Chapter 491: Katharina became stronger with the flames.

The heat was absolute. An incandescent ocean that would instantly turn any living being to ash, but for Katharina, it was like a warm caress. The sea of lava stretched in all directions, a hellish lake whose surface bubbled in columns of red and orange, spewing sparks from the very heart of the world. Yet she dove in serenely. Her naked, immaculate body glided through the flaming waves as if in the crystal-clear waters of a sacred spring.

Her half-closed eyes reflected the glow of the lava, and the slight smile on her lips revealed an almost blasphemous satisfaction. For days, she had been searching for the limit of her endurance, testing how much of the raw essence of fire she could absorb. Now, the answer seemed clear: there was no limit. The heat not only did not destroy her—it accepted her, it fused with her.

Katharina stretched out her body, arms outstretched, as if embracing the entire burning sea. Her hair, drenched in viscous magma, moved like fiery serpents entwining around her head. Each breath she took drew the essence of lava into her. Not just heat, but energy. Strength. An ancient, untamable power, devoured and shaped by her will.

She felt the fiery molecules dissolving against her skin, penetrating to her very bones, transforming her into something new. Her fingers clenched, and her smile widened.

“So this is it…” she murmured to herself, her voice deep and soft at the same time, echoing in the desolate space. “The fire is mine.”

She relaxed again, floating as if weightless, supported by the thick waves of magma. The bubbles bursting around her released flames that licked the air wildly, but within her they merely rested like a warm breeze. Each crackle, each incandescent current reinforced the dominance that had grown within her.

It was more than resistance. Katharina was beyond that. She had become immune. An immunity so complete that the flaming essence itself was no longer hostile—it was part of her.

Time lost its meaning. It could have been minutes, hours, or days. She didn’t know. She was in absolute ecstasy, absorbing, breathing fire, bathing in the liquid hell as if in a healing spring.

Until she felt it.

Something pulled her body down. A sudden, aggressive pressure closed around her legs, dragging her into the depths of the flaming lake. Katharina opened her eyes slowly, her expression calm. She saw, emerging from the densest layers of lava, immense claws, red as incandescent metal. Thick, viscous tentacles rose, wrapping around her thighs, her calves, squeezing with colossal force.

The lake floor trembled. The magma swirled in vortices as the owner of those tentacles revealed itself. A Kraken made of solid and liquid fire, a colossal monstrosity whose body seemed forged from the volcanic crust itself. Its misshapen face was a mass of molten rock, with circular eyes that glowed white, like two miniature suns. Each tentacle gushed lava as if it were pulsing blood, and its mouth gaped into rows of obsidian teeth, serrated and brutal.

Any other being would have screamed in terror. Katharina merely sighed, resting her chin on her hand in boredom. “You ruined my bath.”

The creature roared, the sound reverberating like an erupting volcano, the weight of the lava trembling around it. It tried to pull her deeper, crush her into the incandescent bowels of the lake.

Katharina closed her eyes for a moment. Then, slowly, she opened them. Within them, the red glow flickered like a brazier, a reflection of the power it had absorbed.

“Pathetic.”

In an almost lazy movement, she raised her right hand. Her fingers sliced through the tentacle as if cutting through butter. Heat exploded around her, magma gushed like liquid blood, but nothing touched her. In the next instant, her hand clenched into a fist—and she struck.

A single punch.

The impact ripped through the tentacle, rippling through the incandescent flesh, and into the Kraken’s main body. The energy spread like a seismic wave. The creature roared, a sound that sent the lake itself up in columns of lava, but it was brief. The body crumbled from the inside out, cracking into thousands of fragments, until finally disintegrating in a shower of fire that returned to the molten sea.

Katharina remained where she was, motionless, the lava flowing down her body as if it were nothing more than warm water.

“Tsk. Weakness.”

And she relaxed again, but this time, something changed. She felt what the Kraken had left behind—not flesh, not bones, but energy. A wild essence, pure, compressed fire.

She smiled and opened her arms again. She took a deep breath.

The sea responded.

The lava began to move toward her, as if summoned. Whole waves crashed and rushed toward her body. Bubbles burst in cascades, pouring energy into the air that was sucked in by her breath. The entire lake vibrated, and with each passing second, more and more magma broke free from its colossal mass and rushed toward Katharina.

She absorbed everything. Not just heat, but matter, essence. The entire sea trembled under her will.

Gradually, the glow of the lava began to fade. What had once been a fiery ocean was now turning into black, cracked terrain, its surface hardening, drying, crumbling under the force of the void she created. The lake receded, meters at a time, while Katharina’s skin glowed, now covered in a reddish-orange halo, as if made of the very magma it consumed.

She didn’t stop.

Deeper and deeper, farther, vaster, absorbing every drop, every particle. The smell of sulfur, the sound of molten rock breaking, the heavy air growing thin—all of it drained into her. With each beat of her heart, the sea of lava diminished, until what remained was nothing but small fissures spewing impotent sparks.

Finally, silence.

Where the incandescent lake once stretched, there was only a dry, cracked crater, a black earth that still smoked. No trace of the fiery ocean remained. The liquid hell had been completely devoured by a single woman.

Katharina stood in the center of the crater, her body covered in a flaming aura that writhed like fiery serpents, dancing around her. Her eyes burned like two suns, and each breath released soft flames that disappeared into thin air.

She raised her hand and examined her skin. Not a mark, not a scratch. Just absolute perfection. And now, with the eternal flame pulsing within her, there was more than immunity.

There was mastery.

“Being close to the fire gave me a good sense of the truth behind the element… This forest, it truly is mad. But I became part of the fire with it,” she said softly, almost like an oath.

The hot wind swept through the crater, sweeping up black dust. Katharina closed her eyes again, inhaling deeply. She could still feel remnants of power in the ground, but nothing compared to the vastness she had absorbed. A soft laugh escaped her throat.

“There are no limits anymore… I want to become stronger… my husband will see… will he love me more if I am stronger?”

She turned slowly, walking across the dry crater with slow, steady steps. Each footprint she left glowed red, as if her body were now a burning heart that could not be contained.

Katharina wasn’t just resistant to fire. She wasn’t just immune. She was fire itself, in demonic form.