'Annnd strike!!'
**BAM!!!
Leon's punch connected with the back of the snake's head, snapping it forward and causing the stream of ice it had been releasing toward Camellya to veer off course.
This gave Camellya the opening she needed as she came to a stop, her magic activating to manifest tens of flame spears in the air around the snake.
Camellya launched them immediately, and as she did, the snake unfurled one layer of its body from around the spear and swung its tail toward its head, hitting Leon atop its head from the side before he could deliver another punch to the back of its head.
The impact sent Leon flying across the vault, his body crashing onto the ground and rolling for over a dozen metres before hitting the wall and coming to a stop.
Another wave of ice erupted from the snake's body, this time shooting upwards, forming a shield that blocked the flaming spears, but the snake's respite was brief as the second magic circle on Camellya's hands activated.
"Wind Magic: Blade Storm."
A strong wind burst from the magic circle, sweeping across the room, and the snake's ice shield was instantly cut apart by pressurised wind blades, which then tore across its body, slicing through scales and the flesh underneath, spraying blood across the ice.
The snake hissed in pain, its orange eyes glowing as it finally unfurled its entire body from around the ice spear, revealing its full length.
The magic power both Camellya and Leon, who staggered to his feet after being knocked nearly 50 metres away, could sense from the snake increased by a level.
It hissed and turned its orange eyes toward Camellya, slithering across the ice to close the distance in seconds.
The vault wasn't especially large, only about a hundred metres on all sides, so for the snake whose body measured just under 15 metres, crossing that distance was effortless.
The snake lunged to bite Camellya, but she leapt aside to evade, and as she moved, it aimed its tail in the direction she had dodged and fired ice spikes, forcing her to raise a wind shield to block them.
Leon jumped into the fray, releasing a bolt of lightning onto the snake's head as it opened its mouth to fire another stream of ice, earning an annoyed glare from the creature.
It turned around and dashed toward Leon, slamming its tail into the ground, sending ice spikes erupting into the air before they descended toward Camellya alone, intending to riddle her with holes.
'Wind Stride! Flame Spears!'
Camellya activated her movement spell to quickly evade, then launched flaming spears to destroy the ice spikes she couldn't avoid in time, while the snake closed the distance to Leon with its mouth open.
A chilling wind burst out, frost meant to immobilise Leon so the snake could clamp down, but he was already leaping to the side by the time its jaws opened, evading a direct hit.
He thrust his right fist toward the snake, sending a bolt of lightning into its open mouth, hitting its fangs and flesh, eliciting a pained hiss as it hurriedly shut its jaws.
Leon quickly ducked beneath the swipe of the snake's tail over his head, then leapt back, firing another bolt of lightning to deflect it when it swung through the air again.
He glanced at Camellya and saw her conjuring two flame magic circles, then charged his fists with lightning and shouted.
"Head blasts till the end!"
Camellya didn't respond, only activating one of the spells to generate a flaming circle beneath the snake's body, but before the Flare Circle could fully form, the snake unleashed chilling magic that froze it, shattering the magic circle with its own power.
"Guh."
A low groan of pain escaped Camellya's lips from the backlash of the destroyed spell, but she didn't let it stop her from activating the second, sending spears of flames raining down on the snake.
Leon punched the empty air above him, a ball of lightning shooting from his fists toward the ceiling before exploding into a shower of bolts that descended on the white snake at the same time as Camellya's flaming spears.
The vault instantly filled with loud noises as Camellya's spears exploded violently on impact, the blasts rocking the snake's body and forcing it to use its ice wave ability again, curling its body up, expending great amounts of magic to release a wave of ice around its body that blocked the remaining flames and lightning.
While the snake's body was rocked by the blasts, Leon hurried over to Camellya's position, his face filled with concern as he asked, "You okay? That thing broke your magic, right?"
Camellya slid the back of her right palm across her lips, wiping the faint trace of blood there before replying, "It's just a simple spell backlash. It's not enough to take me down."
Her bracelet glowed, and a water bottle appeared, which she quietly sipped from.
For a moment, Leon glanced toward the snake before snapping his gaze back to Camellya almost immediately.
"Wait, that thing isn't water, is it?" he asked, noticing that the bottle looked slightly different from the one he'd seen her use over the past few days, and he could also sense magic power coming from this one.
Camellya nodded, the bottle disappearing from her palm as her bracelet glowed once more, and she spoke, "Explosions aren't gonna kill that thing, so we're gonna have to change our approach."
A loud hiss echoed right after she spoke, and she spread both arms slightly as magic circles, each with two rings of light glowing around it, appeared above her palms.
Then she spoke to Leon, "I want to use Tier 3 Magic on it, and I'd need your help to hold it off and distract it long enough for me to finish the spell construction. I'd take a while since I'd still be pelting it with Wind Blades while constructing the spell, so it doesn't get suspicious and notice the magic I'm gathering for the Tier 3 Spell."
After speaking, the magic circles around her palms expanded, each reaching about half a meter in diameter, and seeing this, Leon muttered, "That looks complex."
"It is," Camellya replied, slamming her palms together and combining the magic circles before muttering quietly.
"Fire Magic: Flame Pillar + Wind Magic: Tornado."
The smoke from the explosions of her flame spears crashing onto the white snake's body was blown away as a powerful gust of wind began swirling around it.
The snake quickly uncoiled and tried to slither out of the swirling winds, but a pillar of flames erupted from below, hitting it and lifting its body slightly into the air. The tornado immediately accelerated, swirling the flames and lifting the snake into the air with violent force.
The powerful whirlwinds sliced through the snake's scales, tearing them open and spilling blood while the flames burned the flesh beneath.
Leon raised his right hand, a magic circle appearing at the back of his palm as he condensed magic power into it.
'Lightning Spear.'
The purple light solidified into a crackling lightning spear, which he grabbed, then ran forward slightly and threw it toward the whirling tornado that was lifting the snake.
The lightning spear collided with the tornado just as the snake began releasing its frost magic power to disperse it, the crackling lightning mixing with the swirling flames and resulting in a massive explosion in the air.
"I'm going to use the Tier 3 version of that Tornado spell. Get out of the way when you see the magic circle light up under it," Camellya said, her eyes following the snake as it hissed in pain, its body thrown violently toward a corner of the vault.
Leon nodded without a word, coating his legs in lightning and taking a runner's stance. He took a deep breath, then dashed toward the closest wall, ran up lightly and then kicked off it to propel himself into the air, his fist pulled back as he leapt into the cloud of smoke surrounding the snake's body.
"Rise and shine, motherfucker!" Leon shouted as he dropped into the smoke cloud, a hiss answering as the snake lunged upward at him, its mouth open to bite.
A single-ringed magic circle appeared in front of Leon's lightning-clad fist, the Light Magic Spell: Flash, activating and filling the area with a bright burst of light that made the snake reflexively close its eyes and turn its head away, long enough for Leon's fist to slam into the back of its head and knock it down with immense force.
Leon slid down the snake's body after the attack and punched its side with his left hand, the spikes in his gauntlets piercing through the gaps in its scales. He dragged his hand along its body with all the force he could muster, ripping scales from the snake's body, sending them flying and splattering blood as he did so.
He heard a loud whooshing sound and immediately ducked to avoid the snake's tail that was clearly flying toward him.
However, Leon made a slight miscalculation in his approach.
A Level 130+ First Class monster wasn't as stupid as those below, and it had already learned that he always ducked to avoid its tail swipes.
As such, this time, the tail didn't swipe toward his head, but toward his lower body, and when he ducked, he unintentionally placed his upper body directly in its path, only realising it too late within the cloud of smoke where his visibility was limited.
"!"
The tail slammed into his arms, which he'd hastily brought up in front of his chest to block, and threw his back into the snake's body behind him.