For the next three days, Dago kept a low profile, spending his time either cultivating diligently or scouting and detecting in the Town.
As the northern district of the Town was reduced to scorched earth, a large number of Black Robe Wizards from the Dark Blood Council poured through the breach, establishing strongholds in the Town and engaging in urban street warfare with the Academy.
Every day, the sounds of exploding witchcraft and the wails of Academy Wizards and civilians could be heard throughout the Town.
The Wizard Hall officially became the Academy's transit point in the Town, receiving material and personnel support from the Academy Castle.
However, Dago discovered a curious fact: since the battle north of the city, neither side had deployed Formal Wizard-level combat power, only a large number of high-level Apprentice Wizards roaming the urban battlefield.
The highest combat power he had seen on the urban battlefield was merely Half-step Formal Witches.
Basically, the activities of the Black Robe Wizards in the Town were in small teams, with three to five Wizards per team, accompanied by about five blood slaves to scout and clear the way for them.
It must be said that this move was truly ruthless, striking at the Academy Wizards' vitals. These Black Robes from the Dark Crystal Highlands had extremely low moral standards and rich combat experience.
This also gave Dago a great shock, realizing that a Wizard War could be fought like this.
These blood slaves could no longer be called humans; they were civilian captives transformed by the Dark Blood Council.
It was as if they had suffered inhumane abuse in life, their bodies covered in blood-red patterns formed by scars, their eyes filled with madness, and a craving for blood food, like zombies.
Yes, they were obedient zombies, without reason or emotion.
All of this was intelligence Dago had gathered at the Wizard Hall.
Although blood slaves had little combat power, they could serve as excellent cannon fodder, greatly limiting a Wizard's spellcasting actions. If a crazed blood slave charges at you in a suicidal rush, can you still calmly cast a spell?
In these three days, they caused no small number of casualties among Academy Wizards and mercenary Wizards, especially civilians, who were transformed into blood slaves once captured.
However, Dago was no ordinary person; he had developed his own countermeasure.
A tactic he called the Ice Crystal Prison, the same tactic he had used to kill Raymond.
As twilight deepened in the evening, in the western district of the Town, Dago lay prone on the roof of a two-story wooden house. Thin snow covered his robe, and his eyes, cold as ice, stared down at the street below.
In the distance, three Black Robe Wizards and five zombie-like blood slaves walked down the street. One of the blood slaves was not very old, its body covered in blood patterns, wearing tattered clothes.
The three Black Robes chatted and laughed, occasionally casting a spell to damage a house, listening for any signs of human activity inside.
The five blood slaves, like obedient hounds, carried out the orders of one of the three, entering houses to confirm if there were any surviving civilians inside.
After coming out, he would also drop a fist-sized, blood-colored lump onto the ground, letting the five blood slaves fight over it like mad dogs.
Then, they would move to the next house to search, while the other two Black Robe Wizards remained vigilant, guarding against any sudden attacks.
Soon, they arrived at the area of the house where Dago was lying. He narrowed his cold eyes, suppressing the undeniable killing intent.
"Almost there, almost there, ten meters, nine meters..." He silently calculated their distance.
"Now!" Dago raised the Ice Crystal Magic Wand in his hand, aiming it at their group, muttering the incantation for the Ice Crystal Technique. A large amount of ice elemental particles gathered at the tip of his wand in the air.
By the time the three Black Robe Wizards noticed the energy fluctuations in the air, it was too late; a massive blue energy orb flew straight towards them.
"Swoosh~~~" The blue energy orb plunged directly into the snow three meters in front of the Black Robe Wizards.
The three Black Robe Wizards' faces showed signs of a false alarm, then their eyes gleamed with ferocity as they raised the bone staves in their hands.
When a blast of cold air erupted beneath their boots, the Black Robe Wizards' sneers froze on their faces.
Their bone staves had just been lifted halfway into the air when they suddenly stopped — frost flowers condensing on the staffs grew wildly along the patterns, covering the entire bone staff in the blink of an eye, glowing with a greenish-white cold light in the twilight.
"What..." The question from the leading Black Robe Wizard in the middle had not yet left his throat when the flagstones beneath his feet cracked with spiderweb-like ice patterns.
Thousands of ice crystals burst forth from the ice patterns, instantly blossoming into ice spikes in the air, their edges as sharp as broken glass, reflecting a chilling light.
"Puff, puff, puff..." Sounds like firecrackers came from the ground.
Countless ice spikes shot up from the snowy street, eventually forming a crisscrossing forest of ice in this frozen purgatory, their sharp tips piercing the dim sky.
The Black Robe Wizard on the far left had just raised his bone staff when ice spikes had already drilled into the folds of his robe, emerging from his shoulder blade with drops of blood that froze into crimson crystal beads in mid-air.
His throat rattled, and his silver-gray beard was instantly covered in ice shards. The moment the bone staff slipped from his grasp, three more ice spikes diagonally pierced his wrist, pinning his prominent-knuckled hand to the ice spike.
He died maintaining the posture of raising his staff, an ice spike piercing through his eye socket, impaling half of his eyeball on its tip.
The leading Black Robe Wizard in the middle reacted extremely quickly, the flames condensed at the tip of his bone staff colliding with an ice spike, but only melting a few drops of water at the tip, which instantly froze into even sharper barbs.
Ice spikes erupted from the ground like a rainstorm, the thickest one directly piercing his waist and abdomen.
He instantly lost his breath, his Black Robe distended by the ice spikes, like a red rose blooming in the snow.
The Black Robe Wizard on the right tried to escape, but after only a few steps, an ice spike pierced his ankle, winding its way up his shin bone.
He watched, wide-eyed, as an ice shard pierced his throat, his gaze sweeping over his companions before blurring.
The last thing he saw was his hair freezing into powder piece by piece amidst the flying ice crystals, intertwining with the blood mist scattered by his companions in the icy wind, falling onto the already frozen ground.
As for the five blood slaves, they were also impaled like rag dolls within the ice forest of the street.
Dago stood up from the rooftop, his sword-like brows slightly furrowed, enduring the nausea as he witnessed the hellish scene he had created.
He had previously buried the dormant ice elemental energy of the Resonance Art beneath the snow on the street. He only needed to activate this energy with the Ice Crystal Technique to create this scene, akin to an icy hell.
The power of this move depended on the amount of ice elemental energy he had pre-buried, but the further away it was, the more unstable the ice elemental energy became. The most effective range was within thirty meters.
Dago withdrew the mental power that maintained the Ice Crystal Prison, and a large number of ice spikes shattered into ice shards, falling to the ground.
He jumped from the rooftop, his mental power compressing a small amount of air beneath him to form a cushion that caught him, landing on the ground covered in ice shards.
Dago quickly plundered the spoils of the three Black Robe Wizards: dozens of low-level magic stones, their bone staves, and the Dark Blood Council emblems around their necks, storing these items in his storage ring.
Then he withdrew from the western district of the Town and headed for the central noble district where the Wizard Hall was located.
