Crusader King

As the furious flames quickly spread across the ground, the cobwebs that covered every square inch of this part of the great, ancient forest vanished and the old, dying trees covered under it finally became visible to the light of the sun, just to die once more to the raging flames.

From the trees came a crackling sound and the few ancient branches that managed to survive under the thick layer of cobwebs quickly fell down onto the now brightly burning ground.

Cades who had previously cleaned a small field around him, with only a ten foot diameter, was now watching the brightly dancing flames devouring everything.

And as the fire finally died out around him and the smoke had partially cleared itself Cades finally began moving forward once more, now without his apparatus.

As he took one step after the other he could feel the heat exuded by the wall of fire in front of him.

Every few dozen steps he had to take a break and wait so that the superpowered flame wouldn't burn him either.

He was a bit worried when none of the strings of mana came towards him, but after some time a huge amount of the bright violet strings slowly stretched out towards him, twirled around his body, which was soon surrounded by hundreds of them, all slowly vanishing into his body.

At first he had been elated, but later on the growth actually started to feel painful.

The pain, however, did not slow him down at all.

He felt himself growing incomparably stronger.

With each sequence one would grow exponentially stronger and Cades could feel that he himself had almost reached the tenth sequence already.

As he felt this fact on his body, he slowed down, expecting to maybe gain the tenth sequence without needing to fight the eximimus queen.

And Cades did indeed reach the tenth rank without actually having to fight against the queen.

But, at that very moment he saw something that resembled a giant ball of flames coming towards him at a nauseating speed.

When the ball came closer and closer Cades saw eight legs, that seemed to once have been covered in long, dark brown fur, although now they were more so like long burning stilts.

It was the queen of the nest.

Her back was covered in flames as well, actually everything about her was aflame.

She seemed to be suffering and full of anger.

But the queen was still a being at the peak of the tenth sequence.

However, she did not care about Cades at all, instead she seemed to be heading for the nearest river to quench the flames on her body, but Cades saw his chance.

The queen was already wounded, Cades should be able to fight against the ancient goliath right now.

As the queen was trying to pass him he drew his sword and readied himself.

He jumped on top of the queens back, not even caring about the flames licking his body and struck it.

And as the queen continued quickly running away he struck her once more, and again, and again, and again, but the queen did not cave in.

Normally, dark red blood would have already gushed out of the wound, but because of the flames they were constantly being cauterized over and over again.

At that moment the huge abdomen of the queen tried to hit him with surprising flexibility.

He did however still, barely, manage to avoid the queens powerful attack and instead strike the abdomen once before it returned to its original place.

The queen wasn't running through the burning nest anymore, but was instead nearing a river that Cades was able to see just a few thousand feet away.

Cades was slowly being devoured by the dancing flames, however he was a being of the tenth sequence as well, all be it only at the very beginning of the "apex"-rank.

The flames, now dancing on top of the ehetrian, were not capable of killing him, they were painful, but unless he burned alive for quite some time, like the queen had, he would not be killed by them.

However, while he would not be killed by them, his coat was, while slowly being destroyed, transforming the heat of the flames into mana for him to utilize, just as he had intended for it to do.

Finally, the queen reached the river and dunked her huge body into it.

And, at last, the dancing flames on the both of them were destroyed and Cades fell off of the queen, rolled over the ground and stood up right besides the bank of the river, readying himself to fight against another monster.

The queen, with the horrid flames now finally extinguished stood up to her full height of 120 feet.

Her small, onyx eyes glistened in her scarred half molten face, only three of them still retaining their ancient brilliance.

These very same onyx eyes were now looking at Cades.

She only had five legs remaining, but still managed to stand still.

The queen was undoubtably a ancient monster that would have outlived multiple generations of humans, namely, though cades didn't know that, the goliath was over 400 years old.

In her time the queen had seen countless beings and she had always sat inside of her great nest, birthing countless children, nurturing them and gaining more and more power.

And now the very being that had taken exactly that, everything she had created in the last 400 years from her, stood before her, having drawn a pathetic little sword after having the audacity to attack her back while they were both burning.

In this very instance she wished for nothing more than to annihilate that very creature, she wished for it to vanish from the face of this world.

The queen had eaten countless beings that looked just like the one in front of it, she did not think that it would be difficult to kill this one either. 

Finally, she began moving forward to squash the creature.

As the queen heaved one of the few gigantic legs that she still had left up to squash him Cades already knew what he had to do.