He raised his right hand high, fingers curled into a loose claw, palm to the sky, and exhaled.
"Half my Magic reserve, full charge, full chant, with Basic Abilities on par with a Lv.5 Mage, every skill I've got stacked on top, plus the magic amplification from the Secret Art: Transcendent Magic Circle..."
A gigantic ice spike took shape above his head with a run of sharp cracks, like a frozen peak hanging upside down.
Cold poured out of it, and the yellow sand around him froze over, frost spreading until the ground turned to hard permafrost with a crackling sound.
Even Leon's own cloak, mask, and goggles weren't spared. A layer of white frost formed fast on them, leaving them cold and brittle.
The spherical Magic Crystal at the head of his staff let out a sharp crack. It couldn't take a flood of Magic that violent, and a fracture split open on its surface. As the blue magical light grew more blinding, the crack spread like a spiderweb until it covered the whole sphere.
Leon winced so hard he nearly cracked a molar.
"There goes eight million!"
Swallowing the pain in his chest, Leon grinned, a bloodthirsty pleasure rolling through the smile.
"Let's see you survive this!"
"Water-Ice Great Magic Spear!"
"Break!"
The massive ice spike, forced and compressed by his enormous Magic into a date-pit shape ten meters long and three meters across, glittered with a freezing light and cut a streak of frost-blue through the air like a meteor, through the tangle of sandstorm and blizzard.
The next second, a cross-shaped flash burst out from the center of the Mirage Sand Dragon's body.
No earthshaking explosion. No deafening roar. No shockwave sweeping everything away. Only a piercing so utterly silent, a pure penetrating force that bored clean through a body dozens of meters long.
With a sharp crack, the huge Magic Stone buried deep in the sand dragon's torso showed a hollow on its surface, and from that center, cracks spread wildly.
Until it finally reached its limit, and the energy inside the Magic Stone could no longer hold its shape.
The Magic Stone burst apart, turning into a sky full of glittering dust that bloomed like a beautiful firework in the dim yellow air.
Almost at the same time, an ice-blue afterimage swept across the collapsing ruin of sand. Passing a certain spot, "it" shot out a hand and scooped a box glowing with golden light into its arms, then bent its knees, hunched low, lifted its head, and with two flashes of frost-blue light under its feet tore down the snow-covered dune slope in a beautiful arc, faster than the eye could follow.
Secret Art: Ice Floe.
The instant he finished unloading his full-power Water-Ice Great Magic Spear, Leon hadn't even looked at the result before he bolted without a backward glance. At the same time he split his attention, sprinting while using fine Magic control to steer the ice clone at a distance. A few breaths later, the clone carrying the box caught up from behind.
"Hand it over!"
He snatched the box and stuffed it into his coat, dismissed the clone with a one-handed seal, and the corner of his mouth curved with satisfaction.
"Heh, no way I'm spitting out meat I've already got in my mouth."
"You want to steal my kill? Even the Greatest Evil doesn't get to do that!"
Feeling the solid weight of the Drop Treasure Chest tucked into his inner pocket, Leon snorted, used a one-handed seal to help channel his Mind, shifted from running to sliding, and called out.
"Secret Art: Ice Floe!"
"Here we go!"
A few Ice Lances fired off casually blew apart the things in his way, then Leon crouched and kicked off.
Ice light burst under his feet, and the already blistering speed of his "strategic advance" (read: running away) climbed higher still as the Secret Art kicked in.
A streak of frost-blue flickered through the yellow sand, leaving afterimages behind. Far back there, all that remained was the Greatest Evil's savage roaring and the lingering howl of the sandstorm and the blizzard.
...
...
Floor 36, Sand Land, out in the open expanse near the passage up to Floor 35. The team had already pulled back this far and was locked in a brutal fight against the tide of monsters pouring out of the "minefields" they'd triggered along the way.
They held a ring formation, with Iri, Aura, Margaret, and the other Mages protected in the center. The Mages covered Jeanne, Rose, Persephone, and Kureha on the outer ring while quickly healing the more badly wounded.
"Ow, ow... Iri, go easy!"
Irisviel kept one hand on Laurier's right leg maintaining her healing magic, and held out an Elixir with the other.
"We do both at once. I'll purge the poison while you drink this and recover your stamina and your wounds."
"Get your combat strength back as fast as you can. Kureha needs your help over there."
Laurier stared at Kureha, fighting on a knife's edge in the middle of the horde, and nodded quickly.
"Got it!"
Laurier didn't waste words. She pulled the stopper and drained the Elixir, worth five hundred thousand Valis, in one go. She wiped the shine from the corner of her mouth and looked around at what seemed like an endless flood of monsters without a trace of hesitation in her eyes.
Now was no time to count small change.
Clear sword light swung out in a string of afterimages, cutting the monsters around her apart with ease.
Breathing hard, Persephone wiped the filthy blood off her face, golden hair stuck to her forehead, cheeks covered in sweat. She steadied herself for a moment and sucked in deep breaths to get her stamina back.
At the same time she quickly pulled a Potion from the pouch at her back. Seeing the motion, Jeanne and Rose moved in toward her without needing to be told and brought her inside their protective circle. Behind them, Margaret swept her arm to direct the Heavenly Maiden in perfect sync, dropping flames onto the monsters clustered around Persephone. The bombardment, on par with a Lv.2, wasn't enough to kill, but it was more than enough to pin them down for a short while, the blasts landing in a long rolling chain.
...
...