Flame User 1-1

 1-1 Prologue

I'm going to die.

I don't have anything I want to do with my life. I have no regrets.

Because I can die for someone else.

“Valflare. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah. I'll be the sacrifice. Sacrifice will save this village, right?”

“But… the fires of hell will burn your flesh and your soul. Your existence will be completely wiped out, and your… soul will be removed from the cycle of reincarnation, never to be reincarnated again.”

“It’s fine. We all die… sooner or later, so it makes no difference if I die here.”

My name is Valflare. Everyone calls me Flare.

My parents died when I was very young, and I have been living off of food from the people in my village.

I have no friends. I spent every day of my life bored…

“'The Gates of Hell'… burns beyond this point, a hellfire that not even demons can approach.”

In my village, magic flourished.

A small village at the northernmost tip of the world, it seals the "Hell Gate," a door of hellfire that is said to be capable of burning this entire world to the ground, with magic.

I don't know what kind of fairy tale is going around in the village, that there is an incarnation of fire living beyond the gates of hell, or that the worst magical beasts are being punished and burned.

And once every thousand years, this village… used a spell to stabilize the gates of hell by sacrificing to the flames, protecting the world from the flames.

“Valflare…”

“Thank you for everything. Teacher.”

“…I'm proud of you.”

The magic teacher who took care of me sheds a single tear.

With no one to see me off, I walk alone to the gates of hell for my sacrifice.

I touch the gates of hell as my teacher watches over me.

When the gates open, the world will be engulfed in flames. So I'll use the spell I learned for this day.

“Open, ante rote, damn you, prouthe.”

Topun… Ripples spread across similar to the surface of the water as if pebbles had been dropped on it.

I slowly turned around and bowed to the teacher who had raised me.

“Goodbye, Teacher.”

Then proceeded into the ‘Gates of hell’.

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“Ugh… this, this is…. The flames that burns the world… awesome.”

Beyond the gates of hell, I was enveloped in flames.

The stereotype that fire is red was broken.

Red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black, white, and golden flames raging.

Beyond the gates of hell, there is only fire. There is no earth. Just fire.

“What”

Suddenly, the sensation in my body disappeared.

Wrong. It didn't disappear.

“Yes”

My body had turned as black as ink.

The "I" that is here is a bare soul. The body of flesh is completely burnt out, and the pure soul of "me" is here—

“Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Ahhhhhh x─────! ?? !! ?? !! ??”

I don't know what happened.

Something about pain, death, heat, stirring. My soul burns.

Oh, this is death.

Regret. I should have stopped.

I don’t care if the world perishes. I want to stop.

I burned.

I burned in the fires of hell.

But I can't die. I don't know why I can't die.

The soul is on fire. The only thing left to do is disappear. Is the Hell Gate maintained because of this? That's bullshit.

Oh, I'm, well, dead…

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“…I’m not dead.”

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Well, I'm not dead.

I got used to the heat of the flames and burned in the hellfire as a soul.

The passage of time has become dim, and I'm not sure how many minutes, hours, or even years have passed since I was burned.

“…Good grief. Is this okay as a sacrifice?”

I'm sure you can't hear my voice because I'm still a soul.

But the feeling of 'speaking' is engraved in my soul, so I was speaking.

I'm a soul now. I'm just a consciousness without a body.

“Since I' m here, let's go for a walk. If you think about it, no one knows what's beyond the Hell Gate, right?”

Colourful flames are burning.

Red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black, white. And gold… It's so beautiful when you look at it like this. They say its hell, but such a fantastic sight could be heaven.

Since it is a spirit state, there is no concept of walking. When I turn my consciousness upward, I go up and up.

“There is no ceiling. It seems like I could go on indefinitely… I get the sense that I'm making progress, but the scenery doesn't change.”

When I turned my consciousness upward to a certain distance, it did not go any further.

Looking down, I saw colourful flames burning. The flames of hell are beautiful, too…

“Oh, I found something.”

There were areas where the flames were burning mixed together. Apart from that, there were areas that were burning separated by colour.

When I move my consciousness to the area where the red flame is burning...

“What’s this?”

In the centre of the flames, a bright red jewel was floating.

Burning, red like blood… I use my consciousness to reach out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!”

Then the jewel disappeared.

Wrong. It's my soul, it's assimilated into me.

At the same time, a red flame entered me. My soul is absorbing the flame.

“Whoa, oh, what’s this!?”

Dokun—

I know. This is… hellfire.

The flames of hell are etched into my soul.

“…Wait, what? What if...?”

I turn my attention upward again.

I looked down at the hellfire and saw… that the red flames were gone.

"Well, that's right. Maybe other flames as well..."

I headed over to where the blue flame was burning, and there it was again.

There was a blue gem floating in the air, so I reached for it as well just like the red gem. Then the jewel disappeared and assimilated with my soul.

And the blue flame disappeared.

“I understand, if it’s like this…”

I examined all the eight coloured flames and succeeded in getting them into my soul.

Once all the flames have been absorbed, the hellfire will be extinguished. That means I don't have to manage the… gates of hell.

Can I possibly save the… world?

“Hell yeah!! It’s gone!!!!”

The flames are all gone.

The flames of hell were extinguished, and I was left with an empty clearing. Looking at it this way, it was quite a small place that was burning.

“Yay! I'm going to report to the teacher..., but I can't do it with just my soul. You can talk to the dead through spells, but I wish I had a... body.”

“……Eh? What?”

Completely Naked.

A body of flesh. The tactile sensation that I feel after a long time. Touch my face with a petting… Oh, what's this, tears?

“Ah haha…, what’s this? What’s this? Haha…”

I sat down and wept.

I'm alive.

I, Valflare, am still alive.

“Yeah!!”

I stood up, bare-chested, and flailed around.

I had thought I could die.

But I was so happy to be alive.

The flames of hell were extinguished. There was no need to manage the Hell Gate anymore.

But I didn't know.

I didn't know that the outside world was going to be a bit of a mess.

Index    Next

TN: I decided to pick this up. Read the first chapter and it looks interesting. The schedule for this will be the same as Princess Knight. Once or twice a week.

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