Badge in Azure

The hunting that time felt rather ironic. The high-level magic beasts to be hunted were difficult to hunt, but it was nowhere near as difficult as the Ancient was to commandeer. So long as the supply of grade-9 magic nucleus was sufficient, the weapons onboard would prove more than adequate to kill the beasts effortlessly.

They were still at the outskirts of the oceanic ice block. The block itself had the surface of the sea covered in thick sheets of ice, making it impossible for the Ancient to venture inside. The pan’s turtle alchemical boat became the only ship that was of use in the upcoming journey. That meant that when the troupe actually found the cemetery, the Ancient would not be any help to them.

Rossen, the water puppet, brought around twenty goons with it, making their way for their prey. Nailisi managed to catch up to them when the group was about five miles away from the beasts.

The water puppet did not bother greeting Nailisi. It simply jumped right into the water to get close to that piece of floating ice the beasts were on. It was fortunate that the wind was blowing in their direction, or the grade-9 magic beasts would have been able to smell the demons and the spirits out.

Nailisi smirked seeing the water puppet being so unfriendly. “I don’t give a damn about you so long as you know your place and follow orders. If you dare go against me, I swear I will get a chance to have your consciousness wiped, and have you start all over again. I sure as hell don’t think you will be so individualistic every time.

The huge white bears had finished eating their prize, and not even bones were left. The dead sea magic beast’s bones would have been useful for making weapons, as their durability was as tough as metals. Such durable bones were rendered powder being chewed by these white bears’ fangs.

The demons that the water puppet brought with it all wore elf armor, and the spirits were working on their home turf as they themselves hailed from the water. They made their way stealthily under the floating ice. While the white bears were able to sense them coming, they were nonetheless of grades below grade-7. The bears hardly saw them as threats and continued playing on the ice instead.

They, however, were not able to detect the water puppet’s presence. Once entering the sea, the water puppet’s body turned transparent, seemingly having melded with the sea around it. As for Nailisi, she took her spirit form and hid her presence with the three-faced bone demon’s ability, making her look like little else than some peculiar pile of bones.

Nailisi stopped anyone who wanted to follow her earlier, including Nicholas. The grade-9 magic beasts were of heights exceeding ten yards. As such, their magic nuclei were of sizes that could have been cut into thirty to forty standard-sized nuclei. If she was lucky, said magic nuclei might have even been capable of yielding more than one-hundred standard-sized ones each.

The only problem was that the offensive powers of beasts grew proportionately with the size of their magic nuclei. If one such beast’s magic nucleus had been able to yield more than one-hundred standard-sized nuclei, it would have meant that it would have been capable of casting grade-9 spells hundreds of times. That would have made them significantly more powerful than sorcerers.

While it was indeed a given that magic beasts lacked the mental capacity to actually do so, they were nonetheless capable of running, not to mention that their mental powers regenerated quickly. If one was not able to take one out with just one strike, killing the beasts would be very difficult.

Saleen forbade more from joining the fray. He instead had the Ancient release its signature mist, allowing them to close on the target slowly. The bears were rather indifferent about the mist approaching, and as such were hardly alerted.

There were simply too many floating ice pieces around. Keeping the speed of the Ancient at twenty miles per hour made it difficult for the ship to keep up the water puppet’s pace.

The water puppet wore a full set of Mystic Ice Armor, a mutated form of the Ice Plate Armor. The Ice Plate Armor worked by protecting the entire body as a full suit of personal armor. It came with self-repair properties, making it a powerful defensive spell. The Mystic Ice Armor, however, worked like armor pieces attached directly to the water puppet itself. Each piece of the armor possessed powerful defensive capabilities, but it lacked self-repair properties.

The water puppet was practically immune to physical attacks and had chosen to use the Mystic Ice Armor, as both types shared identical elemental defense capabilities. The invention of the Mystic Ice Armor was intended to be used between mages and assassins working in cohesion. The Mystic Ice Armor possessed no elemental vibrations, and did not exude cold air like the Ice Plate Armor. Those properties enabled it to last longer, making it a perfect buff for assassins lurking in the dark.

Nailisi’s three-faced bone demon form was weaker in the water. She did not bother flaunting her bravado. She simply chose to trail behind the water puppet’s group, waiting for her chance.

A spirit struck the ice from under with a giant spear in its hand. The act finally alerted the grade-9 beasts, as the floating ice was where they rested. It was common for grade-9 beasts to conserve their energy at the oceanic ice block, just so to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed by low-level magic beasts in massive numbers.

Three bears huddled together and looked under the ice. The thickness of the ice was about eight yards where they were. The spirit was only able to chisel at the ice slowly to make a hole, as it was impossible for it to simply penetrate the ice. The three white bears grew furious at the thought of their turf being invaded and roared in anger. Their huge paws slapped onto the surface of the ice, spraying ice pieces everywhere.

The ice around the area was penetrated by the grade-9 beasts in a blink of an eye. One of them opened its mouth and sucked hard, causing the seawater around to spin furiously, which sucked a spirit up.

That particular spirit was of the lowest level among the group: only grade-4. As soon as it got sucked upwards by the vortex, it was shattered into pieces by a slap from a huge paw. The three white bears were hardly satisfied with the revenge and took to stepping on the remains of the spirit for a while and roaring furiously. The sound was heard for more than a dozen yards away.

The Vortex was upgradable high-level magic. The particular one used by the bear earlier was of grade-7, which completely rendered the grade-4 spirit helpless. The Vortex dispersed above the ice, alerting none of the other bears. The evidence of the attack laid with the pieces of mystic ice spreading about the foot of a white bear.

Temperatures of mystic ice were significantly higher than normal ice, only somewhere near the freezing point. There was a transparent crystal ring lying among the pieces of mystic ice, perfect still on the floating ice.

Seeing how the three white bears were able to wipe out the invader, the other white bears began playing about again. They were all young beasts, probably a splinter group split out from a larger group, forming their own somewhere else. The three served as the group’s temporary leaders.

The leaders did not order the group to be on high alert, and the other bears did not bother looking clearly at what happened under the ice. A matured group would have had more than one-hundred white bears, and the older ones would have been nearing grade-10. Such groups would not have made such mistakes.

The three leading white bears walked around the hole they made for a bit before leaving. A shadow emerged from underneath as they were just about to leave and the shadow turned out to be a demon instead of a spirit.

Demons were creatures of flesh and blood, unlike spirits. As such, they were very attractive to magic beasts.

The demon was struck with fear. There were creatures equivalent in terms of power to supreme demons on the ice. Said demon was required to attract the attention of such fearsome creatures beneath the ice.

The three white bears made their way back to the whole and roared, casting Vortex. The Vortex was a skill used by them to catch creatures in the water. The skill hardly ever failed them. The demon in the water struggled to get free but proved powerless against the ensnarement the grade-9 magic cast. Nailisi looked from afar with eyes devoid of compassion. If she had bothered doing something, the demon would not have ended up being captured.

Tens of ice blades were thrown into the vortex all of a sudden. The white bears were grade-9 magic beasts. They were the apex predators on the floating ice in the outskirts of the oceanic ice block. Their mastery of water magic was almost equivalent to that of human sorcerers. Adding ice blades to the vortex was a common trick used for hunting.

Sharp cutting sounds were heard, and the poor demon ended up being cut into tens of pieces and sucked onto the ice from the hole, splattering all over the place. The demon’s armor proved useless against the ice blades’ attack.

The defensive properties of elf armor laid in its flexibility, but being cut by tens of ice blades cast by grade-9 magic beasts was equal to being attacked repeatedly by grade-7 magic spells. The demon’s armor was as good as cardboard being subjected to such conditions.

About a dozen white bears came near the splattered pieces on the ice. They turned somewhat violent at the smell of the demon’s flesh and blood. Some even began fighting for the pieces, ignoring the leaders’ roars altogether.

The water puppet began to take form gradually. The pieces of mystic ice on top of the beasts’ icy home were all attached to its body. A hand was formed, and it reached for the crystal ring, putting it on and then moved about in complicated ways, drawing magic signs.

It was Grade-8 magic: Endless Night.

Saleen had developed a deeper understanding of the dark magic. While the water puppet still needed to do signs to conjure the spell, the power of the spell conjured was nonetheless, identical to Saleen’s.

The water puppet had come to the point where it did not require any auxiliary equipment to cast a grade-8 Endless Night. With Saleen being unable to provide it with support in mental powers, the water puppet had begun to gauge its own abilities to fight with magic.

It did not possess magic chords, but as a body consisted only of water elements, its elemental manipulation abilities eclipsed Saleen’s in terms of speed.

Darkness consumed everything above the ice. The Endless Night was also equipped with spiritual attack, rendering targets incapable of determining any information related to battles. When the water puppet finished with the conjuring of the skill, its body had also almost regained its original humanoid form. It then pointed at a white bear nearest to it.

Whoop…

A tiny hole was seen on the white bear’s chest. Its powerful defense was rendered entirely useless under the workings of the crystal finger. The water puppet had turned the attack’s power to its lowest, and its finger turned pale all of a sudden. Most of the resulting magical recoil was absorbed by Raphael’s crystal ring. As such, its finger remained intact that time.

“No way…I can’t fight like I used to then,” the water puppet thought silently and then pointed at another white bear.

The power of the crystal finger was not one that could not have been controlled. It was just that the water puppet was used to casting the skill at full power, collapsing fingers, even entire arms with the castings. It was able to have good control of the power and tempo of the skill that time. The white bears fell one by one with their hearts punctured, being attacked at such close distance with three consecutive strikes.

It was able to see the bears clearly within the Endless Night, but the bears were unable to even see it.

If the bears had wanted to struggle free of the Endless Night’s shackle with the difference in levels, the bears would have had to pay a dire price. They were not very smart creatures, and would not have any intentions of fighting to the bitter end unless their hands were forced.

Such was the difference between humans and magic beasts. Grade-9 human sorcerers would have thought of ways to break the spell on the fly, even if they were unfamiliar with darkness magic. Magic beasts were not able to do anything against unfamiliar dark spells. All they were able to do was to keep expanding their magic nuclei to cast powerful elemental vibrations, in attempts to break the spell’s hold.

Whoop…

A sixth bear slumped on the floor as the water puppet pointed again, and a tiny bloody hole was seen through the bear’s body. The hole was hardly larger than a human’s index finger. If the water puppet had resorted to its old ways of attacking, the white bear would have ended up being split apart at the waist by its crystal finger.

“It is really a piece of cake taking down magic beasts.” As the water puppet thought, a giant paw swiped at it, throwing it off its feet.