Winged Rhinoceros

The next day, Arnold continued onward. He was now completely unbeatable against magical beasts at Fourth-level and below, and he had gained plenty of experience. Thus, Arnold eagerly hoped to encounter a Fifth-level Warrior magical beast and test himself against it.

On a tree beside a stream in the Warcraft Mountain Range, Arnold crouched low, staring at a magical beast drinking by the water.

A Winged Rhinoceros, a Fifth-level Warrior magical beast. It was wind-aligned, a strange bovine magical beast with wings that was exceptionally good at fleeing. The Winged Rhinoceros Arnold had discovered was covered in alternating cyan and earthy yellow, with three horns on its head. It was rather different from the Winged Rhinoceros Noah remembered.

After thinking it over, Arnold guessed that the Winged Rhinoceros before him was probably a mutated magical beast with both earth and wind attributes.

Mutation was simple enough. Generally, if a magical beast devoured another magical beast's magic crystal core or ate the flesh of a powerful magical beast, it might mutate. Out of a hundred mutated magical beasts, ninety-nine would be stronger than their original species. The remaining one was simply unlucky; some unexplainable phenomenon occurred during its mutation and stripped away all of its original attributes.

"Good. Killing this mutated magical beast will be the beginning of my defeating Fifth-level Warrior magical beasts," Arnold said confidently.

He quietly climbed down from the tree and slowly approached the Winged Rhinoceros. When he was thirty meters away, Arnold stopped. Winged Rhinoceroses were highly alert; if he got any closer, it might notice him.

Arnold silently chanted an incantation, and a Wind Blade swiftly flew toward the Winged Rhinoceros.

The Winged Rhinoceros continued drinking. Just as the Wind Blade was about to strike it, its small wings gave a light flap, and it instantly shifted to another position.

As expected, the Winged Rhinoceros was incredibly fast. Damn it, how am I supposed to fight this? Arnold felt utterly frustrated.

Arnold knew that a single Wind Blade could not deal with a Fifth-level Warrior magical beast, so he had merely used it to test the Winged Rhinoceros's speed. The test told him all he needed to know: it was extremely fast, even twice as fast as Arnold when he cast the auxiliary spell Extreme. And this was only the speed it had shown so far; perhaps the Winged Rhinoceros could go even faster.

Meanwhile, the moment it was attacked, the Winged Rhinoceros slightly turned around and fixed Arnold with its cold green eyes. Then it flapped its wings again. Over short distances, it moved as though teleporting, and before long it was nearly in front of Noah.

"I understand now. The Winged Rhinoceros's short wings can only move it quickly within a range of three meters," Arnold concluded after observing its route.

The Winged Rhinoceros was about to reach Arnold, but Noah did not panic. He silently began chanting an incantation.

Unexpectedly, the third horn atop the Winged Rhinoceros's head emitted fluctuations of earth-elemental energy. Arnold immediately sensed trouble and cut off his incantation.

Earth Spikes dozens of centimeters long erupted from beneath his feet. Arnold reacted swiftly and hurriedly retreated. Yet retreating did not solve the problem; Earth Spikes kept rising beneath him without pause, forcing Arnold to cast a wind-element auxiliary spell and fly backward. Even while retreating so quickly, Arnold failed to dodge one Earth Spike. It tore his trousers and slashed his thigh. Fortunately, Arnold's **strength had reached the level of a Second-level Warrior, and the First-level spell Earth Spike did not injure him.

The Winged Rhinoceros's Earth Spikes were not endless. Once the distance had widened, Arnold began to counterattack. He focused and silently chanted, then swept both hands forward. The ground where the Winged Rhinoceros stood seemed to transform into quicksand, and its weight of over a hundred jin sent it directly sinking into the earth. This was the effect of the Third-level spell—Quicksand Spell.

Earth magic was known as the "terrain reshaper" for good reason. In an environment filled with soil, the power of an earth mage's spells increased dramatically.

The Quicksand Spell could turn the ground within a certain area as loose as sand. Thus, the Winged Rhinoceros sank into the earth. Its wings spread wide, and it shifted directly onto nearby ground that had not yet collapsed. Yet the moment its hooves touched the ground, it immediately sank again. Arnold continuously cast Quicksand Spells for one purpose only: to make the Winged Rhinoceros sink before it could react.

After sinking into the ground two or three times, the Winged Rhinoceros grew enraged and let out an angry roar. Its palm-sized wings began to stretch, becoming half a meter long. The Winged Rhinoceros actually flew straight to one side, beyond the five-meter diameter range of Arnold's Quicksand Spell.

After the Winged Rhinoceros landed again, its wings, which had previously shone with cyan light, returned to normal and became dull and lusterless. Its wings must have been too small to support more than one brief flight.

Noah's Quicksand Spell had also effectively crippled the Winged Rhinoceros's short-range instantaneous movement with its wings.

Having rendered its wings unusable for the rest of the day, the somewhat intelligent Winged Rhinoceros decided to teach this human a lesson.

The Winged Rhinoceros charged rapidly toward Arnold. At the same time, elemental energy surged through the three horns on its head. The central horn released an Earth Thrust Lance, while the two side horns released nearly ten massive Wind Blades.

It seemed he had truly enraged this Winged Rhinoceros. Arnold smiled.

However, upon seeing those enormous Wind Blades before him, Noah could no longer smile. First, Noah casually leaped aside and dodged the Earth Thrust Lance. Then, facing ten rapidly spinning Wind Blades each half a meter in diameter, Noah directly cast the Third-level spell—Earth-Flow Wall. By gathering earth-elemental energy from the surroundings, he formed earthen walls over twenty centimeters long and wide. Fearing one wall would not withstand the Wind Blades' power, Noah released three Earth-Flow Walls in front of himself in one breath.

Sure enough, the massive Wind Blades charging straight ahead spun like cutting discs, continuously slicing through the earthen walls formed from earth-elemental energy. Within only a few seconds, the first wall was cut into several pieces. The second wall could not escape the same fate, and even the third wall lasted only a few seconds. However, after being blocked by three Earth-Flow Walls, the massive Wind Blades had been greatly depleted. By the time they reached Noah, Arnold shattered them with a casually formed Wind Shield. Of course, this was also the result of Arnold's observation. If the Wind Blades still retained much energy after cutting through three Earth-Flow Walls, Arnold would have continued forming Earth-Flow Walls rather than using a Wind Shield.

Wind Blades were far faster than the Winged Rhinoceros, but it had not been idle either. It desperately charged toward Arnold. This time, Arnold had had enough. Being chased around and attacked by a magical beast was not an option. His mind turned, and he immediately came up with an idea. A smile gradually appeared at the corner of his lips.

When the Winged Rhinoceros approached Arnold again, Arnold directly cast Gravity Spell.

Bzzzzzz~~~

Centered on Arnold, the air trembled. Even the ground within a hundred-meter radius took on a faint earthy yellow hue. The Winged Rhinoceros felt the pressure rapidly increase, and its charging steps slowed. Clearly, its speed had been reduced by more than half by the Gravity Spell.

The Gravity Spell he cast this time was a wide-area, indiscriminate spell, so naturally Arnold was affected as well. But if a mage could not counter the effects of his own spell, that spell probably would not be very practical.

The earth-elemental energy used in Gravity Spell contained a special fluctuation. As long as an earth mage mastered that fluctuation, he could use earth-elemental energy to negate the effects of Gravity Spell. An earthy yellow glow also flowed across Arnold's body.

With the Winged Rhinoceros greatly slowed while Arnold's speed remained unchanged, Arnold naturally evaded it with ease as he silently chanted another incantation.

First, a Quicksand Spell caught the slowed Winged Rhinoceros before it could dodge, causing it to sink directly into the earth. Seeing that things were going badly, the central horn of the Winged Rhinoceros flickered with earth-elemental fluctuations. So that was it—the Winged Rhinoceros could not climb out of the earth for the moment and intended to attack Arnold.