"Little Black, do we still have to keep going?" Vivian gazed into the depths of the distant forest. The vegetation was growing increasingly lush and dense, and the girl instinctively shrank her neck.
However, the little beast in her arms merely let out a weak cry and pushed at her with its tiny paws.
After Liao Zixuan reminded her, the girl realized that she had been holding Little Black far too tightly because she was so nervous. She didn't have much flesh on her body to begin with, especially around her chest—it was practically flat as a board.
"Mm... s-sorry, Little Black." Vivian's childish face instantly flushed red. It wasn't embarrassment, but sheer mortification, and she hurriedly apologized.
Yet while the girl and wolf were talking, a muffled roar suddenly rang out from an ancient tree diagonally above her.
Immediately afterward, a massive black shadow more than half a person tall launched a surprise attack on the completely defenseless Vivian, diving straight down at her with lightning speed!
It was a leopard-shaped magical creature with razor-sharp teeth and claws. It had clearly been watching the girl in secret for a long time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike a fatal blow when she let her guard down.
And this was obviously the best opportunity it could have hoped for!
Then—
Then there was no "then."
Before its claws could even touch the girl, the magic leopard's own body strangely caught fire. It was swallowed by black flames in midair, and by the time it hit the ground, all that remained was a charred corpse, burned beyond recognition.
As for our Vivian, she was startled at first by the blackened corpse dropping from the sky. But she quickly recovered—and even seemed somewhat used to it, gradually adapting to such things.
There was no other reason. This kind of situation had happened far too many times along the way.
This was one of Liao Zixuan's plans.
Setting everything else aside, the girl was absolutely top-tier bait for attracting magical creatures.
On the way to the Boss Lair deep in the forest, Liao Zixuan naturally couldn't let the girl sit around doing nothing. After all, they might soon face a fierce battle.
As they ventured deeper and deeper, they had gradually left the beginner area behind, and the monsters' levels rose accordingly.
Ordinary forest magical creatures with standard templates were easy enough to deal with. No matter how high their levels were, they were still just free food. But once they reached Boss-level and gained elite templates with "talents," even Liao Zixuan had to treat them cautiously.
Therefore, Vivian's immediate priority was to gain the ability to protect herself and become one less burden during battle.
That said, this actually wasn't difficult. Vivian was an NPC with a legendary player template, after all. She had no bottleneck whatsoever. As long as she kept killing monsters to gain experience, she could level up and advance with ease.
Sure enough—
After killing the magic leopard, the girl's accumulated experience finally broke through the level-ten threshold.
In Fall of the Gods, every ten levels represented a hurdle. Along with a class advancement and enhancement, Liao Zixuan clearly saw Vivian's status panel rapidly changing.
The most obvious change was that the "Apprentice" in her main class, Apprentice Summoner, disappeared, turning it into Summoner Lv1.
It might seem like removing just two words was insignificant, but what followed was a whole pile of class talents available only to a true "Summoner."
For example—
Telepathy—You and your Summoned Beast will be of one mind. You will no longer be restricted by language and can transmit your thoughts to each other within a certain range.
"Moshi moshi?"
"Sawat dee ka?"
"Hello?"
"Can you hear me?!"
The voice that suddenly appeared in her mind gave Vivian such a fright that she nearly threw Liao Zixuan, whom she was holding, out of her arms.
"Who—who's speaking?" The girl nervously looked left, then right. Only after she felt a certain tiny paw scratching at her did Vivian lower her gaze.
"Little Black... Was that you? Were you talking to me just now?" The girl's eyes were filled with disbelief.
Liao Zixuan nodded his wolf head, his expression somewhat helpless.
Since the girl had only just advanced, she was not yet proficient in using the class talent Telepathy. As a result, their communication couldn't yet form complete sentences and was limited to transmitting vague thoughts.
Even so, it was a hundred times better than when they could only communicate through body language at the beginning.
After learning that she could really communicate with Little Black—in other words, with Liao Zixuan—Vivian became extremely excited. That was only natural. Alone in the forest, what the girl needed most was someone to rely on.
Moreover, she had long been holding a stomachful of things she wanted to tell someone.
"Little Black... I... I feel like ever since we started going deeper into the forest, my body has gotten more and more... strange!" The girl bent down and gently set Liao Zixuan on the ground, then stared at her own hands in confusion.
"I keep feeling like... something is trying to surge out."
Perhaps guided by instinct, Vivian murmured as she subconsciously raised one hand slightly.
The girl herself might not have realized it yet, but Liao Zixuan, the Dark Flame Wolf, was extremely sensitive to magic. He had already noticed that the instant the girl raised her hand, the magic in the surrounding forest began to go berserk, as though a gigantic pump had started frantically drawing it into her petite body.
Then, as if it had reached a critical point, a dazzling halo of magic burst from Vivian's palm. Before the girl herself could even react, it transformed into a wave of pure magical energy that howled into the distance.
Boom!
Rumble!!
A tremendous sound erupted from the forest the next moment.
Starting from Vivian, a perfectly straight line extended outward. It was as though the forest had been sliced apart down the middle by that line. Every tree along its path was utterly destroyed and collapsed with a thunderous crash, forming a vacuum.
With a smack—
The girl herself was so frightened by what she had done that she sat down in a daze, her face wearing an expression that seemed to say, "Who am I? Where am I? What did I do?"
Liao Zixuan, who had initially thought it was nothing worth making a fuss over, was also shocked by the sight. He comically rubbed his eyes with his little wolf paws.
The universal basic skill of all Spellcaster-class professions: Magic Missile.
In theory, that was what it was.
But if the Spellcasters of the world of Fall of the Gods learned that such terrifying destruction had just been caused by a country girl from some remote corner of nowhere—one who had only just shed her "Apprentice" title and had never touched magic before—using the spell instinctively...
They absolutely wouldn't believe it even if they were beaten to death!
After all, if it were really true, they would disregard all appearances, use every kind of large-scale magic to teleport themselves over, and fight to recruit her.
Why?
A peerless genius! What kind of magical talent was this? It was terrifying beyond belief!
In reality, however, the principle was very simple, and Liao Zixuan quickly understood it. It was all thanks to the "insane" way he had allocated the girl's attributes.
In other words, all the attribute points gained from leveling up had been poured into Elemental Affinity, the attribute that affected magic and mana.
Thus, although Vivian was only level ten, at least in terms of Elemental Affinity, she was already comparable to a level-twenty second-tier class—the Elemental Mage, whose absolute specialty was magic.
In fact, players in his previous life had tried allocating their points this way. However, they had never achieved such a terrifying result. In the end, players were merely strings of data. They were constrained by the system, and excessively inflated values would automatically be diluted and controlled within a reasonable range.
Vivian was different. As a native, she used her own genuine body. In other words, the attributes gained from those points had not been diluted at all and had completely become the girl's power.
It was as though the players were using addition, while the girl had directly switched to multiplication!
She was already this outrageous at level ten. What would happen when she reached level twenty or thirty?
At the thought of this, Liao Zixuan's eyes instantly burned with excitement. The Dark Flame Wolf transformed into a big bad wolf, staring at the dazed girl with drool practically dripping from his mouth.
Although he himself also belonged to the category of "bugs," and his starting point was countless times higher...
But how did that saying go? True experts never took the field personally!
That was why Liao Zixuan had always been so enthusiastic about playing the role of a sparring partner.
He had long since grown tired of showing off himself. Compared with that, Liao Zixuan preferred personally guiding and raising powerful people, then watching them show off!
So—
Go forth, girl!
The Flame Domain and God of Fire in the entire 1.0 version were waiting for you to save them!
While Liao Zixuan was still immersed in the excitement of watching "the girl next door grow up,"
he had no idea that another "super gift" sure to delight him was rapidly coming his way, drawn by the commotion Vivian had created.
Before you continue