Wizard: My skills can be upgraded indefinitely.

Samael stopped talking nonsense, suddenly raised his hands, and clenched them in front of his chest.

"Death Grip!"

The space around Ian froze instantly, and an invisible force squeezed in from all directions, as if to crush him.

Ian snorted coldly, and activated the [Furnace Tempering Technique] at full power, causing the jade-like luster under his skin to shine brightly.

He let out a low growl and thrust his arms outwards with a sudden burst of strength!

Click!

Like the sound of shattering glass, the invisible squeezing force was forcibly pried open, creating a crack.

Ian pushed off with his feet, shooting to the side like a cannonball, while simultaneously swinging his right hand backward.

A dark sphere, about the size of a fist, with its internal light slightly collapsed, flew silently toward Samael.

[Gravity-collapsed sphere]!

Samael's hair stood on end. He had examined the scene of the raven's death and knew that Ian's witchcraft was extremely powerful, so he dared not confront it head-on.

With a bizarre twist of its body, it slid several meters away as if it had no bones.

The small black ball flew past the hem of his robe and struck a giant tree behind him that would take several people to encircle.

puff.

In the center of the giant tree trunk, a transparent circular hole with a diameter of two meters appeared silently, its edges as smooth as a mirror, and the upper half of the tree crown collapsed with a crash.

Samael's eyes grew even colder. "You do have some skill."

He quickly formed hand seals and chanted obscure incantations.

The ground shook, and seven or eight pale, rotting, skeletal hands burst from the earth, reaching for Ian's feet.

At the same time, Samael opened his mouth and spat out a gray-black plume of smoke that shot like an arrow toward Ian's face.

As the smoke passed by, the air emitted a hissing, corrosive sound.

Ian didn't stop, and half of his floating crystal guards shot towards the bone hand underground like shuttles.

"Bang bang bang!" The bone hand was smashed to pieces by the crystal guard.

Facing the smoke arrows, Ian neither dodged nor avoided them. A flash of light appeared on his left wrist from the [Ring of Overlapping Peaks], and a thick light shield materialized.

laugh!

The smoke arrows struck the light shield, rapidly corroding it, and the shield thinned at a visible speed.

But in that brief moment of obstruction, Ian had already completed his next move.

He brought his right index and middle fingers together, gathering an intense, frosty aura at the tips, and pointed it at Samael from a distance.

[Frost Ray] A full-force attack!

A beam of frost-white light, condensed to the extreme, tore through the air, carrying a chill that could freeze the soul, and arrived in an instant!

Samael's expression changed slightly, and his gray robe fluttered even without wind.

A layer of viscous, constantly writhing and churning gray-black protective aura rose up.

The frost-white beam struck the aura, immediately emitting a rapid freezing sound.

Frost rapidly spread across the gray-black aura surface and began to erode inwards.

"Hmph!" Samael groaned, clearly not feeling well.

However, he was extremely experienced in combat, and while he was injured, he secretly flicked his left hand.

A barely visible gray glint, skimming the ground, shot like lightning toward Ian's shadow.

Ian remained alert and mentally sensed something amiss.

Without a second thought, the [Invisibility] effect is activated!

【Mimicry】makes his body instantly translucent, and his color and texture rapidly assimilate to the surrounding environment.

Not only is it visually difficult to distinguish, but its scent is also almost perfectly concealed.

The gray light lost its target, passed through the spot where he had just stood, and struck the stone behind him, which quickly weathered into a pile of ashes.

Samael was taken aback.

In that instant of distraction, Ian appeared like a ghost, ten meters to his left!

Appearing, raising his hand, he unleashed another [Gravity Collapse Sphere] at close range!

Samael was alarmed. At the critical moment of life and death, he bit his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood.

The essence of blood transformed into a small, dark red shield engraved with twisted runes, which was placed in front of him.

boom!

The collapsing sphere collided with the small shield.

The small, dark red shield let out a mournful cry of despair, its surface runes flashing wildly before exploding with a "bang."

Samael was thrown by the aftershock of the explosion, crashing into two large trees before coming to a stop.

Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his gray robe was torn, revealing a pair of black soft armor underneath.

His eyes changed completely, from greed and contempt to shock and anger, and a hint of...unbelievable fear.

This newly appointed wizard has an absurdly strong physical body and incredibly powerful magic.

There's also that eerie invisibility, and their combat instincts are terrifyingly sharp.

We can't hold back any longer!

Samael roared, raising his hands high, and a dense death energy erupted from his body, instantly withering and dying the surrounding vegetation.

He's about to use his killer move!

Just then.

"Gah!!!"

A sharp caw rang out.

Suddenly, Gaga appeared in the shadows above Samael's head.

With its wingspan reaching nearly twenty meters, it blotted out the sky, its feathers stood on end, and its eyes flashed with an eerie light!

[Eye of Calamity], go all out to get it!

Samael felt a blur before his eyes as countless distorted and terrifying illusions flooded his mind, and the wails of the dead echoed in his ears, causing his consciousness to instantly become chaotic.

Although his mental strength was formidable and he broke free most of the way in an instant, this brief interference was enough!

Ian seized the fleeting opportunity, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.

At the core of the spiritual sea, those pale golden light spots surged wildly.

A trace of invisible and intangible "power," yet condensed to its extreme, was forcibly extracted and concentrated in his eyes.

He looked at Samael.

His gaze was sharp as a needle.

laugh!

Samael's body stiffened abruptly.

He felt as if his soul had been pierced by a red-hot ice needle!

Excruciating pain! A pain that strikes deep into the soul!

His half-prepared killing move instantly collapsed, and the backlash of death energy caused him to spit out another mouthful of black blood.

"Crystal... crystallized silk threads?!"

Samael let out a terrified scream, his voice distorted.

"Impossible! You're only level one..."

Ian won't give him a chance to breathe.

He charged forward while simultaneously unleashing that trace of crystallization properties.

At full speed, the powerful physique granted by the [Furnace Tempering Technique] made him resemble a humanoid beast.

Samael's soul was wounded, and his reaction was a beat slower.

The moment he raised his hand, Ian's fist was already upon him.

This punch, devoid of any fancy moves, concentrated all the power of the body, and the jade-like radiance beneath the skin almost shone through the entire body.

Bang! ! !

It slammed solidly into Samael's black soft armor on his chest.

The soft armor emitted a piercing groan and caved in deeply.

Samael's sternum cracked with a clear sound, and he flew backward like a broken sack.

It crashed into a big tree and slid down softly.

He collapsed to the ground, coughing up large amounts of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, and his eyes quickly dimmed.

Ian stepped forward, expressionless.

Samael struggled to lift his eyelids, looked at Ian, and his lips moved.

"The cursed ones... will not... be spared..."

Before he could finish speaking, Ian placed his right hand on Ian's forehead.

[Bloodline Purification Technique] activated, breaking limits with the special effect [Soul Devouring]!

It not only extracts blood and qi, but also directly devours the remaining spiritual power and soul essence!

"Ugh!" Samael let out a final, short scream, his body convulsed violently a few times, and then went completely still.

His skin quickly dried up and turned ashen, turning him into a withered, dried-up corpse.

A refreshing sensation, much purer than before, flowed into Ian's body.

He closed his eyes and sensed it; his mental strength had increased slightly, and his [Furnace Tempering Technique] had also made subtle progress.

He put away the blood essence and looked at Samael's corpse with a cold gaze.

"Since you want to devour me, it wouldn't be too much for me to eat you too."

The leader of the Cursed Dead Squad, at the peak of liquefaction, died just like that.

He shook his wrist; his knuckles were still a little numb from that punch. The soft armor was indeed quite defensive.

"Caw caw!" The quack flew down and landed on his shoulder.

The small eyes glanced at Samael's ashes, then at Ian. "Is it done?"

"Hmm," Ian responded, immediately turning his head to look in the direction of the silver sapling.

That patch of silvery-gray soil is now completely empty.

Only a bowl-sized, bottomless hole remains on the ground, with subtle signs of movement in the soil around its edges, which is rapidly leveling off.

"They ran away?" Ian frowned and immediately rushed to the cave entrance.

He probed the cave with his spiritual power, but it only went in less than ten meters before being disrupted by a chaotic force field, preventing him from continuing.

However, he keenly sensed that deep inside the cave, there remained an extremely faint and unique energy fluctuation.

It shares the same origin as that silver sapling, but is more subtle, more… “concentrated,” as if it has shrunk into a small core.

"Chase!"

Without the slightest hesitation, Ian gave a low shout to Ga Ga, and his body began to shrink rapidly.

The [Mimicry] effect can not only simulate the environment, but also change its own shape and size to a certain extent.

He shrunk his body to less than a meter tall and glanced at the hole, which was about the size of a bowl.

With a determined effort, he jumped in.

Gaga was startled and quickly shrank to the size of a fist.

They darted into the hole with a "whoosh" and followed closely behind.

The cave is not vertically downward, but rather winding and meandering, like a tunnel dug by some kind of creature. The walls are smooth and still retain a faint silvery glow.

Ian hunched over and moved quickly inside, relying entirely on his senses to track the faint fluctuations.

The passageway was extremely deep and had many branching paths, like a maze.

Ian dared not lose sight of it, pushing his mental power to its limit, locking onto that slight fluctuation.

After chasing for about ten minutes, the road ahead suddenly opened up.

He slid out of a hole and landed in a dimly lit space.

Gaga flew out as well and landed on his shoulder.

Ian steadied himself and cautiously surveyed his surroundings.

This appears to be a dilapidated laboratory.

The area was small, less than fifty square meters, and everywhere there were collapsed stone shelves, broken crystal vessels, rotten scrolls and metal parts scattered all over the ground.

The air was thick with dust and a musty smell, a mixture of medicine and metal.

In the center of the laboratory, there is a stone platform.

On the stone platform, there was a silver-gray, basketball-sized lump of gelatinous clay, its surface slowly wriggling as if it were alive.

Inside the mud block, one can vaguely see fine, silvery roots intertwined.

At the core, a faint fluctuation of consciousness emanated, the very fluctuation that Ian was tracking.

The small silver tree from before now huddled above the clod of earth, no bigger than a palm, its branches and leaves curled up, trembling like a frightened little animal.

Those silver fruits have also disappeared; I don't know where they went.

"Is this... its 'root'? Or rather, its 'brain'?"

Ian took a few steps closer, but did not touch it rashly.

His gaze fell on the stone platform, on a few relatively intact metal plates and crystal pieces scattered around it.

It is engraved with some ancient characters and patterns.

Ian crouched down, carefully picked up a relatively intact metal plate, and wiped away the dust.

The script was in the language of ancient shamans, and he could barely decipher some of it.