"You're late." After tidying up the scene, Jiu Ming pressed a hand to his chest and let out a soft breath.
"How was I supposed to know what was going on? The moment I stepped out of the kitchen, I found myself at the mouth of a volcano."
The White Fox girl waved a hand. "I nearly fell in."
"...Oh. I thought you were going to take a lava bath... Didn't you run into an eight-headed serpent monster?"
"No."
Staring at the smoke rising from Jiu Ming's entire body, the White Fox girl was silent for a while before asking, "What kind of new look is this? Why do you look like a major source of pollution?"
"Well... it'll be fine in a while." Jiu Ming bared his teeth. The black flames on his body poured straight into those cracks. They would not fade as slowly as the cracks did, but it would still take quite some time for them to vanish completely.
At the very least, there was no chance of that happening today.
"So how long is 'a while'?"
With her arms folded, Evangeline asked Jiu Ming, "Hey, it's rare for me to come out, and you turn into this. It feels like the air wherever you go is about to get polluted."
"What kind of nonsense is that? If I weren't afraid of trouble, I couldn't be bothered to do this." Jiu Ming rolled his eyes. "Do you think I wanted this?"
"Then... what about your clone?"
"My clone?" Jiu Ming waved a hand, and a clone immediately appeared beside him. The instant it emerged, surging black flames burst across its body, turning it directly into a cloud of grayish-green mist that merged back into Jiu Ming. "See? That's how it is."
"What a pain. Then we'll