I was entirely unaware of what was going on at the test due to the blade I gave Hroldar and even after it was over he never showed up so I totally forgot about it. Instead I worked on testing my new flames to get a feel for what they were capable of, the answer to which was complicated. See the first thing I tested was the temperature of the flames by using iron since I knew how hot it had to be to melt the stuff and how much hotter it had to be to melt it faster than that minimum point.-
Turning the fire to as hot as i could burned through my energy(pun very intended) at extremely high speeds but could turn a three inch iron nail to slag in about half a second. This meant my hottest was about 1700 or so degrees Celsius. Hot enough that even being near it should make things very uncomfortable if not downright hostile. That was where things got complicated as neither Bell or myself could feel anything more that a normal warmth from like a campfire or something similar.-
In addition to that my fire COULDN'T burn me, like at all. Yes I know you are likely asking how i knew that and the answer was because I tested it. Don't fucking judge me this was something important to know. Anyways I could flare my fire up as hot as I wanted and then stick my hand in it and nothing would happen, I may as well have been putting my hand through air. Another thing I discovered was that my fire needed to be kept away from water at all fucking costs. Not because it acted like a grease fire but because it ate the water and grew rapidly.-
Electrolysis is the process of separating oxygen and hydrogen that existed in water, both of which were flammable as all hell. My flames being the weird shit they are could apparently skip the whole separation step and burn both of those in their bonded form. In other words water might as well be fucking gasoline as far as my flame was concerned. The good news was that the water capital floors of the dungeon were going to be a fun experience for me since I needed to be extra careful not to burn the whole place down.-
A nifty use for the flames I discovered was that I could condense them before unleashing a violent blast in a single direction with them that I affectionately refer to as my "fuck everything in that direction" attack. Why? Because that blast traveled for quite some distance and THEN the flames started to spread and consume everything. The attack was practically made for killing huge groups at once and it did not discriminate hence , fuck everything in that direction. Bell was so jealous by the way because it looked awesome and it was effective.-
Admittedly I might have gotten carried away as I stood in the blazes laughing like a hyena. Anyway pyromaniac tendencies aside I could safely say that my new flames were fantastic as a personal form of magic. According to Miach and Hestia thankfully the name hell fire was just a name and not actual hell fire since that was technically a divine substance and shouldn't be possible to manifest in the mortal realm to begin with. As an added note Miach said my flames were shit as far as alchemy was concerned which i suppose is fair considering it ate the flask he tried to experiment with, my flames weren't picky.
Other than that I had gotten to work recreating my weapon with the drops that Tiona had dropped off. I fused the goliath tooth with an infant dragon fang and a green dragon horn to create a super hard and durable material for the weapons head that I refined as far as I could before it started taking my entire energy pool for a miniscule improvement. The axe head side was also ridiculously sharp as well which in addition to it's very high weight made it very effective.-
The handle was made of three minotaur horns fused and refined into a single foot long and inch and a half wide cylindrical handle with a skull shaped pommel just because I could. The final weapon weighed easily two or three times as much as my previous one due to it's stupid density and even with B rank strength I had trouble using it. The effectiveness of each attack however was not something to sneeze at. That was a lot of weight moving fairly fast after all so that was to be expected I suppose.-
Spent a couple of days practicing with my weapon before I finally felt confident to head back into the dungeon. Bell on the other hand was making astoundingly fast progress as with his most recent update he was at H rank in all his physical stats but hadn't gotten anywhere with magic which was to be expected since he lacked any way to use that stat. His foundation was solid though as he had taken what I had taught him as well as what he figured out from our spars to get a handle on how he wanted to fight.-
He was actually going in the exact opposite direction from myself as I wanted to hit the hardest without sacrificing maneuverability while he traded impact for speed and quantity of attacks. Neither path was wrong but both ended in different ways given enough time. Mine ended with each strike of mine being a potential death sentence while his ended with a death by thousand cuts type scenario or as a distraction so a heavy hitter like me can safely move in for the big ticket damage. If it wasn't for my magic not being team friendly we would probably make a very effective two man unit in the dungeon.-
I had made a bunch of figurines already which Hestia had moved to selling instead of Jagamarukuns since they brought in way more profit. They were apparently very popular with the gods and women in the city to the point that she was sold out mere minutes after she opened in the morning. This meant she got most of the day to do whatever she wanted after that which tended to be her lazing about at the church or cheering on Bell as he trained. Thanks to this influx of money we were now eating good food nightly.-
Unfortunately all good things come to an end eventually and Hephaestus finally got a chance to catch Hestia and ask about me. It was odd really as the red head was downright flirtacious when she introduced herself. Hestia had apparently told the goddess how my cursed technique worked since they were friends and now the red head was trying to poach me to her familia openly. I myself wanted nothing to do with the woman as the looks she was giving me made me feel like she was moments away from eating me.