"Now!"
Bosain roared, the silver armor on his body condensing once more. A long silver sword formed in his hand, and the void seemed to ripple faintly.
"I'm going all out!" Jiamen's eyes turned slightly red. He chanted a few ancient syllables, bit his finger, and let his blood drip onto the green emblem.
Boom!!!
Countless vines burst from the ground, but this time their surface had turned completely red. The barbs were denser, flecked with green, giving off an extremely dangerous aura.
"In that case!" Leilin flicked his hand, and a dozen crimson vials shot out.
On the Hoar Black Serpent's body, over a dozen bright explosions of flame bloomed.
Moreover, a light flashed in Leilin's hand, and the black longbow reappeared in his palm.
"Frost Rune!"
Leilin chanted the incantation. A layer of fine ice crystals slowly coated the surface of the black arrow, transforming it into a freezing long arrow!
"Kill!!!"
Three voices shouted the same word in unison.
The blood-red vines moved faster than before, whipping up gusts of wind, and in an instant ensnared the Hoar Black Serpent, which was still writhing on the ground.
At the same moment, a freezing long arrow pierced the void and shot directly through the black serpent's right eye.
"Hiss!!!"
Fire burned in the Hoar Black Serpent's mouth. Its eyeball shattered completely, spilling a large amount of translucent, crystal-like fluid. It let out a pained groan.
"Die!"
Amid the roar, the silver armor on Bosain's body melted completely into metallic liquid, converging onto the longsword in his hand.
Under this influence, the silver longsword swelled to over five meters in length. Mysterious wizard runes appeared on the blade.
"Maximum power! Strongest form! Go to hell!"
Bosain's muscles bulged continuously, and several spell glows flickered directly into existence around him.
Leilin only glanced slightly and saw many zero-level spells that temporarily boosted constitution and strength.
With the augmentation of so many spells, Bosain's current physical stats likely surpassed those of a Great Knight, completely approaching the legendary advancement of a Great Knight—the Branded Swordsman!!!
Pfft!!!
The longsword effortlessly pierced the Hoar Black Serpent's outer defenses, stabbing directly into the giant serpent's vitals—its heart.
Countless streams of crimson blood mixed with hints of black gushed out. The serpent's body coiled, then was pulled straight again by the blood-red vines. The colossal vines crawled toward the wound as if possessing intelligence, drilling straight inside from the injury.
"Hiss!!!"
The giant serpent roared and twisted ceaselessly, blood spattering the surrounding earth.
After struggling for over ten minutes, the Hoar Black Serpent's remaining left eye finally lost its luster, and it collapsed to the ground.
"Is it dead?" Jiamen asked uncertainly. The blood-red vines still clung to the giant serpent's body.
"Target in critically injured state, life force fluctuations continuously decreasing!"
"Target life force fluctuations dropped to critical threshold!"
"Target life force fluctuations completely ceased. Deceased!"
The Chip's notifications confirmed for Leilin that the giant serpent was dead, but he still said, "Cast a few more detection spells first!"
The lesson from when the Chip couldn't detect the Hoar Black Serpent earlier was still fresh in his mind.
Perhaps this black serpent had some secret technique to conceal its life force, evading the Chip's detection!
Next, the three apprentices cast many more spells, finally confirming that the Hoar Black Serpent, which had killed two of their companions, was truly dead.
Hearing this conclusion, Jiamen immediately recalled his blood-red vines and collapsed to the ground.
Leilin noticed that Jiamen's face was completely devoid of color, frighteningly pale, as if he had lost a massive amount of blood.
Meanwhile, Bosain's greatsword had completely liquefied, retracting back into his hand. He couldn't even maintain his armor form anymore.
It seemed his magical item had also consumed a great deal of energy.
These bits of information were all recorded by the Chip, which frantically calculated the two's combat states and simulated their probability of victory.
Of course, in the eyes of the other two, Leilin was just a somewhat more capable
This was the illusion Leilin had painstakingly created beforehand.
"There's still this! I need to collect it quickly!"
Leilin looked at the black serpent lying on the ground, its life aura gone, blood still flowing continuously from its wounds.
A faint spell ripple formed in Leilin's hand.
"What are you doing?" Bosain and Jiamen instantly created distance between themselves and Leilin, staring at him with wary eyes.
Once external threats disappeared, the temptation of profit began to sow unease within the small team. The seeds of distrust were silently planted.
"Collecting materials, that's all!" Leilin's spell chanting didn't stop.
"Blood!" After uttering several syllables, Leilin opened his mouth and spoke a word in the Ancient Byron Language.
Whoosh!!!
The pools of blood on the ground seemed to receive a summons, flowing along several blood-red lines toward Leilin's palm.
Countless droplets of blood flew into the air, convercing continuously like a crimson curtain of light.
Sizzle!!! An invisible force in the void compressed and solidified the collected blood, forming a small, blood-red stone in Leilin's hand.
Drip!!! The invisible force acted directly on the Hoar Black Serpent's wounds, extracting the blood from its body to form blood-red stones.
A few minutes later, the Hoar Black Serpent on the ground appeared slightly shrunken, its scales somewhat faded.
And in Leilin's hand, there were now over a dozen fist-sized, blood-red stones.
The blood of the dozens-of-meters-long Hoar Black Serpent had been concentrated into these dozen Blood Essences.
This was a zero-level spell Leilin had learned, specifically designed for collecting blood from large creatures.
Seeing the effect of Leilin's spell, Bosain and Jiamen finally relaxed their guard slightly, but Leilin could still see a trace of vigilance deep in their eyes.
"The blood of the Hoar Black Serpent is a key ingredient for many potions. I'd like to take all of it. As for the other materials on the serpent, I'm willing to give up a portion of equivalent value!" Leilin explained with a faint smile.
The content from the damaged notebook he had seen in the laboratory at Polar Night City surfaced in his mind. Words like "preparation" and "bloodline" within it had stirred a faint, indistinct fluctuation in his heart. Therefore, even if it offended the other two somewhat, he had to speak up and claim the blood.
"Blood?" Bosain tilted his head and suddenly laughed. "True! For many apothecaries, the blood of high-energy creatures is an essential material for many potions!"
As for things like "bloodline," Bosain hadn't even considered that angle.
After all, many ancient creatures had gone extinct millions of years ago. On many current wizard-world creatures, only a faint shadow of those ancient beings could still be seen.
And the topic of how to extract ancient bloodlines had been researched by many wizards, but there was absolutely no solution.
To obtain some gene fragments of ancient creatures from their blood and combine them into a Bloodline Essence was completely beyond the capabilities of current wizards.
Rumor had it that only a Level Four Wizard or higher could make it possible, and even then, only barely.
But a Level Four Wizard was already a legend on the South Coast!
"The materials on this Hoar Black Serpent are worth at least several hundred thousand Magic Stones!" Jiamen's eyes flashed, a look of intoxicated greed appearing on his face.
For this type of serpent magical beast, the most valuable parts were its scales, its internal organs, its brain matter, etc. These were often excellent materials for crafting certain Magical Items.
As for blood, aside from occasional use by apothecaries and alchemists, it had basically no other purpose.
Since Leilin had acted first, the three apprentices discussed it briefly. Jiamen and Bosain directly harvested the most precious materials from the Hoar Black Serpent's body, then cast a zero-level preservation spell and left the area.
For them, the Hoar Black Serpent was just a harvest from the outermost periphery of the ruins. Who knew how many good things lay within?
"This ruin looks quite advanced!" Jiamen surveyed the entire cave, trying to find some clue. "They actually placed such a dangerous creature as the initial alarm mechanism... What a pity for Ross and Xiangya..."
Regarding the deaths of their two companions, Leilin and the others only showed a brief, superficial somberness before quickly recovering.
To be honest, these two apprentices had only been with Leilin for a little over ten days. There wasn't much of a bond.
And wizards were generally rather detached people. Soon, the three of them turned their attention back to the ruins.
"Using high-energy creatures to guard the ruins—that should be the style from the ancient Khulal period!" Bosain seemed to be recalling something. "Architecture from the ancient Khulal period was full of simple, rough-hewn style. Even the alarm mechanisms were set up extremely simply, with at most two layers!"
"That means once we pass through one more barrier, we'll be able to approach the core of the ruins!" Jiamen's eyes lit up. "Then what are we waiting for?"
For him, finding the information to advance to a Wizard was the top priority. Other creature materials were nice, but they couldn't compare to the allure of a wizard's legacy.
Each apprentice used zero-level spells to probe the interior of the cave, and finally, they discovered a cave entrance in a corner.
The pitch-black entrance was surrounded by a layer of green patina, as if it were made of some kind of metal.
Whoosh!
A single green eyeball shot out from inside the cave.
Smack! Jiamen reached out, caught it, and pressed it back into his own eye socket.
"No danger ahead, but after five kilometers, my spell was blocked by some kind of barrier. It seems to require some form of identification to pass!" he reported.
Meanwhile, Leilin and Bosain had also used their own methods to probe the cave and arrived at the same conclusion.