14 Volcanic Marshes [2]

https://discord.gg/ZrWk2jqjbV

It's been about an hour since I've embarked on my little journey—and nothing attention grabbing has really happened so far. However, it seems Nakajima's theory was correct, I can certainly feel that my strength is growing, although slowly, the feeling of progress is there.

I did manage to find a strange looking piece of vegetation though—it was essentially a purple shrub and had what looked like cherries, berries and other small rounded fruits on it. Although upon closer inspection, the "berries" were actually rock-solid, as if they were part of the ground.

You could see a faint orange glow radiate from within just like the terrain around me, I decided to grab a few and place them in one of the tiny collection boxes I brought along with me. I remember Nakajima telling me about how they wanted to use Fire Kelp in order to make a sort of enhancement drug for people with fire-based abilities, I wonder if these might be able to help? Azazel didn't give me a guidebook or anything of the sort, so I have no idea whether this is something that has already been discovered or not.

As a result of the amount of fire I can actually conjure increasing—I'm now able to form things with a larger mass like swords, well I say swords but really all I'm doing is making a stretched out triangular chunk of flames. It works though so I guess it isn't all that important.

As I continued to traverse the area I still found a whole load of nothing—so I thought it was time for me to make a detour. I've been walking across the border of what seems to be a forestry area, and I've avoided it so far as I had no idea what potential dangers lurked within, but caution isn't really my style.

I mustered up some courage and made my way into the woods, I still had my map on me so I wouldn't have to worry about getting lost. Studying my surroundings, this place had a striking resemblance to a tropical rainforest. There were climbers, five layers of trees—fungi scattered across the floor, and all sorts of luxuriant growth. The only main difference was the coloring and the supposed dryness, it was a combination of red, orange and purple hues.

I went up to one of the trees and tried to get a better look, the bark was just like those berries I found earlier, rock-like in texture. I was taking notes of the vegetation, when suddenly a stinging sensation overwhelmed my lower body.

I snapped my head towards my foot and saw a vine like object with purple thorns all over it digging into my right foot. I quickly conjured a blade of ghostly flames and cut it off hurriedly, five red streaks of blood trickled down my foot from the hole likes wounds it left. I was about to take out the evacuation scroll when I heard an eerie rustling sound near my vicinity.

Looking forward there were about seven more vines making a beeline towards me, out of panic I bolted in the opposite direction, I had no idea where I was going but with the help of my map I should be able to readjust my bearings. I still had the evacuation scroll in my hand, but for some reason I didn't want to tear it.

What the hell was I doing? I just need to rip it and I'll be good to go—but at the same time I didn't want to leave this place just yet, I still had more to study, more to learn and I didn't know whether Azazel would bring me back here again, shit—now was not the time for me to be having a dilemma.

I just kept running for a solid three minutes until I could no longer hear the rustling sound, it seems I got lucky and whatever those vines are have some range than prevents them from going too far from wherever their origin is.

I admonished myself for not breaking the scroll immediately—sure this time I had luck on my side but that wouldn't always be the case, I took a minute to catch my breathe and realign my thoughts, this body truly isn't made for intensive activity. Next time something like that happens, I'll hopefully be wiser and just skedaddle—hopefully.

The wound on the bridge of my ankle wasn't actually all that bad, sure there was a bit of blood but the thorns didn't manage to get very deep. There were no odd sensations present either, so I guess it wasn't venomous, I grabbed some disinfectant and bandages from my first-aid kit and applied them in an amateurish fashion.

...

After a bit of recovery it was time for me to test out something I've wanted to do. I was about five meters away from one of the trees as I proceeded to hold my palm out towards it.

I fired pellets of white flames right at the tree—there was no need for me to worry about anything catching fire because clearly nothing here was made out of wood, or was flammable considering how I can see a magma-like substance within most of the "vegetation" here. Not even the leaves, they were like thin sheets of metal in my opinion.

After exhausting a good amount of effort—I finally managed to make a crack in it, unfortunately fire is pretty ineffective against rock so it was a lengthy process. Nevertheless, I managed to accomplish my goal, the magma-like substance I've been seeing began to seep out from the tree and I hurriedly grabbed a vial and proceeded to collect it.

As I gazed upon the liquid it was almost as if I was being...tempted. I snapped out of my daze and sealed the lid, if I was correct this was most likely sap. The substance responsible for transporting water and nutrients throughout trees, I know that regular sap is harmless to humans so tasting that wouldn't necessarily be dangerous. However, this was obviously not regular sap.

I'll actually use my brain this time and wait until I get back to Grigori to have it properly examined. The sky began to dim signifying it was getting late—as a side note the Underworld doesn't actually have a day/night cycle, it just has an artificial one created by Ajuka for reincarnated devil's, pretty handy.

Coming out here had another purpose than just going for a trip—Azazel wanted me to learn the field work skills necessary for a researcher, the technology at Grigori can cover most of the issues one would face in the wilderness, but having these skills as backup is always great, you never know when something could go wrong after all.

He provided me handbook about basic skills like purifying water, how to prepare food properly, what's safe to eat and what's not, those berry things weren't included unfortunately—and also how to make temporary shelters. I had a scroll he gave me that would just make a basic tent appear out of thin air, speaking of which learning how to create these scrolls is definitely a skill I want to pick up. Anyhow, Azazel wanted me to learn how to make a shelter on my own, but I was pretty worn out after trying to collect that sap so I'm going to have to get to that some other time.

I also have some ration like things in my backpack, I guess they're basically MRE's—I'm supposed to learn how to hunt, but so far I haven't seen any animals around here, and most of the "food" that I've seen would probably shatter my teeth should I try to consume it, and who knows what other effects they may have.

Truthfully—I have a sneaking suspicion setting up camp in the middle of the forest isn't the greatest idea, but considering there isn't any other wildlife here, at least in terms of "diurnal" species I should be fine, unless those vine things attack me again, but I'm too tired to make my way out of the forest so I'm just going to have to make do.

Before I went to bed I decided to attempt a little mini-experiment. I found a random spot and placed one of the "berries" I grabbed on the ground, and also took out the vial with the sap I had collected. I didn't know what I was doing, but I wanted to see what happened if the two made contact with one another.

I poured a bit of the sap onto it and waited for about three minutes...and nothing happened. I guess the experiment was rather primitive so I shouldn't be too shocked that it hadn't bore any results. I made my way into the tent and went to bed.

---

My eyelids slowly parted and I heaved a sigh of relief. Nothing seemed to have happened during my slumber, I did some light stretches and pondered what my next move should be. That was until I looked behind me.

There was...a tree? And it was awfully out of place—wait a minute. Isn't that where I left the berry? And then I came to a realization. The sap caused a tree to grow? No...that meant those weren't berries or even a food object to begin with, they were saplings!

This was huge, if I find a use for the sap I would literally be able to create a farm for me to use whenever at Grigori, the substance was definitely going to be analyzed—thoroughly. I went to examine the tree—and there were no differences from any of the other trees I had seen on the way, this ecosystem was truly perplexing. Though the absence of animal life has become slightly discomforting, perhaps there's something in the environment I'm missing making the place inhabitable for them. Do the vines prey upon all life it encounters? But plants normally sustain themselves through water and nutrients from the soil.

Albeit there are exceptions like the Venus flytrap, but thorny vines? Even if they were a carnivorous plant—how on earth would they actually consume their prey? Do they have a method to absorb them? Or perhaps there's some sort of mouth wherever the source of the vines were located. Whatever it was, I'd rather not stay to find out. I proceeded to make my way out of the forest—I had my gains, there was no longer a reason to stay.

I considered leaving now—but there was still something I wanted to check out. In the distance I could see volcano like structures and according to the map they were extinct volcanoes—so I didn't have to worry about an eruption suddenly going off. Though that raises a few questions, eruptions occur because plate movements apply pressure to the magma beneath the surface.

However the Underworld is just one giant plate—so it's impossible for compressional, shearing or tensional force to occur, I assume the volcano was active at some point, so what caused it to go off? Perhaps once I got there I would have some answers.

Anyways—staying here still brought passive benefits, my [Flame Shake] would continue to grow, and considering how the hotter the temperature is the faster it should grow, going over there should be even more beneficial. I would like to have my flames be at least 50% stronger than when I first began this expedition.

I was roughly halfway towards the volcanoes when I froze in place, about ten meters from where I was there was a hog-like creature. I was no longer in the forest so I guess from now on it would be possible to encounter wildlife, but even before I entered the forest I hadn't seen anything, so why was this appearing now?

Regardless—now was the time to make a decision, either I just leave it alone and take another route, or I can take a gamble on whether it's aggressive or not and approach it. The former was safer, but the latter could end up helping me discover something interesting. Unlike my hasty decision to enter the forest, now was the time to think before I acted. Do I humor my curiosity? Or play it safe?

I wont lie I was betting on the thing being aggressive, it had black horns protruding from it's skull, and the way it carried itself constantly grunting and the intimidating presence it was leaking, approaching it might not be a great idea after all.

---

AN: I'm considering going for no-harem, some people prefer harem, but there's already a trillion DxD fics out there with it, so I don't see why I need to do it as well.

Also, Christmas Break has begun for me, so expect more frequent uploads.