Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

"I have one last question, Wizard Raymond."

Dago took a deep breath and said, "Isn't there a formal lineage of wizards in the academy? Why are you going to all this trouble to plan Viser's lineage?"

Raymond burst into laughter upon hearing this, but there was no joy in his laughter, only surging madness.

"Do you really believe the academy's employment contract will provide formal wizard training? That's just a way to trick these fools into hiring wizards to risk their lives. I've been at the academy for thirty years and I'm still only a half-step formal wizard. Do you think the academy will provide formal wizard training?"

"Thirty years. How many thirty years does one have in a lifetime? Without becoming a formal wizard, we are all just ants. Even that old devil, the academy dean, is nothing more than a pawn of [Emerald Life]."

"So I had to become a full-fledged wizard and see the view from above. This idea was like poison, eroding my soul every day and driving me mad."

Raymond's cold gaze fell on Dargo, as if he were giving him an ultimatum.

Dago pondered for a moment, then said, "There's a saying in my hometown that's very true: villains die from talking too much."

After saying that, he shot the ice ball from the tip of his ice crystal wand at Raymond.

Seeing this, Raymond shouted, "You're asking for it, Dago!"

He hurled the fireball he was holding toward Dago.

The ice hockey and the fireball collided violently in mid-air, instantly creating a spectacular sight of ice and fire intertwining.

The ice ball, formed from condensed ice energy, gleamed with a deep blue light and was covered with fine white frost. The moment it collided with the fireball, the flames shot up three feet high.

In the end, the ice ball shattered into countless ice crystals under the continuous burning, and the fireball dimmed considerably under the erosion of the cold air, turning into a sky full of sparks that fell into the rain of ice crystal fragments.

In the instant the hot and cold clashed, a large amount of white mist and water vapor spread out.

Dargo raised his ice crystal wand, his gaze piercing through the white mist, his detection spell firmly locking onto Raymond's location.

The next second, the air and light at the tip of his wand began to distort.

The massive accumulation of ice energy and air created a strong wind all around, causing the cloak behind Dago to billow upwards.

An ice crystal projectile, about the size of a basketball, condensed and formed.

Aim, fire, all in one smooth motion.

Terrifying ice crystal shells were fired, tearing through the white mist and kicking up large swaths of snow and mud along their path.

"boom!"

The spinning blue-black ice crystal projectiles crashed directly into the wall of fire in front of Raymond and were completely melted away.

Raymond held a bright red wand in his hand, his face looking rather grim. It seemed that the power of this move had greatly intimidated him, forcing him to draw his wand to fight.

Dago's detection spell gave him a piece of information: Flame Wall, a thick wall of flames that rises in front of the caster, which can not only block physical attacks, but also burn the elemental energy that comes into contact with it.

A safe zone will be formed behind the wall, where the flames only release heat outwards, while providing a gentle, warm glow inwards.

Dago's expression was grim. The ice crystal cannonballs were basically ineffective, and he kept thinking about his next plan.

In terms of experience, how could Raymond, a wizard with thirty years of experience, be inferior to me? In terms of strength, Raymond, a half-step formal wizard, is several times stronger than me.

However, he also has an ultimate move, the Flame Core Air Bomb, but the charging time is too long, making it virtually impossible to unleash.

To win, one must take advantage of the environment.

Thinking of this, Dago took out a bottle of purple psychoactive potion from his storage pocket and drank it.

He then used his mental energy to compress a tiny amount of air beneath his feet, activating the Bouncer mode.

Dago leaped several meters away, bounding towards a large field between the town and the forest.

As soon as Raymond saw Dago trying to escape, a light purple-blue halo flashed in his eyes, and his body suddenly rose from the ground, hovering a meter above the ground, as he chased after Dago.

Dago looked behind him and was instantly horrified. This half-step formal wizard can fly!

Raymond flew a meter into the air, while Dago leaped across the wide field, and the distance between Raymond and Dago kept closing.

Raymond's wand began to gather red energy, condensing it into a fireball, which he then began to bombard Dago.

Having no other choice, Dago gritted his teeth and could only intensify his mental power to compress more air, creating an air blast to make himself fly further.

This means you can't maintain a stable landing posture and it damages the floor beneath your feet.

And so, Dago was bombarded by Raymond's air-to-ground forces for a full ten minutes. During that time, Dago was nearly hit in the back several times, but he managed to jump away by the skin of his teeth each time.

His cloak was no longer recognizable; it had been torn into countless tattered strips, like a tattered flag hanging on his body, with charred edges.

A foot-long gash was cut open on his shoulder, revealing a bleeding wound underneath. The tattered cloth was stuck to his skin with blood and trembled slightly with each breath.

The cuffs were so badly torn that only half of them remained, and the exposed forearms were covered in scratches. The cleansing runes that were originally embroidered on the robe had long since faded.

That tattered robe was more powerful than any ornate decoration.

Every crack is proof of a narrow escape from death; hidden within every scorched and broken piece is an unbroken spirit and an indomitable edge.

Dago stopped and turned to look at Raymond, who was calmly watching him from a distance of more than ten meters.

Raymond said with a mocking smile, "Run! Why aren't you running? This game of catching mice is quite fun."

Dargo calmly said, "Raymond Wizard, haven't you noticed something? I've actually been jumping around a circular area the whole time."

"Oh? To a hunter, what difference does it make whether a mouse runs straight or runs in circles?"

"Of course there's a difference, Wizard Raymond. It's my turn now, I hope you can handle it."

The reason why Dago was injured during his constant escape and lacked the protection of the ice armor formed by his fair skin was because he used his mental power to continuously bury dormant ice elements in the fields.

Just like a hardworking old farmer planting rice seedlings, now it's time for him to reap the harvest.

He chanted the incantation for the Ice Crystal Spell, continuously gathering ice elements in his palm to form a large blue energy ball.

Raymond, expecting Raymond to attack him, began chanting a spell, conjuring a fireball at the tip of his wand.

Dago shouted, "Bloom, Ice Crystal Flower!" and then pressed the blue energy ball into the ground.

Ice energy roamed across the snow-covered fields, connecting the dormant ice elements that Dago had buried in the snow, forming dense ice veins beneath Raymond.

Raymond quickly turned the fireball at the tip of his wand toward the field to ignite it, but unfortunately, faced with such a massive amount of ice energy, the fireball was instantly extinguished as if it had been thrown into the ocean.

The cracking sound was particularly jarring in the deathly silent night, as if something was struggling to break free from the ground.

At first, tiny icicles pierced the frozen ground, their tips gleaming with a cold, eerie blue light. Then, more and more icicles grew wildly along the veins, shooting upwards at a visible speed straight at Raymond.

These ice spikes are not smooth pillars, but are covered with vicious barbs and sharp edges, every inch of which is filled with millennia-old cold air, and the surface is covered with frost-like ice crystals.

Countless ice spikes rose from the fields, eventually forming a crisscrossing ice forest in this frozen inferno. Their sharp peaks pierced the gray sky, and the cold air flowed along the veins of the ice spikes, causing the temperature of the entire hell to drop even further.

They are like countless hands reaching out from the abyss, cold and sharp, with an irresistible power, trapping everything that has strayed into this place in this eternally cold cage built of ice spikes.

As Raymond was trapped in the cage, he smiled at Dargo and said, "Dargo, do you think this can kill me? You're underestimating a half-step formal wizard."

But the next second he was terrified, seeing Dago raise his wand high, a fiery core like a small sun shining at the tip of his wand.

Raymond shouted maniacally, "Impossible! The ultimate technique is beyond your comprehension at your age!"

Then, looking at Dago with a pleading expression, he said, "Please, Dago, everything is negotiable. Just don't release it at me, for the sake of the academy."

Dago's face turned pale, and he said in a sly tone, "My word doesn't count. Go talk to my little Flame Core."

"boom--"

An unexpected explosion tore through the heavens and earth, forming a ring of fiery shockwaves that melted rocks, turned vegetation to ash, and even vaporized ice forests formed from ice crystals.

A mushroom-shaped cloud of fire rose from the center of the explosion, with incandescent flames churning within it. Raymond had already been reduced to ashes in the instant.

The flames he once controlled have now become the most ferocious destroyers, carrying his ashes and engulfing everything within a hundred meters in this scorching catastrophe.

After the flames subsided, only a charred crater more than ten meters long remained, with embers still burning at the bottom and the air filled with the smell of sulfur and scorched earth.

There were no wreckage, no traces, only the land that was completely burned down as proof.