Chapter 16 – First time being angry

Having watched the human's silly excuse of a fight, Sophia felt really reluctant to help them. Still, it would likely leave a sour aftertaste if she abandons the first humans she ever met in this world. For the better or worse, she decided to save their lives from the vicious beast. The bored kow, that is.

"Uhmm…" Arriving at the group of the three mighty warriors and one bored-looking kow, Sophia was trying to find out how to actually tackle this task. "H-Hello there…" A little bit shy and incredibly awkward feeling, she made herself known to the group.

"Haah?!"

"A little girl?! Where did you come from?!" The two still-standing humans finally noticed her.

"Uh… I was nearby, and… heard you guys fighting, so-"

"Then, scram!"

"Yeah, don't you see we're busy?!"

"That's why I, uhm, stopped… You seem to be… in need of some… help."

"Haaah? How's a little girl supposed to help us?!"

"Exactly! You're just a hindrance! Go and play somewhere else! Leave this to us strong ones!" The two obviously didn't want any help.

"Err… one of your oh so strong ones is already half-dead over there, though…?" She pointed at the guy that got hit by the kow earlier, lying unconscious in the dirt.

"This won't happen again! This beast just got a lucky hit! There's no way such an inferior kow would be able to take out one of us powerful hunters with skill after all!"

"Ah, is that so…" Sophia's eyes looked dead again.

"Now scram already! There's no need for a weak little girl here!"

"But…"

"Ah, I get it now!" One of these guys seemed to have arrived at a revelation of some sort. "You're scared, aren't you, girl? Wandering around here alone, seeing this vicious monster," He pointed at the bored kow. "Not with us, girl! In this world, survival of the fittest is the general rule. If you're not strong, you're dead."

"…" She tried not to laugh.

"No, wait a moment…" The other guy stopped his companion and looked at Sophia with dirty eyes and an expression she really didn't like. "Actually, we can protect you, girl. That's going to cost you, though~." He scanned her from head to toe. "We'll just quickly beat up this monster, and we'll pay all our attention to you. Don't worry, it won't hurt… much."

"…" The emotion changed to something different than being amused.

"What? Did you think we would help you for free?! You need to give us some service, or else you'll die out here!"

"…" Sophia remained silent, obviously not because she was scared. The feeling she had right now was of an entirely different nature. "Weird… I came over to help those humans… But, why is it that I want to kill them myself now…?" She had splendidly snapped, and her voice was devoid of any emotion. "Ahaha… No, they're probably just talking in delirium because they're terrified of being about to be killed by a not-yet-skinned dinner… Yeah, that's it… They're not bad guys, just weaklings barking and the wrong tree. Scared out of their minds, they are… Ahaha…" Mumbling to herself, Sophia was trying her best to quell the urge to kill. "Haa…" Letting out a sigh, she walked over to the already out-of-commission guy and picked up his sword from the ground.

"Guuh…" The unconscious person let out a groan because Sophia stepped on him while reaching for the sword.

"Little girl, that's not a toy! Put it back before you hurt yourself. We still need you after all~."

"Could you maybe, shut up?" With eyes colder than ice itself, she glared at him before looking at the sword. After getting a feel for it, she sent it flying with a slight movement of her hand.

"W-Wha-?" The two guys were stupefied thanks to the sword that flew right past them with tremendous speed.

"M-Moo…" A moment later, a pained cry echoed through the area.

"H-Huh…?" While vigorously sweating, the two turned around and couldn't believe their eyes. The kow, that was merely playing with them, was splendidly cut right in half, using the swords the humans couldn't even put a scratch on with.

"G-Girl, what are…" Still unable to believe the situation, one of the guys faced Sophia to question her, only to notice that she was long gone. "Huh…?"

She couldn't stand it anymore, and so, after listlessly flicking away the sword, the girl immediately left the place.

"…"

"…"

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A girl and a wolf were walking side by side in complete silence because neither of them could put what happened into words. Once they arrived at their camp, though, Fen tried to start a conversation with her.

"So, uh, are you okay, Sophia…? Well, probably not…"

"Did that actually happen…? There's no way that happened, right?" She was still hoping that everything had just been a bad dream.

"Sorry." He could only apologize.

"I see… Are they really all like that…? Are all humans in this world like that? Please tell me those… things were an exception…"

"…" He thought about a suitable answer. "I'm sorry." All he could do was to apologize again. "The unfounded feeling of superiority runs through all of humanity. They also all only care about themselves. Always wanting to get a profit out of anything. Conceived like nothing else… They're worthless in my eyes. Trash." It sounded like he could go on for a while.

"…" She had heard those words time and time before from Fen, but they now carried an entirely different weight after witnessing it herself.

"Sorry…" He apologized yet another time.

"It's not your fault, Fen."

"I know, but-"

"It's fine…"

"Is it really?" The wolf didn't believe her. He wanted to and hoped to but couldn't do so.

"It's… not…." She was finally honest. "How could I be? I tried not to be negative anymore after our talk yesterday. I really did, but it's impossible… How could I stay positive after that…? After what those… things said, wanted to do… Are they idiots? They're idiots, right?!" Her expression, even her aura, began to change. "What do they think they are? Some hot joke? They lost against a freaking kow of all things! And yet, they thought they were some superior beings… Don't mess with me… Protecting me? They?! How deluded can one get?! Even as a joke, that's way too much! Fen, how are the humans still alive in this world? They should've gone extinct decades ago already if they're all like this!"

"Sophia, you're not depressed?" Fen had completely misinterpreted her earlier silence.

"Depressed? Ah, maybe a little, but that's not the problem here!"

"Angry, huh? Well, not that I could blame you." There was only one other interpretation of her outbreak, pure anger.

"Obviously! How could I not be?! Why did I save such scum? I should've ended this filth myself! I actually feel sorry for that kow… even though I already ate a lot of its kin. Okay, let's go back, Fen! If they haven't gotten killed by a bug already, let's go and relieve them from their pain. The pain of what their life is, obviously."

"How about we calm down for a moment, Sophia." He noticed that she was going slightly out of control. "I'm all in for an act of nice revenge, but you're a bit too hasty."

"Hasty…? Don't you think these guys have earned this much?"

"I certainly do. In fact, I would've ripped them to shreds after about three seconds talking to them if I had been in your shoes."

"Then, what's the problem?"

"Sophia, in your old world, no matter how annoyed or angry you were, have you ever seriously thought about wanting to kill someone? No, were about to kill someone."

"No, of course not! Hmm…?" Sophia noticed that something was off. "I naturally thought about things like Ah~, I wouldn't be sad if that person falls from a cliff and dies… everyone occasionally feels like that. You aren't really serious when saying it, but… Wanting to kill one myself and seriously going for it? No way! Wait a moment, don't tell me-"

"Yeah, I think your boosts kicked in again after getting really irritated."

"Boosting my anger to the point of an honest desire to kill someone?"

"It seems that way to me. I mean, you did seem a little… ruthless from time to time, but this desire earlier was not like you being you, in my opinion."

"T-That's-, That's scary! Boosting negative feelings isn't nice at all! Really, just what in the hell is that sorry excuse of a god thinking?! Okay, it's back to Plan A!"

"Plan A?" Fen obviously didn't understand.

"Operation: Tear that idiot a new one! I wanted to find a way to meet that god again and give him a nice talking… with my fist, that is."

"That sounds… reasonable in this situation."

"I know, right?!" Having vented her anger just a little bit, Sophia managed to calm herself to some degree.

"What now, though?" Fen wasn't sure about their next course of action. "Your first contact didn't go quite as expected. Well, for me, it did, but… Do you still want to visit the human city?"

"Hmm…" This wasn't an easy decision for her. "Yeah, I think so… Earlier was shocking, but I still do have a slight hope that those things were some particularly exceptional examples, not the norm."

"If that's what you want." He had little hope that the city would change anything. Even so, Fen felt like she would need to make this experience.

"Anyways, that's a topic for tomorrow! Right now, I want to do something fun!" Sophia decided to change the topic, mainly to distract herself. "Time to do some magic experiments!"

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Looking for a comfortable place at their camp side, the girl sat down and looked at her held out, open palm. A small reddish-yellow flame appeared there, and Sophia studied it for a while. After some time passed, the color of the fire suddenly began to change. Fen, who was watching, naturally became interested.

"What are you doing?"

"Hmm… Did you know that the temperature of a flame and its color are related?"

"Color…?"

"Ah, let's see… for example," The flame on her palm changed to a darkish-red. It also started to flicker as if it were about to go out. "This one's relatively cool. Well, in terms of how hot fire is."

"Ohh…" He got a little closer and felt that it was indeed not that hot.

"Let's increase the power a little." As she said so, the color of the puny flame changed to a lighter red first before slowly traversing to a light orange, almost whitish color. "That one's pretty hot, isn't it?"

"Yes, it definitely is." Fen didn't need to get close to feel its heat. "This looks like the flame I usually use in my fire magic when used for attacks. Now that you mention it, I did wonder why my fire looks a bit different and is way hotter than normal flames in this world."

"That's because it's more powerful."

"I knew I'm great."

"You sure are, Fenny~." How about this, though?" The flame's color changed again and considerably shrunk in size. The base color turned to that of the blue sky, and the top was an even paler blue, almost invisible already. There was no sign of flickering left. It was perfectly stable. The flame was so hot that you could even hear a noise coming from it, which sounded similar to a low grumbling.

"A blue… fire? Not to mention it's ridiculously hot… What did you do?"

"You see, I haven't changed the magic power for the fire once since I started experimenting here."

"Huh?!"

"I've been playing around with the air around my palm, increasing or decreasing the oxygen in it. For a fire to burn, it needs fuel, my magic power in this case, and oxygen together with a heat source to ignite. The flame uses oxygen to burn the fuel. The more of it is around, the more powerful and faster the fuel gets burned. Have you noticed how the blue flame's much smaller than the other ones? The fire has so much oxygen at its disposal, it burns the limited fuel so fast and violent that it couldn't maintain its size. A blue flame also means the fire is most efficient as no fuel is wasted." Sophia tried to explain how fire worked. "Well, that's at least how I remember it… No idea whether it's 100% true, actually. Well, my idea's working, so I shouldn't be that wrong. Probably."

"I will admit that I haven't fully understood the concept, but basically… if you want a hotter flame, increasing the fuel isn't the only thing you have to do, right? For it to get truly powerful, it also needs more of this oxygen thing?"

"Yes. Adding fuel is the first thing to get more power, as evident by your fire magic. At a certain point, adding more fuel just isn't efficient anymore, though, because the fire can't burn it all."

"Ah, I actually tried that out before. No matter how much power I used, my flame didn't get any hotter, just bigger… It did help when it was windy, so I actually used air magic when burning things before, but it never had such a result..."

"Yes, exactly that. The fire didn't have enough oxygen in the right place. While wind gets the fire more oxygen, it can only do so much before the flame's saturated again."

"I see… Okay, so, if you were to increase the oxygen and the fuel?"

"Well, that's where the real fun starts." Sophia extinguished the flame on her palm and pointed at a tree at a slight distance. "How about a small demonstration? I'll fill the area around the tree with my magic power and ramp up the oxygen in the air before finally igniting it. Okay, I actually don't have to use much magic power because the tree itself will become fuel, but let's go all out." Concentrating on what she said, Sophia finished her preparations and activated her magic to get it started. The moment it ignited, the area around the tree turned into hell itself, a much hotter and blue hell. Just as fast as it started, it was over again as well. The fire was so violent that it had burned all the fuel in an instant. Once it entirely died down, one could see that not even the ash of the tree was left behind, and the ground had actually melted into a glass-like substance.

"…" Fen was speechless.

"Pretty neat, huh? I think I did a good job there." She looked very smug.

"Sophia," The wolf took a deep breath. "Please teach me how to do that!"

"Sure~." And just like that, the relationship between teacher and pupil had turned around.