Gourmet World – The Ignis Aeterna Mountains, Week 18
The air tasted of sulphur and simmering stone. Four weeks had passed since their encounter with the young Heavenly Kings, and Indra and Rias had pushed deeper into one of the Gourmet World's most volatile regions: the Ignis Aeterna, or Eternal Fire, mountains. This was a land where geology itself was alive and hungry—rivers of molten rock flowed like arteries, mountains breathed plumes of superheated gas, and the very ground could crystallize into precious minerals one moment and vaporize into ash the next.
Their bodies had adapted further. The constant, radiant heat that would have vaporized a normal human in seconds was now merely a "brisk sauna" to their enhanced physiologies. Their chakra networks had developed a secondary, insulating layer, and their skin had taken on a subtle, heat-dissipating patterning. Rias's hair, already streaked with sonic silver, now held faint, glowing ember-orange highlights at the tips when the ambient temperature spiked.
They stood on a obsidian cliff overlooking a vast caldera, a boiling sea of magma a kilometer below. Strange, fire-adapted flora and fauna thrived in impossible niches. Indra's Space-Time Rinnegan was active, analyzing not just spatial dimensions but thermal gradients and energy flows with unprecedented clarity.
Indra: "Thermal readings are off the charts. The core magma chamber below us isn't just molten rock—it's a living bioreactor. The energy signatures match high-level Appetite Energy, not just geothermal activity. This entire range might be a single, semi-conscious organism."
Rias: (Scanning with her specialized visor) "Biodiversity is insane. I'm reading over two hundred unique life forms in visual range, all adapted to temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius. Discovery Log #311 through #350 are going to be fire-proof."
She was right. The past days had been a systematic cataloging frenzy.
Discovery Log #311: Living Forge-Moss. Clung to superheated vent walls. Consumed metallic vapors and excreted perfectly tempered alloy filaments. Potential for self-repairing armor.
Discovery #325: Lava Carp. Silicate-based fish that "swam" in magma flows, filtering microscopic diamond dust for nutrition. Their scales were perfect heat sinks.
#338: Chime-Crystal Geysers. Columns of rapidly crystallizing minerals that, when struck by thermal updrafts, rang with perfect musical notes. Rias had spent hours recording their natural symphonies.
#349: Heart-Flame Orchids. Beautiful, dangerous flowers that bloomed only when sensing a stable, powerful life force nearby. They emitted a calming pheromone that could pacify even volcanic predators. One had bloomed when Indra passed, its petals the color of his Rinnegan.
They were preparing to descend into the caldera via a stable-looking obsidian bridge when the mountain shook. Not a tremor—a heartbeat.
A colossal section of the magma sea three kilometers away bulged upward, then erupted. But it wasn't lava that emerged. It was a head.
The Volcanic Drake pulled itself from the molten rock with the grace of a primordial god. It was a CL 800—the highest they'd personally encountered. Its size was difficult to comprehend. From snout to tail-tip, it stretched nearly 300 meters. Its body was not flesh and blood, but living, moving geology. Plates of black obsidian armor shifted over a core of glowing magma. Wings of solidified smoke and crystallized ash unfolded, each beating sending gale-force winds of superheated air across the caldera. Its eyes were pits of white-hot plasma, and its maw dripped not saliva, but streams of liquid sunstone. Six horns curved from its head, each crackling with different elemental fury—one dripped acid, another sparked with lightning, a third wept liquid nitrogen in a bizarre paradox.
It wasn't just a creature. It was a natural disaster given form and intent.
It opened its mouth, and the sound was the cracking of a continent.
Volcanic Drake: "INTRUDERS. YOUR ENERGY SIGNATURES ARE FOREIGN. YOU DISRUPT THE FIRE'S SONG. YOU WILL BECOME ASH AND ENRICH THE MAGMA."
Its voice wasn't sound waves; it was pressure waves transmitted through the molten rock and air simultaneously, vibrating in their bones.
Indra: "It's intelligent. And territorial. Our presence, our foreign chakra, is an anomaly in its ecosystem. It sees us as an infection."
Rias: "CL 800... Its sonic signature is layered. Multiple frequencies, from subsonic tremors to hypersonic shrieks. My Banshee defenses will be strained."
The Drake didn't wait. It inhaled, its chest glowing like a forge. Then it exhaled.
This wasn't a simple fire breath. It was a Plasma Geyser—a focused beam of star-core temperature matter that turned the air it passed through into plasma. It cut across the caldera towards them, not as a spray, but as a surgical lance of destruction.
Indra reacted instantly. "Spatial Decree: Refractive Lens!" He didn't try to block it. He created a series of warped spatial fields in front of them. The plasma beam hit the first lens and bent, splitting into multiple, less concentrated streams that shot harmlessly into the sky, vaporizing cloud layers.
The Drake roared in annoyance, the sound triggering actual volcanic eruptions on distant peaks. It beat its wings once and launched itself into the air. Despite its size, it moved with terrifying speed, circling them like a hawk.
Rias: "It's learning. Adapting. Look at its wing positioning—it's creating harmonic thermal drafts to destabilize the air around us."
She was right. The air around them began to shimmer and twist, creating vortexes of superheated and frozen air that tore at their stability. Indra anchored them with a gravity seal, but the thermal shock was intense.
Indra: "Direct confrontation is untenable. Its mass and energy output are orders of magnitude above ours. We need to analyze, find a weakness."
Rias: "I'll try to disrupt its coordination. Sonic attacks might interfere with its internal thermal regulation."
She took a deep breath, her Banshee Bat Gourmet Demon awakening within her. Her vocal cords glowed with pale blue energy. "Sonic Release: Cascade Dissonance!"
A complex, multi-layered wave of sound erupted from her. Each frequency was designed to interfere with a different biological or energetic process—one to disrupt nervous impulses, another to cause crystalline structures to vibrate to shattering point, a third to cancel out specific thermal wavelengths.
The sound washed over the Drake. It shuddered mid-air, plates of its obsidian armor rattling. One of its lesser horns, the one weeping liquid nitrogen, developed a hairline crack. The Drake shrieked—a sound of pure outrage—and its eyes focused on Rias with murderous intent.
Volcanic Drake: "SCREECHING INSECT. YOU DARE CHALLENGE THE MOUNTAIN'S VOICE? I WILL MELT THE SONG FROM YOUR BONES!"
It dove, not with its breath weapon, but physically. Its talons, each the size of a house and glowing with contained heat, reached for her.
Indra was already moving. "Temporal Decree: Accelerated Perception!" Time didn't slow for the world, but his and Rias's mental processing sped up exponentially. The Drake's dive became a stately descent. He had seconds to plan.
Indra: "Its talons are its primary heat sinks. The joints are slightly cooler—vulnerable to rapid thermal contraction. Rias, a focused sonic lance on the left talon's third knuckle, frequency 34.7 kilohertz, on my mark. I'll handle the right."
Rias: "Understood."
As the talons were about to close around them, Indra shouted, "NOW!"
Rias pointed a single finger, humming a note so pure and sharp it cut through the Drake's roar. A needle-thin beam of sonic energy struck the specified knuckle. At the same instant, Indra formed a seal. "Water Release: Absolute Zero Drop!" A single, compressed bead of water, chilled to near-absolute zero through spatial compression thermodynamics, shot from his palm and struck the other talon's joint.
The effects were spectacular. The sonic vibration caused the superheated obsidian at the joint to resonate and become brittle. The absolute-zero impact created an instantaneous, catastrophic thermal differential. The right talon's joint froze solid just as the left one became brittle.
The Drake shrieked in genuine pain as both talons on its leading limb shattered. Chunks of obsidian and frozen magma rained down. It pulled back, hovering unsteadily.
But CL 800 creatures were not so easily disabled. The magma within its body flowed to the injuries, rapidly reforming new talons—these ones even sharper, glowing brighter.
Volcanic Drake: "CLEVER. YOU UNDERSTAND HEAT AND SOUND. BUT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND DESTRUCTION. I AM NOT A BEAST OF FIRE. I AM THE EMBODIMENT OF THE WORLD'S PURGING FLAME. I AM THE END THAT MAKES WAY FOR THE NEW."
Its entire body began to pulse with a deep, ominous rhythm. The caldera below responded. Magma geysers shot up around them, forming a cage of liquid fire. The air itself began to burn, the oxygen combusting from pure heat.
Indra: "It's raising the ambient energy to a point where our organic forms can't survive. Even with our adaptations, we have minutes at most. We need to break its concentration or retreat."
Rias: "Retreat isn't an option. It'll hunt us. This is its domain. We have to stand."
She was right. The Drake's will saturated the environment. Running would mean being chased down by an angry landscape.
The heat was becoming unbearable. Rias's sonic barriers were constantly active, deflecting waves of radiant heat and concussive blasts. Sweat evaporated instantly from their skin. Their chakra was depleting rapidly just to maintain cellular integrity.
Indra: "I'm going to try a spatial severance. Cut its connection to the magma flow. If I can isolate it from its power source..."
He focused his Rinnegan, the tomoe spinning madly around the central pupil. He targeted the streams of molten energy flowing from the caldera into the Drake's body. "Palkia's Decree: Severance of the Veins!"
Space itself twisted like a knife along invisible lines. Several of the energy streams connecting the Drake to the magma sea were cut. The Drake roared, this time in shock and pain. The glow in its body dimmed momentarily.
But then, something terrifying happened. The Drake laughed, a sound like grinding tectonic plates.
Volcanic Drake: "YOU THINK MY POWER IS BORROWED? FOOL. I AM NOT A PARASITE ON THE FIRE. I AM ITS SOURCE. THE MAGMA FLOWS FROM ME."
The severed connections didn't dissipate. Instead, they reversed. Energy began to flow from the Drake back into the mountain. The caldera's activity increased violently. New volcanoes birthed themselves along the rim. The Drake wasn't drawing power; it was regulating it, and they had just disrupted its careful balance, making the entire region more unstable.
Indra: "A stabilizing force... We've made it worse. It's not just a predator. It's a keystone species for this entire biome. Killing it might cause a chain reaction that destroys the range."
Rias: "So we can't kill it, we can't run, and we can't outlast it. What's left?"
The Drake, now furious at the disruption to its sacred duty, decided to end the game. It folded its wings and plunged straight into the magma sea. For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the bubbling of rock.
Then, the entire caldera heaved.
The magma rose in a colossal wave, a tsunami of liquid stone 500 meters high. And riding its crest was the Drake, now encased in a shell of solidified magma, a true dragon of destruction. Its maw opened wider than seemed possible, and at its core, a sphere of blackish-red energy formed—a Gravity Compression Ignition Sphere. It wasn't just heat; it was a miniature sun compressed to the point of collapse, pulling everything towards it even as it prepared to annihilate it.
This was an extinction-level attack. The very fabric of the environment was screaming.
In that moment, facing absolute annihilation, something deep within Rias Uzumaki stirred.
It wasn't the Banshee Bat. That entity was for sound, for vibration, for communication. This was something older, darker, and written in the very blood of her lineage. The Uzumaki were not just masters of sealing and vitality. In ancient times, they had been the Binders of Calamities. They had sealed away entities of pure destruction. And that impulse—to confront, to contain, to master annihilation—was in her genes.
As the gravity sphere grew, pulling at her, threatening to unravel her at an atomic level, she didn't feel fear. She felt a cold, familiar rage. The same rage Indra had felt when Obito threatened his home. The Uzumaki rage against that which would unmake what they sought to protect.
Her eyes, usually a vibrant blue, bled into a deep, burning crimson. Not the red of the Sharingan, but the red of banked embers, of magma glimpsed through a crust. The orange highlights in her hair ignited into full, flaming streaks.
She stepped forward, past Indra's defensive stance.
Indra: "Rias! What are you—"
Rias: (Her voice was layered, her own mixed with a deeper, rumbling growl) "It wants destruction? I'll show it destruction. Real destruction isn't mindless fire. It's the end of a song. The silence after the scream. The point."
She raised her hands, not in a seal, but in a grasping motion, as if clawing at the fabric of reality itself. The Banshee Bat's power was there, the sonic energy, but it was changing, warping, merging with something new.
From the core of her being, from the sealed memories in her Uzumaki blood, her second Gourmet Demon awoke.
It did not emerge gently. The air around her shattered. Not with sound, but with silent, concussive waves of nullification. The ground at her feet didn't crack; it disintegrated into fine, inert dust. The intense heat nearby didn't retreat; it ceased to exist, creating pockets of absolute zero.
And behind her, a phantom form took shape. It was not a physical beast, but a conceptual avatar—a colossal, serpentine dragon made of shimmering black voids and crimson cracks, like cooled lava over an infinite abyss. It had no eyes, only pits of silent, hungry nothingness. Its wings were tattered shadows that drank the light. This was the Apocalypse Dragon—the Gourmet Demon of Endings, born from the Uzumaki destruction impulse and the Gourmet World's raw, chaotic energy.
Rias/Uzumaki Ancestral Memory/Apocalypse Dragon: "YOU CALL THIS DESTRUCTION? THIS IS NOISE. CHAOS. I AM THE QUIETUS. THE FINAL NOTE. THE SEAL ON THE TOMB."
Her voice was a triple-layered chorus: her own, an ancient Uzumaki elder's, and the silent scream of the void.
The Volcanic Drake hesitated, its gravity sphere flickering. For the first time, its plasma eyes showed something other than rage: recognition, and a sliver of primal fear. It was facing not another creature, but an opposite. It was Creation's Fury. She was Entropy's Hand.
Rias moved. She didn't attack the Drake. She attacked its attack. She pointed at the Gravity Compression Ignition Sphere.
Rias: "Destruction Release: Unraveling Silence."
No beam, no blast. A sphere of absolute negation, a bubble of "non-existence," expanded from her fingertip. Where it touched the Drake's miniature sun, the effect was not an explosion, but an unmaking. The furious nuclear fusion simply... stopped. The gravity well collapsed. The sphere winked out of existence without a sound, without light, without energy release. It was erased from causality.
The Drake recoiled as if struck physically. The energy it had poured into that attack was gone, not dissipated, but voided.
Indra watched, his Rinnegan analyzing frantically. This wasn't a new element. It was an affinity, a fundamental force manipulation similar to his own Space-Time authority, but focused purely on cessation, decay, and endpoint. It was horrifying and magnificent.
The Drake, enraged and now terrified, unleashed everything. Acid horns spat streams of metal-dissolving fluid. Lightning horns called down plasma bolts from the superheated atmosphere. It swiped with its newly reformed talons, each strike carrying the kinetic energy of a meteor impact.
Rias met it all with her newfound duality. She had become a conductor of two symphonies: one of sound, one of silence.
When acid came, she hummed, and a Sonic Shield tuned to the acid's molecular frequency vibrated it into harmless vapor.
When lightning struck, she gestured, and a Destruction Field simply negated the electrical charge, the lightning bolts vanishing inches from her skin.
When the talons struck, she didn't dodge. She met one with a palm. "Combined Release: Resonant Shatter." Sonic energy poured into the talon, finding its resonant frequency, while Destruction energy seeped into the cracks the sound created. The result? The entire forelimb, from talon to mid-forearm, turned to black sand that scattered in the wind.
The Drake's shriek was now pure agony. It tried to retreat, to dive back into the magma, to heal.
Rias would not allow it. "You do not get to run. You showed me destruction. Now understand it."
She clapped her hands together. The Banshee Bat's power and the Apocalypse Dragon's power merged completely for the first time.
Rias: "Ultimate Technique: Requiem for a Sun."
She took a breath, and the world held its. Then, she sang.
It was not a melody. It was the sonic profile of a star's death—the last vibrations of a collapsing sun, the scream of matter being torn apart in a black hole, the final, fading echo of a big bang's birth cry. And woven through that sound was the pure, silent thread of Destruction, the certainty of the end.
The wave of energy that left her was invisible and silent to normal senses. But to Indra's Rinnegan and to the Drake, it was the most terrifying thing in existence. It was a song that ended other songs.
The wave hit the Volcanic Drake.
It did not burn, freeze, or crush. It... concluded.
The furious, chaotic energy that was the Drake's life force was settled. Its burning plasma eyes cooled and darkened, not extinguished, but becoming inert, obsidian orbs. The magma in its veins solidified into beautiful, cold basalt. The living, shifting plates of its armor locked into a static, majestic sculpture. Its wings of smoke and ash gently settled into permanent, carved stone feathers.
In the span of a heartbeat, the CL 800 Volcanic Drake, a force of nature, was turned into a magnificent, lifeless statue of itself, perched forever on the magma wave it had been riding. The wave itself solidified, creating a new, permanent obsidian island in the caldera.
The silence that followed was absolute. The ambient heat dropped dramatically. The caldera, robbed of its regulating heart, began to calm. The violent eruptions ceased, settling into a gentle, rhythmic bubbling.
Rias lowered her hands. The phantom Apocalypse Dragon behind her faded, its silent roar echoing in the sudden quiet. The crimson faded from her eyes, leaving her looking exhausted, awed, and slightly horrified. She stared at her hands.
Rias: "I... I ended it. Not killed. Ended. Like closing a book."
Indra was at her side instantly, his analytical mind warring with concern. He scanned her. Her chakra was depleted, but stable. A new, dark-crimson energy signature pulsed within her, intertwined with the blue sonic energy and her Uzumaki vitality. It was stable, but... profound.
Indra: "Your genetic memory... the Uzumaki sealing imperative... it fused with the Gourmet World's latent 'end cycle' energy. You haven't just gained a new ability. You've gained an affinity. For Destruction. Not as an element, but as a concept. Like my Space and Time."
Rias: (Shaking) "It felt... familiar. Like remembering something I never knew. An urge to bring things to a close. To impose finality. Is this... is this what my ancestors felt when they sealed away the Nine-Tails? This cold... certainty?"
Indra: "Possibly. But you've given it form. A Gourmet Demon of Endings. And you can combine it with your Sonic Release. The vibrational energy to weaken structure, the destruction energy to enforce conclusion. It's a terrifyingly efficient pair."
He looked at the petrified Drake, now a monument in the center of the calming caldera. "You didn't destroy the ecosystem. You... resolved its violent apex. The region is stabilizing at a lower energy level. You may have actually healed it by removing a runaway element."
As the adrenaline faded, Rias slumped against him. The awakening had taken everything.
They made camp on the newly formed obsidian island, next to the Drake statue. The environment, now safer, allowed for deeper study. Over the next three days, as Rias recovered and practiced controlling her new dual affinities, they cataloged the now-accessible depths of the volcanic ecosystem.
Discovery Log #351: Finality Lichen. Grew exclusively on the petrified Drake. A grey, soft moss that emitted a faint, calming "silence" field. When ingested, it induced a state of perfect mental peace and halted cellular decay temporarily. Potential for stasis medicine.
#365: Lava to Basalt Bees. Observed the insects that now pollinated the cooled lava fields. They collected mineral nectar and excreted hexagonal basalt combs filled with crystalline honey that tasted of smoked minerals and peace.
#378: Echo-Scarabs. Beetles with wings that were natural sonic recording plates. They flew through the Chime-Crystal Geysers, "recording" the songs, then landed on specific rocks to play them back, attracting mates. Rias discovered she could "program" them with her own sonic patterns, creating living message drones.
#382: Heart-Flame Orchid Grove. A hidden valley filled with thousands of the flowers, all in full bloom, responding to the new, stable energy. The pheromone cloud was so potent it induced a state of euphoric calm. They collected samples for advanced calming agents and potential psychological therapy.
Rias's training with her new abilities was methodical. She learned she could now manipulate not just sound, but heat and energy decay.
Rias: "Watch. Destruction Release: Thermal Siphon." She held her hand over a pool of magma. The radiant heat streaming from it... vanished, drawn into her palm and converted into inert energy that she could dissipate. The pool's surface crusted over instantly.
Indra: "You're enforcing thermodynamic equilibrium. Forcing energy to move towards entropy at an accelerated rate. It's not fire or lava release... it's the end of those things. But look here."
He showed her a finding. Discovery #395: Rebirth Fern. A fragile fern that only grew in spots where extreme heat had been suddenly and completely removed. It was the first new growth after a "destruction event."
Indra: "Your power doesn't just end things. It creates the possibility of new beginnings. True destruction isn't annihilation—it's the necessary clearing of the old for the new. Your Apocalypse Dragon isn't a mindless devourer. It's the gardener who burns the dead fields so new seeds can grow."
This perspective settled her. Her power wasn't inherently evil. It was a part of a cycle, just as her Sonic Release was part of communication and creation. She was the bridge between the song and the silence.
On the fourth day, she attempted her first major combined technique since the Requiem. Focusing on a small, active lava vent, she sang a low, resonant note that made the lava vibrate violently. Then, she layered over it a whisper of Destruction.
Rias: "Combined Release: Shattersong."
The vibrating lava fountain didn't explode. It crystallineized in mid-air, turning into a beautiful, jagged sculpture of obsidian and garnet that chimed softly in the wind. She had transformed violent creation into static, beautiful art.
She looked at her hands, then at Indra, a real smile returning. "I can control it. I'm not just an ending. I'm... a composer. I can write the final note of a process."
Indra: "Exactly. And that makes you more powerful than any mindless force of destruction. You have purpose and precision."
They spent the next week thoroughly exploring the stabilized region. Discoveries #396-400 were milestones:
#396: The Drake's Cradle. At the very spot where the Drake had emerged, they found a cavern lined with Primordial Fire Crystals—concentrated, stable Appetite Energy that had been regulated by the Drake for millennia. These were beyond precious; they were batteries of pure, calm creation energy. Indra collected several, ideas for self-sustaining barrier cores and chakra reactors blazing in his mind.
#397: Symphony of Silence. A natural formation in the cooled magma tubes that acted as an acoustic filter. All sound entering one end was stripped of chaotic harmonics, leaving only pure, simple tones at the other. A natural meditation and sonic purification chamber.
#398: Uzumaki Resonance Stone. A rare, spiral-patterned stone that reacted powerfully to Rias's blood and her new Destruction affinity. When she channeled energy into it, it projected a field that weakened spatial and energetic bonds. A natural, unrefined "sealing-breaker" or "barrier-dissipator." The ultimate Uzumaki tool.
#399: Gourmet Demon Symbiosis Log. Rias's detailed notes on the co-existence of her Banshee Bat (Sound/Creation/Communication) and Apocalypse Dragon (Silence/Destruction/Conclusion). She theorized they represented two halves of a whole process—the message and its end, the story and its final period.
#400: The Peace of the Purged. A philosophical entry by Indra. "Witnessed the transition of a chaotic, high-energy biome to a stable, diverse, and fertile one following the resolution of its apex predator. The predator was not an enemy, but an unchecked force. Rias's power did not destroy the system; it brought it into balance. True power may not be the ability to create or destroy, but the wisdom to know when each is needed, and the will to execute that judgment. She has become a force of natural order."
On their final day in the Ignis Aeterna, they stood once more on the obsidian cliff. The caldera below was no longer a raging sea of fire, but a landscape of gentle geothermal vents, growing crystal forests, and thriving lava-adapted life. The petrified Drake at its center stood as a silent guardian, a monument to the day destruction brought peace.
Rias's hair had settled into a permanent pattern: the base her natural red, streaked with sonic silver and tips of ember-orange that glowed faintly when she used either of her powers. Her eyes held a new depth, a wisdom born of having touched the end of things and returned.
Rias: "I'm not afraid of it anymore. The power. It's a tool. A heavy, sharp, dangerous tool. But so is a surgeon's scalpel. It's about the hand that holds it."
Indra: "And your hand is steady. You composed a requiem and gave a mountain range a future. The Gourmet World is changing us, yes. But we are leaving marks on it, too. Small ones. For now."
He looked at the horizon. Their time was dwindling—just over five months until their planned return. The Gourmet World had given them immense power, but with it came immense responsibility and perspective.
Rias: "Where next?"
Indra: "The data from Coco suggested a region of 'fluid fate' to the south. A marsh where time and causality are said to pool. I want to see it. And you need an environment less... combustive to practice the fine control of your Destructive affinity."
Rias: "Marshlands sound damp and quiet. After all this fire and noise... quiet sounds perfect."
They shouldered their packs, filled with crystals, samples, data, and hard-won wisdom. With a final glance at the peaceful caldera and its stony guardian, they turned south, two sovereigns walking away from the fire, their shadows longer and more substantial than when they had arrived, ready to face whatever silent, mysterious trials awaited in the lands of fluid time.
End of Chapter – 58.