After getting her first taste of battle, Ivette became almost addicted to it. Over the following months, she went "fishing with explosives" on the Water Platform two or three times each month.
Though she only ever tested the waters, firing a few shots before running away, it truly helped her adapt to combat. She was no longer as flustered as she had been in the beginning, often launching Frost Bullets in wildly wrong directions.
She also discovered the ruler lurking here: a mutated giant serpent over thirty meters long, covered in rotting scales, with a single eye growing from its forehead.
The appearance of this "One-Eyed Serpent King" greatly disrupted Ivette's escape plans. Its existence meant that if she wanted to leave on the Flying Board in the future, she would need enough strength to face an attack from a giant beast of the lake.
That was quite a lot of pressure for her at the moment.
Before long, another twenty years passed.
It had now been a full seventy-three years since Ivette had transmigrated here.
Because of the threat posed by the One-Eyed Serpent King, she reduced the frequency of her trips to the Water Platform, lest a terrifying maw burst from the lake and kill her in an instant.
She also practiced harder than ever. Finally, one morning, she had accumulated one hundred Mana Points and compressed a tiny Mana Core within her body.
According to the theory of the Rune Siphon Effect, a high-density Mana Core would naturally draw in the surrounding magical elements. That proved to be true. Her cultivation efficiency improved dramatically, allowing her to gain 2.5 Mana Points every year. At that rate, she would gain another 250 Mana Points in merely a hundred years—by then, perhaps she would be qualified to challenge the Snake King.
Mm, merely.
Besides her breakthrough in Mana Points, over those twenty years, Ivette had also iterated the final forms of three magical formulas—Frost Bullet, Flame Dance, and Wind Walk—through experimentation in her spare time.
Among them, Frost Bullet's mana consumption had been reduced to the terrifying number of "1." She had truly achieved one Mana Point per bullet, and had also adjusted its method of attack. When necessary, she could create multiple virtual firing points and unleash Frost Bullets like a Gatling gun, creating a freezing storm.
Flame Dance not only had smoother handling and lower mana consumption, but could also designate launch positions. Through Shared Rune Array technology, each additional pillar of fire required only ten extra Mana Points. She could release up to four fire pillars at once, forming a fifty-Mana-Point Full Firepower Mode.
As for Wind Walk, it had been renamed Wind Control. It consumed eight mana per second and could create powerful winds. Whether accelerating herself, briefly hovering in the air, or blowing enemies away, it was immensely versatile.
Unfortunately, Ivette had not mastered more advanced theoretical knowledge, nor did she have sophisticated equipment to assist her.
Otherwise, she might have created magic better suited for flight, bypassing the Snake King's threat and escaping easily.
Over the following century or so, aside from an offensive spell called Wrath of Thunder, Ivette did not attempt to design any new magical formulas.
After all, instant-cast magic required two things: proficient memorization and an enormous amount of practice.
With her current memory capacity, adding Wrath of Thunder, which contained five hundred runes, was already her limit. If she forcibly memorized a fifth or sixth spell, it would be far too easy to confuse them and even mess up magic she had already committed to memory.
Thus, every day, she repeated the same tasks: "meditation," "magic practice," "going to the Water Platform for a break," "watching Mutated Creatures fight," and "observing the Snake King." Her days were peaceful and regular, and she had almost lost track of the passage of time.
Only during the coldest days of every winter would she suddenly realize with a jolt that another year had slipped away without her noticing, so quickly that she could barely form any memory anchors.
By then, her Mana Points were already approaching four hundred.
That morning, crouching at the entrance to the facility and watching another year's snow drift down, she thought that perhaps she could finally try testing the strength of that giant serpent in the lake.
Through her long observations, Ivette had gained a considerable understanding of the One-Eyed Serpent King. She discovered that the creature had no day-night habits at all. It seemed as though it did not need sleep and could emerge from the water at any time.
So she simply walked to the edge of the Water Platform and tossed several Magic Light Vine tendrils into the water, hoping to lure it out.
It took a long time to bait it, but Ivette did not lose heart. She knew the giant serpent had to be down there; otherwise, the other Mutated Creatures would not have stayed so far away.
It was not until dusk was approaching that a huge pale serpent eye, pupil-less and nightmarish, suddenly surfaced beneath the water. Though only a tiny fraction was revealed, it was enough to make one tremble.
"Roar—"
There was no waiting for an opening, no hesitation. In an instant, the giant serpent burst from the water, throwing up waves dozens of meters high!
Ivette had been prepared. With a pull from Wind Control, she dragged herself dozens of meters behind the platform, evading the attack before looking ahead.
Upon the dusky lake, the giant serpent rose more than ten meters above the water and looked down at her like a god gazing upon an ant.
Then, the serpent's snout split open to either side from the middle of its lower jaw, revealing a bright-red snake tongue. But upon closer inspection, it was not a tongue at all, but over a dozen slick tentacles twisted together.
Once they separated, they shot toward where Ivette stood like lightning, seemingly intending to wrap up the small, delectable prey before them and stuff her directly into its mouth.
Ivette's nerves were taut as she used Wind Control again to pull herself farther back. This was her first time fighting the ruler of the lake, and with a touch of both deep-water phobia and megalophobia, she did not dare relax in the slightest. After dodging the tentacles, she immediately unleashed her half-control, half-damage spell.
Frost Bullet, Gatling Mode!
Blue projectiles poured out from multiple angles. In just a few seconds, forty or fifty shots were fired, freezing the serpent's head and tentacles into an ice sculpture. The unbalanced serpent head crashed heavily onto the platform, making the entire structure tremble.
Then, seeing the giant serpent struggle, Ivette did not choose Flame Dance, lest it help the creature break free faster. Instead, she used another spell—the only new achievement she had made in the field of runes over the past century: Wrath of Thunder!
This spell followed an entirely different approach from her previous work. It no longer pursued the ultimate mana-efficiency ratio. Instead, it pushed single-target damage to the limit at all costs. At least within the restriction of five hundred runes, this was the highest damage she could achieve—and it naturally came with the greatest mana consumption.
A full 240 Mana Points!
One use, and more than half her mana bar was gone!
As the formula activated, a rune ring more than ten meters in diameter appeared in the air. A thick, dazzling bolt of lightning descended from it and struck the still-struggling frozen serpent head, snapping its body taut and making it convulse. Even after the ice shell shattered, it remained in a paralysis-like state, shaking without end.
Ivette held her breath, her heart pounding. She had fewer than one hundred Mana Points left, making a second Wrath of Thunder impossible. So she summoned the rune ring representing Flame Dance beside her, preparing to release pillars of fire.
But...
Before she could attack further, the giant serpent had already stopped moving. It no longer convulsed. Its massive head simply hung stiffly against the platform's metal grating, its eye and tongue-like tentacles turning black as an unpleasant burnt stench spread through the air.
Was it... dead?
Ivette was uncertain, but she did not stop moving. She immediately used Flame Dance to scour the half of the serpent's body stuck to the platform with flames, doing everything she could to sear every inch of its skin.
Only after the half of its body lying on the platform had been completely burned black, all signs of life gone, and she had thrown it into the bottom of the lake with Wind Control, could she finally be sure that this thing probably, perhaps, really was dead.