Her wings beat softly behind her, guiding the flow of magical elements. Her golden-blue eyes blazed with brilliant light, watching the giant bear’s every move with perfect clarity.
The giant bear wasn’t stupid. The moment it saw Yueye using this kind of magic, it tried to stop her. It opened its jaws and let out a deafening roar that made people’s eardrums ache. An ocher-colored orb formed in its mouth, aimed straight at Yueye.
The orb’s launch rang out like a thunderclap. Its recoil forced the giant bear’s massive body back several steps. A streak of yellow light flashed through the air and struck the water curtain that had suddenly appeared in front of Yueye.
The ocher energy blast shattered the water curtain. Spray burst in every direction, then froze in the bitter cold, turning into countless icicles that scattered all around.
She slowly adjusted the snowball floating in front of her, taking aim at the giant bear. As her wings beat gently behind her, they guided the flow of magic to complete the “snowball”... Gradually, Yueye could feel it nearing the point of saturation.
“Roar!” The giant bear seemed to sense the threat posed by the snowball before Yueye. It charged at her in a frenzy. A road made of earth surged up from the flat ground, stretching toward Yueye as the bear moved and forming a path that climbed into the sky.
After several ranged attacks failed, the giant bear decided to stake its life on one final gamble.
“You can even get up here?” Yueye clearly hadn’t expected this. As she watched the giant bear race toward her, her expression darkened. In the blink of an eye, her mind raced, and she quickly came up with a response.
At Yueye’s command, water vapor swirled around the road the giant bear had just made from earth element, then transformed into a slick sheet of ice.
“Roar!” The giant bear slipped. It clearly hadn’t expected the ice to appear, and nearly fell into the deep pit it had just made with its own paws, almost meeting its end.
But the giant bear reacted quickly. Its claws shot out in an instant, and under its control, the road grew slightly ridged. It scrambled back to its feet and charged at Yueye again. Now, time was life itself. Whoever seized this crucial moment would win the battle.
When Yueye saw that the ice hadn’t stopped the giant bear, blue light flashed in her slit pupils. Massive, thick ice walls appeared across the road, one after another, trying to keep the bear from reaching her. But it was all in vain. With ocher light covering its head, the giant bear smashed through wall after wall without slowing down.
A faint pallor spread across Yueye’s pretty face. She knew she’d already lost this fight. In her current state, she had no way to resist the giant bear at close range. She gently closed her beautiful eyes, as if accepting the outcome... This was what happened when she failed to think things through—or simply underestimated her opponent.
The giant bear roared as it smashed through the ice walls in front of it. The closer it got to Yueye, the more it felt as though it were about to escape death.
“But I’m the one who loses. I’m not the one who dies.” Yueye’s beautiful eyes suddenly opened. A momentary sense of foreboding stirred in the giant bear’s heart.
A massive beam of white light descended from the sky, forming a huge white barrier in an instant. The giant bear couldn’t dodge in time and slammed straight into it, bruising its face. At that moment, it understood the truth: it had never had any chance of winning this fight.
Looking up, it saw a pair of star-like eyes fixed on it. Baiyao had been ready from the very beginning to save Yueye at a moment’s notice.
A trace of despair appeared in the giant bear’s eyes. It charged at the enormous white barrier like a mad beast, but to no avail. Gradually, it gave up struggling... and quietly waited for death to come.
The storm snowball had changed from white to a clear, blue-crystal color. It was easy to tell that it was filled with compressed water-element energy.
“Thank you. I shouldn’t have underestimated any enemy.” Yueye’s dragon eyes rested on the giant bear, carrying a trace of gratitude. She was grateful that it had reminded her how weak she still was. But Yueye had no intention of holding back any longer. She released the energy contained in her dragon claw.
Her ears seemed to go silent. Blue energy erupted in front of Yueye, pierced straight through the giant bear, and continued into the depths of the forest. In an instant, several thousand meters of forest in its path were completely wiped out, leaving behind a frozen canyon a thousand meters long. The spell she’d spent hours preparing unleashed its full power at last.
Yueye looked down at the blue canyon beneath her feet, its beauty rivaling anything shaped by nature. Surprise showed on her pretty face. She truly hadn’t expected the Dragon Clan’s inheritance magic to be this terrifying.
The deep-blue canyon stretched for more than two thousand meters and was over ten meters wide, leaving a blue scar across the forest. It began beneath Yueye’s feet and grew deeper and wider along the path of the storm snowball she had fired. Its unmistakable shape made it easy for anyone who saw it to guess how it had formed.
“The only good news is that there’s still some left to eat...” A hint of regret crossed Yueye’s face. The giant bear had been so close to her that the energy pierced it before it could spread, leaving a huge hole in its chest—but most of its body was still intact.
“Earth Spirit—Hell Bear, level-six magical beast, has been slain. Due to special circumstances, the Earth Demon Bear broke through to level six. The killer is awarded 20,000 exchange points, one Earth Demon Bear claw, 40 free attribute points, and one magic sword (earth).” The system reported the kill as usual, and Yueye finally understood why the level-five bear had suddenly become so difficult to deal with.
“Because you have killed a large number of participants, the system has decided to grant you the title of Global Wanted Criminal. Participants with this title receive 100% of the reward points belonging to any participant they kill. They will also be marked on the map as regional lords. Other participants can kill them to earn a large wanted bounty, along with all the wanted criminal’s current reward points.” The system’s announcements came so quickly they were almost impossible to take in, but Yueye immediately had a bad feeling.
A huge red dot appeared on the tactical map, right where Yueye was standing.
Almost every team with its tactical map open received the wanted announcement immediately. It gave no information about Yueye at all. The red panel was blank except for the word “Encrypted.” The only information it showed was the eye-catching bounty at the bottom: 30,700 kill reward points and 10,000 wanted reward points.
“...So there are penalties for killing people?” When Yueye saw the wanted tag on her status panel, she had a pretty good idea of what would happen next.
It was too late for Yueye to regret it now. Ever since she’d started fighting the giant bear without caring that there were people nearby, she and the bear had probably killed countless humans with their attacks. Thinking back on it now, Yueye couldn’t help feeling a little guilty.
“Whatever... What happens to humans has nothing to do with me. I’ll deal with things as they come.” Yueye shook her head. She’d never cared much about these people in the first place, and quickly steadied herself again. If she’d decided to sever her ties with humanity, then there was no reason to pity humans—or fear killing them. Under the influence of dragon blood, her way of thinking had changed a little. She’d become more direct, no longer letting her emotions control her like before, though her memories from her time as a human still affected her.
