644 Battle of Ice and Snow (1/2)

The snowflakes kept increasing in size. The ground was now thickly blanketed in snow. An ordinary person's vision could now only see a few meters ahead. The snowflakes were literally as large as a person's hand. In fact, a snowflake falling on a person's body would cause noticeable pain.

Extremely condensed ice element separated itself in midair and descended in its natural forms, snowflakes, snowballs, and snow bricks. However, they were foundationally no different. They were all part of the forbidden spell which was creating a world of ice and snow.

Saying that this place had become a world of ice and snow was no mere description. It was a concrete fact. As the forbidden spell spread, all other elemental powers were naturally rejected in this location. All non-ice magic spells would see their power decreased by an extreme amount, or even be rendered completely unusable. This was the anti-magic zone that a complete forbidden spell would bring.

The foundational reason for this was quite simple. The ice element had gathered in far too great an amount here, which reduced the space for other elements to exist. Since mages needed to make use of the power of the elements, it would obviously be a nightmare for those who weren't ice mages.

The most pitiful would be fire mages as fire was the opposing element to ice. Near the end of the forbidden spell Ice Aeon's completion, even a Legend-ranked fire mage would be unable to throw a single fireball.

The appearance of the anti-magic zone doubtlessly meant that the forbidden spell was nearing its end. It was already in the final parts of the explosive period. The powerful forbidden spell, capable of destroying everything, was almost ready to be released at any moment.

”Kill him! Stop him!”

Everything would be dying in the next instant? Perhaps death was simply another form of ”eternal life”. However, all living creatures had instinctual fear of death, which was currently warning them with full force. The already berserk demons became even more berserk. Yet, the demons found it difficult to proceed forward in the blizzard.

Demons also had their natural elements and natural talent abilities. The fact that most demons reeked of sulfur was already the best explanation. The great majority of demons would be born with excellent fire and poison resistance. Many demons would also be experts at using fire magic.

Not only was this a natural-born ability, explosive attack power would be necessary to survive in the dangerous Chaos Abyss. This naturally meant that fire magic, which was easily usable in most environments and possessed great destructive power, was the most popular magic type. A high-level demon job class like inferno demon was what many demons would consider the perfect job class.

Now, the will of the Chaos Abyss had forcefully conscripted demons and turned them into demon war slaves, giving them the ability to self-destruct. Self-destruction was one of the most common techniques available to all fire element creatures. This basically meant that the demon war slaves had all been bestowed with the fire element.

But now, these natural fire element demons met with great trouble. Not only did the blizzard constantly sap them of warmth and stamina, it was also expelling the burning fire mana in their blood. In fact, some of the demon cannon fodder even became unable to self-destruct.

However, it wasn't only the enemies that suffered from the blizzard. Elven clothing styles all had one thing in common—they were quite light and simple as elves typically used low-level magical accessories and spells to keep themselves warm. However, all low-level magic equipment had already started to lose their effect in this anti-magic zone. The elves were starting to shiver and regret how little they were wearing.

Luckily, the human reinforcements from the Northlands were likely the most skilled army in the world when fighting in snowy environment. In fact, their ice mages even came prepared with sleds. The snow would be their natural ally. The demons became much easier to deal with after becoming slowed and dulled by the snow, and even if parts of the city wall were destroyed, snow could be stacked up to solidify the walls again.

”Ice Aeon…”

The trembling Empress Afina the First managed to squeeze these words out from between her chattering teeth. All the Elven Gods were shouting the names ”Roland” and ”Yongye”. By this time, everyone had recognized this ultimate ice element forbidden spell.

A bit more than one hundred years ago, it was precisely Ice Aeon which destroyed multiple elven kingdoms. Some of those elven kingdoms' land was still even now locked in an eternal world of ice and snow. Emperor Yongye had been quite famous for loathing elves. The elves had also viewed him as their mortal enemy, and Ice Aeon became a taboo buried in history, not to be spoken of again.

Forbidden spells were also categorized into different levels based on the power, area of effect, and functions. But, no matter how you tried to categorize Ice Aeon, it would definitely be top-tier among all forbidden spells.

The complete version of Ice Aeon was all about creating a world of ice and snow. The area of effect and duration could all be modified based on the caster's desire. Of course, the more powerful the spell, the more mana and preparation time would be required. The Ice Aeon spell had already created countless calamities before. The largest ever usage of this spell had directly frozen the territory of an entire elven kingdom.

That was only a smaller country that only had several mid-sized cities. However, even that elven kingdom's territory was several thousand square kilometers in size. The power of ice magic had frozen over this entire territory for more than a century by now. Even in the current day, this location showed zero signs of thawing. However, some powerful individuals had still managed to survive that incident. In that case, most people understood that Ice Aeon's strengths were its tremendous area of effect and long duration, but its overall attack power wasn't that ridiculous.

Just one use of Ice Aeon would likely transform the new Moonwheel Capital Elven Empire into another land of ice and snow for more than a century. It was likely that not a single elf would be able to calmly leave here when thinking of this.

The elves could only have tears in their eyes as they said goodbye to their home. They would then board the airships in the sky while having incredibly complex emotions and expressions. Without a doubt, Emperor Yongye was currently casting Ice Aeon from the sky.

Events that happened one to two hundred years ago would be nothing more than bedtime stories or legends to other species. However, the long-lived elves could remember such events like they happened just yesterday. Every elf would tremble in fear when talking about the forbidden spell Ice Aeon. Yet, Ice Aeon had now resurfaced, and was even being cast in order to protect the elves. It was truly ironic.

But right now, I didn't have the free time to care about the elves' feelings. The current situation was giving me a headache.

”I think I used too much mana… I think I used three times more than what I was expecting?”

As I was always overly cautious, I personally felt that the forbidden spell's explosive period would only be half an hour, which was why I added some extra time just to be safe in case I went overboard, but I really did go overboard in the end…

Ice Aeon was probably the forbidden spell cast the most over the past three hundred years. I could be considered incredibly experienced in comparison to unfortunate mages who either exploded themselves or suffered a decrease in power level after casting a forbidden spell.

As I was one of the few mages in the world with the experience of casting forbidden spells repeatedly, along with the fact that I personally invented Ice Aeon, there would be no need to emphasize how familiar I was with this spell.

However, while the spell Ice Aeon hadn't changed, I, and the surrounding environment, had changed.

Compared to before, since I now had a far more powerful bloodline, along with better understanding of ice and death magic that improved my mana pool, my magic power and mana pool seemed to be equal or even greater than when I was previously Yongye. My improved understanding of the fundamental nature of ice, along with the foundational ice magic I learned from the Frigid Nightmares, meant my magic abilities had greatly increased. Something that I previously would have needed to give 100% of my magic power to would now likely only require 50% or less.

Even I didn't expect that my foundational ice magic would be so compatible with Ice Aeon.

As I previously mentioned before, my foundational ice magic was the most basic ice magic of all: ice sculpting, creating what I imagined with ice. Meanwhile, Ice Aeon was a spell to materialize a world of ice and snow that I imagined in the actual world. Foundationally speaking, Ice Aeon was also a type of ice sculpting, although of course the scale was much larger, and the final formula far more complex.

To use an analogy, I was like an artist who had previously required three hours to paint a single person's portrait. But then, I worked hard on my fundamental skills, and also changed my drawing tools. Now, three hours would be enough time for me to paint an entire family. Since I was still calculating time by my previous abilities, it was only natural for me to make a mistake with the estimation in the end.

The end result was that I used the same amount of magic as before, but with about twice the results. Plus, my new physical body also strengthened the effects of my magic, along with the new high magic environment also buffing all magic power. It seemed likely that the Ice Aeon I cast here would far surpass all Ice Aeons in ”historical records”.

This wasn't a good thing.

Only a novice would try to cast the most powerful magic spell possible. An overly powerful magic spell would quite often be beyond the ability of the mage to control it. Basically, an overly powerful magic spell was like a bomb that might detonate at any moment, and even if it didn't, the casting time required and difficulty of the spell would be greatly increased. Currently, time was of the essence, and equaled lives…

”I still need at least another half an hour? I've truly gone overboard this time…”

The battle between mortals and regular demons was still alright as the blizzard had greatly reduced the demons' attack power. However, Anslo's situation was constantly worsening in his battle against Donatis.

As I previously mentioned, in normal situations, during a battle between Main Gods, it would be quite common for the battle to last several years or even decades rather than just a few days or months.

However, this was no normal situation. The demon wave was Donatis's home territory. His combat strength was at its very peak. Meanwhile, not only had Anslo lost his Divine Kingdom, he was also seriously injured, and most importantly of all, Anslo would still be weaker than Donatis even if Anslo was also at his peak. With all these factors added up, the difference between them was now even greater.