Chapter 85: Again and Again

Just at that moment, before even 1 second had passed since the snake coiled around his body, a sudden current of energy filled Kesar's entire body.

*SWOOSH*

The surrounding mana began to go crazy, freezing and thawing the forest at an incredibly fast rate.

"I WON'T GO DOWN THAT EASY!!!" Kesar shouted, his eyes glowing an intense light blue color.

Although he could no longer move his wand and therefore wasn't able to use any spell, that didn't stop him from being unable to affect the icy mana in the surroundings.

The wands actually functioned as means by which mages could transform mana into various spells, facilitating the more complicated process when it came to using magic.

However, when a certain level was reached, the wands stopped helping and instead became a limitation.

An example of this was Sarah's aunt, Iris, who to make the mana obey needed nothing more than a simple snap of her fingers. In her case, her entire body had become a means by which the mana could manifest her will much faster and more efficiently, thus requiring no wand or similar object.

This of course was an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish, a product of natural talent and years of preparation, for if a mage who was not prepared for this attempted to use mana with his body as the medium carelessly, even if he was of (B-) rank, the result would be disastrous.

It was clear that Kesar was still quite far from reaching this level, but still, as long as he resisted falling to the Aqugas snake, he was willing to take such a risk.

*CRACK*

Slowly, with Kesar as the final destination of all the icy mana in the surroundings, the latter's body began to freeze at a visible rate, various shades of blue appearing all over his body.

The snake was also being affected by such violent concentration of mana, several lines of blue colored energy coming from Kesar were ravaging its slender body, freezing it even though it had resistance to ice magic.

Several cracks were appearing every second on the slender body of the Aqugas snake, which was unable to avoid being frozen and instead devoted all its strength into choking Kesar.

"ARGHH!!!"

It knew very well that this situation was quite dangerous, but still, the snake could tell how this was incredibly tiring for Kesar, which meant that as long as it could hold on, it will have won.

"I-I...!"

Finally, after a few seconds, just as the snake's body was about to turn to ice completely, Kesar reached his limit.

"I DON'T WANT TO...GIVE...up...."

With those words as his last, he lost consciousness, his eyes losing all their sparkle and the mana in the surroundings ceasing to act crazily.

Despite being extremely reluctant, Kesar had fallen.

*Crack crack*

The Aqugas snake moved slowly, fearful that some sudden movement might break its body, which was now mostly frozen.

Normally it would replenish those parts of its body using water, but its reserve had long since been frozen, forcing it to have to endure being in this deplorable state. 

However, even if its body was like this, its mood was good, after all, it had managed to defeat the more annoying prey of the two that had escaped.

With the most dangerous target out of the way, now all that was left for it to do was to wait for its body and other sub-bodies to thaw and fuse with them before finally going after its other elusive prey.

But in the meantime...

Without waiting much longer, its head then began to lose its snake form and instead began to enlarge, all in order to devour Kesar completely.

The confrontation with the young mage had undoubtedly left its body pretty damaged, normally what the snake would do in this situation would be to head to a nearby body of water so it could speed up its recovery speed while it ate something.

However, the snake didn't have to travel far before it realized that the stream it had come from was frozen. What was worse, it was not a simple freezing as if only the surface had turned to ice, but went beyond that, leaving it with hardly a drop of water in a liquid state.

Therefore, in order to regain even a little strength, it had no choice but to eat its prey.

Although this would take a while since it could only wait for its body to dissolve Kesar, this process could be accelerated if the Aqugas snake wanted it to.

*BAM!*

Suddenly, the Aqugas snake felt a small sized object collide against one of the parts of its body that were most frozen, causing a little crack to form.

Then, at the same time as the snake turned in the direction where it felt the object had come from, several of those same objects began to rain down on its body.

Now that it could see better, it realized that these small objects were nothing more or less than stones of various sizes.

"..."

Although they were mostly small stones, each one of them had considerable force behind. If this continued, there was no doubt that its body would be torn apart, so the snake quickly located the person responsible for this shower of stones.

The snake quickly found it, located in one of the branches of a tree, there was the same elusive prey that it had almost managed to catch a while ago, in his hands some stones, which he was throwing without stopping.

The Aqugas snake immediately threw Kesar to the side before starting to move in the direction of this tree, dodging all the stones that came its way with quite agile movements.

Jay then, seeing that he could no longer aim properly, switched targets, throwing the stones towards several ice statues that were actually the Aqugas snake' sub-bodies, shattering them.

Although this seemed to anger the snake more, causing its speed to increase, Jay continued to destroy ice statues, ignoring this danger.

After a few short seconds, the Aqugas snake managed to reach the tree, almost at the same time that Jay ran out of stones.

"You won't catch me that easy!" Said Jay before leaping from the tree to the ground, choosing as his landing spot a certain statue that he hadn't been able to break with his stones.

*CRASH!*

The ice shattered from the force Jay had applied upon landing, separating this large ice statue in the shape of the Aqugas snake into several pieces.

What he had just destroyed had clearly been the other half of the snake.

Another tree was again crushed due to the pressure the snake exerted on it, due to some parts of its body being frozen, this also did some damage to its body, however, it did it anyway, it was clear that what Jay had just done had succeeded in completely angering it.

Without even a second having passed, the snake came down from the tree at an extremely fast speed, heading towards Jay.

Strangely, the latter did not run away, but also started running towards the snake, several wind currents accompanying him in his run.

Then, just as Jay's fist was about to collide with the snake's head, unexpectedly, Jay suddenly turned his body, successfully dodging the snake.

Although the movement had been abrupt, for some reason, it felt quite natural and fluid.

Not wanting to lose momentum, Jay used the spin to power a punch towards the now unprotected and frozen body of the Aqugas snake.

*CRACK!*

With that sound, several chunks of ice fell to the ground, leaving a sizable hole in the snake's body.

The next moment, Jay received a strong hit that sent him flying, crashing into a tree.

Despite all the damage it had taken so far and the fact that a large part of its body was frozen, the Aqugas snake was still a monster belonging to the upper ranks of the (C) rank, so it was to be expected that its strength would still be high, especially against a mere rank (D+) super like Jay.

Ignoring the pain of having hit the tree so violently, Jay quickly fixed his stance before again starting to run towards the snake, a current of wind forming and surrounding his body again.

"One more time!" he said, not taking his eyes off the snake.

In response, the latter also lunged towards Jay, moving its body so that it could respond quickly if Jay were to suddenly turn again.

*BAM!*

At the same time that Jay flew off into another tree, several chunks of ice fell from the snake's body, apparently, he had managed to hit the snake again.

This time the snake was somewhat confused, which was understandable, after all, in the brief exchange, the snake could have sworn that it had hit Jay before he could touch it.

Of course, what the snake didn't know was that he had actually managed to hit Jay, but unfortunately, just before he was sent flying, Jay managed to hit him with a punch using the momentum of the wind that surrounded him.

"If twice isn't enough, then I'll do it again and again!" 

Despite what he had just said, he was actually quite hurt, although his regeneration ability was working at top speed to fix the damage, it would undoubtedly take a good while.

Even then, Jay again decided to throw himself at the snake.

As for the reason for this, it was because this was the only way he could think of in which he could manage to break the Aqugas snake's body.

He had already found that while the damage he could do to it by throwing the small stones at it could accumulate, he needed the snake to be still for it to work, which clearly wasn't going to happen.

Therefore, the tactic of trading damage for damage came to his mind, although he wouldn't be able to take many hits and had to be extremely careful that the snake didn't catch him, he was confident that he would manage to do so.

Right now, with an incredibly weakened opponent, Jay's fighting spirit increased tremendously.

Though of course, if he somehow got caught or saw that he was in a bind, he would not hesitate to use Overload to finish off the snake.

***

*BAM!¨*

For a while, the sound of a heavy object crashing into a tree was the only thing that could be heard in this part of the forest, along with the passionate screams of a young man, screams that were getting fainter and fainter.

It wasn't long before Jay began to show signs of weakness, even his body which was at the level of a rank (D+) pugilist quickly reaching its absolute limit.

He didn't keep a count of how many times he had been hit by the snake, there were several places on his body that hurt quite a bit, especially his right arm, on which were imprinted visible painful purple marks, as if something had tried to crush his arm, the consequence of not dodging in time.

However, the pain was secondary at the moment, so he had no choice but to grit his teeth and concentrate on the current situation.

In front of him was the Aqugas snake, whose slender body had now shrunk to a size of only 3 meters, although almost as if to compensate, it no longer had a single chunk of ice covering it.

Thanks to Jay's relentless attacks, the part of the snake's body that was frozen had been forcibly shattered, scattering into small chunks of ice that now lay in the ground.

Even with its ability to split apart, controlling such small pieces of its body was not possible, so just like with the small snakes and the other half of its body, they were already hopeless cases.

However, even with the incredible amount of damage the snake had suffered, it still seemed to have some energy to be able to finish off Jay, who was once again cornered.

'It seems that I have no other choice...'

Jay no longer had the strength to move, so he could only use his trump card, Overload. 

Immediately, his body was filled with a huge amount of energy that even seemed to want to escape... or at least that's what Jay expected, but instead of that feeling, what appeared in front of him was a message from the system.

_____________

Activation of "Overload" denied due to the incredibly tired state of parasites.

Please try again in a few minutes.

_____________

"...Ah, sh*t."

After saying that, a viscous substance suddenly enveloped his entire body.