The Magician's Journey

  The Ice Snake King now has signs of madness, with two blood-red eyes emitting a strange red glow. It opens its big mouth and rushes towards me and Freya's position again, I can even see the two sharp teeth in its huge mouth that are shining with cold light.

  Two enormous vines with thorns burst out of the ground, like two green giant snakes tightly wrapping around the body of the Ice Snake King. The ice snake struggled to twist its body to get rid of this sudden restraint. Furei finally made her move.

  The Ice Snake King shrunk its body into a ball, and the two vines also tightened up, trapping it inside. Suddenly, the Ice Snake King's body seemed to inflate like a balloon, and the tightly shrunk vines finally couldn't withstand the force of the inflation and "Boom" burst into countless fragments.

  However, my binding spell has been released, and every move the ice snake makes towards us becomes extremely difficult. The air around us seems to have turned into a kind of super-viscous glue, making it impossible for the wind element to be shapeless. The Ice Snake King's attempt to repeat its previous trick has become impossible, but it still stubbornly moves towards us bit by bit, without any intention of giving up.

  Inferno, an upgraded version of Fireball, although the fireballs released are only slightly larger than those of Fireball, their power is increased by tenfold. It's one of the mid-tier magic that's closest to high-tier magic. As long as the Ice Snake King is immobilized and unable to move, if it gets hit, it will immediately be blown to smithereens by this spell.

  The King of Ice Snakes opened its huge mouth, and a massive water ball flew out from it, colliding with the incoming Exploding Flame Technique in mid-air. The two spheres collided, and the water ball immediately wrapped around the fireball, tightly enclosing it inside. The high temperature of the fireball caused the surrounding water ball to rapidly vaporize and turn into white steam that rose up. When the Exploding Flame Technique broke through the water ball's encirclement, its power had almost completely dissipated. The remaining weakened fireball, although hitting the King of Ice Snakes as intended, did not cause any substantial damage under the protection of its thick scales.

  The remaining ice snakes saw their leader being attacked and immediately launched a fierce counterattack, fighting to the death. It seemed they understood that in order to save their leader, they had to eliminate us humans. However, Dakuru fully demonstrated the strength of a beastman shaman here. He made a strange guiding gesture, and suddenly, lightning chains like giant snakes emerged, destroying the ice snakes' attack. Countless ice snakes were struck by Dakuru's lightning chains and turned into charcoal. Moreover, Dakuru's flame totem shot out fireballs at the ice snakes, although not as powerful as those cast by real mages, but enough to kill an ice snake each time. The best part was that it didn't require Dakuru's control, it was an automatic attack.

  The Ice Snake King was hindered by the binding spell, also creating a great opportunity for Evan and Xilu. The figures of the two siblings suddenly appeared on the top of the Ice Snake King's head, and in an instant, two daggers were inserted into the Ice Snake King's blood-red eyes. The Ice Snake King was stimulated by severe pain, violently twisting its body, miraculously breaking free from the control of the binding spell. The powerful twisting force immediately threw Evan and Xilu off its body like dust.

  The King of Ice Snakes endured the pain and relied on his memory to open his big mouth and bite down in our direction. Evan, who was thrown to the ground, quickly pushed me and Freya away with one hand, but the giant snake swallowed Evan whole in one gulp.

  Frey and I were shocked, Frey immediately cast a spell of wood magic to re-fix the Ice Snake King with vines, while I shot ice cones at the part around the throat of the Ice Snake King that was clearly bulging out, trying to break open the throat of the Ice Snake King to rescue Evin, but unfortunately there was a thick layer of scales around its throat, which were abnormally hard and easily blocked my ice cone.

  Just as everyone was worried about Evan, the throat of the Ice Snake King suddenly exposed a sharp blade of a dagger. The sharp blade moved quickly and cut out a long slit in its throat. Evan fell from that slit, two dark shadows flashed by, and Evan and the corpse of the Ice Snake King fell down together.

  We didn't have time to care about the fate of the ice snake, and we rushed towards Evan. We saw Evan struggling to get up from the ground, covered in mucus and blood, but this guy was swaying back and forth, laughing loudly, saying: "Bastard, want to eat me? You'll need a stomach for that."

  Seeing Evan was fine, everyone let out a sigh of relief, especially Ciel, who kicked her brother several times and said: "Every time it's like this, why do you have to be so desperate? It's not like we can't kill it, making everyone think you're dead for sure!"

  Ivan laughed heartlessly and repeatedly said: "Exciting, too exciting!" Xi Lu was so angry that her tears were about to come out.

  With Evan confirmed to be safe, everyone finally had the mood to look at the giant Ice Snake King. The ice snake lay on the ground, gasping for breath, its body twitching occasionally. It was clear that it wouldn't survive. Dakuru also eliminated all the remaining small ice snakes, and the battle finally came to an end.

  Ivan, who had laughed enough, immediately pulled his sister to start cleaning up the battlefield. They worked until late at night and finally dug out all the crystals from each of the small ice snakes' bodies. Except for those that were completely destroyed by the flames, the intact crystals piled up into a small mountain in the center of the camp. Those water-elemental crystals were crystal clear and varied in size, with larger ones approaching the size of the gemstone on my magic wand and smaller ones being about the size of a pigeon egg. It was indeed a bountiful harvest.

  And within the body of that ice snake king, a huge and perfect crystal of deep blue color was dug out. Even from a distance, one could feel the fluctuations of magic power. Evan, who didn't waste anything, even peeled off the skin of the ice snake king intact. According to him, the skin of the ice snake king is also a rare good thing. If made into boots, belts or hats, it would have agility attribute by nature. If handed over to tailors and alchemists to make leather products, they could make the best magical leather armor, not only with wind attribute bonus but also extremely tough, with very high defense power. If Evan's two daggers weren't nearly divine artifacts, it wouldn't be so easy to peel off the skin of the ice snake king.

  The skin of the Ice Snake King was taken by Paiwen without hesitation, and the large blue crystal was unanimously given to me. Dakuru even explicitly stated that he only needed to bring back the rare snake fruit to be satisfied, and the mountainous pile of crystals was evenly distributed among the remaining two ladies. Given that I possessed a storage ring, they unanimously requested that it be stored with me.

  After the division of spoils was completed, everyone could finally take a break and rest. It wasn't until this moment that everyone's heart truly relaxed.

  "Clap, clap, clap!" Suddenly a round of applause came from outside the camp, and a lazy voice rang out: "You've really done a big thing at my doorstep, don't you think you should pay me, the owner, some tax or something?"