Wildfire

Max sat down tiredly. His armpits were sweating, and his feet felt sore.

"What is it?" A voice asked from behind him.

"Nothing," he replied, "I'm just tired."

"Now that you say it, I think it would be a good idea to take a break." the voice answered, and a figure sat next to him.

"Here, Max." they said, handing him a canteen of water.

"Thanks, Tyler" Max said gratefully, taking a sip of the warm water.

Thankful for the brief respite, Max checked how much further it was until they reached the top of the mountain. He and his friend Tyler had come here due to a rumor they heard recently. It was said that the top of this mountain had some sort of valuable treasure. After making some preparations, they had immediately arrived and started making their way up. Since there was no official route there, their only choice was to forge their own path to the top.

Now, they were a little over five days in, and they were about 3/4 of the way up. The going had become harder, the ice made it hard to grip the rock's surface, and they often slipped, forcing them to waste time. The good news was, the mountain wasn't very steep, or they probably would've fallen to their deaths already.

"So, when do you think we'll reach the top?" Max asked. When he didn't receive an answer even after several moments passed, he turned to face Tyler.

There, his friend stood agape, staring up at the sky.

"What's there to look at?" Max asked. Besides the occasional flock of birds, the sky was just a blank blue canvas, as empty as it was vast.

"There's nothing ther-" Max abruptly cut off his sentence and stared at the sky. Now, he knew what his friend had seen.

"What the hell is that?!" He shouted in both fear and surprise. In the sky, a giant thundercloud had appeared. It loomed over the forest below, creating a giant shadow. Lightning could be seen moving around inside the cloud, and strangely, there was no rain coming out of the storm.

"Boom!" A giant bolt of lightning, struck the forest far in the distance. Luckily, the storm didn't reach them yet, so Max and his friend Tyler didn't have anything to worry about.

However, the forest wasn't so fortunate. The lightning up the sky, and the impact could be heard from a mile away. The lightning started a forest fire, and the inferno swept over the forest like a wave of.... fire.

Within moments, a chunk of the forest went up in flames. Smoke went high into the sky, before being blown away by the string winds. As if it was never the in the first place, the thundercloud had already disappeared.

"What just happened?" Max asked, still stunned.

"Not sure," Tyler replied.

They stayed like that for several moments, before they came back to their senses.

"Let's keep going."

"Yeah, someone else probably noticed the fire already."

"They'll deal with it, we're too far away to do anything even if we wanted to."

"C'mon."

With that, they set off, continuing towards the top of the mountain.

...

Meanwhile, at the place where the

lightning struck...

'Ouch...' Roland groaned. His entire body was charred, but he had survived.

'That freaking hurt.' he thought annoyingly. When the lightning bolt stuck, he had done everything he could, setting up a barrier with basic mind magic, something he hadn't done in a while, and getting out of the way as fast as he could. However, the barrier barely lasted a moment before shattering, and the lightning followed him wherever he went. At the very least, he wasn't hurt, although rather than him being strong enough to withstand it, he believed that it was just consideration on the system's part so that he didn't die.

Deciding that now wasn't a good time to be thinking about that, Roland surveyed his surroundings.

'What have you done, system?!?' He thought the moment he looked around. The ground was covered in fire, and smoke blotted out the sky.

The trees were burning, and almost the entire forest was covered in a bright red glow.

'This is a disaster!' He thought, 'What am I supposed to do?' It wasn't like he lived in this forest, but he didn't feel like leaving this mess behind, especially since it was partially caused by him in the first place.

"Ding!"

[Quest: Put out the fire]

[Completion Rate: 0/100%]

[Contribution: 0%]

[Minimum requirements for completion:]

[Contribution reaches at least 15%]

[Forest fire is put out]

[Rewards:]

[200 SP]

[Any choice of water element skill from the shop with a price below 1000 SP]

(Rewards may increase based on contribution)

'What is all this?' Not knowing what all of this meant, he asked the system.

[Due to the nature of this quest, other people can affect the results. Thus, the criteria for this quest are based on the final result and how much you did to help.]

Roland nodded. That made sense. He wouldn't be the only one trying to put out the fire, someone else would definitely notice the forest that was burning.

'What about the completion rate and contribution?'

[The completion rate shows how much of the quest is currently done, and the contribution is how much of that percentage you did]

'Care to explain a bit more?' asked Roland, 'it would be easier to show me if you just gave me an example.'

[If there were 100 trees, and you put out the fires on 5 of them, while the total amount of fires that were put out was 45, then the contribution would be 5%, since you put out 5 of the 100 fires by yourself. Meanwhile, the completion rate would be 45%, since 45 out of the 100 fires were put out so far]

'So, if we used the same example, I would need to put out at least 15 fires and all the rest would have to be put out as well to complete the quest?'

[Exactly]

'Alright,' he muttered to himself, 'I just need to use the right skill.'

He didn't have any skills that could deal with the fire, so he would need to buy one from the shop.

'Shop.'

Skills:

[Mana Manipulation] [50 SP]

[Water Creation] [60 SP]

[Wind Blade] [75 SP]

[Fireball] [60 SP]

...

'Water creation? This might work,' he thought.

He checked the description of the skill.

[Water Creation]

[Allows you to create small amounts of water. It has great taste and is free of impurities.]

'What?!' Roland nearly spat out blood. He didn't care about the taste of the water; he just needed a lot of it!

'This won't work,' he realized, 'I need to try something else.'

'System, can you filter out the skills I don't need?'

[Sure]

[Filters: Water element, price at or below 200 SP, From lowest to highest price]

[Water Orb] [70 SP]

[Raincloud] [90 SP]

[Water Arrow] [90 SP]

[Water Control] [100 SP]

[Water Blast] [120 SP]

[Infinite Water Arrow] [180 SP]

[Tsunami] [200 SP]

Roland nodded when he saw the list. Other element skills might work for the same purpose, but he felt that water element spells would be the best at putting out fires. Still...

'Is that all of them?' Roland asked. The list felt a bit too small for him.

[Most of the skills in the shop cost far more than this, so they aren't shown. Plus, I took the liberty of removing the ones that were simply defensive and healing spells, since they wouldn't be of any use.]

Half listening to the explanation, Roland looked through the skills.

'Tsunami? No, too destructive. It would cause more damage than what was already done. Water arrow? No, it would do a lot of damage to wildlife as well, and I'm not sure about how well it can put out fires, and the same goes for infinite water arrow. Water orb seems a bit too mundane, at most it would create a ball of water, and Water Blast sounds like an attack rather than a skill that would work for this situation.'

After all that, he had narrowed it down to two remaining options: Raincloud, and Water Control.

'Which one should I use?' he wondered, while looking at the descriptions for both skills.

[Raincloud]

[Summons a Raincloud, what did you expect?]

[Water Control]

[Allows you to control water molecules in the air]

When Roland saw the first option, he immediately decided not to use it, but he wasn't so sure about the second one either. All the water would've already evaporated in the intense heat. However, the explanation for the first skill was a bit too vague. What was 'summons a raincloud' supposed to mean? Would it just make it rain, or create clouds, or something else entirely?

Despite his hesitation, the forest was burning faster by the second, so he didn't have much more time to choose.

'Whatever!' Deciding not to waste any more time over this, Roland made his choice.