"Heh! You old man really are sly."
Genie Sylas raised an eyebrow and glanced sideways at Nostradamus, "Weren't you just saying that when you were young, you wouldn't even know to find a place to hide and kite the living dead slowly?"
"Look at the places you picked for your disciple. Forget the fact that it's a bare patch of land without even a bit of high ground."
"On top of that, new living dead keep popping out from underground at any moment. Fine, let's say that's acceptable."
"But the moment he tries to climb a tree, you just make the tree disappear?"
"What kind of ridiculous move is that?"
"The hell do you know!", Nostradamus had his secrets exposed, and a trace of panic flashed in his eyes as he forced an explanation, "I'm doing this for my disciple's own good! If you don't push him, how are you going to force out his potential?"
Sylas sneered, "Are you trying to push out his potential, or are you just looking for a chance to show off your own abilities?"
"I can't be bothered arguing with you! People like you just don't understand anything."
"Can't win the argument, so you just stop talking, huh?"
"Pah!"
However, just as the two of them were about to start arguing again.
Ethan suddenly, in a rather bizarre way, led a large group of zombies, charging aggressively toward the big tree where Nostradamus was.
"See that!", Nostradamus said smugly, "My disciple knows what's what. He knows he can't handle so many zombies, so he deliberately ran to my side. While pushing his potential, it also makes it convenient for me to save him. Not like you, just making wild guesses, talking as if I'd harm my own disciple."
"Is that so?", Sylas said, unconvinced, "Then why don't I see even the slightest intention from your disciple to ask for help? To me, it looks more like he's using the tree you picked to stall for time."
"What's the use of stalling?", Nostradamus scoffed, "You're not unaware of how slow spiritual power recovers. With his current ability, he can at most fire twenty Great Fireball Techniques, that's already the limit. When his spiritual power is completely exhausted, won't he have to beg me for mercy?"
"Look how proud you are. Having a disciple is that amazing?", Sylas rolled his eyes.
BOOM!
But the scene they imagined, where Ethan's spiritual power would be completely drained, never happened.
Not only that, after running for a while, Ethan would always, at the last moment, fire off a splitting Great Fireball, directly blasting down the zombies that were just about to catch up to him.
Then he would keep running, as if caught in a cycle that never ended.
"Twenty-five already," Sylas laughed, "Your disciple has already released twenty-five Great Fireballs, and he still hasn't asked you for help."
"Any moment now," Nostradamus said confidently, "I've calculated it. Based on the recovery of spiritual power and his original consumption, he can release at most twenty-six Great Fireballs before he's completely drained. If he doesn't kneel then, I, as his master, will kneel to him."
"Really?", Sylas said, half-believing, half-doubting, "Then I'll be watching closely."
———
[Great Fireball Technique – Level 2: EXP 190/200]
And beneath the tree, Ethan, leading dozens of zombies in a run, was constantly keeping track of how far his spiritual power and Great Fireball Technique were from leveling up.
Nostradamus wasn't wrong. With all his spiritual power combined, he could at most release twenty-six Great Fireballs.
And after the last one, Ethan would truly be left with not a single drop.
But, what no one knew was, he could level up, and at the moment of leveling up, all his mana would be instantly refilled.
BOOM!
The final Great Fireball was finally launched from Ethan's hand.
This time, he didn't play any tricks with it, nor did he split it. He simply hurled it straight into the zombie horde. It only killed one zombie and slightly slowed the group's advance.
The forty to fifty zombies behind it were still completely unaffected.
"The last shot is finally out," Nostradamus stood on the tree trunk, eager to act, "My disciple is definitely about to beg me for mercy! Just wait!"
Sylas looked down beneath the tree, puzzled, "But your disciple doesn't look like someone whose spiritual power is exhausted."
"The hell do you know! Within three seconds, he'll definitely come begging," Nostradamus said with absolute confidence as he started counting, "Three… two…"
BOOM!
However, before Nostradamus could even count to one.
Everyone saw a massive burst of white light erupt beneath the tree, almost like a real sun appearing, before quickly dimming again.
Both Sylas and Nostradamus's expressions changed.
"This… how is this possible?"
"This kid should have exhausted all his spiritual power. How can he still release a gigantic Great Fireball?"
———
[System Notification: Great Fireball Technique Level 2 → Great Fireball Technique Level 3]
[System Notification: Spiritual Power restored to 5000]
[System Notification: Awakened, Great Fireball Enlargement]
However, this was Ethan's strategy.
Hold on until leveling up, then instantly revive at full strength.
And that was exactly what happened. Relying on his higher-than-average agility, he kept running with the zombies, dragging things out until his spiritual power recovered enough to release the last few Great Fireballs.
The Great Fireball Technique had finally upgraded from level two to level three.
Originally, Ethan thought that at level three, he would be able to release three Great Fireballs.
But who would've thought, at level three, it instead produced one gigantic Great Fireball. Its size was almost like a large water vat.
And it was huge, bright, and incredibly heavy.
So heavy that Ethan had trouble even launching it. So he simply treated the level three Great Fireball like a bowling ball and rolled it directly toward the zombies.
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
A thunderous sound like massive rocks rolling echoed beneath the tree.
The dense mass of zombies surging toward Ethan was forcibly crushed into a path of rotten flesh by the enlarged Great Fireball.
As for the remaining zombies, many were knocked down, and the rest mindlessly continued charging at Ethan.
That was the nature of zombies.
They had no intelligence and couldn't think at all. If it were other monsters or beasts, seeing how powerful Ethan was, they would've already turned and fled.
But these zombies didn't. They continued to rush forward one after another to their deaths.
And this… Naturally gave Ethan a chance to experiment with how to use the level three enlarged Great Fireball.
"Bowling ball!"
"Falling bronze sphere!"
"Invincible bouncing ball!"
Ethan first rolled the massive Great Fireball, clearing out large groups of zombies on the ground. The remaining scattered ones couldn't be handled with this rolling method.
So he jumped onto a tree branch about two meters high and started throwing Great Fireballs downward.
The massive Great Fireball crushed a zombie flat on impact.
Then it bounced, flattening several more zombies in succession before finally dispersing into several streaks of firelight, disappearing into the night.
After leveling up, Ethan felt completely refreshed. There was no such thing as over-exhaustion of spiritual power at all.
This scene left Nostradamus on the tree trunk dumbfounded, while Sylas naturally seized the chance to mock him, "Didn't you say that if your disciple didn't kneel, you would kneel to him as his master?"
"Did I say that?", Nostradamus played dumb, "You must've misheard."
"Shameless old man!", Sylas cursed.
But at this moment, he didn't have time to keep arguing with Nostradamus either, because he was genuinely curious how Ethan managed to do it.
To actually master the enlarged Great Fireball Technique at such a critical moment?
And that wasn't even the main point.
The main point was, after fighting for so long, how did this kid show no signs of overusing his spiritual power?
That was simply too gifted.
Boom!
Ethan kept blasting monsters.
Just like when he discovered in the treasure land that the farts of those farting bees could increase his poison resistance when he endured them.
This feeling of leveling up only made him more excited.
Compared to others who might need three to five years of hard training to level up, he only needed to keep killing monsters until his energy was nearly exhausted, and then he would level up.
Then revive at full strength again. This feeling was simply more exhilarating than anything.
BOOM!
Ethan was casting the Great Fireball Technique faster and faster now.
Especially now that he was level three, using level one or level two Great Fireballs was almost instantaneous. With just a thought, he could fire them out easily, and with his precise aim.
For the first time, he realized this Great Fireball was even more useful than a bow and arrow.
'Is this the difference between physical attack and magic attack?'
'No wonder so many people want to become mages.'
RUMBLE!
Where there were many zombies, he used the level three enlarged Great Fireball, hitting every time.
Where there were fewer zombies, he used the level two Great Fireball to save energy while maintaining precision.
And if there was only a single lonely zombie, Ethan would just walk up to it and slap it, the slap infused with the Great Fireball Technique, blasting the zombie into the air, spinning three and a half turns in a full 360 before crashing down.
At this moment, Ethan walked across this land filled with zombie corpses, like taking a walk in a park.
He was like an invincible king, striding through the night, every movement bursting into flames, dazzling beyond belief.
"Old thing, is this what you call spiritual exhaustion?"
Sylas kept finding chances to mock Nostradamus, "He's a hundred times more handsome than you were when you were young."
"Hmph! He's still my disciple," Nostradamus said proudly, "Jealous?"
"You don't—uh!"
Just as the two were about to start mocking each other again, Sylas suddenly fell silent, leaving Nostradamus, who was about to retort, a bit annoyed, "Don't what?"
"Look… look over there!"
Sylas didn't answer. Instead, he pointed straight at the center of the Land of the Living Dead.
A huge mound of earth was rapidly cracking open. A tombstone over two meters tall on top of it was pushed askew, and beneath the fractured ground, a decayed giant hand was breaking out of the soil.
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