Heroine-Saving System: Reborn In A Third-Rate Manga As The Protagonist-Chapter 104: Numb

’I knew they were weak...’ Koya thought as they stood at the bark of one of the trees, the ones on the Isle were much stronger than usual trees too. ’But I didn’t know they were this weak.’

For the past three minutes they had been attacking the bark and hadn’t managed to scratch it that much.

The cubs couldn’t even wield full flamethrowers yet. They were biting into the bark with everything they had and the tree was completely unbothered.

’System, are you sure you aren’t messing with me right now?’

「Absolutely not, Host. These are the cubs with the highest potential amongst the Cindervix however their starting points are weaker than the average Cindervix.」

The cubs whimpered and gave up on the bark, turning to look at Koya with a defeated expression that showed they had genuinely tried their best and knew it wasn’t enough. He gave each of them a pat on the head.

"Don’t worry, you tried your best. That’s what matters." He said. "We’ll do some hardcore training after we leave this place."

And by that he meant the Outer Zone. He was going to take them out there and make them hunt real monsters... that was how you turned potential into actual ability.

Familiars and humans weren’t that different in that regard. A Familiar was just a domesticated monster and like humans, the more experience and mana they absorbed the stronger they would grow and the closer they got to ranking up except ranking up for Familiars was an evolution. The Queen Broodminder he had faced a while back had once been a Twigspire after all.

That was the cycle of life.

"Let’s just focus on getting to the Embermane Lion territory. Hop on." Koya said and they hopped back onto his shoulders.

He opened the map tab... the Embermane Lion territory wasn’t that far from here. "Alright. I hope nobody is stupid enough to anger those vicious things."

The System’s expanded data on the Embermane Lions had been clear, they were deeply hostile to anyone they didn’t consider worthy of being their master. It could get very ugly, very fast.

...

"And what did I expect?" Koya muttered under his breath.

The small grove where the Embermane Lions lived was on fire. Literally on fire... the trees at the edge of it were burning, the ground between them was burning, and several Class 5 students were sprinting out of the smoke with Embermane Lions right behind them, their manes were fully lit and blazing.

Somehow Renji was among the runners.

’Didn’t they read the entry on the guide?’ Koya thought from his position, he was hidden within the top of a tree. He had already retracted the silver-fur pup while the second one was sitting flat on top of his head.

He watched his classmates run past below him, some of them with singed defense suits and wide eyes and not one of them looked back, if they did, they would have been jump-scared by how close the Emberlions were.

’Everyone should know their limits... You don’t walk into an Embermane Lion grove without knowing your limits.’

He was not going to jeopardize his own opportunity and get on the bad side of the Embermane Lions — their ability to amplify a fire user’s output was simply too valuable to lose. He wasn’t going to move.

He glanced back anyway.

A rock that he picked up formed in his hand from his storage ring and Koya threw it in a clean arc. The rock curved through the air and struck one of the pursuing Embermane Lions directly in the head with enough force that it knocked the Familiar sideways clean off its feet.

It crashed through a tree and brought it down while the others stopped immediately and turned, scanning the treeline for the attacker.

They checked left, checked right and even checked the canopy above but found nothing.

By the time they looked back at the runners, the Class 5 students had enough distance that pursuing them was no longer worth the effort. The lions turned and walked back into their grove, which was still on fire.

Koya let out a breath.

"Thankfully they didn’t see me." He muttered.

The cub on his head let out its own tiny yelp of relief, Koya waited for a few minutes then he dropped from the tree and landed on the grass below.

The grotto was visibly hot even from here as the air leaked out of it. "Now let’s go."

Three minutes of walking brought him to the beginning of the grotto and it was absolutely on fire. Two large rocks framed the entrance and both of them were covered in thick crimson flames, and one Embermane Lion stood guard between them watching him approach.

’These Familiars are a bit too complicated.’ Koya thought as he made eye contact.

To enter the grotto, he had to beat the Embermane Lion in a staring contest. It sounded straightforward but the intense heat pressing against his face from this close made it considerably harder to keep his eyes open without blinking.

’Not to mention that they have a tendency to—’ 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The lion opened its mouth and exhaled a long wisp of hot smoke directly at his face. It spread outward and rolled past him and over the cub on his head.

The cub let out an indignant cry and clamped its eyes shut, shaking its head. The Embermane Lion made a short sound that was very much a laugh.

’Cheat at their own game.’ Koya sighed internally and held his eyes open. After a stretch of time that was longer than it needed to be, the Embermane Lion let out a huff of acknowledgement and stepped aside.

Koya walked in.

The grotto was significantly hotter inside than outside. Every tree in here was on fire and the Embermane Lions were everywhere... rolling around in the flames and soaking in them, their cubs were tumbling through burning patches like it was perfectly normal grass.

Several areas of the ground had burned through entirely and pools of lava sat open in them and the lions lounging at the edges or lying directly in them with full comfort.

’These Familiars are insane.’ The cub on his head twitched watching this.

In terms of raw fire power the Embermane Lions were in a class of their own, but for versatility in fire element usage a Cindervix would always have the edge.

The Embermane Lions also had these ridiculous trials for potential masters and were permanently on the edge of being angered. It was complicated in every direction.

"Ah, Akari?"

Koya’s eyes widened. Akari Kagutsuchi was in the process of removing her clothes... the defense suit was already off and now he could see her bra as well as her underwear.

She spun around and immediately tried to cover herself with both hands though it barely did anything.

"Koya-kun, what are you doing here?" She bit her lip.

She was genuinely grateful he hadn’t pursued the poisoning incident further... she had been the one who ordered those maids to spike the food after all, and her father had been relentlessly nagging her about making a proper apology. ’So what if he can use our clan’s flames? That doesn’t make him important and if you really don’t want another clan getting their hands on him then just kill him off.’

"I came here to get a Familiar." Koya said, glancing at the lava pools.

She pointed upward at the cub still sitting on his head. "You already have one though?"

"There are no rules saying we can’t get multiple Familiars."

She sighed. "True, but you have to take as many as your soul can handle. A Four-liner can only handle four or five permanent contracts before giving out, so please be careful."

She kept her face neutral... A Four-liner could only handle two, going above that led to death. If poisoning wasn’t going to scare him off then a bit of misinformation would do the work.

"I see. What are you doing then?" Koya asked as she turned toward one of the lava pits.

"The Embermane Leader gave me a challenge. I have to stay in the lava for ten minutes to earn one of its children." She replied. "If you want I can ask for a similar request on your behalf as well."

"Sure." Koya nodded.

It didn’t look that difficult and staying in there would do his skills some good. She waved over to the Embermane Lion leader, which was considerably larger than the others and was stretched across a large flat rock with full comfort.

Its mane blazed blue instead of the usual crimson that the others hard..

"Grooaah rrrgh HAARRR snarl~" Akari said toward it.

Koya’s eye twitched.

’Is she speaking Lion?’ He thought.

「Yes Host, Akari is currently suggesting that the Embermane Lion increase your trial to twenty minutes in the hottest lava pool available in the grotto.」

’This woman is really petty.’ He thought. She was pettier than the pettiest person he had personally encountered back on Earth.

Akari turned back to him with a shy expression.

"Koya-kun, I spoke with the Embermane Leader. He initially wanted to give you forty minutes but since we’re friends, he reduced it to twenty." She pointed. "However, you’ll have to use that one over there."

The lava pool she pointed to was bubbling so aggressively that the Embermane Lions that had been near it had moved away from it and even the cubs were giving it distance.

"I see..." Koya looked at it. "Do I need to take off the defense suit?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"But won’t it burn through my undergarments?"

She blinked thoughtfully, then turned back to the leader. "Grrrgh HAARR snarl roogh~"

The leader responded.

She nodded and turned back. Her undergarments wouldn’t burn since they were from her clan however the same couldn’t be said for Koya.

"Isn’t it weird to be roaring like that?" Koya asked.

"Impossible. All Kagutsuchi heirs learn to communicate with the Embermane Lions from childhood." She said. "The Clan Head from our clan was the one who first caught and established bonds with the original Embermane Lions... it’s naturally harder to interact with them if you’re not from our clan."

She began walking toward her own lava pool. "Anyway, the Leader has agreed. You can keep the defense suit on, It won’t matter much either way."

She stepped her leg into the lava and a dense cloud of steam rose immediately. It was like watching skin react to boiling water... it was dramatic from the outside but her expression was more relaxed than pained.

’Onii-san said the lava removes dead skin tissue and leaves your skin glowing.’ She thought, lowering herself further. ’If it actually makes me more beautiful I’ll come here every day until we leave.’

Akari settled into a comfortable position and let her eyes close. "Haah~ This feels amazing~"

But one eye crept back open to watch Koya.

’He already has a Cindervix. What does he want with an Embermane Lion too?’ Getting a Familiar wasn’t just about the contract... it required resources and genuine understanding of the species.

This was why the Kagutsuchi clan, despite being the foremost fire experts alive, focused almost entirely on the Embermane Lions. They understood the monster better than any researcher and a person without that background going after one was just setting themselves up for a difficult path.

’It’ll be fun watching him try to sit in the lava though.’ She thought, and suppressed the smug expression before it showed.

"Alright, get off for now." Koya said and the Cindervix cub hopped off his head and landed on the hot ground with a yelp, shaking one paw and then the other. "While I’m in there, practice your fire breathing."

The cub nodded seriously and took a deep breath, puffing its chest out. It opened its mouth and produced a flame roughly the size of a candle which was flickering and unstable.

It held it for two seconds before it went out. The cub looked at its own mouth, confused, then tried again which produced the same result.

It kept trying anyway with each attempt producing the same small struggling flame but it was completely unbothered by the failure.

Koya watched it for a moment and then turned back to the pool.

’The suit probably makes it harder to endure, right?’ He thought. He extended one leg forward and activated Pain Resistance.

「Yes.」

’Let’s go.’ He didn’t waste time... He jumped into the pool of lava completely.

Akari nearly stood up.

"Is he trying to kill himself?" She stared.

He was supposed to ease in gradually and let his body adjust but he had just ignored all of that and jumped. ’I know I’ve been trying to kill him but I’m the only other person here and if Papa finds out I let it happen...’

The image assembled itself immediately in her head with no effort at all.

She was standing in the family hall with every member of the clan seated in their positions looking at her.

Her father at the head of the table with the exact expression he wore when she usually did something he could not find a single excuse for.

"You spoiled brat! What have you done?! I told you to make friends with him, not kill him! As a result of your actions, you have been expelled from the Kagutsuchi clan effective immediately!"

She could already hear the precise tone of it and the way it would echo off the stone walls and both her eyes flew open.

"Noooo!" She yelled, loud enough that several Embermane Lions turned to look at her. She was already moving to get out of her own pool then Koya surfaced and he didn’t look hurt at all. "Huh?"

"This temperature is just right." He said, settling into a cross-legged position in the middle of the bubbling lava and closing his eyes.

’This is hot as absolute hell.’ The heat seeping into his body was beyond any reasonable description. But he exhaled once slowly and let the skill absorb it.

「Unique Skill: Pain Resistance (C-Rank) → Numb (B-Rank)」

「Congratulations on upgrading one of your skills to B-rank. You have received 10 FP. Numb works by removing the limiters on your brain that process pain for a period of time. However, once the skill deactivates, any pain accumulated during its activation will hit you simultaneously.」

「Natural Pain Resistance has also increased.」

’I see.’

So he was banking pain rather than avoiding it... He wasn’t sure yet if that was a good trade or a bad one.

’Whatever.’

He circulated mana throughout his body to activate the skill and the scalding sensation vanished completely. He looked at his hands in the lava.

The defense suit was fighting the heat and losing slowly, becoming uncomfortably warm against his skin but he couldn’t feel any of it now.

"It feels kind of peaceful." He said.

"Koya-kun! Are you still alive?" Akari called from her pool.

"As alive as I’ll ever be." He stretched both arms outward. "Don’t worry about me... AHHH!!!!"

Akari cleaned the steam from her eyes and looked.

Koya was twitching in the lava while the Cindervix cub stared at him from the edge of the pool. He raised one arm and stuck a thumb up.

"I’m okay, I think." He said, pulling himself upright.

He had deactivated the skill to test the rebound and it was not a small amount of pain that came back.

His body wasn’t actually burning that much since the heal skill was activated but the sensation of everything he had been numbing to hitting at once was another matter entirely.

’I guess that’s fair for complete numbness. I wonder what happens when it reaches A-rank or S-rank or higher. Surely I’m not going to reach a stage where I miss pain... right?’

Surely not, who liked pain anyway?

...

"That was a good exercise." Koya walked out of the grotto with the Cindervix cub back on his head and another one held carefully in both hands.

His entire body was steaming.

"Exercise?" Akari walked beside him. "You smell like you cooked yourself alive."

"It was all worth it in the end."

By worth it he meant Numb... The skill upgrade alone had justified the twenty minutes. Now if he could find a way to raise his Poison Resistance too, he would be grateful.

He had considered trying to drink lava to see if it triggered anything but lava wasn’t poison so the logic didn’t hold.

"Sure." Akari rolled her eyes. "Are you heading back to the tower base to register your Familiar?"

She had gotten hers and wanted to walk with him to make sure he got home safely and not die next to her, not that she was going to phrase it that way.

"I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer." He said. He had a Cindervix for Akemi but still nothing for Yuna. He wanted to find something that matched her element before calling it.

"I see... Maybe I’ll join yo—"

A heavy whoosh of wind cut across the Isle and the three Dolderbirds from before came sweeping low overhead large shadows crossing the ground beneath them.

Students were on their backs but they weren’t wearing ALI uniforms.

"Oh? So the students from Omni Academy are here too?" Akari’s jaw tightened. Her eyes were tracking the Dolderbirds.

If Omni Academy was here then that meant "he" was here too.

"Omni Academy, huh." Koya said, watching the birds bank and descend toward the tower. That was a deviation from the plot he hadn’t accounted for.

Then every tree on the Isle seemed to speak at once as an intercom system cracked to life from devices mounted across the entire forest.

"ATTENTION! ALL STUDENTS IN THE FAMILIAR FOREST ARE TO REPORT BACK TO THE BASE OF THE TOWER, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY! TWO CLASS 2 STUDENTS AND THREE CLASS 5 STUDENTS HAVE JUST BEEN REPORTED DEAD!"

Koya blinked.

"What the fuck?"