If an artwork died, so be it, the old passed and the new came. But if the performance ended without anyone grasping the beauty of his art, that was unacceptable. He cleared his throat and used the massive, grotesque bone pipe organ to project his voice outward.
"Miss, why must you be so irritable? Why not take a proper look and listen? Regardless of the quality of the work, I treat every performance with…"
"Shut up."
Before he could finish, this avatar of Salva was frozen into an ice sculpture by the biting wind and torn to pieces. People did not understand each other's feelings, and Icelis only found the strange noise in front of her unbearably loud. The longer she listened, the more her head hurt.
It was annoying, the sound was awful, and it still refused to die obediently. With three layers of dislike stacked together, she responded by applying even more merciless force. The freezing wind howled fiercer and colder, cold enough to burn like fire.
Towering ice and snow took the shape of a heaven-piercing great sword, standing in all directions and turning the small battlefield into an inescapable ice prison. Endless glaciers crushed the constantly mutating black flesh into mud, shattering every groaning bone. The wind used snowflakes as blades, aiming to sever the loathsome thing's vocal cords.
Yet the hateful black flesh was like a stubborn skin disease. Even smashed to paste, ground into ice fragments, and scattered into the storm, it still crawled out from beneath the snow-covered ground in a disgusting struggle. Music filled with bizarre atmosphere and twisted beauty kept eroding the glaciers, cutting through the flowing ice with precise strikes like correcting discordant notes in a score.
Sinister Magic Array imbued with black Magic spread like a blasphemous painting. Accompanied by music from flesh-made instruments, it staged a nauseating opera that poured indiscriminately into the minds of everyone present. This included not only Icelis, but even Salva himself, though it barely affected him.
"This is troublesome."
The impatience on Icelis's face deepened as she endured her weakness and the swelling pain in her head. She called forth even more wind and snow, forcing herself onward. The situation was clearly not improving.
"This means I have no choice but…"
Salva also shook his head helplessly, waving his baton to draw strange, almost solid musical notes in the air. They flew quietly toward the outskirts of the battlefield. Despite the fierce exchange, both sides were stuck in an awkward stalemate.
Neither could kill the other, trapped in mutual torment. Icelis, wielding only a fragment of her true power, lacked much of her former strength. Though she seemed able to summon glaciers to crush flesh and bone, the efficiency was low and decisive damage was hard to achieve.
Salva was in a similar position. Seated before the pipe organ, his conducting looked elegant, but he lacked effective finishing methods. With little preparation, he could only rely on stubborn mechanisms and sheer durability to hold on.
In the past, Salva would prepare meticulously for every performance, choosing the right work, gathering large amounts of consumables, and arranging assistants as performers. This time, before preparations were complete, an unreasonable little girl had come knocking and started killing him outright. He was frustrated, convinced that what he had hidden could never be found by such crude mortals.
Yet he had been exposed, and escape was not an option. This location was a critical node, and the number of sacrifices was still slightly insufficient. At least until the transfer was complete, he could not leave.
The sacrifices should have been ready days ago, but an ancient White Dragon had appeared from nowhere and slaughtered the monsters meant to serve as offerings. Several of his works were destroyed as well. This delayed multiple nearby rituals and led directly to his exposure.
"Come to think of it, this young lady's power feels a little similar to that dragon's… no, not exactly similar, more like…"
Salva's mind ran through multiple threads of thought at high speed. From the perceptions and memories sent back by the work he had dispatched to test that ancient White Dragon, the power did resemble what stood before him now, but only faintly. It was similarity, and nothing more.
Similarity alone meant little, but the timing was too precise. Both were existences tied to ice. The thought formed faintly in his mind.
"Ice? Could it be…"
Before he could fully sort it out, another wave of attacks and constant damage forced him to pull his focus back. It was truly troublesome, but at least one of his preparations had likely begun to take effect. Soon, his own weight would be added to the balance of this battle.
With that thought came his habitual taunting. "Miss, you are clearly no ordinary person. You must be different from those crude mortals. I have a small suggestion, if you would…"
"Shut up!"
"Why be so irritable? Please calm down like ice first, and I will properly…"
There was no response after that. If there was, the sound could no longer pierce the layers of ice and snow to reach him. It was obvious that no one wanted to continue this tug-of-war any longer.
Icelis knew it clearly. If this continued, there would be no real result. So she chose to be decisive and end it quickly.
A gigantic dragon head took shape. It was extremely vivid, yet far more ferocious than a real dragon. Countless winds and snows formed its overwhelming wings, ice became its bones, frost its claws, and her memories gave it form and presence.
It had three pairs of curved long horns and a savage maw filled with protruding fangs. Along its spine rose rows of massive spikes. Its gaze was hollow, yet its mere appearance seemed filled with rage.
The dragon was incomplete, its skeletal frame left hollow for the freezing wind to pass through. There was no flesh, but from its gaping mouth burst the howling winter itself. On both the mental and physical level, it unleashed a deafening roar.
"Roar!"
The sweeping ice storm literally stripped a layer of flesh from the ground and the massive flesh flower, freezing it solid and leaving no chance of regeneration. The destruction was absolute. Silence followed for an instant.
Salva was stunned for a moment, not even bothering to catch the small hat blown from his head. Dragons were rare, but he had seen them before. They were powerful, yet if he wished, he possessed the strength to slay one alone.
He even had works that used dragons as samples. As magic systems matured and nations accumulated strong individuals, dragons had ceased to be an unsolvable problem. They possessed power comparable to Gold Rank and intelligence not inferior to humans, but their numbers were too small.
They could not stir great waves. Nations had hunted dragons during territorial expansion, and there were nearly a hundred human experts capable of solo dragon slaying alone. Compared to the past, even Gold Rank themselves had grown stronger through accumulation.
With enough silver-ranked fighters, proper equipment, and specialized preparations, even organized teams could hunt dragons. It was a matter of cost, nothing more. Human steel and blades had long surpassed dragon claws and scales.
Some powerful dragons might manage to destroy a city, but never an important one. If they became too arrogant, they would be hunted down and reduced to achievements and materials. To humanity as a whole, dragons were no longer an existential threat, merely troublesome monsters.
Yet he had been shaken. A false construct shaped from ice, lacking even true consciousness, had roared once and shaken his spirit, honed through countless pursuits of art. He could tell it was modeled after the bearing of a real dragon.
If even an imitation carried such presence, what of the original? Just borrowing its essence, that roar had crushed the spiritual will embedded in his work. The realization struck him deeply.
While he stood frozen, Icelis continued to squeeze every bit of nearby Ice Element power she could draw. She poured it endlessly into the dragon's skeletal frame. She was not surprised that he had been shaken.
In the fragmented memories she carried, she did not know why, but the thing she feared most was the sight of that dragon opening its mouth. She looked at him coldly.
"Something that even scares me. What right do you have not to fear it?"
The immense presence of the Ice Giant Dragon Veyr felt real, and a bead of cold sweat slid down Salva's temple, freezing into an ice pellet in the blink of an eye. The chill forced him awake for an instant, and his lips split into a twisted smile full of delight, exposing sharp teeth and a strange tongue. He even had the leisure to bow politely, as if this were a formal meeting rather than a battlefield.
"Thank you, miss. A very good inspiration. I will make good use of it in the future."
There would be no future. You needed to die now, immediately, without delay.
Icelis's already pale face somehow turned even whiter, and as a move meant to end everything at once, the cost was naturally heavy. The massive ice dragon circling in the sky grew more solid, radiating severe cold as its bone wings of ice spread wide. It stared down at Salva with the cold fury of absolute frost.