It was already evening by the time Aaron returned to the orphanage.
Carrying two iron cages, he climbed through his window, shut it tight, and drew the curtains.
The two fire salamanders inside the cages had completely quieted down.
They were no longer terrified, but their condition had not improved either.
The one with the black wound on its front leg was breathing at increasingly long intervals.
Every rise and fall of its chest looked like an agonizingly difficult task.
It wouldn’t survive the night.
Aaron unlocked the iron cages.
His finger touched the spine of the first fire salamander.
“Come inside.”
Two dim, orange-red figures vanished from the iron cages.
Aaron closed his eyes, and his consciousness sank into his Divine Kingdom.
The fifteen-hundred-meter Divine Kingdom was now three times wider than before.
The white jade altar stood right in the center, its seven steps gleaming with a soft luster under the glazed sky.
The golden flame at the top of the altar burned quietly.
The two fire salamanders appeared on the grass before the altar.
The moment they landed, a change occurred.
The concentration of spiritual energy inside the Divine Kingdom far exceeded that of the outside world.
For ordinary insects, this spiritual energy merely made them healthier and more active.
But for magical creatures like fire salamanders, spiritual energy was fuel.
Beneath their dry skin, their residual fire magic began to awaken.
At first, a few orange-red sparks drifted out from the gaps between their scales.
Then, the sparks grew more numerous and dense until, finally—
*Boom.*
The fire salamander with the injured front leg erupted first.
Catalyzed by the spiritual energy, its remaining fire magic instantly spiraled out of control.
A massive fireball two meters in diameter exploded from its body, engulfing all the grass within five paces.
The second one erupted right after.
The one with the severed tail was even more violent; its flames were a bluish-white.
That was the high-temperature fire that salamanders only produced in states of extreme pain or fury.
The bluish-white tongues of fire licked the bottom steps of the altar, charring the stone surface black.
The Demiguise let out a sharp cry and bolted in the opposite direction on all fours, the tips of its silvery-white fur singeing and curling from the heatwave.
The Naga coiled up from the edge of the pond, raising its upper body.
Its golden vertical slits stared fixedly at the sea of fire as it hissed, “Master! Invaders!”
The ant colony had it the worst.
A nest close to the blast point was roasted crisp on the spot, and dozens of ants scurried out in a frantic panic.
Aaron’s soul projection appeared in the sky above the Divine Kingdom.
He looked down at the sea of fire below, his expression entirely unbothered.
The fire salamanders weren’t attacking; they were simply instinctively releasing the pain they had bottled up for so long.
Having their fire magic drained and their wounds sealed with low-grade potions was a fate worse than death for a fire salamander.
Now that they had entered a space overflowing with spiritual energy, their suppressed magic had found an outlet, causing it to explode all at once.
But Aaron couldn’t let them burn down his Divine Kingdom.
He spoke.
A single word.
“Extinguish.”
It was a rule.
Within the Divine Kingdom, Aaron was the rule itself.
If he said “extinguish,” then the fire had to die.
The sound of that single word rippled through every inch of air, every speck of dust, and every blade of grass in the Divine Kingdom.
All the flames died out at the exact same moment.
They weren’t snuffed out; they vanished.
The orange fire, the blue-white fire, and the residual sparks on the grass all evaporated into thin air the instant the word “extinguish” landed.
Not even a wisp of smoke remained.
The two fire salamanders froze in place.
Their bodies remained in their eruptive postures—limbs braced, backs arched, jaws wide open.
But no more fire came out.
Their wild magic was forcibly pushed back and stuffed into their bodies by a far vaster, more primordial power.
The entire process took less than a second.
The fire salamanders were stunned.
Their brains couldn’t comprehend what had happened.
All their instincts told them that the force which had just suppressed their fire did not belong to anything they knew.
It wasn’t water, it wasn’t ice, and it wasn’t a Flame-Freezing Charm.
It was something far more fundamental than fire.
It was the very hand that had created the fire.
The two fire salamanders lay flat on the charred grass, limbs splayed, heads bowed low to the ground.
They trembled all over, but not out of fear.
It was a submission from the depths of their souls, the same submission the Naga and the Demiguise had shown.
The punishment was over.
Next came the blessing.
The golden flame at the top of the altar flickered.
A warm golden light separated from the flame and slowly drifted down onto the two fire salamanders.
When the light touched the fire salamander with the black wound on its front leg, the wound began to heal at a visible rate.
Its cracked, peeling skin grew fresh scales, which slowly turned from a dull, dying black back to a vibrant orange-red.
Flames began to drift from the gaps in its scales once more—not as a violent fireball, but as a soft, steady, natural flame of life, like breathing.
The one with the severed tail was also recovering.
The low-grade potion on its stump was instantly dissolved by the golden light, and new tail tissue sprouted from the wound, extending inch by inch until a complete tail covered in orange-red scales reappeared.
The entire process lasted less than two minutes.
The two fire salamanders stood up from the ground.
The look in their eyes had changed.
The cloudy, terrified, near-death look they had in the iron cages was gone.
In its place were bright, hot, fiery pupils full of vitality.
They glanced at each other, then turned toward the altar at the same time.
One after the other, they slowly and solemnly climbed the first step.
They stopped when they reached the third step, bowing their bodies in unison.
The power of faith surged forth.
It wasn’t the weak sparks from before their near-death; it was two hot, dense masses of faith bearing the fire attribute.
Like two crimson rivers, they merged into the golden flame in the center of the altar.
[Believers +2 (Fire Salamander, Magical Creature, Rare)]
[Power of Faith: Extremely Strong]
[Resonator Bonus: Faith Conversion Efficiency × 10]
[Core Talent Acquired: Flame Breath (Can control and breathe ultra-high temperature magical fire, ignoring standard water-based extinguishing spells like Aguamenti)] Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
A scorching energy surged from the depths of Aaron’s soul, pouring into every meridian in his body.
This feeling was different from when he acquired Invisibility or Parseltongue.
Those talents were “additions,” like adding a new color to a glass of water.
But Flame Breath was an “overlay,” like a never-extinguishing ember being stuffed into his heart.
From now on, his blood carried a temperature that did not belong to humans.
Aaron opened his palm.
A fist-sized flame formed in his hand.
It wasn’t an ordinary flame.
It wasn’t red; it was a dark gold.
The edges of the flame were as sharp as if they had been sheared, completely lacking the flickering, unstable shape of normal fire.
It sat quietly in his palm, extremely hot, but it did not burn him.
Because it was his fire.
Aaron withdrew the flame and looked toward the edge of his Divine Kingdom.
The transformation had already begun.
At the far southern end of the Divine Kingdom, the flat grassland was undergoing a violent geological shift.
The soil split open, and dark red magma surged up from the fissures.
It was incredibly hot, but its spread was restricted to a fixed area—an oval-shaped zone about two hundred meters long and a hundred meters wide.
The magma solidified into black basalt along the edges of the oval, forming a natural barrier.
Inside the barrier, the magma flowed slowly, and high-temperature steam rose from the cracks, creating a scorched wasteland permanently shrouded in red mist.
A dedicated territory for fire-attributed believers.
Sensing their new home, the two fire salamanders leaped down from the altar, their four little legs moving rapidly as they trotted toward the lava zone to the south.
The moment they dived into the magma, their entire bodies lit up, looking like two mini-suns falling into a sea of lava.
Coiled on the rocks by the pond, the Naga watched the direction where the two fire salamanders had disappeared with indifference.
“Master… they are so noisy,” the Horned Snake hissed in Parseltongue, its tone full of disdain.
Aaron withdrew from the Divine Kingdom.
His room was now completely dark.
The streetlights outside cast a crooked square of light onto the ceiling through the curtains.
He looked down at his palm.
A trace of warmth still lingered in his hand.
Number of believers: over three hundred insects, one Demiguise, one Horned Snake, and two fire salamanders.
Core talents: Super-Proportional Strength, Sensory Network, Invisibility, Parseltongue, Hyper-Speed Nerves, and Flame Breath.
Divine Kingdom space: over fifteen hundred meters, featuring three types of terrain—grassland, aquatic, and lava.
A white jade altar with a tenfold faith conversion efficiency.
Aaron leaned back against the headboard, staring at the night sky outside the window.
Tomorrow was September first.
He thought about the list of potential believers at Hogwarts.
The Forbidden Forest: the Acromantula colony, the centaur tribes, unicorns, Thestrals…
The Black Lake: merpeople, the Giant Squid, water spirits…
Inside the castle: the Owlry, Hagrid’s magical beasts…
And that Basilisk sleeping in the Chamber of Secrets for a thousand years.
“Hogwarts…”
Aaron closed his eyes, his lips twitching into a slight smile.
“My faith warehouse, here I come.”
He rolled over and pulled up his blanket.
The moon emerged from behind the clouds, casting a cool, pale white light into the shabby orphanage room.
This was his last night here.