Alex jumped.
SHING! SHING! SHING!
Everything below Alex was reduced into a mess of ice spires, all stretching into the middle of the circle from ten meters away.
Alex had jumped with his full power, and he had managed to jump forward with a height of five meters.
This was far beyond what a normal human could do.
The Frozen Lake Stag didn't panic when it saw that Alex managed to escape its attack.
Instead, it calmly infused one of the ice spires with more Ice Mana.
The spire began glowing and shot at Alex.
Alex was currently in the air, and he couldn't evade.
It was stupid to jump into the air when one was fighting someone with ranged attacks.
Only an idiot would do that.
Was Alex an idiot?
No.
Alex stretched his left arm towards the ground.
BANG!
A violent wind came out of Alex's left palm. The wind wasn't colder than the surroundings, but Alex didn't use the ability of his left arm because of the cold effect.
No, he was using it for the pushback!
A thick ice spire passed just below Alex, destroying a couple of fingers in the process.
However, Alex was used to worse pain.
Alex pushed himself over the ice spire until he started falling down on its opposite side.
Alex squatted on the ice spire's side.
Then, he pushed himself forward with all his power.
BANG!
The ice spire shook under the power, but Alex had seen how hard these things were. He was sure that it wouldn't break.
And sure enough, the ice spire only shook. It didn't break.
The force of Alex's push shot him towards the Frozen Lake Stag like a cannonball!
Alex reached the Frozen Lake Stag before it could deploy another ice spire or run away.
Alex lifted his sword and slashed down.
SHING!
Alex's sword cut through the Frozen Lake Stag's torso but was stopped somewhere in the middle.
The Frozen Lake Stag shouted in pain, and more Ice Mana gathered around it on the ground.
Alex pulled out his mangled hand and pointed it at the Frozen Lake Stag's head.
BANG!
Alex's left arm began smoking as an impossibly cold wind shot out of Alex's left hand.
At the same time, Alex used the force of the wind to push himself away from the Frozen Lake Stag.
Yet, something unexpected happened.
Alex had expected the Frozen Lake Stag's head to freeze over, but the cold wind was absorbed by its antlers!
The antlers lit up with bright white light, and the intensity of the Ice Mana around it increased by several times!
The spots of Ice Mana just half a meter away from the Frozen Lake Stag's body expanded until they even reached the ground below it.
BANG!
A wall of ice appeared just in front of Alex, but luckily, only his sword had been in the path of these absolutely massive ice spires!
Alex felt his sword being torn out of his hand, and at the same time, Alex felt like he had heard a painful cry.
pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ And the Frozen Lake Stag?
The scene was gruesome.
The Frozen Lake Stag was impaled on gigantic ice spires, its mangled body hanging down from ten meters above the ground.
Its cold blood ran down the ice spires and immediately froze, creating red icicles.
The scene was as brutal as it was bizarrely beautiful.
The Frozen Lake Stag obviously hadn't survived its own attack. Originally, it had only wanted to destroy the area around it to force Alex to retreat, but the uncontrollable growth of its spires had spelled its doom.
Alex was captivated by the scene for one second before an overwhelming burning sensation came from his left arm.
Alex grunted and rubbed his left arm across the ice spires in the surroundings to cool it down.
He had unleashed a severely cold wind in his last attack, and his left arm was paying the price.
After a while of cooling down, Alex looked around the area to find his sword. He had remembered in which direction it flew, but he couldn't see it immediately.
Alex felt nervous without his sword, and the first thing he wanted to do was to find it.
Alex ran into the distance and searched for some seconds, but some kind of connection made him look up.
Alex spotted his sword hanging on the branches of a tree, and he quickly retrieved it with a jump.
However, when Alex inspected his sword, shock spread across his face.
There was a crack!
The ice spire had hit Alex's sword on its side, and the force had created a crack on it!
Alex looked at the sword with a bitter expression.
The God had said that this sword would grow alongside him. He only had to feed it powerful ore.
'Has my power already reached a level that makes my weapon my weakness?' Alex thought.
Alex still remembered how easily his sword had killed the Pest Cat, or Stalker, which had assaulted Alex on his first day in this world.
Back then, Alex would have died if his sword hadn't been so incredibly powerful.
But now, Alex's sword had been damaged by one of his enemies.
'My opponents will only become more powerful from here on out. This means that I have to upgrade my sword quickly. Otherwise, my sword will break as soon as it comes into contact with any attack.'
Alex stared at the crack in his sword for some time and put it away.
'Not right now,' Alex thought.
Alex walked back to the Frozen Lake Stag and looked at it for a bit.
The corpse had been separated into many different parts, and its head hung down from one of the ice spires.
Alex grimaced when he saw the scene. However, he grimaced for a different reason than one might expect.
'Seems like I can't sell that,' Alex thought. Then, he looked at the head and the antlers. 'Luckily, its antlers are in one piece. I bet they are worth quite a bit.'
Alex took out his sword. 'Sorry, you have to go through a bit more stress.'
Alex stabbed his sword into one of the ice spires and used it as a tool to climb the small wall of icicles.
His sword didn't make any noise during that process.
After a bit of climbing, Alex reached the hanging head.
Alex stepped onto his sword and grabbed the antlers. He wanted to pull the head and antlers off.
"Fuck!"
Alex immediately shouted in pain as soon as his hands touched the antlers.
Alex's right hand was nearly completely frozen over!
Luckily, Alex had reacted fast enough, and only the surface froze.
Alex activated his Ice Blast again to warm his left arm and then rubbed his cold and hot hands together.
After a while, Alex's right hand recovered, but it was still in quite a bit of pain.
Yet, as Alex was calming down, he realized something.
'My left hand didn't get frozen,' Alex thought as he looked at it.
'I also didn't feel any pain from it.'
Alex looked at the antlers again.
'Worst case scenario, I'll just heat it again.'
Alex touched the antlers with his left hand, and, sure enough, he felt nothing.
Alex used his right hand to throw the sword to the ground and hung from the corpse's head with his left hand.
Then, Alex pulled himself upward and let himself fall a bit to create enough force to separate the head from the body. The head was barely hanging on by a couple of threads of skin due to the ice spires.
A comical scene of Alex swinging on the hanging antlers of a nearly decapitated head took place.
"Come on! You can't be that hard!"
The sound of tearing flesh and skin could be heard as the head slowly separated, and soon enough, the entire head separated from the body.
BANG!
Alex fell to the ground while carrying the head by its antlers.
A ten-meter-fall was nothing to him.
Alex used his right hand to clean some of his clothes of the blood that had fallen on him during his mission.
However, Alex quickly became surprised as he looked at his right arm.
'Wasn't this supposed to hurt?' Alex thought.
Alex was surprised when he saw his right hand.
It was fully healed!
'Now that I think about it, my left hand also feels pretty good now,' Alex thought as he looked at his left arm.
Then, Alex noticed something.
Was the glow of the antlers growing weaker?
Also, was his body getting hotter?
"Oh, fuck!"
Alex immediately dropped the antlers, but it was too late.
His left hand had absorbed a ton of Ice Mana and had converted it to regular Mana, which now filled his body.
Alex was close to exploding.
Alex had to do one attempted suicide of training, at least!
Otherwise, he would explode!
Alex quickly looked around in panic.
No trees were high enough for him to get heavily injured!
"Fuck! Fuck!" Alex shouted.
Fear took hold of Alex.
"It can't be that hard to kill myself!" he shouted.
Then, Alex noticed the gigantic ice spires.
And then, he remembered how hard it had been to cut them with his sword.
Alex gritted his teeth, ran into the distance, turned around, went to his knees, and assumed a sprinter's position.
Then, Alex shot with all of his power at the ice spires!