Chapter 459 - 459 - Cheaters Always Do Things Differently

Wind loaded with sand howled over them. They wore hooded cloaks, scarves pulled tight, masks and goggles, dressed head to toe like travelers of the sandstorms, and right now they stood frozen in place, staring at the scene ahead, scalps prickling, backs damp with sweat.

Someone sucked in a breath. "That is a terrifying sandstorm."

"Visibility is awful. It's going to cripple our sightlines."

"Add the ambushes and surprise attacks from the mine zone and this is just... a net closing from every direction!"

"An ordinary adventurer who hasn't prepared specifically for this probably wouldn't last long before the environment swallowed him whole, bones and all."

Listening to his companions mutter, Leon tugged his mask down a little and gazed out at that chaos of flying sand and stone.

"Now you know how important gold is, right? Without money, where do you get resistance gear? Where do you get Magic Swords? Without a few Magic Swords, or an ice Mage to help, Sand Land is impossible to cross."

Kureha seemed to remember what happened on the last Expedition, and laughed softly as she picked up the thread. "Forget this place, even that stretch in the Water City was rough. If you want to subjugate the Amphisbaena, that Two-Headed Dragon, it's flat out impossible without Magic Swords or Mages. You can't even make a place to stand, let alone reach the gate to the 28th floor."

Jeanne adjusted her mask and goggles again, pulled her hood tighter, took her Banner Lance up as a probing staff, exchanged a glance with Rose, and stepped forward.

"Everyone, tighten formation. Keep the spacing under half a meter, single file. Split duties by odd and even positions. Odd numbers watch the left, even numbers guard the right. Rose and I take front left and front right. Leon, Persephone, the rear is yours."

"Understood."

"Good. Same as always, Leon, you open the road. Move out!"

"Wait!"

Leon raised a hand and cut Jeanne off, and the whole group nearly stumbled.

The mood was right there. What are you doing?

Pinned by everyone's reproachful stares, Leon coughed, embarrassed. "Everyone, boofs. Boofs!"

"Boofs?"

Leon rolled his eyes. "It's my hometown accent, okay? BUFFS!"

"Ohhhhh."

"Power Word: Fortitude!"

"Blessing of Might!"

"Arcane Intellect!"

"Frost Armor!"

...

"Golden Oath!"

...

"Aura, Iri, skip your buffs. Save them for after the fighting starts."

"Not needed for travel."

"Right."

After that little circus, feeling the Magic surging inside him, Leon drew a deep breath, looked out at the underground spectacle where sand and wind fused into one, and the corner of his mouth curved with anticipation.

"A sandstorm, huh? Let's see whether you're stronger, or my Blizzard is."

He swallowed the last bite of his Monster Hunter Special (burger version), downed a bottle of Wild Mixture, lifted his staff, and began the performance.

A low hum spread out as a massive frost-blue magic circle wrapped the entire party and began to rotate slowly with Leon at its center.

True Essence of All Magic, go!

Magic range expansion, maximize, activate!

He didn't even swing the staff. He only raised his left hand high, then clenched it hard and spoke quietly.

"Now, in the name of winter, I command. Descend upon this place. Blizzard!"

Winter is coming! The cold wind howled.

With a certain dividing line as the center, frost blue and sand yellow split the sky cleanly between them.

Snowflakes began to fall.

Within moments, white drifts had buried the yellow desert.

The sheer volume of the snowfall was greater, by more than a little, than anything Leon had put out on the floors above.

Looking at the buried region ahead, and the countless monsters the cold was driving out of it, the group marveled at his methods all over again.

"The range is bigger. The snowfall is faster."

"Leon, is this the real power of Lv.5?"

Faced with Aura's question, Leon only smiled and said nothing.

This was a complete Blizzard he had deliberately cast with full area coverage and a full charge, purely to show off. He had just used magic control to lower the destructive force and raise the area of effect.

It looked terrifying. The actual damage was nothing special.

Against opponents of the same level the effect was barely better than nothing, at most some crowd control and a slow, plus a buff to other frost skills. But against Lv.3 and Lv.4 small fry, it was extremely useful.

Under a Blizzard backed by parallel charging and full chanting, those desert monsters, already "weak to ice," died the moment they surfaced. The few with thicker health bars were left hanging by a thread, and the group cut them down in passing.

Killed Lv.3 monster, Excelia +0.1

...

Killed Lv.4 monster, Excelia +1.0

...

Killed Lv.4 Strengthened Species, Excelia +44

...

Killed Lv.4 monster (elite), Excelia +...

...

Soft wet impacts sounded one after another through the snow.

Under the cover of the Blizzard, the party advanced slowly along the route marked on the map.

The mine zone monsters lurking underground were forced up by the cold, quickly coated in a layer of pale blue frost, their movements dragging. The unluckier ones were frozen into ice sculptures outright, stiff where they stood.

The single file line only had to step up and land one easy blow on these half dead monsters to end the fight.

"This fighting is way too easy, isn't it?"

"One light slash and the battle's over? No... this doesn't even count as a battle. This is just farming mobs!"

A vein jumped on Kureha's forehead, her lovely face flushed red.

Her whole body was boiling with fighting spirit, but this scene was not what she wanted at all. What she wanted was an exhausting, full blooded fight, the thrill of dancing back and forth across the line between life and death.

"Well now, dear Miss Sword Saint, don't be blind to your own good fortune."

Margaret laughed softly. "This is a tactic other teams could only envy. If we didn't have Mr. Leon..."

It took exactly this: Leon, a cheat carrying the Demon Lord's Crest, a hundredfold Mind pool, and the "energy efficient casting" mechanism of Arcane Ward, giving him a mana bar both long and durable, to afford squandering Mind on something as extravagant as keeping a Blizzard running the whole way.

Put any other Mage in his place and see how that goes.

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