An Owl's Rise

With wide eyes filled with shock, she could see that Evelyn appeared mostly unharmed. The flames that easily would have burned her into a charred corpse seemed to have done almost nothing to Evelyn. It seemed that fortune had given her divine favor.

However, Evelyn herself did not feel lucky in any regard. Certainly, the intense heat of the flames had not harmed her in the slightest, but the explosive impact of the flaming arrow had broken several of her bones and caused internal bleeding throughout her body.

\'Damn it! I can\'t move my left wing.\'

As she tried to steady herself, Evelyn found that one of her wings was completely limp. Without it she could not right her body and continued falling towards the ground at an alarming rate.

Unable to fully stop her momentum, Evelyn used her gravity magic to lower her effective weight and created a wind cushion under her to absorb the shock of the fall.

Thankfully this was enough to prevent her from incurring any more serious damage as she crashed into the ground.

Despite the relatively soft landing, the pain Evelyn experienced was still immense. Her broken bones were violently rattled, and her internal injuries were worsened. For a normal creature the damage she had taken would be enough to put them close to death\'s door, but as a magical beast at the peak of the awakened rank, Evelyn\'s body was able to take a great deal of punishment without perishing.

At least, so long as she had magical energy within her.

With a gritted beak, Evelyn ignored the pain and forced her body to move.

From out of her storage cuff, she pulled out two powerful healing potions she had made herself. For the first one she splashed it over her body as an emergency treatment method. The second one she brought to her mouth and quickly drank once the initial potion had lessened the pain she was feeling.

\'I\'m really glad I prepared these. I\'d have been big trouble without them.\' Evelyn thought as she pulled herself up.

Thanks to the power of her healing potions the terrible injuries she had incurred were mostly mended within just a minute. Her body still ached all over, but the pain was not debilitating enough to slow her down so long as she stayed focused. She had dealt with far worse in the past after all.

Once she had finished her recovery, Evelyn\'s first order of business was to locate who had attacked her.

The white-hot flaming arrow that had snipped her out of the air had come fast and packed an incredible punch. So far, she had not encountered any fire elementals of aberrant beasts that were anywhere close to powerful enough to launch an attack at that level.

Luckily, the sniper made themselves known quickly. Unfortunately, it was by firing another arrow at Evelyn since she had survived the first one.

Forcing herself to move, Evelyn lowered gravity around herself again and used her fire and wind magic to create a burst of flames like those coming out of a rocket.

In a show of remarkable speed, she shot back into the sky and narrowly avoided the flaming arrow coming towards her.

The spot she had been just a moment ago was consumed by blazing explosion and a spray of molten rock spread through the area.

After dodging the second arrow, Evelyn finally had a bit of breathing room and was able to get a better look at the entity attacking her.

Sitting atop what looked like a wolf made of molten rock was a large six-armed fire elemental made of pure white flames that was easily four meters tall.

In one pair of its hands was a bow massive bow made of the same flames as the elemental\'s body. The others were currently empty, but Evelyn was able to surmise that it could likely create whatever sort of armaments it wished out of flames.

\'I wonder if that might be a grand fire elemental.\'

This was the first fire elemental she had seen that was clearly head and shoulders above the rest and the power behind its attacks was clearly close to that of a sovereign rank beast. At least, as far as Evelyn could estimate.

She could not understand why it had decided to target her when rank wise she was the weakest on the battlefield, but undoubtedly, she had caught its attention, and it was not going to let her go easily.

With Evelyn having evaded its second shot, the presumed grand fire elemental conjured two more bows and began launching a rapid dire volley of arrows towards her.

At the same time, the main force of fire elementals charged towards the weakened Inferno Field Rangers.

A brutal battle soon ensued between the two forces and any chance that Evelyn would receive some sort of assistance vanished in an instant.

\'Looks like they are more than happy to let me take fire from the strongest enemy for as long as I can last.\' Evelyn thought, seeing no one moving to intercept the mounted fire elemental relentlessly attacking her.

Nevertheless, Evelyn found this to be advantageous. If what was after her truly was a grand fire elemental, then taking it down would be the swiftest way to achieve her goal of claiming its heart.

Utilizing all three of her magic affinities, Evelyn darted around the sky and evaded the multitude of arrows flying towards her. At the same time, she pulled out one potion or pill after the other and consumed several items to enhance her abilities. She was not going to hold anything back here and brought out her rarest alchemical items to give her an edge against her vastly superior opponent.