Chapter 689: Elental Hunting
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
The entire world was filled with red flas, scalding magma, and an active sea of fire.
At a great distance, this would feel like a sauna, but at a close distance, it would be no different from being baked in flas, and if you tried to walk through here, you would burn to death unless you had fire-resistant equipnt and potions.
The sea of fire wasn’t quiet at all. Various strange creatures of fire were crawling out from within. They furiously attacked everything before them, including their own kind. And when their short lives reached the end, violent explosions and a return to the sea of fire would signify the end of their lives.
Fire elent creatures were everywhere. Fire lizards, low-level fire elentals, magma monsters, fla wolves, and so on were all cruelly killing each other. The victor would be able to devour the loser’s elental core for swift growth.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I knew how all of this ca about, it would be quite difficult to imagine this taking place in the famously frigid Northlands. This seed just like a nightmarish scene out of a story about the Fire Elental Plane. But, in a way, this place really had beco a part of the Fire Elental Plane due to elentalization.
However, amongst all the flas, there was a throne of ice and snow that attracted a great deal of attention from all the fire elent creatures.
This throne was more than 10 ters tall. It was enveloped with an aura of ice and snow. Even the sea of fire would instantly be frozen upon coming in contact with this aura. Any fire elent creatures that approached would also be instantly frozen solid.
There was a figure that appeared to be thinking about sothing while wearing heavy ice armor. It seed almost as if he had fallen asleep on the throne of ice. However, his bright eyes shone with the light of intelligence, proving that he was still awake.
Obviously, it would attract a lot of hate for soone to be summoning ice in a world of fire. Countless fire elent creatures charged over, yet they all transford into popsicles the mont that they got close. In fact, the ice-armor-clad person had yet to be forced to personally attack.
The ground was already covered in shattered ice shards. Those had previously been shards from the fire elent creatures. Being able to kill and defeat such fire elent creatures in such large numbers was more than enough evidence of the ice-armored man’s strength, even if this was still only the very outskirts of the volcano.
He remained silent on his throne, ignoring the fire elent creatures roaring at him from below. His thinking pose made him seem like he was waiting for sothing that never ca. Finally, he spoke when dusk began to set. His words were quite simple and aningful, and his voice was deep...
“...Damn it, my butt’s frozen to the throne!”
Ahem, ahem, at this mont, I finally had a realization. No wonder why a certain prince could sit on his frozen throne for so long! He was probably in the sa condition as , having gotten stuck to his throne from sitting for too long, and when his ho was invaded, he probably had to helplessly stand up... which likely hurt his butt imnsely.
I made up my mind to stop cosplaying as that unlucky prince, and that I should find a new look as I began to analyze my harvest here. But of course, before that, I first tossed out a signal flare to transmit a ssage to the outside world.
10 or so minutes later, two gigantic red dragons appeared in the sky and charged at with the speed of lightning.
Since red dragons were of the fire elent, they wouldn’t be viewed with hostility by the denizens of this elentalized area which had the traits of the Fire Elental Plane. Red dragons also had incredibly high fire resistance, so they completely ignored the fire elental creatures’ fire attacks against them. The two red dragons simply dived down, grabbed the throne which had retracted its aura of ice, and then turned around to fly off.
And since I was hunting on the outskirts of the volcanic area to begin with, we soon returned to the regular Northlands. The mont that I started breathing the cold air again, my harvest was obtained by as a trendous amount of ice magic mana poured into my body, chilling to the bone and almost killing from frostbite. It took nearly half an hour for to finally slowly recover.
“...It seems that I need to hunt less next ti. I didn’t expect the Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm to be so generous, giving this much again.”
The Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm had just given ice magic mana as a present. As for the reason? I would have to first talk about elental wars and dinsional wills.
Dinsions had their own wills. Although this sounded ridiculous, it was a fact that was accepted by all mages. Dinsions would be the amalgamation of various rules. Although dinsions were simplistic and chanical, they would indeed follow those rules... The exception would be the will of the Chaos Abyss, which was an unreasonable bastard that constantly cheated.
Most of the ti, the great majority of ordinary people wouldn’t even notice the existence of the dinsional will. They would also be unable to co into contact with the dinsional rules.
Every dinsional will would set different rules. Treating all of its residents equally was the only rule in common (with the will of the Chaos Abyss again being the only exception as the Chaos Abyss was controlled by an individual). Still, even the Chaos Abyss had its rules, such as the law of the jungle where the strong preyed on the weak being one of its basic rules. Killing an enemy would an obtaining a reward from the will of the Chaos Abyss, and the swift growth obtained after demonization would be an even stronger lure for you to follow the rules of the Chaos Abyss and continue to kill in order to beco ever more powerful.
Perhaps so people would say that devouring was the source of all growth. However, allowing... no, creating the rule of “devouring” was sothing up to a dinsional will.
In the mortal plane, if you made a contribution that benefited the dinsion of Eich, the dinsional will would also support you. For instance, back when I successfully transford the power of Law into a brand-new Concept, the dinsional will (the Source of Order) had given out great rewards and support. Not only did the Source of Order incorporate the Concept of Law into the power of Order, it also rewarded Wumianzhe with divinity and Divine Concepts. That was a trendous reward, the ability to beco a God.
The mortal plane’s rewards were rarely actual items. The rewards were usually special abilities and invisible preferential treatnt. You could take advantage of them if you knew about it, but in most cases, you wouldn’t even know what you had been rewarded with. Of course, the most common type of reward would be a mysterious amount of good luck (blessed by the heavens), while the most obvious punishnt for invaders and those who endangered the dinsion would be mysterious bad luck (this was actually one of the true reasons why demon kings would always be defeated in the end).
Damn it, I felt like I finally discovered why my Luck rating had always been E...
The Elental Planes would also have their dinsional rules. As I ntioned previously, the elental creatures would devour each other. This was common for any Elental Plane. The elental creatures would constantly evolve through devouring, eventually evolving to beco Elental Suzerains, who would then fight with each other and evolve into Elental Lords. The Elental Lords would then war against each other and compete to beco the next Elental God.
It could be said that the Elental Planes’ dinsional rules were quite simple and direct. The reward would be power from the Elental Plane. This was actually quite similar to the Chaos Abyss’ dinsional rules, but elental power would at least co without the downsides associated with the power of Chaos. As for who had plagiarized whose idea? I really didn’t know, but when considering the age of the dinsions, it was likely that the will of the Chaos Abyss had been the one to do it.
So, during any elental war between Elental Planes, only sufficient benefits would motivate the elental creatures to try their hardest to fight, and only the purest and most powerful elental power would be the most practical reward for the elental creatures.
Did all of this sound familiar? This should be quite similar to two major companies fighting both openly and in secret over a share of the market. The companies would reward the employees who contributed the most in helping them to obtain the market, encouraging them to continue working hard for the company’s sake... This was a highly suitable analogy to explain the truth behind elental wars.
Mages had discovered the simple dinsional rules of the Elental Planes long ago. In an elental war, using your elent to defeat enemy elental creatures (all Elental Planes would have this sa basic dinsional rule) would see you rewarded by your own Elental Plane. Since the Ice Elental Plane and Fire Elental Plane were at war now, and I had just used ice elent magic to kill nurous fire elent creatures, the Ice Elental Plane had rewarded with pure ice elent power that could help any ice elent creature to swiftly power up. But since I was an ice magic mage, I could instead transform this ice elent power into ice magic mana, which would be far more practical for .
This was the main reason why the Mage Country had bases in each of the major Elental Planes. In the Elental Planes, mages of the plane’s respective elent could swiftly improve their power there. However, mages of the sa elent fighting each other would barely be rewarded by the plane. Only by fighting an enemy elent in a ti of elental war would they get a great reward... and to continue my company analogy from earlier, no company would support their own employees fighting each other for market share, but would always encourage and reward their employees for successfully stealing market share from the company’s competitor.
For us elent mages, elental wars would be incredibly dangerous as we were no elental creatures. Just having stronger elental power would be mostly aningless. Magical cultivation was the accumulation of knowledge and experience. If your magic power exceeded your control of magic, you would basically be risking self-destruction at any mont.
However, in my case, what I lacked the most right now was elental power. Not only did I need to replenish myself for how weak I was after casting Ice Aeon, I also needed to strengthen my foundation so that I could increase my power level. My ice magic abilities were already at the realm of Level 4.
It was now the third day that I had been hunting fire elentals. Yet, for all three days so far, I could only do a small amount of hunting on the outskirts of the volcano. This wasn’t because I was too weak, but rather because the Ice Elental Plane was being far too generous to , giving far too much. I figured that this was because the elental war had just begun, so there were too few ice elent creatures hunting down the fire elent creatures. In fact, it was likely that I had beco the Ice Elental Plane’s “#1 Salesman”, and was receiving the “Best Employee of the Day” reward each day.
When calculating the ti, the ice elent creatures from the Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm should be arriving soon. At that ti, I would likely be receiving a more normal amount, so I could also consider hunting higher-level fire elent creatures at that ti. Hunting down fla wolves, fire lizards, and so on every day was way too boring, reaching the point where I wanted to find new tricks to amuse myself with... Wait a mont, I needed to first figure out how to unfreeze my butt from this throne—using force here would be too dangerous. Perhaps I might not even be able to ride on steeds anymore... Wait, was this why a certain person had fallen off from his steed!?
Cough, I should probably get serious now. Over the past few days, I had been rather pitiful. Hunting low-level fire elent creatures during the day was incredibly boring, and at night, I would have to spend all-nighters taking extra lessons. Not only that, it was the sa ice magic teacher as before who was giving those lessons...
“...Roland, for today, turn to chapter 153 of ‘Compound Effects of Water and Ice’. Let us properly discuss the effects of water and ice. But first, you need to forget everything that I taught you previously, because back then, I was digging pitfalls for the students...”
I felt like I was rendered speechless. Was there such a teacher out there!? Digging pitfalls for the students on purpose? As expected! I knew already that there had been sothing wrong with the situation back then! I failed my ice magic classes three tis back then... all because of Harloys!
“...No, it’s because you were too stupid. Everybody else passed their ice magic classes. The pitfalls I dug were only to make the students take longer paths, but you were heading in the wrong direction before you even took your first step.”
[I can guarantee that she’s telling the truth.]
Even my System made a remark at such a ti to give a bigger impact. Was my talent for magic that terrible?
“Believe , I’ve seen plenty worse students than you. Those students weren’t even able to beco acolyte mages. I truly don’t understand how you managed to beco an official ice magic mage back then.”
How had I beco an ice mage? I had relied on my System’s cheat-like powers.
But when I focused my attention on my System, the reply I received made feel even more helpless.
[From a certain standpoint, you aren’t really an ice mage. More accurately speaking, you’re more similar to an ice elent creature than a mage. Other mages analyze and understand theories in order to create magical spell formulas to control the power of the elents. However, you directly use your instinct and will to forcefully control the power of the elents. Other mages use their brains, but you rely on instinct... Other mages are sketching the exact object that they see, replicating it as faithfully as possible, while you’re using watercolor to draw what you sense, projecting your own reality instead. There’re trendous foundational differences.]
At this mont, countless mories entered my mind. How my understanding of ice was so connected to the Northlands, my mysterious foundational ice sculpting magic, and how Harloys had later changed her teaching thod for , no longer telling magic theories, and instead telling to go sense the essence of ice... What exactly was sensing the essence of ice supposed to be? Was that sothing that a mage who was supposed to rely on research, knowledge, and experints supposed to do? Now that I rembered all this, it all sounded like such a scam.
“Of course it was a scam! Have you ever heard of a mage trying to ‘sense’ things? That’s so unmagical! And the most unmagical part of all is that I was just trying to fool you back then, but it actually worked... So that’s why I switched to the thod for teaching magical beasts with you.”
Although I was quite displeased, I had a nice coback prepared.
“Hmph! You scientists wouldn’t understand, because you only know how to play with your data! I’m a literary student who believes in pursuing the romantic! Theories are crutches for idiots. Geniuses only need to rely on intuition and instinct!”
“...Okay then, dear romantic literary genius, would you like help curing the frostbite on your butt? Or, do you intend to crouch and apply dicine yourself? I definitely won’t do sothing such as taking pictures to sell to the fairies and Reyne...”
“...Dear Teacher Harloys, please continue your class! I can’t wait to beco an outstanding mage who’s a master of magic theories!”
Reviews
All reviews (0)