My Scumbag System-Chapter 384: Thermal Shock is a Bitch

I’d like to fight the walking bonfire, I really would. But standing here watching this thing pull itself together from literal campfire leftovers, my first thought isn’t ’let’s throw hands.’

It’s ’we are so monumentally fucked.’

The creature straightened to its full height, crimson flames rippling across its body like muscles beneath skin. The eyeless face turned toward us, and I felt its attention like pressure behind my eyeballs. Heat rolled off it in waves that made the air shimmer and distort.

Nel was still jammed. Apollo was MIA. My fancy new System abilities? Offline.

All I had was Ember, Sever, and a half-naked ice princess who probably regretted every life choice that led to this exact moment.

"Satori." Celeste’s voice came out steady despite the terror I could feel radiating off her. "Please tell me you have a plan."

"Working on it." I shifted my grip on the bat, feeling the familiar weight. "You know how I said the fungus looked dead?"

"This is not the time for your sarcasm!"

The fire elemental took a step forward. The stone beneath its foot cracked from the heat, glowing cherry red at the contact point.

Right. Priorities.

I shoved Celeste toward the tunnel entrance. "Move!"

To her credit, the princess didn’t argue. She ran, her bare feet slapping against stone as she sprinted for the exit. I followed, and behind us I heard the crackle-roar of flames consuming oxygen at an accelerated rate.

We burst into the tunnel at a dead run. I risked a glance back and immediately wished I hadn’t.

The creature flowed after us like burning water, its body stretching and contorting to fill the tunnel’s width. Those hollow eye sockets locked onto me, and the blank face split open vertically to reveal a furnace interior where a mouth should be.

Oh good. It had teeth made of burning thorns.

"Any chance you can freeze that thing?" I shouted, my lungs already burning from the heat and exertion.

Celeste threw her hand out behind her without looking. Frost erupted from her palm, coating the tunnel floor in a sheet of ice that spread backward toward the creature.

The elemental stepped onto the frozen surface. The ice boiled away instantly, vaporizing into steam that filled the tunnel and made visibility drop to zero.

"That’s a no then!"

We rounded a corner and nearly collided with a wall. Dead end. The tunnel terminated in a small chamber with carved symbols covering every surface, all of them glowing that same silver light as the river.

I spun around, bat raised. The creature emerged from the steam like a nightmare materializing from fog, its burning form filling the tunnel mouth completely. Trapped. Boxed in. Exactly where I didn’t want to be.

The elemental’s furnace mouth opened wider, and I saw the internal temperature spike as crimson light gathered in its throat.

Celeste grabbed my shoulder. "Down!"

I dropped. She threw both hands forward, and the air between us and the elemental crystallized into a wall of ice three feet thick.

The fire blast hit her barrier like a battering ram. The ice didn’t just melt. It exploded into steam with a concussive force that knocked both of us backward into the chamber wall.

My shoulder hit stone. Pain lanced through my barely healed ribs, sharp enough that I saw stars.

Celeste coughed, waving steam away from her face. "That bought us five seconds. Maybe."

The elemental stepped through the dissipating vapor, its blank face somehow conveying smug satisfaction.

My mind raced through options. Fire versus fire was stupid. Sever might cut it, but the thing would just flow back together like burning putty. Ice clearly wasn’t working given the temperature differential.

Wait.

Temperature differential.

I looked at Celeste, at the sweat beading on her forehead despite her natural affinity for cold. At the walls covered in those glowing symbols. At the elemental filling the tunnel with enough heat to melt steel.

"Cel. You’re gonna hate this, but I need you to trust me."

She met my eyes, hers wide and searching. "What are you going to do?"

"Something really stupid. On three, I need you to freeze everything around us. The walls, the floor, the air itself. Make it as cold as you possibly can."

"That’ll drain me completely!"

"I know." I raised the bat, channeling Ember into the metal until it glowed white hot. "But thermal shock works both ways. Super hot meets super cold? Things tend to shatter."

Understanding flickered across her face. Then determination.

The elemental lunged.

"One!" I shouted.

It closed the distance impossibly fast.

"Two!"

Those burning thorns reached for my throat.

"Three!"

Celeste screamed, and winter itself exploded from her body.

The temperature plummeted so fast I felt my lungs seize. Frost coated every surface in the chamber, crawling up the walls in geometric patterns like living fractals. The very air crystallized, forming tiny ice particles that hung suspended in the space between us and the creature.

The elemental hit the wall of absolute zero and recoiled, its flames guttering and dimming as the opposing force fought against its nature.

I didn’t waste the opening.

Ember roared to life along my bat, the heat amplified by the Dragon Witch’s Ring until blue-white fire wreathed the metal. Then I added Sever, layering the invisible cutting force over the thermal blade.

The combination sang through my arms like electricity.

I swung.

The bat connected with the elemental’s torso, and reality itself seemed to hiccup. The thermal shock created a shockwave that cracked stone. Where superheated metal met supercooled flames, the elemental’s body simply stopped being fire and became something brittle. Glass-like. Fragile.

The Sever finished what temperature started.

An invisible blade sliced through the creature’s chest horizontally, separating top from bottom. The elemental’s mouth opened in a soundless scream as its body fell apart, the two halves toppling in opposite directions.

For one beautiful second, I thought we’d won.

Then the pieces started burning again, crawling toward each other across the frozen floor like magnets finding their match.

"Oh come on!" I backed up, pulling Celeste with me. "That’s cheating!"

The halves reconnected. The creature reformed, slower than before but still functional. And now it looked pissed.

Celeste wavered beside me, completely drained from her frost bomb. I caught her before she could face plant.

"Can’t do that again," she gasped out.

"Noted."