Chapter 370: Fall of the Ice Elemental

"Spatial lockdown initiated."

Invisible ripples spread in all directions from the White Tower. Wherever they touched, space was sealed tight, the lockdown expanding to a radius of ten thousand meters. In the blink of an eye, the stored energy within the White Tower's Elemental Pool visibly dropped.

Spatial lockdown magic worked by increasing teleportation resistance, preventing ordinary teleportation spells from tearing through space. For an existence at the Abomination Rank, however, a Dimensional Anchor was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

But this spatial lockdown was different. If a Dimensional Anchor was akin to flooding the otherwise thin air of space with water to amplify resistance, this spatial lockdown was like injecting it with thick paste.

"Ice Armor Cladding initiated."

Frost coated the surface of the White Tower at a visible rate. This was no ordinary frost, but a living chill similar to animated ice. Unlike ordinary animated ice, the Ice Armor Cladding contained a massive amount of elemental energy capable of effectively dampening incoming impacts.

"Metamagic Railgun charging."

Vast amounts of energy from the Elemental Pool surged upward, pouring into the massive amethyst suspended above the White Tower. Heavy with accumulated elemental energy, the crystal accelerated its rotation like a top. The Metamagic Railgun was primed to fire.

In the blink of an eye, the White Tower was fully armed. Seeing this, the Blade Sovereign felt a hint of surprise; even from the lofty perspective of an Abomination Rank powerhouse, the Floating Tower before her was quite impressive.

The Blade Sovereign put away her contempt and faced the White Tower seriously. Just as the White Dragon Lord had said, she was currently nothing more than a clone carrying limited power. If she maintained the arrogant mindset of a powerhouse, there was a real chance of capsizing in a ditch.

By now, nearly half the blood moon on the horizon had set, and the blood moon energy between heaven and earth had reached its absolute peak. The corners of the Blade Sovereign's mouth curled up, and her eerily beautiful purple lips parted.

"Little white lizard, today I will teach you how to respect a powerhouse on Tiamat's behalf."

The Blade Sovereign slowly spread her eight arms. The curved blades in her hands were like hooks, perfectly symmetrical on the left and right, fanning out like open ribs. The blood moon's radiance plated the steel in a layer of crimson.

From the White Dragon Lord's perspective, the Blade Sovereign stood with her back to the blood moon. Her upper body formed a bewitching fan, while her slender snake tail swayed slightly beneath her, unconscious and lethal.

The blood moon's radiance abruptly dimmed. The White Dragon Lord's heart gave a jolt. He realized the moonlight was converging, gathering onto the Blade Sovereign's body. The originally mild light condensed into a thick blood-red glow, and crimson flames ignited upon her skin.

The phenomenon vanished in the blink of an eye, but the dense, blood-flame energy on the Blade Sovereign's body remained. His heart heavy, the White Dragon Lord rapidly chanted an incantation.

Frost Armor Technique!

Defense within Offense!

Mirror Counter!

A series of three powerful spells buffed the Ice Elemental. The ice armor covering the Ice Elemental's body was reinforced, and the surface of his shield became as smooth as a mirror.

Still uneasy, the White Dragon Lord tore open a scroll. A streak of white light shot into the Ice Elemental's body.

Legendary Magic—Protection from Fatal Strikes!

While the White Dragon Lord buffed his frontline, the Blade Sovereign made her move.

Unexpectedly, her movement speed wasn't overly fast. Her charge followed an "S" shaped route, weaving left and right to make her position impossible to lock onto. She held her curved blades in a reverse grip, hiding them behind her arms.

As she drew closer, the High-Tier Legend Ice Elemental, Hammerlake, raised his massive, door-sized ice Greatsword high. Relying on his reach advantage, he swatted down at the Blade Sovereign.

Standing forty meters tall, Hammerlake wielded a sword that was equally as long. In contrast, the slender Blade Sovereign measured no more than eight meters, even factoring in her tail. The descending Greatsword fell like a collapsing wall, its shadow completely engulfing her.

The snake demon's eerily beautiful face showed not a ripple of emotion. Her snake tail whipped fiercely to the side, dodging out of the Greatsword's range.

As the Ice Elemental retracted his Greatsword, he rammed his shield toward his enemy. An ice-blue energy radiance lit up across the mirror-smooth surface.

Shield Bash!

Her swaying tail violently lashed out sideways like a whip. Forcefully halting her lateral momentum, the Blade Sovereign snapped back to her previous path, landing precisely on the retracting Greatsword. She suddenly accelerated, charging up the blade straight for the Ice Elemental's head.

Hammerlake was alarmed, but his body couldn't react in time.

Fortunately, he wasn't fighting alone. From the rear, the White Dragon Lord's spell was complete.

Legendary Magic—Frost-Shaping Breath!

A violent Cold Wave mixed with snow swept forward from the White Tower's control room. The blizzard blotted out the sky; both the Blade Sovereign and the Ice Elemental were within its attack range.

As an incarnation of ice itself, an Ice Elemental at the High-Tier Legendary Level possessed resistance to ice-type magic that bordered on immunity. The Blade Sovereign, however, did not have the capital to ignore an ice Elemental Storm.

Shielding her body with an energy barrier, the Blade Sovereign slid down the side of the Ice Elemental's arm. She used his massive frame to avoid a direct confrontation with the storm.

The fierce storm swallowed the gigantic Ice Elemental, and the Blade Sovereign was subjected to the pervasive attack of the freezing winds. High-speed snowflakes slammed into her Protective Shield like razor blades, scraping against it with a harsh screech.

The ice, snow, and wind were merely the surface. The true lethality lay within the terrifying ice elemental energy infused in the storm. The energy inside the Blade Sovereign's body depleted rapidly as she continued to fly over eaves and walk along walls across the side of the Ice Elemental's body, pressing her charge toward his head.

Sensing the Blade Sovereign's intent, Hammerlake hastily released his Greatsword and swung his massive hand up to cover his head.

An Ice Elemental's entire body was formed from materialized elements. His head was not his weak point; his elemental core was. Usually, elemental cores were hidden deep within the torso, but Hammerlake had hidden his in his head, right near his mouth. He hadn't expected the Blade Sovereign's sharp eyes to see right through it in a single glance.

The Blade Sovereign was aiming exactly for Hammerlake's elemental core. Two blades hidden behind her arms struck out like venomous snakes darting from the grass, sending two intersecting crescent blade lights slashing toward the core.

The sturdy armor on Hammerlake's body was sliced open, and the blade lights vanished. Immediately, a second pair of curved blades swung out, sending forth two more cross-shaped crescent blade lights. The Ice Elemental's elemental shell was cleaved open, exposing the elemental core hidden beneath.

The elemental core of a High-Tier Legend Ice Elemental resembled a sapphire the size of a human head, radiating an intoxicating halo.

But the Blade Sovereign had no intention of appreciating it. Yet another pair of hidden curved blades slashed out. The Protection from Fatal Strikes applied by the White Dragon Lord kicked in, vanishing together with the blade light.

However, the Eight-Armed Snake Demon the Blade Sovereign inhabited had eight arms. The final pair of curved blades swept out.

This time, there was absolutely no cover over the elemental core. The cross-shaped crescent slash struck the Ice Elemental's weak point. A fissure cracked across the core, and the massive amount of elemental energy stored within leaked out madly, erupting in a brilliant radiance.

The falling motion of the Ice Elemental's arm came to a dead halt. In the blink of an eye, he turned into ordinary ice devoid of any energy reaction. No longer able to maintain his form, the Ice Elemental disintegrated in midair, shattering into blocks of ice that plummeted downward.

The ice blocks hadn't plummeted far before the radiance of the shattered elemental core surged to its absolute limit, detonating in a violent explosion.

Boom!

The falling ice blocks met the fierce energy shockwave and were instantly pulverized into powder. The energy storm generated by the explosion swept up the ice shards and expanded in all directions, slamming into the Protective Shield covering the rapidly retreating Blade Sovereign. Cracks spiderwebbed across the shield's surface.

The moment the Blade Sovereign broke out of the danger zone, the Protective Shield's mission was complete; it shattered and dissipated into the air.

The White Tower was a fair distance from the Ice Elemental's explosion, and combined with the White Dragon Lord's timely reaction and rapid retreat, it suffered no major impact.

After flying a distance away, the force-drained ice shards pelted against the surface of the Moon's Protection with a crackle. The White Dragon Lord gazed heavily at the Blade Sovereign, who met his stare from afar.

The curved blades in the Blade Sovereign's hands spun, weaving a beautiful dance of blade shadows before vanishing behind her arms once again. She leaned slightly forward, assuming an offensive posture.

"Little white lizard! Now! It's your turn!"

Analyzing the previous exchange, the White Dragon Lord's grave expression relaxed slightly.

"Your Excellency Sovereign, I am quite curious. Do you, someone who must carefully budget her attacks, still have enough power to shatter a defense on the level of a Forbidden Spell?"

The Blade Sovereign furrowed her brows. Just as the White Dragon Lord had said, since she was possessing a trusted subordinate, her energy pool was her weakness.

Following their earlier battles, the power within the Eight-Armed Snake Demon remained at eighty percent. Supplemented by the energy from the Blade Sovereign's clone, the energy within the Eight-Armed Snake Demon was practically at full capacity.

However, the furious strike in response to the White Dragon Lord's provocation had cost ten percent of her energy, and slaughtering the High-Tier Legend Ice Elemental had just consumed another twenty percent. Now, the energy under the Blade Sovereign's control was merely seventy percent of a peak-condition Eight-Armed Snake Demon.

If the White Dragon Lord were completely unprotected, the Blade Sovereign had an eighty percent certainty of slaying him by relying on her rich combat experience and slaughtering techniques that could only be called an art. But there were no "ifs" in this world. The White Dragon Lord sat securely within the heavy protection of the Floating Tower.

To slay the White Dragon Lord, the Blade Sovereign first needed to punch through the Forbidden Spell-level Ice Armor Cladding. Beyond the Ice Armor Cladding lay the innate defensive capabilities of the White Tower itself. Even after breaching the tower, she would still have to face a fully rested White Dragon Lord. The difficulty of such an endeavor vastly exceeded the limits of what combat technique could bridge.

"Even if I can't kill you, I have to leave you a little souvenir."

The Blade Sovereign moved, slithering forward as she charged at the White Tower.

The White Dragon Lord completely immersed himself in spellcasting, handing over control of the White Tower to his Gold Finger. The purple crystal at the tower's peak lit up with radiance, and a massive purple energy shell blasted toward the Blade Sovereign.

Metamagic Railgun!

Fueled by energy stored in the White Tower's Elemental Pool and processed by the magical Array within the peak's crystal, the energy formed a Metamagic Railgun blast that relied on Elemental Impact for its primary lethality. Its might reached the level of Legendary Magic.

Shells bearing the might of Legendary Magic weren't considered exceedingly strong for a super Floating Tower, but the Metamagic Railgun's normal firing rate was one round per second. Pushed to the limit, it could fire three rounds every two seconds. Moreover, the Metamagic Railgun fired without any prior warning, making its trajectory impossible to predict, and its extreme velocity made dodging incredibly difficult.

The Blade Sovereign whipped her snake tail hard, narrowly brushing past the incoming purple energy shell. She was deeply shocked, as the Metamagic Railgun's attack frequency far exceeded her imagination. Furthermore, the "White Dragon Lord's" targeting skills were absolutely flawless, predicting her dodges on multiple occasions and forcing her to burn more energy just to violently shift her position.

At this moment, the White Dragon Lord's spell was completed.

Legendary Magic—Vein-Freezing Midwinter.

A hazy ice mist billowed out from the White Tower, enveloping a radius of three thousand meters in the blink of an eye.

Vein-Freezing Midwinter was a comprehensive control spell at the Legendary Rank Level. It blanketed its area in freezing cold air. The weak would simply freeze to death instantly, while a powerhouse would find their movements bogged down by the low temperatures. Additionally, it possessed a certain ability to scramble vision and perception.

Another blast from the Metamagic Railgun tore through the heavy fog, speeding right for the Blade Sovereign. Due to the interference from the icy mist, by the time the Blade Sovereign detected the shell, it was already nearly upon her.

An intense sense of fatal crisis surged from the bottom of her heart. Whipping her snake tail, the Blade Sovereign instantly vanished from her spot.

Inside the White Tower's control room, the White Dragon Lord, drawing information through Soul Sight, discovered the Blade Sovereign had abruptly materialized in another location. Astonishment washed over him.

Teleportation magic?!

A split second later, the White Dragon Lord overturned the thought. If the Blade Sovereign's main body were here, she might possess the strength to break through the spatial lockdown and teleport a short distance. But relying solely on the possessed Eight-Armed Snake Demon, that was absolutely impossible. It had to be some sort of secret technique that instantly boosted her speed.

Realizing this, the White Dragon Lord felt deep dread. To execute a secret technique granting such terrifying speed using nothing but a High-Tier Legend host body—if he were to face the Blade Sovereign's main body without the protection of the White Tower and his equipment, he would likely be killed in a single strike.

Heavy, freezing fog cloaked the surroundings, the endless cold invading her body. Forcing her subordinate's physique to unleash a secret technique of the Abomination Rank triggered an agonizing, bone-deep pain in the host's snake tail. The thought of retreating arose in the Blade Sovereign's heart.

After all, High-Tier Legendary Level Eight-Armed Snake Demons weren't cheap cabbages you could just pick off the street. Even the Blade Sovereign only had eleven of them under her command. There was no need to lose a capable subordinate over a petty dispute of pride.

With the Metamagic Railgun liable to strike at any given moment, the Blade Sovereign didn't dare linger inside the freezing mist. With a swipe of her snake tail, she spun around, breaking toward the outer perimeter.

Witnessing this, the White Dragon Lord realized the Blade Sovereign was retreating. He considered it and made no move to stop her. Given the speed the Blade Sovereign had just burst forth with, trying to stop her would be a fruitless effort anyway.

The Blade Sovereign escaped the coverage of the icy mist and turned her head back, shooting a complicated look toward the mist-wrapped White Tower control room. She sensed that a gaze had been locked on her the entire time.

After a fierce battle, the blood flames cloaking the Blade Sovereign had worn so thin they had nearly vanished, and the blood moon was now nothing more than a sliver hanging just above the horizon.

Once again, the Blade Sovereign stood with her back to the blood moon and spread her arms. The residual radiance of the blood moon converged upon her. The blood flames, which had worn so thin they were practically gone, ignited anew, but this time they didn't cling to the Blade Sovereign. Instead, they poured directly into the eight curved blades.

"Little white lizard, I admit I underestimated you. As compensation, big sister will give you a parting gift."