Chapter 6

Lucielle had forged off on her own down one of the many interconnecting tunnels in search of her prey with nary a sound emitting from her footsteps. Her head was on a constant swivel as she made her way farther away from the other groups. To say she was completely calm would have been a total lie.

She had been thrown out of groups many a time before in the Gates because of how useless she was to the overall team but this was the first time she had volunteered to venture off on her own. She knew her chances of survival had plummeted considerably now that she had wandered off on her own this early into the dive, but she knew that she couldn't risk showing off the ability she had gained quite yet. She needed to grind as much as she possibly could before showing off her hellfire before the public. Only when she was certain she could adequately defend herself from the many people that would harm her would she finally step into the limelight.

Lucielle checked her surrounding one last time a couple minutes later as she determined that there was no possibility of someone stumbling across her during her mini training arc. Lucielle focused down on her hand as she pictured a small ball of flame in her mind and suddenly a reddish flame appeared in the air above her open palm. A wide smile graced her face as the ball of flame hovered above her hand. Despite being in such close proximity to her bare porcelain skin, Lucielle felt no discomfort or pain from the flame.

'It would be pretty ludicrous if my own flames could damage me I suppose.' She waved her hand around watching as the flame followed the arc of her hand. 'To think that these flames will become strong enough to make a flame God cry in pain is truly something.'

While she experimented with her Hellfire some more her sensitive ears perked up as she finally heard a sound besides the crackling of her flames. The silent and steady waters of the sewer began to undulate as a lone sewer rat the size of a motorcycle sped through the sewage towards her location. These monsters were notorious for their heightened senses and ability to find foreign invaders in their turf. Doubly so as the dungeon was utterly silent this time around. The scent of human flesh in particular excites them beyond compare.

Psyching herself up, Lucielle entered a battle stance as a knife slid out of her hoodie sleeve and into her waiting hand. Armed with the knife in one hand and the ball of Hellfire in the other Lucielle stared ahead as the rat slowly came to a stop twenty feet away from her, causing Lucielle to frown as its beady eyes rose just above the surface to stare at her.

'What the hell is going on with this rat? Usually these beasts attack at the first sign of fresh meat yet this one is observing me as carefully as I'm observing him. Could the Gate have possibly mutated?'

Gates could potentially mutate over time and jump ranks which caused the monsters there in to evolve and become stronger than they were previously. In this case if the Gate had mutated it could have gone from an F Rank Gate to a Rank E or possibly even a Rank D Gate.

Lucielle still remained relatively calm but she had a bad feeling in her stomach when it came to the other Slayers that she had dived into this hell hole with. Steeling her resolve she was about to taunt the giant rat when it abruptly launched itself forward to attack her.

"Skreeee!"

The beast had let out a loud shriek to get her to freeze up but Lucielle was unfazed as she lobbed the ball of flame at the rat before diving to the side to avoid its deadly lunge. The rat screeched again but that was the worst mistake it could have possibly have made in its entire existence.

The ball of Hellfire promptly went straight down its gullet and began to slowly cook the creature from the inside out as the Hellfire greedily consumed its flesh as fuel. Lucielle had already recovered from her side dodge and rushed up to the fallen rat that had begun to shriek and writhe on the ground as the Hellfire continued to roast it. Taking her knife into a reverse grip Lucielle began to stab away at the giant rat as it offered no resistance as the pain of the Hellfire had robbed it of its ability to retaliate. Blood had gushed out in a fountain as Lucielle must have hit an artery in the creatures neck as she continued to frantically sink her knife through the layers of fur and flesh of the beasts neck.

Less than a minute later the beast was silent as its last breath escaped its body. The fight seemed to take forever to Lucielle but it was over basically in an instant. The combination of her Hellfire roasting it alive from the inside and her repeated knife strikes to its neck had sealed its fate.

Lucielle had just finished wiping her blade clean off on the rat when she finally noticed a notification from her System.

<1 Exp>

The familiar black box with the blood fire text appeared for a brief second before disappearing once again. 'That box still looks ominous as hell no matter how many times I see it.' Shaking her head Lucielle slid off the back of the rat as she glanced down at her soiled clothes. 'I may have gone a wee bit overboard in this fight. These clothes will definitely need to bethrown out.'

Now that the battle was over she could take a brief moment to reflect on the few things she had learned in that fight. 'When I finally cast the Hellfire from my hand as an attack I could feel a slightly drain in energy from my body. Do I essentially have a mana pool that I'm just not aware about? How many times can I use my Hellfire before I'm emptied out? What happens to me if I empty it out? Do I become sluggish or do I pass out completely?'

Her mind began to churn out ideas at a thousand miles a minutes as she began to stalk her way through the sewers in search of her next victim. 'Next fight probably won't be as easy as this first one so I should also check and see how much damage these flames are capable of doing when they make contact with the creatures fur. There's no guarantee that every rat will be stupid enough to just launch itself at me with its mouth wide open every time.'

'Summoning the fire is effortless but when using it any way costs energy. The more complex the action the higher the energy cost begins to increase.' Lucielle had tried compressing the ball of Hellfire into a smaller shape but as she did so she could feel her "mana pool" begin to decrease at a rapid rate. 'I imagine the more I use this skill and the more sins or sinner I burn the stronger it will become while consuming less energy. My mana pool probably correlates to that Spirit stat that I saw earlier when I first opened the Profile tab.'

Feeling curious about her stats once more Lucielle called open the Profile tab

Name: Lucielle Everstar

Level: 1, EXP 1/10

HP: 10/10

Strength: 10

Agility: 10

Stamina: 10

Spirit: 15

Skills:

Hellfire Lvl. 1 (EXP 10/100)

Lucielle's eyes widened in shock as she look at her skill gain exp. 'Holy fuck that skill gain is absolutely busted! Just nine more rats and it'll level up to the next stage! How much more powerful will it become then?' If she hadn't been in a rat infested dungeon she would have done a happy little jig at such an explosive growth rate. 'This kind of rapid growth is off the charts!'

Lucielle raised an eyebrow as she continued her hunt for new prey. 'So you're not just an autonomous being after all. I was beginning to wonder if that was the case or not since from all those webnovels I used to read Systems were generally not sentient.'

'I see. So unless I ask you for information you won't provide me with anything. Then since we got some time to kill till the next battle would you mind telling me who exactly you are' Because I doubt you're just a System as you claim to be.'

'So you mean to tell me that I died at some point and that's why I'm human now?' Lucielle heard sloshing in the water around the corner from the intersection she was approaching and readied her flame and dagger for the next fight.

Lucielle smiled faintly as two rats sprang from around the corner she was approaching and took her battle stance. 'I was planning on doing just that Mithrial so don't you worry. I have no plans on dying any time soon.' The two rats shrieked loudly as they immediately began to scramble towards Lucielle. Lobbing the ball of Hellfire at one of the rats that was trying to flank to flank her, Lucielle compressed the ball so it sped through the air with greater speed before splashed against the rats thick fur and began to burn it.

Lucielle had already dashed towards the opposite rat after flinging the fireball at the other. The beast tried snapping at Lucielles slim waist but she deftly dodged it by twisting to the side, the creatures teeth just missing the fabric of her hoodie by a hairsbreadth. Her knife went arcing into the creatures exposed beady eye, blood and eye puss gushed out as Lucielle wrenched her knife sideways and out of the creatures eye socket before she dashed away from the enraged creature.

Its companion was rolling around desperately to put out the fire but it was to no avail so it locked its sight on Lucielle before madly charging the smaller girl. "Skreeeee!" It leapt at her ,and much like the first rat she had slain, wound up with a mouth full of hellfire that began to cook it alive from the inside out.

'They seemed a bit smarter at first but when the fire hits them they seem to lose their minds and reasoning ability as well as generating excessive aggro onto me.' Lucielle had shifted her attention back to the half blinded rat that was circling her more carefully as it had watched its comrade burn alive from those deadly flames of hers.

'I can also feel my mana pool refilling itself every second that the flames consume that dead rat over there. Am I self charging battery? ' These thoughts casually flitted about her mind as the rat and her had a standoff, but then it did something she never would have expected to see. It turned and began to run off!

"Oh no you don't! You're my free meal ticket!" Lucielle summoned another ball of fire and whipped it at the creatures retreating rear. A loud roar echoed throughout the sewers causing all who heard it to clench their buttocks reflexively sympathy. Lucielle's fireball had whether by intent or not landed square on the rats anus.

The excessive pain it was under caused it to stumble and fall allowing Lucielle to catch up to it before mounting it's back and shoved her knife into its destroyed eye socket and thus into its brain ending its misery quite suddenly.