Greed Kills

Frost covered the translucent scales.

The Earth Fire Lizard, which had been searching for a direction, fell straight to the ground.

Its two round eyes were still full of bewilderment, as if it didn’t understand what had happened.

But as the frost spread, its final ability to think soon vanished completely.

The bushes rustled, and a pair of small black leather shoes stepped on the ground covered with fallen leaves and withered branches.

Su Ran, in her light purple dress, appeared beside the Earth Fire Lizard.

The light and fluffy skirt passed through the branches, but not a single part of it was torn.

It only took a blink of an eye to condense the water vapor around the Earth Fire Lizard into ice, controlling the magical beast.

Then, through the frost on its surface, the water inside the Earth Fire Lizard’s body was also frozen.

And just like that, an Earth Fire Lizard ice sculpture, frozen from the inside out, was completed.

Su Ran found that the ice generated by her witch ability carried a bone-chilling cold.

Perhaps this was the difference between an exclusive witch ability and ordinary magic.

She placed her hand on the Earth Fire Lizard’s head, and five wind blades emerged from her slender fingertips.

With a gentle push, a crystal with light red magic essence flowing inside appeared in her hand.

The magic essence in her body was gradually filling up, approaching the limit of a Sequence One.

Su Ran was becoming more and more adept at using magic.

The remaining parts of the Earth Fire Lizard, after the magic crystal was removed, turned into a cloud of powder and scattered on the ground with a sizzling sound.

She didn’t even need to get any of the magical beast’s blood on her to destroy the corpse and erase all traces.

She placed the removed magic crystal against her identity tag.

With a “whoosh,” the magic crystal in Su Ran’s hand vanished into thin air, and the number on the tag changed to three.

It had been a while since she had entered the magical beast habitat.

This so-called magical beast habitat was far inferior to Noda Forest, both in terms of the distribution and variety of magical beasts.

Even though she complained like this in her heart, for the sake of making money…

Su Ran crushed and put away her identity tag, continuing to search for traces of Earth Fire Lizards in the habitat.

She calculated that she only needed to kill two more Earth Fire Lizards to complete her goal this time.

“If only I could make a potion that attracts magical beasts.”

However, Su Ran’s thoughts only remained at the imaginary stage.

It was too late to think of it now.

The time it would take for Isa to collect the materials and make the potion, she could have found the remaining two magical beasts herself.

“Let’s go a little further in.”

The entire habitat was similar in size to Noda Forest, but with the addition of mountains of varying heights, it provided many hiding places for the Earth Fire Lizards.

If the Earth Fire Lizards didn’t appear on their own, it would take Su Ran some effort to find the hidden magical beasts.

The position Su Ran was currently at was the first mountain in the habitat.

After crossing it, there were still many undulating foothills.

Perhaps it would be easier to find traces of magical beasts on the mountains further back.

Walking on the road, Su Ran missed the readily available magical beasts in Noda Forest immensely.

There, she could harvest a batch of magic crystals with a single spell.

After thinking about it, Su Ran gave up.

If she did that now, she would most likely receive a fine from the habitat.

As she gradually went deeper into the habitat, the feeling the magic essence in the air gave her became more and more oppressive.

Suddenly, a rumbling vibration came from the ground, and the sound was getting closer and closer to Su Ran’s position.

“This is not an earthquake.”

The approaching vibration made Su Ran realize that she couldn’t stay on the ground.

Glancing around, Su Ran picked a large tree with a thick trunk.

With a slight raise of her hand, several ice cones instantly condensed beside her and pierced into it.

Su Ran leaped up, her body enhanced by magic essence, and jumped to the treetop by stepping on the ice cones.

“If I were a Sequence Three now and had learned from the society’s elves, I wouldn’t need to look for a foothold everywhere.”

Before Su Ran could even get a firm footing on the treetop, countless Earth Fire Lizards on the ground scrambled to rush into the mountains.

“According to the habits of magical beasts, besides those that like to live in groups, there’s only one explanation for this situation: their leader has appeared.”

Unintelligent magical beasts, when advancing to a leader, would subconsciously call upon their nearby kin.

This process was no less than a small-scale beast tide.

Back then, Shadow had used this habit of magical beasts to control a large number of leader-level magical beasts, gathering small beast tides into a large one to attack Laita City.

And now, for a low-level magical beast like the Earth Fire Lizard to become a leader, it needed to be at least a Sequence Three.

In other words, there was at least one Earth Fire Lizard in the habitat that had reached Sequence Three.

“But this is also a good thing.”

Su Ran stood on the treetop, her eyes fixed on the two at the end of the Earth Fire Lizard group.

With a “swoosh,” she threw the condensed ice cones, instantly piercing through the heads of the two Earth Fire Lizards, killing them instantly.

The cold air emanating from the ice cones also froze the blood at the wounds on their heads.

Originally, Su Ran was worried about where to find magical beasts.

Now, the appearance of the Earth Fire Lizard leader had solved this problem for her.

Su Ran just needed to wait for the Earth Fire Lizards to leave completely, take the magic crystals left on the corpses, and she would have achieved her goal for this hunt.

It wasn’t that Su Ran didn’t want to take this opportunity to hunt a few more magical beasts, but if she killed too many, it would easily cause chaos in the entire group, and then attract the attention of the magical beast leader.

Why make things difficult for herself when she could easily get away?

Su Ran had no intention of taking such a high-risk action just to earn a little more money.

But others did not share this thought with Su Ran.

“Help! Is anyone there? Help me! I’m surrounded by Earth Fire Lizards!”

A cry for help came from not far away, and Su Ran couldn’t help but sigh.

She hadn’t expected someone to actually start a massacre on the Earth Fire Lizard group just to earn one or two more magic crystals.

The magic essence in her body was still abundant.

Glancing at the Earth Fire Lizard group that had just left her side, Su Ran slowly took out the magic crystals first.

Judging by the other party’s loud and clear shouts, he could still hold on for a little while.

She planned to let him deepen his impression first, to let him be anxious for a bit.

As Su Ran continued to walk in the direction of the shouts…

A short while later, the view before her suddenly opened up, and a clearing appeared before Su Ran’s eyes.

There was a tall, thin man who looked to be in his thirties, with his back against a stone wall, facing the group of Earth Fire Lizards that surrounded him.

On the ground beside him lay the corpses of more than ten Earth Fire Lizards.

Su Ran roughly counted, and about eight of them had already had their magic crystals dug out.

The rest had been hastily hunted and had not yet been dealt with.

One could only say that greed kills.