"Miss Camellya. Miss Camellya!" Leon called in a loud whisper, patting Camellya's arm repeatedly as he spoke. "Didn't you say the highest-level monsters in this dungeon were Level 130? I'm pretty sure that thing in front of me is well above 130."
"You don't need to tell me. I can sense that thing's level is closer to mine than it is to 130," Camellya whispered, leaning away from the corner and taking a few steps back.
Turning from the giant snake in the distance, Leon faced Camellya and said, "So, it seems our white snake friend over here decided to take a nap and froze everything around it to keep the room 'quiet'."
He glanced around the corner again at the silent, sleeping snake, then looked back at Camellya and shook his head.
"Nope. Our target is right under the snake's body, and I doubt it's going to listen if we tell it we just want to get something from one of the corpses and leave."
Leon exhaled after saying this, and Camellya peeked at the snake once more before asking, "So, what do you suggest?"
She turned back to him and added, "Do you want us to go back and call your guards so they can handle it?"
"Nahh. We're saving that for last," Leon said immediately.
He then removed his gloves and dropped them on the floor, his watch glowing as a new pair of arm wear appeared in his hands.
It was a pair of gauntlets, crafted from a mix of metal and leather, with spikes on the knuckles and magic stones embedded around the back of the palm to enhance damage output.
"So you're planning to fight?" Camellya asked, and Leon nodded.
"Yep. The white snake over there is a huge chunk of EXP just waiting to be claimed. And until I'm completely sure that neither of us can handle it alone, Elidyr and Beriel will have to sit this one out."
He began putting on his gauntlets, and at the same time, Camellya raised her right hand, her bracelet glowing lightly as a choker appeared in her palm. She pushed back her hair and fastened it around her neck, tucking it into her turtleneck.
Seeing this, Leon raised an eyebrow. "Is that a magic catalyst?"
Camellya nodded silently.
Mages typically used staves to enhance their magic power circulation, speed, efficiency, control, or amplify damage, but that required them to hold the staves. Some mages used their hands to assist in constructing spell circles, so they employed magic catalysts that offered the same or even greater effects than staves, coming in various shapes and sizes.
Common magic catalysts were the types that floated beside the user, constantly consuming a small amount of magic power, and there were those that could be worn like Camellya's choker.
The gem at the centre of the choker was a magic stone, and if one looked closely, several runes could be seen inscribed along the strap.
After she put it on, she raised both palms, red magic circles forming above them. She then looked at Leon and said, "Ready when you are."
Leon smiled lightly, clenching his fists and activating Bronto, purple lightning running through his arms and into his gauntlets.
"And off we go," he said, immediately turning around the corner and dashing straight toward the sleeping snake, Camellya moving right beside him as they closed the distance in a few seconds.
The moment they crossed the threshold of the vault doors, the snake's eyes snapped open, its glowing orange pupils locking onto them instantly, and Leon jumped onto the wall, kicking off to boost his speed as he charged toward the snake's rising head with his fist pulled back.
But just as it looked like Leon was about to land the first hit, the snake opened its mouth, a hiss echoing as magic power burst from it in the form of a pressurised ice stream aimed at the airborne Leon.
In that instant, the magic circle above Camellya's left palm glowed, and a wall of fire rose between Leon and the snake, blocking the ice stream.
Leon deactivated Bronto as well, retracting the lightning around his fists just as the energy released from the clash between the ice stream and Camellya's flame wall hit him and knocked him backwards, filling the area with hot steam.
For a moment, everything in the snake's heat-seeking vision blended together, and in the instant its sight needed to refocus and distinguish the cloud of heat in front of it from the heat of the two humanoids attacking it, a stream of fire slammed into the left side of its head, knocking its body toward the ground.
As its head hit the ice with a loud thud, it blinked, and when its eyelid opened, it reflected a fist coated in purple magic power descending toward it.
[!]
The snake instantly unfurled part of its tail from around the spear and swung it toward the incoming fist, barely in time to block Leon's punch.
The impact cracked several of the snake's scales and sent the tail slamming into its own face, and seeing his attack had been stopped, Leon quickly rolled forward over the snake's body and landed on the floor, then got up and leapt away as the snake turned to its right side and tried to bite him with its fangs.
Just as it bit into empty air, a magic circle appeared beneath the snake's head, and a spear of earth burst from it, hitting the underside of the snake's jaw and knocking its head upward.
Leon immediately turned and clenched his fist, using Bronto to send a bolt of lightning in a parabolic arc that crashed down onto the snake's head at the same moment Camellya released two flame spears.
**BOOM!
A loud explosion rang out, powerful shockwaves and waves of hot air spreading in all directions as the snake's head slammed onto the ground with force.
Leon moved to charge in again, but he heard a loud whooshing sound and dropped flat to the ground, avoiding the snake's tail as it swept through the space where he had been standing earlier.
'If that thing hit me, I'd have ended up as a human-shaped imprint on the wall right now.'
That thought crossed Leon's mind as he got up and threw a punch upward, hitting the snake's tail from below, the spikes on his gauntlet piercing through the gaps between its scales and into the flesh beneath, causing blood to spill.
He sent lightning through the spikes to shock the snake's body, but its tail immediately began thrashing, so he quickly pulled his fist back and rolled away to avoid being crushed beneath it.
Right after, magic power flowed out of the snake's body and into the icy ground around them, and hundreds of ice spikes burst out from the ground across the entire vault, shooting upward toward the ceiling.
Leon coated his legs with lightning as he leapt aside, avoiding the spikes as quickly as he could, while Camellya used wind magic to increase her speed and dash back toward the vault door, which was outside the range of the snake's attack.
The spikes that had risen into the air began falling back down, some changing angles mid-air and shooting toward Camellya, who had a magic circle forming in front of her, but Leon dashed into their path and punched them aside, redirecting the projectiles and giving Camellya the time she needed to complete her spell circle construction.
"Flare Circle."
With her quiet mutter, two rings of light appeared beneath the snake's body, from which a swirling pillar of flames rose and engulfed its upper body.
Magic power gathered just below the vault's frozen ceiling, and with a flash of purple light at Leon's command, the energy descended as a bolt onto the snake's head as it was engulfed in the flames.
However, their combined attack on the snake didn't last long, as its body burst with magic power, releasing an omnidirectional wave of ice that extinguished Camellya's flames in an instant and added another layer to the already thick ice covering the vault.
Since Leon and Camellya had moved out through the vault entrance when the snake released its ice spikes, they were at the edge of this wave's range and were only brushed by a small burst of cold air.
But in the moment they needed to leap over the foot-thick layer of ice, the snake had already gathered magic power in its mouth and fired a stream of ice toward Camellya, while its tail swept toward Leon with ice spikes shooting from the tip.
Both of them immediately dashed in opposite directions, lightning around Leon's feet boosting his speed, while Camellya used a wind magic spell to increase hers, running toward the vault wall faster than the snake could turn its head to redirect the stream of ice toward her.
While she outran the constant ice stream, Leon charged straight toward the snake, jumping over the first ice spike that shot at him without breaking pace. He dropped into a slide to avoid the second, then pushed himself back up and continued forward, shifting slightly to the side to avoid another as he closed the distance.
The snake's tail swept toward him again, and Leon quickly ducked beneath it as it passed overhead, clenching his fist and punching the underside of the snake, the impact lifting part of its massive body off the ground.
He didn't slow down, immediately dashing toward the bulk of its body, his feet making brief contact along the scaled surface as he climbed up the section still coiled around the frost spear embedded in the ground, then launched himself upward toward its head with his fist pulled back.