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Volume 7 Chapter 10 Part 3

Translator: Kell

As the enemy targeted the others, the monster in front of me made a move. The surrounding temperature dropped slightly, and the Volcano Avatar’s mouth began to glow with a white light.

“Really? You have to use that now?”

The name of this attack is “The Roar of Scorched Earth”. The power stored by the volcano is converted into heat and released to the surroundings. It may sound like a simple attack when put into words, but this is actually the most deadly of the many attacks that the Volcano Avatar has.

The Volcano Avatar has several attacks that use heat, but the Roar of Scorched Earth is on a whole different level. It contains almost half of the mana of the volcano.

For volcanoes, mana is more than just something you use for casting spells or using Skills. The body of the volcano itself is basically mana. To use half of it means sacrificing half of your body to launch a single attack, in human terms.

In that sense, this Roar of the Scorched Earth is basically its ultimate attack. And there’s no way to defend against it.

It’s not the kind of attack that you can withstand by preparing beforehand. You can stack all the defense and resistance magic all you want, but it will burn through your defenses anyway.

Aviation magic or distancing yourself is meaningless as well. A few kilometers is pretty much nothing in the face of a power that’s been accumulated for centuries inside a single mountain. If you were to take off at full speed the moment the Volcano Avatar appeared, you still wouldn’t be able to escape.

In fact, even the enemies on the mountaintop would get caught in the attack. So if the Roar of Scorched Earth is unleashed, our goal of taking back the active volcano of Raijis will be achieved. A few neighboring towns might get levelled in the process, but the surrounding imperial forces will also be reduced to ashes. Count Gaze can then just reclaim these burned ruins. After we’re dead.

In short, if the Roar of Scorched Earth is fired at us, we’re a hundred percent dead. Then there’s only one way to deal with it. Don’t let the monster shoot.

I’m not gonna die here. In fact, I’ve been waiting for this particular attack to win. You could even say that were were lucky that the monster is using the Roar of Scorched Earth right off the bat.

“Ice Pillar.”

Waiting for the exact moment that the Volcano Avatar was about to launch its attack, I shot ice magic into its jaw. It’s normal attack magic, but it’s essentially a powerful shot that contains enormous mana and enhanced with several buffs. It’s way weaker compared to the attack I’m trying to stop, but it’s enough to deal damage to the Volcano Avatar.

In order to unleash the roar, the Volcano Avatar gathered its power in its body, which decreased the amount of heat emitted outside. My ice pillar was being melted by the heat, but it still managed to retain its form—and reach the Volcano Avatar’s body.

The lava giant screamed in anguish. Unable to endure the rapid cooling, the jaw that the ice pillar hit crumbled.

The Roar of Scorched Earth, which requires a huge amount of energy, cannot be released with a broken body. The monster began using mana to repair the damage.

Since it’s a monster made of lava and mana, repairing its body is not that difficult. Soon the Volcano Avatar will return to normal and try to unleash its roar once more.

But the time it takes to repair the damage is a fatal opening. Because it had to repair itself, the amount of heat around it was reduced, and its body hardened in preparation for the roar. Facing the defenseless monster, I cast my magic.

“Point-blank Shooting. Super-Delayed Incantation.”

Point-blank Shooting is a spell that amplifies power in exchange for drastically shortening the range of the attack. Super-Delayed Incantation is also a spell that amplifies power, but in exchange, it takes some time before the magic is invoked. Casting the two buffing Spells, I approached the monster.

I then cast the same spell, Ice Pillar—well no, not really. I’m using the most powerful ice attribute that I have in my arsenal right now.

“Blizzard Tornado.”

When I uttered the spell name, a large amount of mana was released from my body and began forming a tornado—slowly, because of the Super-Delayed Incantation’s effects. Watching it gradually grow, I distanced myself from the monster. If I get caught in it, I’ll freeze to death too.

As the tornado built up in power, the monster finished repairing its body and re-activates the Roar of Scorched Earth. But my spell was a split-second faster.

“Gwwwooooaaaaahhhh!”

A tornado of ice, buffed with several Skills, swallowed the monster. The ice that hit its body melted and evaporated, but eventually the heat could not handle the cold, and ice began clinging to the body.

Unable to withstand the thermal contraction, the body shattered, and its cross-section was also destroyed by the ice storm. Inside the blizzard of ice, the Volcano Avatar’s body went under repeated destruction.

And when the ice tornado subsided—there was only frozen rocks right where the Volcano Avatar was.

“Magic Search.”

I used my detection magic to scan the area of any mana signature. If the Avatar Volcano was dead, my magic should not pick anything up from the rocks. But there was a faint signature in one of them.

“I knew it. You’re still alive.”

I picked up one of the rocks that had fallen to the ground. Unlike the other ones, it had a faint warmth to it.

This is the Volcano Avatar, all that’s left of its mana after losing almost all its power—its actual body, so to speak. Although it’s dying after having its power taken away, it will return to its original form after replenishing its mana. But if the rock is destroyed, the volcano will become completely dormant, and will never be active ever again.