Chapter 124: The Sudden Revocation of OP Protagonist Privileges
The beast let out a roar that sounded like grinding tectonic plates mixed with a furnace blast, its molten eyes locking onto the party.
Jace’s shadow horse scrambled back, its blue eyes widening. Barnaby let out a panicked "EE-AWH!" and tried to deploy his glorious wings to fly away, only for his short donkey legs to get tangled in a bush.
"What the hell is that?!" Rogue shrieked, desperately trying to steer his flapping donkey backward. "Is that a raid boss?! Elizabeth, is that a normal horse?!"
Elizabeth’s cat ears were pinned completely flat against her head, her hand instinctively gripping her sword hilt. "That’s an Infernal Dread-Charger," she whispered, her voice tight. "They aren’t supposed to spawn this close to the river. We need to run. Now. It’ll cook us alive."
Liam didn’t run.
He stared at the towering beast of rock and fire. He watched the way the heat radiated off its obsidian hide, the perfect, steady temperature of its molten core. His red eyes narrowed in deep, clinical evaluation. His tail flicked behind him with an intense, sudden rhythm.
His mind completely bypassed the danger, the status metrics, and the concept of a mount. Instead, his chef-brain instantly calculated the thermal output of a permanent, mobile, high-tier magma core.
’Infinite heat regulation. Zero fuel required. Perfect sear capability for Level 4 hearth ? It’s a walking, high-pressure wood-fire hearth.’
Liam took a slow step forward, his large hand reaching into his inventory, his expression completely locked onto the flaming creature.
"Dibs," Liam said flatly.
"LIAM, NO!" the entire party screamed in unison.
The fire horse snorted, a jet of literal white-hot plasma blasting from its nostrils, instantly turning a three-foot patch of winter grass into a smoking patch of black glass.
Liam didn’t even flinch. In his head, the numbers were already beautifully lining up. He’d been tearing through dungeons, cooking high-tier monster meats, and handling two demanding beast-girls in a bathtub. He was, by all logical parameters of this world, absolutely overpowered. A walking raid boss in his own right. Taming a glorified, four-legged campfire? Please. ’I’ve got this covered in my sleep,’ he thought, a smug, unbothered grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t pull out a rope. He didn’t pull out a sword. With supreme, unearned confidence, Liam reached deep into his inventory and pulled out a slab of premium, raw flank steak.
"Watch and learn," Liam muttered back to the screaming peanut gallery. "You use sugar cubes for ponies. You use high-grade protein for real monsters."
He held the massive steak out on his broad palm, stepping directly into the shimmering heatwave. The air was so hot his eyelashes were starting to curl, but Liam just stepped closer, channelling his inner alpha aura. "Hey. Big guy. Look at the marbling on this. You want to sear this for me, don’t you? Come get the protein, pspspspspsp."
The fire horse stopped roaring. It lowered its massive, obsidian head, its molten orange eyes narrowing as it stared at the raw meat. Then, it looked up, staring directly into Liam’s red eyes.
For a fraction of a second, Liam genuinely thought the "Connection" mechanic was working. He felt like a god. He was about to possess a mobile, infinite-fuel barbecue.
Then, the horse’s expression shifted from curious to profoundly insulted.
It didn’t want a snack. It didn’t care about marbling. It was a creature of pure, primordial destruction, and some white-haired dog had just offered it a raw steak like it was a stray at a backyard BBQ.
The fire horse didn’t just kick; it erupted.
With a deafening shriek that sounded like a volcano tearing itself apart, the beast reared back. The torrents of flame composing its mane and tail flared outward, expanding into a thirty-foot localised firestorm.
Before Liam could even process that his OP protagonist privileges had just been violently revoked, the horse brought its front hooves down directly toward his skull, unleashing a concentrated blast of magmatic force.
"LIAM!" Elizabeth shrieked.
A tidal wave of pure, white-hot fire enveloped him. The heat was instantaneous, an apocalyptic wall of pressure meant to incinerate anything with a biological pulse down to atomic dust.
The grass for fifty meters around him vanished into ash in a microsecond.
Within the roaring inferno, Liam’s brain screamed one word: NOPE.
With a panicked, frantic reflex, he slammed his mental interface, activating his absolute panic-button emergency skill: [Invincible].
A translucent, golden barrier snapped into existence a millisecond before the plasma melted his skin. The skill rendered him completely invulnerable, bypassing all elemental damage, thermal physics, and systemic rules for exactly ten seconds.
Outside the golden bubble, the world was a roaring, blinding hellscape of liquid rock and screaming heat; inside, Liam was just standing there, holding a now violently charred, thoroughly ruined piece of steak, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
’Holy shit,’ he thought, his smugness completely evaporating into cold sweat. ’I am not as OP as I thought. That thing almost turned me into a well-done brisket, well, that was a wake-up call, next time I’ll sacrifice the fridge instead.’
Through the shimmering, distorted waves of the golden barrier, Liam watched the Fire horse look down. The beast seemed actively confused that its target hadn’t been reduced to a pile of grey soot. It snorted, stomped a flaming hoof, and then, apparently deciding that this glowing golden human was entirely too weird and annoying to deal with, it turned on its hoofs.
[Tool Tip]:
Status: Protagonist Ego: Severely Dented
The High-Grade Protein Enticement Calamity: Liam, approaching a literal volcanic entity of pure, primordial devastation while whispering "pspspspspsp" and offering a raw flank steak, has triggered a [Profound Existential Insult Attribute] in the mob. The system notes his unearned chef confidence resulted in a 50-meter ash perimeter instead of a mobile wood-fire hearth.
The Well-Done Brisket Epiphany: Activating the [Invincible] panic button exactly one millisecond before total cellular liquidation has completely restructured Liam’s combat assessment parameters. The system registers a permanent 100% increase in his survival humility, accompanied by an official entry in his mental logs to sacrifice Fridge the Lich next time things get slightly warm.
