Aziro felt as if he were deep inside a fog and couldn’t muster proper thought. He knew that something was happening, but the only thing that remained in his heart was that hateful man.

  “Ezekiel!” he roared inside his mind as he thought about the events that led to this point.

  Aziro led his expedition toward the mine as he believed there would be a nest of some troll. It took them over a week to get there, but there were otherwise no problems.

  However, the situation got worse once they entered the mine.

  It took them several days to find even a trace of the troll, but the mine started to branch off into too many side tunnels and there was no way to investigate all of them.

  At first, he used his undead creatures to investigate, but as time passed and the situation got suspicious, he stopped doing so and left the remaining forces by his side.

  That was his only good luck.

  As he tried to call upon the faraway undead, he received no answer.

  He did it in an inconspicuous manner so that others didn’t realize, and he did it rightly so.

  Just before they ambushed him, Aziro finally understood what was happening and pnned his escape route.

  He would have left unscathed if not for Ezekiel’s timely arrival.

  Aziro could only curse loudly as he used a [Flesh Explosion] spell on his undead to find an opportunity to run away.

  He was being hunted down for days before his strength got completely drained with Ezekiel’s wendigos attacking unrelentingly.

  However, Aziro was a ruthless person. He used everything he could to kill that man.

  And he succeeded. Or so he thought.

  “W-What…? You shaped the living men into your shape?” Aziro was horrified but at the same time amazed when he realized that the body he killed wasn’t in fact Ezekiel, but just an empty shell of one of the bandits. Alive but without mind.

  Unfortunately, this meant that Aziro had no way to defend himself from Ezekiel since he didn’t even know if he was at the scene.

  At some point, Aziro, being cornered and in a dying state, decided to do something.

  His mind power was already gone, but he still decided to muster all his willpower as he let the Ghost Fme consume his mind.

  His mind, already on the brink of colpse, disappeared as he used the st bits of Ghost Fme to convert himself into a spiritual being.

  It was done through necromancy, so there were some problems, especially when it came to his mind, but he ‘survived’ at the very least, hidden inside his own corpse.

  That was, until Illyan arrived and started to fiddle with his body.

  And now, he recovered a bit of his rationality from sensing Illyan's intense emotions, which he could feel better thanks to his spiritual form.

  “Y-you…! Smiling Devil… So you were throwing hands with Ezekiel all this time, huh…” Aziro’s face twisted as he stared at Illyan.

  Illyan’s eyes glimmered with disgust when hearing this, but he chose to remain silent.

  He hated being associated with that bastard, but he wouldn’t correct his enemy as it could be to his advantage.

  Instead, he started to focus on the remaining five orbs flying through the air.

  With a swift change of grip, he turned the sword’s trajectory around as he sent another air ssh and redirected another four of them.

  Boom

  The fire orbs were thrown aside as they exploded, melting the tunnel’s walls.

  Unfortunately, there was still one fireball closing in upon him.

  Realizing that avoiding it would be impossible because the explosion radius was too rge and sending another ssh would take too much time.

  In the end, Illyan decided to endure the attack with his left hand.

  The sword would definitely melt under the attack’s effects, which was unacceptable since it was the key in his strategy to win.

  On the other hand, the hand… was expendable.

  With that thought passing through his mind, Illyan was prepared to intercept the fireball.

  However, this wasn't a common fme that could be easily defended from.

  Just as his hand almost blocked the ethereal green fme, it turned even more translucent as it phased through his palm.

  ‘W-what?!’ Armed, Illyan had thoughts of avoiding it, but of course, it was impossible. If he could dodge, he would do that in the first pce rather than trying to block it with his bare hand.

  Boom**Sizzle

  Before he could take any other countermeasure, the green fme entered the center of his chest where it suddenly manifested itself and threw him against the wall behind him.

  His body was violently embedded inside as the wall almost shattered.

  “Guuh!?” Illyan felt pain coursing through his chest. A hole the size of a fist was immediately burned out inside of him as several of his organs became damaged.

  However, the worst pain didn’t come from this burning sensation.

  That itself was horrifying, but it was just physical pain. Another pain came from his mind as if the fire was devouring his consciousness.

  “Aaaagh!”

  It was as if needles with barbs were pierced through his head and twisted upon insertion.

  But the worst feeling was sensing the mind power Illyan had diligently accumuted over months combusting in his head as it quickly dissipated into nothingness.

  His mind turned foggy because of that, and he felt nauseous.

  And if that wasn’t enough, his body started to become sluggish as frost formed on his skin, with his body parts becoming stiffer as time passed.

  Illyan coughed.

  ‘I certainly didn’t expect that.’ Illyan ughed bitterly in his mind as he realized he had lost something permanently.

  However, he couldn’t dwell on it for too long as the enemy was still in front of him.

  “You couldn’t block it… I overestimated you, smiling devil,” Aziro muttered as his body flickered in an ethereal way.

  Illyan didn’t say anything as he leaned on the wall he had been thrown against. His skin was completely pale while his lips were purple. It looked as if he would freeze to death at any moment.

  It was because of the green ember in his chest that was absorbing the heat from his body.

  “But I guess this is for the better… I can at least focus on recovery to deal with the real enemy,” Aziro said as he pnned to return to his body to rest for the time being.

  He was in a hibernating state since turning into an undead was quite a difficult ordeal, and he needed time to recover and endure the transformation.

  But just as he turned around and hovered above his dead body, he heard a cracking noise behind him. With the turn of his head, he saw Illyan’s body, which was covered in frost, moving again.His body was still bluish pale, but it didn’t seem to hurt him.

  “What… You are getting stronger instead?” Aziro was confused upon seeing this. Illyan seemed to thrive as the coldness permeated his body.

  Even after the hole inside of his body stopped absorbing the heat as the ember dissipated, the coldness didn’t just disappear.

  However, Illyan never feared coldness.

  He was baptized by cold energy—the essence of a Frost Dragon further refined by [Blood

  Feeding Technique], which coursed inside his veins…

  Illyan never truly realized, but his resistance to coldness was on a completely different level.

  He could endure the freezing temperatures of Frozen Vas Tundra even without heavy clothes protecting him and could swim in the chilling waters without even shivering.

  Although magic would be more tricky to defend against, the coldness caused by this fme was a natural ck of heat. It was not magical at all.

  Illyan stood up as he felt the hole in his body slowly close.

  It was disappointing that he lost his mind power, but it was not like he had a lot of it accumuted.

  It wasn’t as if he would waste too much time since he needed to refine his mind power with [Thirteen Layers of Blood Energy] anyway. Creating already refined mind power would quite hasten the progress.

  Illyan grinned as he aligned his bde and pointed its tip at Aziro.

  “Ugh! Argh?!” Aziro, seeing this, screeched as he held his head in his own arms.

  Just one fireball had eaten away most of Illyan’s mind power, so the state Aziro had to be in had to be insufferable.

  His mind was consumed by the fmes as he gred at Illyan with a bloodthirsty expression while baring his fangs.

  The robe he was wearing fluttered as his intangible body flew at him at high speed.

  Illyan immediately sent a sword ssh and propelled himself to the side.

  “Agh!” Aziro phased through the sword ssh as if it was nothing, but an expression of pain appeared on his face.

  However, it disappeared as soon as it appeared, and his face turned crazier. He threw more fireballs all around him or conjured waves of fmes that acted as snakes as they swirled towards Illyan.

  In such a way, they pyed a game of cat and mouse with Illyan being the mouse.

  However, he was a dangerous mouse as most of his attacks hit the enemy.

  Individually, the attacks were nothing, but what if those attacks were counted in hundreds or even thousands?

  It didn’t seem that Aziro had some recovery spell, so he could rest at ease.

  Unfortunately, Aziro wasn’t completely out of tricks.

  Just as Illyan thought that the fmes were getting weaker, Aziro screeched in an inhuman way.

  “Damn it! I will end you, you wretch! Kho’ndurum Age’hleia-!” Aziro screeched as he started to chant unknown spells.

  “Shit, can he still cast magic in this state?” Illyan was shocked to see this as he pnned to retreat.

  However, at that moment, Aziro called out loudly, “[Undead Conjuration]!”, which caused a purple cloud to appear above Illyan’s head as it wriggled.

  Aziro screeched as his body turned almost transparent with pain visible on his face. It seemed that he was having difficulty casting spells in his current form.

  But Illyan couldn’t focus on that at all.

  Instead, he was looking at the purple cloud swirling in the air. It didn’t seem dangerous at first, but just as it stopped moving, pieces of magical energy condensed into material objects in the form of a gigantic bone arm, which immediately swept Illyan from the ground.

  Fortunately, with Illyan’s reactions, he managed to block most of the brunt of the attack with the sword as he flew across the tunnel before turning himself midair and nding on the ground with ease.

  ‘What was that? Giant? No, it felt more like…’ Illyan narrowed his eyes, looking at the conjured arm hanging from the purple cloud.

  Just then, a humongous leg made out of bones stomped down at the pce Illyan was.

  Boom

  Jumping away, Illyan noticed the bone structure and confirmed his suspicion.

  ‘Troll’s bones… But how is he using them like this?’

  The troll’s leg was coming out of another purple cloud that was far from the arm that showed up before.

  But Illyan managed to catch a glimpse of what was happening.

  The leg didn’t just appear. It was as if it was gradually manifesting.

  Bone by bone, the purple cloud, which seemed to be made from mana, started to form the shape of bones before completely taking the form of the troll’s bones.

  “Ahh… I should create this thing sooner… Undead Conjuration has difficult conditions to fulfill, but what does it matter when you can summon an undead at any moment’s notice… Even Ezekiel didn’t expect that as he was caught off guard and was killed afterward… Or rather his avatar… That piece of crap…”

  Aziro was cursing in a low tone as his eyes glistened with madness hidden within them.

  ‘He is completely broken… Did the transformation make him mentally unstable, or is it because of that stupid fme? Whatever the case, the thing is too big to fight in this cramped pce. I need to finish this as fast as possible!’

  Illyan thought as he ran towards the wraith that was writhing in the air as the limbs of the troll were filing around his body in different pces.

  There were already four of these purple clouds with four limbs coming out of them, each angled in an unusual direction and in different pces. One leg was above the arm while the left and right arms were switched too. It was as if all four limbs were completely disconnected from each other.

  ‘It is probably the corpse of the troll that was killed half a year ago in Winterfrost. He turned it into an undead, but since it was too big, he turned it into this.’

  Illyan pondered over the magic spell he saw and deduced that Aziro used this spell to turn the body of the troll intangible for the sake of storage.

  After all, the thing was around six to eight meters tall.

  Wanting that as your undead would be too conspicuous.

  In whatever case, Illyan was prepared to get over that body to take down the owner of the bones.

  No matter how strong the puppet was, it was still dependent on the user.

  However, the limbs were more agile than expected.

  It was mostly because the joints didn’t work as intended and the limbs didn’t move as they should.

  The high speed of the purple clouds drifting in the air also didn’t help.

  Illyan could only jump around as he cshed with some of the attacks that could not be avoided.

  That made him fly to the other side of the tunnel each time, so he made sure to avoid such situations as much as possible.

  ‘Intangible danger, my ass…’ Illyan grumbled in his heart as he prepared for another csh.