he had no idea where he was.

Kang De immediately rolled aside and rose into a crouch, drawing his short knife from his waist.

No one was around.

In the vast underground space, the stone walls and floor glowed. He looked at the luminous writing and murals, unable to understand them, yet they gave him a faint sense of familiarity and... sadness.

"Where is this...?"

He called out, "A Xing! Old Dai! Pigeon!"

No one answered.

He shook his head and recalled what had happened. The animals had captured Tina, and he had gone to make contact with people from another world. Those natives had ambushed him, yelled at him, attacked him with blades and guns, and nearly killed him, so a fight had broken out. Then starlight had shone from Tina, and she had done something...

And then he had understood the language of the other world.

His body had also undergone some changes...

He instinctively looked at the knife in his hand and suddenly froze.

Now that he had calmed down, he noticed that the world was different.

The knife seemed... different.

No, it wasn't the knife that had changed. It seemed to be him...

He had found this knife in the police station's storage room for confiscated items. It was a restricted weapon, sharp, with a blood groove, forged from modern steel. It was exceptionally sharp and highly lethal.

As he gazed at the cold blade, his thoughts wandered of their own accord. He felt his thoughts expand like vines, spreading over the sharp blade like a net. He felt that he had come to "know" its keen edge, and as if compelled by some mysterious force, he spoke words that were unfamiliar to him.

"Element... Extraction..."

The hard, sharp blade dissolved into starlight at his words.

Under Kang De's astonished gaze, the blade disintegrated into thin air until it vanished without a trace, leaving not the slightest residue, as if it had disappeared from the world entirely.

In its place were clusters of light in various colors.

Some were large, some small; some were clear, others indistinct. The floating clusters remained where the blade had been, intertwining and interacting with one another, yet existing independently.

As Kang De looked at the clusters, an unfamiliar word from another world flashed through his mind.

He murmured, "Elements..."

He slowly reached toward the collection of endlessly revolving lights, extending his hand toward the brightest and most conspicuous cluster. It was the largest and also the slowest.

He touched it.

The white cluster touched Kang De's fingertip and slipped into his body. Kang De instantly felt a sharp, stabbing pain. Without that cluster to keep them in balance, the intertwining spheres of light rapidly dispersed, drifting into the world around him.

Kang De looked at his left hand.

He could sense the cluster he had absorbed floating in the flesh of his palm.

This "Element"...

He muttered to himself, "Sharpness..."

As if inspired by heaven, he raised the knife handle in his right hand.

Only the steel blade had disappeared.

He pressed the tip of his left index finger against the handle and brushed it across, releasing the absorbed cluster of light.

A cold, metallic sharpness attached itself to the cloth-wrapped handle.

Thoughtful, Kang De held the handle and drew it lightly across his left palm.

A slight sting followed. With just that gentle cut, a mark opened in the skin of his palm.

His tough body, strengthened by the black beast crystal, had been easily cut by the sweat-absorbing cloth wrapped around the knife handle.

Gripping the handle, Kang De made a cut in his tactical vest.

The snapped threads and clean cut were easy to see.

He drew his fire axe.

The axe blade met the knife handle.

A piercing metallic clang rang out as they scraped together.

He saw a small nick appear in the sturdy fire axe blade. Immediately afterward, the knife handle shattered as though struck by a sledgehammer. It had reached the limit of what it could bear.

Kang De stared blankly for a moment, then tossed the axe aside and took a nail from his waist pouch.

A nail for a nail gun.

He concentrated, cast out his net of thought, attached it to the nail, and performed Element Extraction.

The steel nail disintegrated into even smaller clusters of light, though there were fewer than when he had broken down the blade.

Several of the clusters looked familiar, very similar.

He held his breath and focused, choosing one of them.

"Piercing..."

After a moment's thought, he picked up the fire axe and used his fingernail to pry a small splinter from its handle.

He brushed his finger over it. Element Attachment.

Pinching the splinter, he crouched and stabbed it toward the ground.

With a bang, the splinter shattered, but Kang De saw that its tip had pierced the hard stone and entered the ground.

He murmured, "It worked, but it wasn't hard enough..."

Hardness.

A second nail. Element Extraction.

A sphere of light similar to the one from the steel knife.

Element: steel.

A third nail. He extracted it again.

Element: piercing.

He attached the two Elements to another splinter, one after the other.

Kang De tried again. This time, the brittle splinter embedded itself in the ground like a nail.

Then it disintegrated.

"The material..." Kang De muttered to himself. "Ordinary wood, in such a small piece, can't withstand two Element enhancements...?"

He hadn't even noticed the inexplicable seriousness hidden in his own voice... or the delight.

It was the feeling of possessing power.

He didn't stop experimenting.

He tore a piece of cloth from his clothes, uncorked a Molotov cocktail, and poured out a little liquid.

He lit it.

Flames leaped up, illuminating his face.

"I can break down solid objects, but what about an intangible flame...?"

His mind reached out.

A sudden tremor ran through him.

He gritted his teeth and reached toward the leaping flames.

It worked.

A beam of mental energy enveloped the fire, and the scorching flames gradually went out. Elements rose into the air, many of them, but they were like a solar system. The tiny Elements were no more than orbiting planets, while the star at the center had the greatest light and heat, the most conspicuous and distinct.

Element: flame...

Crimson light flowed into Kang De's body.

He took out a fourth nail.

Element Attachment. The steel nail changed color, as though a crimson light flowed within it.

He had used only half this time... He carefully sensed the limit of what the steel nail could bear.

After all, this nail was merely the most ordinary mass-produced item from a modern industrial system, made of inferior material.

If it were made from better steel using superior manufacturing techniques...

He loaded the nail into the nail gun and fired.

A scorching red light shot out, streaking into the distance like a thin line of fire.

Kang De took out the Swiss Army knife he carried and sent the other half of the flame Element into the folding knife. He cut at a flashlight, and with just a light stroke, its plastic casing melted at a speed visible to the naked eye.

He stared blankly for a while.

"What is this?" he muttered, even laughing. "Enchanting?"

It was just like the enchanting skills in Western games and fantasy novels, attaching magical power to ordinary objects to give them greater capabilities and more wondrous uses.

Was that what it was?

Instinctively, he felt it wasn't quite that simple.

Ever since waking up, he had noticed that everything he saw seemed somewhat different.

Simpler, clearer, and more... fragile.

He took out his phone.

What kind of Elements would come out if he extracted them from this thing?

He spread his mental net and enveloped this product of modern human technology.

"...Uh."

Then he felt a little dizzy. Kang De sensed his mental power wrapping around the phone's casing, but as it penetrated deeper, it encountered a great many electronic components and unusual materials. And that wasn't all. Those were merely related to matter; there were even more intangible things.

He had a feeling that even if he forcibly activated this mysterious power, the phone would only disintegrate into an extremely complex mixture of Elements, perhaps even thousands upon thousands of them, impossible to absorb or identify.

Too many Elements.

Maybe... he could do it later?

But how?

And...

If he could extract Elements from objects and even flames, then... what about living things?

What would he extract from them?

At that thought, Kang De suddenly shuddered.

This "extraction" was no gentle method. Extracting an Element depended on the extracted object disintegrating into nothing... In other words, if it were a person...

Wait.

Disintegrate.

Disperse into nothing.

Kang De sprang to his feet, his body trembling violently.

Outside the cave.

The sky had already darkened, but the animals were still standing guard.

The knight urged, "Your Highness, perhaps you should return to camp and rest first."

Tina shook her head stubbornly. "Please forgive me for being stubborn this once. We'll make camp here. I want to make sure I can see Mr. Kang De as soon as he comes out, to show our sincerity."

The knight frowned. "But..."

He swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue because of the look in the princess's eyes.

"...As you wish."

He looked toward the cave entrance. "That Cathayan... how long will the ritual last?"

"That depends on each person's aptitude and the nature of the inheritance."

The princess replied, "In theory, the Awakening Ritual lasts three days, but in practice it won't take that long. The power inherited from every ancient hero is an understanding of the laws of the world. After receiving the inheritance, the enlightened person will sleep until the laws of this world grant their recognition, and only then will he wake up... Generally speaking, once he wakes up, the inheritance is complete."

The knight keenly picked up on a phrase.

Her Highness was always precise in her speech.

"Generally speaking?"

"Yes, generally speaking."

Tina nodded. "There are exceptions. Generally speaking, when the enlightened person wakes up, it means the corresponding power of this world's laws has recognized him. The process is complete, and there's no benefit to staying any longer. But the inheritance ritual still lasts three days, which means..."

Seeing the knight's bewildered expression, she shook her head with a smile. "Let me give you an example."

"Stella, the Abyss Walker, was a human hero of the Terra era. After receiving a heroic inheritance and gaining the recognition of his own plane's law of slaughter, he immediately opened a portal to the abyss and charged into the demon world, continuing his heroic inheritance amid endless slaughter."

"Because the inheritance ritual lasts three days, the enlightened person can resonate with the power of the world during that time. So Stella also gained the recognition of the Abyss Plane's law of slaughter. In other words, he possessed two sets of the power of the law of slaughter. The convergence of two supreme powers produced a terrifying mutation..."

She said, "Do you understand now?"

"I do."

The knight nodded.

But this was meaningless.

As if compelled by some mysterious force, he suddenly said, "An example like that has nothing to do with that Cathayan."

"As I said before, how could there be a Hero Altar in a forbidden place sealed by the gods?"

"Even if there is one, it's because the gods took pity on Goth, and that Cathayan happened to be incredibly lucky. Besides, in a desolate, sealed land of deathly silence like this, even if there is a Hero Altar, it wouldn't belong to a particularly powerful ancient hero. Let alone another world. Portals to other worlds aren't so easy to come across."

The knight spoke like a machine gun.

"Besides, that Cathayan looks utterly ordinary. How could he wake up so quickly? He'll most likely sleep the full three days and barely manage to complete the inheritance. Even if we take a huge step back and say he does wake up and there really is a portal to another plane, it's most likely a weak one. How could it compare with the Abyss Plane, where slaughter is everywhere and madness is eternal? Even if he really could gain a second set of laws' recognition, it wouldn't be very powerful."

The princess looked in surprise at the knight as he rattled on, then suddenly laughed.

"Knight, why would you say such things?" she asked with a smile. "Could it be that you actually hope..."

Cleveland turned his head away and gritted his teeth. "Hmph, those absurd, groundless rumors about me... must never be believed!!"

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PS1: Hmph, none of you guessed right. I told you it was a cheat, so how could it be that simple? (Disdain)

PS2: So, can you guess now what infinite possibilities and room for improvement this cheat represents, and what it has to do with the title "Fire Thief"? (Laughs)