Scared?
Having come this far, how could I back down?
If he backed down, there was no telling how Hanks would mock him.
Of course, if the danger was too great and there was no way to pull it off...
Then fuck that third-tier mage tower...
Nothing matters more than staying alive.
At worst, I'll go back to fishing and hunting in the Desert!
With that resolve to flee at the first sign of danger, An Kai edged toward the oasis...
The oasis was also a gathering place for the creatures of the Desert.
Thorny plants three to four meters tall, somewhat resembling cacti, provided the greenery here.
Holding his [Meditation Staff], An Kai looked three steps ahead for every step he took.
Roars occasionally rang out from within the oasis, announcing that its residents were far from friendly.
Before long, An Kai followed the roars and found their source...
About fifty meters ahead of him.
Two giants nearly five meters tall were fighting almost twenty Desert Crocodiles at close quarters with their bare hands!
The roars came from the Desert Crocodiles!
[White Stone Giant: Lv8] [Desert Crocodile: Lv5]
Though outnumbered by the Desert Crocodiles, the [White Stone Giants] packed tremendous force into their punches!
Every blow that landed on a [Desert Crocodile] either killed or injured it.
A clear lake lay not far from them.
At the sight, An Kai understood why the two sides were fighting.
-A fight over water!
If An Kai was right, the [White Stone Giants] were the magical beasts Hanks had left out.
Though they were called "giants," they had nothing to do with humans. [White Stone Giants] were magical beasts formed from condensed earth elements.
Their outer layer of grayish-white armor gave them the name [White Stone Giants]...
They were savage by nature and loved to fight.
At Lv8, they were also the highest-level magical beasts An Kai had encountered so far.
As he watched the two sides fight, An Kai suddenly realized that the force of the [White Stone Giants'] attacks seemed comparable to the power of his Fireball...
At full strength, he could kill a [Desert Crocodile] with one or two Fireballs. The same held true for the [White Stone Giants], who could beat a [Desert Crocodile] to death with one or two punches...
The two [White Stone Giants] took nearly two hours to finish off almost twenty [Desert Crocodiles].
Pieces of [Desert Crocodile] bodies littered the battlefield.
Dark brown [Desert Crocodile] blood covered the ground.
There weren't even five intact [Desert Crocodile] heads to be found.
The two [White Stone Giants] were also riddled with wounds. Each had lost an arm, and cracks covered their grayish-white bodies.
Even with their affinity for earth elements, recovering fully from injuries like these would take some time.
However...
An Kai had no intention of letting them go!
Kicking an enemy while they were down was one of his favorite things to do!
Huge fireballs appeared in both his hands!
Without so much as a blink, he launched the Fireballs. Aided by Meditation, they crossed fifty meters and slammed swiftly and accurately into the backs of the two [White Stone Giants]!
Boom!
Boom!
The violent impacts made the two [White Stone Giants] stumble, lose their balance, and fall flat on the ground.
At the points struck by the Fireballs, their grayish-white outer layers cracked and clattered off...
Just as the two [White Stone Giants] paused to catch their breath and prepare to retaliate...
Two more enormous fireballs, every bit as powerful, came crashing down!
About fifty meters away from the [White Stone Giants], An Kai was like a merciless gun emplacement.
Fireball after Fireball left his hands, striking the [White Stone Giants] efficiently and precisely.
Explosions thundered one after another!
They were many times louder than the sounds of the earlier battle between the [White Stone Giants] and [Desert Crocodiles]!
The blasts echoed throughout the oasis!
He mercilessly bombarded the ground with Fireballs for a full half minute!
An Kai remembered clearly that he had fired seventy-four Fireballs!
And even then, his mana had only dropped by a third!
Under An Kai's ferocious barrage, the two [White Stone Giants] were blasted into grayish-white fragments scattered across the ground...
There was no chance of them coming back to life!
In this battle, he had personally defeated two Lv8 magical beasts!
An Kai suddenly felt that the Lv9 earth mage at the Bounty Tower wasn't so far beyond him after all!
Walking onto the cratered battlefield, An Kai was very pleased with his handiwork.
Coming from Blue Star, he had an inborn fear of insufficient firepower. This Fireball bombardment had eased his symptoms...
Amid the fragments of bodies strewn across the ground, An Kai finally found two intact [Desert Crocodile] heads and put them into his storage ring.
He also found two faintly glowing beast cores where the [White Stone Giants] had died...
"Exchange!"
[Skill Points +2]
Once again, An Kai chose not to save them.
[Freezing Spell proficiency +2] [Freezing Spell Lv2 "11/20"]
With a thought, a basketball-sized chunk of ice appeared in An Kai's hand.
He hurled it at the ground beneath his feet...
Bang!
An Kai smashed a hole into the ground that radiated cold air!
He lay down and pressed his face to the opening. Piercing cold washed over him, feeling unbelievably refreshing beneath the Desert's blazing sun...
Whatever its power might be, the usefulness of Freezing Spell had earned An Kai's approval!
Unfortunately, aside from the [White Stone Giants], none of the dead [Desert Crocodiles] had left behind any beast cores.
An Kai could only chalk it up to bad luck...
The earlier explosions had already carried far. Rather than leave, An Kai planned to stay here and wait for prey to come to him.
Sure enough, some magical beasts arrived before long.
Their levels ranged from Lv1 to Lv4.
Close behind them came An Kai's targets: Lv5 Desert Crocodiles.
An Kai was in no hurry to act, because his free labor was on its way.
The ground shook as three hulking grayish-white figures slowly appeared in the distance.
The newcomers were none other than Lv8 White Stone Giants!
The moment the three [White Stone Giants] saw the [Desert Crocodiles], they plunged straight into battle without a word...
And the scale of the battle steadily grew.
More [Desert Crocodiles] and [White Stone Giants] kept joining the fight.
Four hours later.
About two hundred [Desert Crocodiles] were embroiled in the melee, along with nearly thirty [White Stone Giants].
On average, that amounted to roughly seven opponents for each [White Stone Giant].
Not only were they holding their own, they were firmly in control.
Watching the battle, An Kai was displeased by this sight.
He wanted rivers of blood, not a one-sided rout.
He threw fireball after fireball, striking each [White Stone Giant] with precision.
At the same time, he prepared to flee at any moment...
Ten hours later.
Dark brown blood and grayish-white fragments had polluted the lake, leaving no trace of its former clarity...
As An Kai threw his final Fireball, the last [White Stone Giant] in the oasis fell!
One could say that An Kai had single-handedly eliminated the threat posed by the oasis's magical beasts...
[Skill Points +32] [Freezing Spell proficiency +29] [Freezing Spell Lv4 "40/40"]
Before you continue