The entire ground underneath the actively separating black goo started to become hot and turn red in color, sizzling the goo that came into contact with the hot ground.
However, That was only the beginning because a moment later, a large pillar of flame erupted from the ground where it had turned hot and red and completely covered all the black goo.
Multiple small high-pitched screams resounded from within the pillar of fire as all the small little individual Puffclaws burned to a crisp.
The beasts had completely separated from the black goo and the extreme temperature was halting them to do so. In a last-ditch effort, all of the remaining beasts combined their love ability to launch a massive invisible emotional attack that would make Mako feel an insane amount of guilt so much so that he would want to kill himself.
The Puffclaws couldn't survive such high heat for too long so they quickly channeled their Love aura which they could pretty quickly since they were still part of the black goo and weren't fully separated yet and launched the massive emotional attack towards Mako.
The invisible attack hit right on target and its effects were instantaneous as Mako could suddenly visualize his grandmother again. However, unlike past times, this her grandmother wasn't smiling nor did she appear to console Mako or help him get past a hurdle. This time her grandmother was frowning upon Mako who still kept his hands glued to the ground, continuously supplying it with more fire aura in order to maintain the skill.
"Such weakness! Such incompetence! You're the reason, I am dead!"
"What did you even accomplish in your worthless life?! Failure!"
"You bring shame to our family name! It is a good thing you never knew your mother or father!"
These were the words that came out of his grandmother's mouth as she showed pure disgust toward Mako whose face was already covered in tears at this point.
Mako didn't know any other family members that he grew up with. He didn't even know much about his mother or father besides their names and a bit about how they died while serving in the military. From the very beginning, it had always been him and his grandmother.
His grandmother took care of him since he was an infant, taught him how to walk and talk, looked after him when he got sick, was there on his first day of school, and always consoled him when the whole world was against him. Mako cherished these moments with her like they were gold. To him, there was no person on this earth more pure and noble than his grandmother.
In spite of all of that, to hear those words come out of the person, Mako loved and cherished the most was like getting empaled by a thousand skewers right in the heart.
[User's hormones are spiking to critical levels]
[User is feeling an intense feeling of guilt and sadness]
[Temporarily blocking the User's ability to perceive emotion...]
"NO!" Mako commanded the system as he stopped it from involuntarily messing with his body again plus he didn't want to just dull out the guilt and pain that these hellish beasts had given him.
[User override accepted]
[System on standby mode]
Thanks to increasing his intelligence, and also having a high mentality, Mako wasn't affected much by the mental emotional attack that these beasts launched as a last-ditch effort.
Their Love ability had failed to draw out any singular emotion and cancel out the rest. The reason why Mako was crying was that even though he was in control of his own mind, he wanted to cry after hearing such words come out of the mouth of this illusion that resembled his grandmother.
However, since he wasn't affected by the Love ability which would have dulled the rest of his senses so he would only focus on the guilt, Mako was aware that this wasn't real and that it was just an illusion. So once he had obtained the maximum amount of guilt that he could from the illusion, he began converting that said guilt and sadness into anger.
"YYYAAAAAHHHHHH!" Mako screamed at the top of his lungs as he summoned every ounce of his willpower inside his body to increase the rate of flow of Fire aura into the ground.
Adrenaline pumped in large quantities all over his body as veins popped on his head and arms. Although, the fire aura inside the ground was already very concentrated Mako's newfound rage and willpower forced more and more aura to condense within himself as well as the ground.
As he squeezed the aura more and more so that it could be released at a faster rate, suddenly a reaction occurred in his body where the tightened blob of Fire aura inside Mako released a couple of sparks.
Mako's entire body pulsed with power so much that it made it difficult for him to breathe, but Mako pushed on through and the sparks created by the Fire aura ignited as the color of the fire aura changed turned from bright orange to deep red similar to the Fire aura that Mikhail possessed.
The space that the blob of Fire aura Mako possessed shrank significantly as it condensed even more during its transformation. Once the transformation was complete, there was way less fire aura to speak of but now the aura had turned completely red and the flow rate of the fire aura into the ground had actually increased rather than decreased.
[A change has occurred with the user's fire aura]
[Computing changes...]
The ground began to crack from the pressure that Mako's hands were exerting on it but Mako didn't stop as he used every ounce of anger and rage that he had within his body to ignite the flames of Flame pillar into turning into the red color as well.
The flames that were burning the black goo got exponentially hotter as it transitioned from the standard orange into this lava-like red color.
The high-pitched screams of the Puffclaws became even more fierce as the hotter flames started burning it at a much faster rate.
The temperature was too hot for the Puffclaws to do anything and they very quickly perished and turned into ash.
*Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!* *Ding!*…
Mako was bombarded with several notifications each confirming the kill of a single Medium tier Puffclaw. After about a minute of blasting the black goo with the red flame pillar, the notifications finally stopped, confirming the kill of the last Puffclaw still present inside the black goo.
Mako stopped the skill a moment later and the scene left after the use of such a skill was completely mind-boggling.
The ground from where the flames had erupted was still super hot and red, right at the cusp of becoming lava. The giant puddle of black goo that was engulfed in flames was now reduced to complete black ash powder with steam rising as was still extremely hot.
There were no body parts or blood to speak within the pile of ash as everything was completely incinerated, but there was still something shiny and reflected poking out of the ash that had caught Mako's eyes.
The area was still too hot to come near so Mako had to use Analyze on it from afar.
[Analyze]
[Medium Tier Puffclaw Crystal]
Even though the heat was strong enough to leave the ground on the cusp of melting into lava and turning all the organic matter contained within the black goo into complete ash, the crystals were still intact and completely unfazed by the extreme temperature around them which left Mako completely baffled as he couldn't believe that these crystal were so resilient to heat.
He began to think about how the forging process must happen to melt and forge armor and weapons using these very crystals.
The rejuvenating pills were coming in the real clutch even after releasing such a strong and powerful move that would have completely emptied his energy pool which it almost did, Mako still had around 300 units of energy left in the tank and that number was increasing back up again.
However this didn't mean that Mako wasn't exhausted as he had gone way past what his stamina allowed and his entire body was physically hurting so much that Mako didn't want to move a muscle, but with both Bill and Iris also down, he knew he could rest just yet as he had to make sure both of them were okay.
Along with his physical body hurting like he was impaled by thousand needles all over, he was having a mental headache with the number of notifications that the system was generating.
Mako didn't have time to check out the notifications at that moment as he still had to get Bill and Iris to safety as well as collect all the crystals from the ash once it has cooled down a bit.
He had to return back to the shelter so that Leon could prepare himself for the next wave which Mako was very concerned about considering how tough this third wave was.
*Ding!* *Ding!*
"Oh my god! Can you shut this damn noise off!" Mako screamed in frustration as the notification sounds kept bugging him.
[Notifications turned to silent mode]
"What?! You could do that all this time?" Mako said as he was left in complete shock with the system complying with his request and actually turning off the system notification sounds which was a first for Mako.
He wanted to get rid of that sound for so long now, but he never knew that the notifications could be turned silent or else he had done it a long time ago.
Now with some peace and quiet, Mako painfully walked over to Bill to check and see if he was okay.