From within came extreme cold and violent Magic fluctuations. "You think I'll let you run?" Having returned to his pitch-black form, Black Dragon: Belial made his entrance. Seeing the enemy still able to flee, he could only admire how tough he was, though that weakness looked like mere lingering survival.
There was no way he would let him go now. "God of Destruction! I'm coming!" The thought of killing the opponent, grabbing the biggest experience reward, and unlocking the God of Destruction panel in one go filled Belial with joy. In that moment, both sides were strangely happy.
Inside the canyon, the commotion was no calmer. Salva, twisted into a black, grotesque form, dodged the sudden rise of ice mountains. A massive frost-white wolf head lunged from the icy mist, and he escaped only after losing three arms.
He seemed to realize something and smiled. "Perfect, all the audience is here. It's time to take the stage, and time to return what belongs to the the Lord." He threw the chained coffin into the air with his left hand.
Seated atop an ice peak, Icelis's eyes sharpened as her figure blurred and flashed. She caught it with her small hand. Inside were fragments of her own body, and realizing this, she looked at Salva with icy contempt.
"What is it, insect, ready to die properly now?" She could sense that another fragment was elsewhere, but that was fine. Once she recovered even a little, she could use the connection between her body parts to retrieve it.
"You flatter me, my lady. It's only that the actors have finally gathered," Salva said with a confident smile. "This is just a small gift for everyone before the show. Please accept it."
"So your clown companion is back? It doesn't matter. You're not our match." Without hesitation, Icelis used brute cold to force open the iron coffin sealed with Magic. The moment it opened, the surrounding air chilled sharply.
Fragments of varying size flew out, ice-blue light mixed with a hint of red-purple. The aura was correct, these were indeed her fragments. To avoid delays, Icelis began fusing them immediately, a process that would not take long.
She was not worried about any tricks placed on them. Her fragments carried high-level Laws power, and even if she could not detect something, it would not be capable of affecting her. That was the confidence of a great spirit at the pinnacle of an element.
Salva knew this as well. Any backup plan would fail if she fully recovered, so he had not given everything at once. And because this was a hastily modified product, even partial recovery of the Ice Spirit would be enough to ignore that influence, but weakness would change things.
"I said it's just a small gift, and things like this are for everyone!" Salva's face again showed the uncontrollable fanaticism that had never faded. He watched the increasingly bright and cold light in the air.
Someone else watched with him. Fei'er Li hugged a blank white book while pressing down on the Ice-Blue Shard sealed in a small glass bottle at her neck. After hearing the report from that Wolfguard uncle, she had been confused, then uneasy.
Why would a villain so generously hand over one of the most important items to the enemy? "No matter how you look at it, something is very wrong." She frowned, unconsciously gripping a talisman in her pack, and in that hidden corner, a glimmer seemed to appear in the goddess's eyes.
At the canyon's edge, a flaming meteor crashed to the ground. Kwenfield coughed blood as he struggled to stand. Using his remaining strength, he activated another seal hidden there, tearing open a gap with Rend as another iron coffin radiating cold appeared.
He smiled weakly and pressed his hand against it. Most of his remaining Blessed Power was transferred inside.
Icelis felt as if she had a dream. The completion of her body fragments took very little time in the real world, yet it felt unexpectedly long to her. Her awareness seemed bound by shackles from the past, dragged back into a sealed stretch of time, and she vaguely recalled things from when she had once been whole.
She opened her eyes and looked around, but there was no trace of ice or snow from the Northlands. All she saw was a red world of fire, flames stretching from the ground to the sky. They burned without end, so bright that even the sun no longer stood out.
She had only a small patch of white beneath her feet, and deep within the flames there was another presence. Icelis tried to see it clearly, and that presence seemed to notice her as well, turning its gaze and spreading its wings until they blocked the sky.
Wrong, hateful, disgusting, a disaster that should not exist. A powerful sense of revulsion surged up, as if that existence itself was a mistake, something that did not belong in the world. There was also too much fire around her, burning away things she disliked and even more things she cherished.
Then there was only one thing to do. That presence had already looked at her and risen high into the air, rushing straight toward her. Just do it like this.
Icelis reached her hand forward.
From the outside, the fragments merged naturally into the true body of the Ice Spirit. The light was cold and blinding, yet unexpectedly, Icelis herself lowered her head without any response. Something was wrong.
"Icelis?"
The White Wolf had meant to protect its own the Lord person, but when there was no response, a slight heaviness settled in its heart. Dotleivy called out softly.
Icelis's right hand twitched a few times, red lines like blood vessels surging within it, and then she raised her hand straight toward Dotleivy. "You are not something that should exist in this world."
In her vision, the flaming figure with beating wings rushed toward her, and she lifted her hand. "@￥.!wh%&sw.?kg.dk@."
Icelis raised her head, revealing half a face covered in solid ice, and lifted her hand again. "Wait! It's me…"
Before Dotleivy could finish speaking, massive connected peaks of the Glacier Mountains burst from the ground with Icelis as their origin. In an instant, they filled a corner of the canyon with overwhelming force.
Dotleivy's form reassembled in a distant corner through the Ice Element, but it was much smaller than before. Its original body had been destroyed by the attack, and disbelief filled its eyes.
It was not just the attack. Its body no longer obeyed it, as every element that made it up had received orders from a higher authority, even suppressing part of its own Laws. As an elemental spirit of ice itself, Dotleivy felt something it had never felt before: cold.
There was no doubt that such control and suppression of the Ice Element and the Laws of ice meant that Icelis, after fusing part of her fragments, was gradually returning to her former peak. But why had this happened, and why was she attacking it?
Mind control made no sense. Icelis's elemental nature was nearly immune to mental interference, since one could not control a rock with the mind. Her fragments also carried high-level ice Laws, a pure essence that rejected foreign interference, so what could possibly affect her without being noticed by the true the Lord person?
Dotleivy split its thoughts across multiple threads while flashing away and reassembling again, narrowly avoiding another erupting ice peak. At the same time, new changes appeared on Icelis's body.
Her whole body twitched like spasming muscle, and ice extended from her back as if bones were being pulled out, forming half an ice wing made only of a skeletal frame. Jagged ribs like claws stretched outward, while another layer of ice covered her body as if she were trapped inside it.
Her outstretched hand was fully encased in ice and reshaped into a three-clawed talon. When she clenched it, the ice mountains she had raised began to shrink at high speed, returning to raw elements and Magic. In moments, dozens of meters of ice were compressed into a three-meter-long ice sword covered in barbs, which she brought down in a single strike.
Dotleivy dodged with all its strength, yet its body and soul felt frozen and hard to move. The Laws from the source itself became a cage, locking it in place.
A member of the Wolfguard rushed out from the side at the critical moment and dragged Dort Vann away. Even so, a third of his body was cut away, and that portion could not be restored.
The ice sword did not cause a wide shockwave, but Dort Vann clearly saw what lay behind him. A thin ice scar, no thicker than a fist, split through most of the rocky canyon, plunging deep, with stone reduced to frozen powder. In the distance, a mountain that had been cut diagonally slowly slid down.
"What exactly is happening!" Dotleivy stared wide-eyed. It was certain that something else had happened to Icelis, because this sealed-in-ice state was nothing like the original Ice Spirit. The last attack alone exceeded what the fused fragments should have been capable of.