Chapter 360 – The Mortal Fight between Two Beasts
At the bottom of the freezing lake, thousands of meters deep, a bowl-sized, clear and bright bead emitted a faint chill.
Throwing Appraisal, Fatty got its information.
Ice Spirit BeadCelestial itemAn artifact of the Frost War G.o.d Saya that increases the power of ice spells by 10%. During a fierce battle with the Fire G.o.d – Emperor Occult Flame, Saya accidentally dropped this bead, which then fell into this place.
A Celestial item! Fatty nearly howled in exhilaration. Easily getting a Celestial artifact, this trip to the Demon world was truly rewarding.
No wonder the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King had come all the way here, it was for this Ice Spirit Bead. Moreover, Fatty discovered that the bead contained ten Advanced ice spells, which greatly added to its already very high value.
At that moment, a loud shriek accompanied by the sound of water splas.h.i.+ng from above his head where the huge figure of the Three-Headed Blood Dragon could be seen looming. When this beast felt the breath of the Ice Spirit Bead suddenly disappear, it instantly flew into a rage and disregarded the crocodile king to go catch the thief in its lair.
Three heads and six eyes like six bright lanterns, stared intently at Fatty through thousands of meters of water, its three mouths roaring nonstop. For a moment, the water currents under the lake surged, and in the originally cold water suddenly appeared electric and fire sparks.
The electric shock running through struck Fatty to trembling all over. He immediately cast two Waterwalks, emerged from the lake, rushed ash.o.r.e and then fled.
Behind him, the Three-Headed Blood Dragon roared and also stampeded to the sh.o.r.e. Upon seeing this sudden turn of events, the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King thought that its minion had successfully stolen the Ice Spirit Bead. A huge water ball appeared right away and shot towards the Three-Headed Blood Dragon.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon repeatedly roared angrily, its heads kept swaying as they threw out a slew of fire, water, and thunder spells, bombarding the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King amidst deafening rumbles.
Having achieved its goal, the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King didn’t want to fight on. A water ma.s.s nearly 100 meters wide condensed out of thin air and slammed into the Three-Headed Blood Dragon. While the dragon was dizzy, the crocodile king let out an informing cry before throwing Fatty on its back and ran in the path they came from.
No no this won’t do. Fatty rolled down from the crocodile king’s back and ran towards the Three-Headed Blood Dragon. In the eyes of the crocodile king, it looked like Fatty was so frightened he ran in the wrong direction.
The Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King forcefully stopped with a loud howl of exasperation and turned back to fight the Three-Headed Blood Dragon. Meanwhile, the dragon was excited like a rooster to see the Ice Spirit Bead only a few meters away from itself. Alongside three loud roars, a huge water ma.s.s with ice hidden inside, a seething hot flame similar in size, and a lightning bolt as thick as a bucket descended from the sky towards the crocodile king.
The three attacks contained the full power of the Three-Headed Blood Dragon. The instant they appeared, the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King let out a loud cry and desperately retreated. After all, the dragon was still one rank higher than it, if they truly fought with everything they had, the crocodile king was certainly no match for the dragon.
Forcing back the crocodile king, the dragon excitedly rushed towards Fatty. The water head opened its mouth, and a dense cold covered him; Fatty’s movement slowed immediately. Having lived with the Ice Spirit Bead days and nights, the Three-Headed Blood Dragon obviously had evolved its water attribute to ice.
“Useless!” Fatty shot the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King a glare. All of a sudden, he threw the Ice Spirit Bead exactly in the middle of the two beasts.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon’s eyes immediately turned bloodshot at the sight of its beloved treasure. It disregarded Fatty to run straight to the bead. The Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King was also forced to a dead end, if it didn’t fight now, there’d be no chance to rob the bead again in the future. The crocodile king rushed over with a crazed shriek and the two engaged all over again.
This time it was really a fight to the death. The Ice Spirit Bead fell to the ground, but neither of the beasts had a chance to pick them up. When one side approached, the other instantly rushed over to hinder. After fighting for half a day, both of them were covered in wounds while the bead was still lying there, emitting a dense chill.
The Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King was left with a half-broken tail and one blind eye, its body was scorched black all over where patches of skin peeled outward to reveal red meat. The Three-Headed Blood Dragon also lost half of its tail, a claw was broken, two of its three heads were half gnawed off and were dangling on the sides of the middle water head. The two behemoths kept yelling at each other with the expectation that the other would retreat.
When the clam and the snipe fought, the fisherman benefited. The two highly intelligent Demonic Yao bosses were fully aware, and they did not want to be taken advantage of by other Demonic bosses. They stopped at this moment and hoped to solve the problem through negotiation.
Unluckily for this decision, though, the little thief just now suddenly crawled towards the Ice Spirit Bead.
The Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King and the Three-Headed Blood Dragon were both furious. In the crocodile king’s view, if this little fellow hadn’t run in the wrong direction in panic, it would have been appreciating the taste of the Ice Spirit Bead right now. In the dragon’s view, if he hadn’t taken advantage of the chaos to steal the bead, it wouldn’t have to fight so bitterly with the crocodile king.
Both roared at Fatty at the same time, the threat in their roar was spectacularly dense. Fatty was ‘dumbstruck,’ then continued to crawl towards the bead as if he didn’t understand.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon shrieked. It didn’t dare to let this small ‘Ironkiss Crocodile’ get the Ice Spirit Bead, while the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King wanted to buy time for Fatty. Therefore, the two big guys went at it again.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon was stronger than the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King, but it wasn’t to be forgotten that the latter had brought tens of thousands of minions with it. Although many froze to death in the cold lake, there were still several thousands of them. At the moment, they all speedily flocked to the Three-Headed Blood Dragon under the order of their king.
While its kin surrounded the Three-Headed Blood Dragon, the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King cunningly snuck around, occasionally ambus.h.i.+ng the enemy.
The cold air around the Ice Spirit Bead was too dense, Fatty had casually thrown it out but dared not touch it so easily again. If he got frozen for just a moment, who knew if any stupid Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile would rush over to take it away. Fatty simply sat down not far away and watched the two beasts’ warfare with alacrity.
After killing more than half of the crocodiles, the Three-Headed Blood Dragon finally ran out of energy. It cast a resentful glance towards the Ice Spirit Bead before turning around to flee back to the lake. However, the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King was unwilling to let it go now. It rushed forward with its terrifying mouth open and bit the dragon’s tail off.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon painfully turned around and madly cast attacks, but the crocodile king refused to loosen its jaw despite being bombarded. With creepy ‘creaking’ noises, it chewed and swallowed the dozen-meter-long tail.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon squealed miserably, desperation was tangible in its bloodshot eyes. At last, three demonic nuclei of different colors and sizes were spewed out, landing on the back of the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King.
With a wretched scream, the crocodile king hurriedly retreated. Through the three large b.l.o.o.d.y holes over one meter wide on its back, squirming internal organs could be seen clearly.
The Three-Headed Blood Dragon still didn’t want to let go of the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King with just this. In its last desperate attack, ice water, flame, and thunder spells soared like there was no tomorrow.
“Beat it! Well played, woah, good attack!” Fatty watched in high spirits. Soon, both of the Demonic Yao bosses were exhausted. They plopped on the ground and weakly roared at each other.
With a steady pace, Fatty first approached the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King. He stretched out a claw, patted the boss and before it could gather its wits, summoned Wheat and Inky.
Letting out a final roar, Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King’s head fell on the ground. Even until its death, the poor creature still couldn’t understand why its minion dared to lay its hands on it, and with such a sharp attack to boot.
Seeing the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King killed by Fatty while still in crocodile disguise, the Three-Headed Blood Dragon instinctively felt something was off and that it must return to the cold lake. Only, it was seriously injured while still wanting to use this chance and take back the Ice Spirit Bead, so it foolishly remained on the spot.
“Pounce.” With a wave of Fatty’s claw, Wheat and Inky charged in unison at the Three-Headed Blood Dragon, who converted the last bit of its mana into spells before finally following in the footsteps of the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King and died.
Fatty earned a large sum of experience points for killing two Demonic Yao bosses, but the experience required for each level was so much that the increase in his exp bar wasn’t as obvious as the two pets. With two strokes of light, Wheat and Inky each rose one level.
Ignoring the dazed looks of the surrounding crocodiles, Fatty joyfully took his time to pocket the Ice Spirit Bead and then began to pillage the bosses’ belongings.
He first groped around under the corpses. The Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King gave a black combat blade over three meters long, and Three-Headed Blood Dragon yielded a magic staff shaped after it, with the heads atop capable of boosting fire, water, and thunder magic.
The rest were some equipment with poor stats along with gold coins. In order not to clog up his inventory, Fatty fed them to the Elemental Skill Book.
Then, he cast Harvest and collected several bones from the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King, which was a good material for making weapons, and a small amount of blood from the Three-Headed Blood Dragon, which was an Advanced material for refining drugs.
Lastly was the four demonic nuclei1. The one of the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodile King was the size of a human head, glittering and translucent like it was carved from the finest jade. The other three from the Three-Headed Blood Dragon weren’t as big because of their separation in power, however, the total energy in them was more than that of the crocodile king’s nucleus.
“Getting off to a good start.” Fatty pocketed the harvest with a satisfactory smile. Looking around at the Demonic Ironkiss Crocodiles still standing in a daze, his interest to capture some fizzled out. It was worthless, time-consuming and uneconomical, or so he thought after the bountiful harvest.
Leaving the lake, Fatty pondered a little and decided to look for the Death Altar first before going to the place West had mentioned.
The topographic map he had acquired in Demon City just happened to contain this region. Unfolding the copied map, Fatty checked carefully and identified several places which were the most likely to hide the Death Altar.
1. Demonic nucleus: equals to inner core of a human world Yao monster (first introduced in c173).↩