"Mana, compress, spikes, ground." The runes flashed and disappeared.
A few moments later, dark mana spikes jotted out of the ground, skewering a demon in place.
"Mana, compress, ice, spikes, ground." This time, the runes glowed for a moment before crumbling.
It didn't disappear like it did if a spell was successfully cast, but Kayn could see the runes literally crumble and disappear right in front of his eyes.
Seeing his attempt fail, Kayn just ran forward, using his two arms to block the demon's attack and using the other two to decapitate the head of the demon.
He then grabbed the souls of the two demons that he had just killed and consumed them.
He would ordinarily be delighted after consuming two souls without doing much work, but he didn't this time.
The two souls he consumed permeated his body, and they started mending the cut on his arm and the burnt skin on his body.
Despite his wounds healing at an incredible speed, something that would only happen if an explorer with healing magic did it, Kayn just stared at his half-healed charred skin.
He had to shoot his enhanced fireball at point-blank range to save himself.
He was affected by his own attacks, and the enhanced fireball certainly did him good.
If not for it colliding with the thick ice dome and the fire being dissipated greatly before bouncing back to hit him, then Kayn would become just like the third-eyed demon.
A charred corpse.
Kayn was still thinking about the ice demon. Its expressionless face, its nonchalant attitude, and how easy it was for the ice demon to deal with himself.
Even with all the tricks Kayn had learned from fighting the other demons, the ice demon just raised his two hands and stood in place, and made Kayn run away without even thinking of fighting back.
"It's just like before… In the forest…"
The times when he felt powerless already felt distant when Kayn was able to get the best of the demons' body parts and combine them together.
He could even use magic just by seeing how other demons did it.
"Although using ice magic was somehow impossible… I guess I need to gain an affinity to it first…"
But the landslide defeat against the ice demon was a wake-up call for Kayn, reminding him of how weak he actually was.
The ice demon was not only strong and had cheat-like abilities to cast spells without drawing the runes one by one, but it was also clever.
The ice demon could predict how strong Kayn's attack was, how much impact it would make, and think of how he would respond to those attacks.
When Kayn fired a single fireball, the ice demon just stood still. When Kayn fired five fireballs, the ice demon put up a shield. When Kayn threw the fireballs aimlessly, the ice demon let him as he knew that it would actually benefit himself.
The ice demon wasn't just strong, he was also calm and calculating.
"I will pass that trial and get that affinity for myself."
Kayn still wanted to go to the ice temple to gain an ice affinity, but he took a roundabout way, moving as far away as possible from the ice demon's territory.
Though it would take him more time to reach the ice temple, Kayn would not be dying in the process, and he could also hunt more souls to mend his wounds.
It took Kayn days, or at least what he felt like days, since there wasn't any daylight cycle in this demon world, to reach the area around the ice temple.
Just like what he saw from above before, the ice temple was surrounded by mountain-like glaciers, and only a single path was available for him to go into the temple.
As he got closer to the path, Kayn suddenly smelled the scents of many souls gathered from the direction of the temple.
Kayn readied himself and cast a self-strengthening spell. It only lasted about 5 minutes, but it was more than enough for Kayn to escape if the situation turned out to be dangerous.
With his wings ready to flap and bring him to the sky and his four arms ready to block any incoming attacks, Kayn continued his journey.
He walked past the walls made up of humongous glaciers and then found himself at the front of the temple.
And there, he saw a scene that confused his brain.
There were dozens of demons all around the temple. However, they didn't wait in an ambush or fight each other.
Instead, they all looked injured, lying on their backs or propping their body on the glacier walls.
There weren't any visible injuries on their bodies, but Kayn could see their weakened bodies.
And none of them had the same gray colored skin as the ice demon from before, they all had red skin just like him.
They were just ordinary adult demons that were somehow not fighting or killing each other.
When Kayn walked in, he earned several glances from other demons, but none of them spoke up or even did anything to him.
'There must be an unwritten rule here… I wonder why my demon knowledge didn't tell me anything about it…'
With them not paying Kayn any attention, he did the same to them as he continued walking towards the steps of the ice temple. Though he still kept his guard up.
Kayn walked up the stairs into the entrance of the temple, and he finally saw something.
Without Kayn even being able to sense any mana or any shifts in his surroundings, a blur flew past him in the stairs before it landed a few meters away from the base of the stairs.
Kayn turned back and saw a red-skinned demon lying on its back, groaning in pain.
As if already gotten used to this scenery, the other demons just spared the fallen demon a glance before continuing their rest.
Kayn then began to realize something.
'Did that guy just get thrown out of the temple because it failed the trial…? And all those guys sitting and lying on the front of the temple, are they also demons who failed the trial?'
Kayn didn't know whether those weak-looking guys were permanently weakened from failing the trial or not, but now Kayn knew what probably would happen to him if he failed the trial.
Kayn's throat gulped, but he didn't waver as his firm steps continued going inside the temple.
He needed the power to survive, he didn't want to die if he ever met any other demon like the ice demon.
Besides, he had a human mind, he would be able to complete the trial with the craftiness of a human.
At least, that's what Kayn thought as he finally saw the inside of the temple.
It wasn't anything royal or grand inside the temple, there were only demons, ice chairs, and a single glacier in the middle.
The demons were seated on the ice chairs, arranged in a circular formation around the single glacier.
Unlike the glaciers outside that protected the temple, this single glacier was only about 5 meters tall, and it was actually see-through, as if it were made of pure ice with no impure components mixed in.
Kayn felt an unbelievable amount of mana contained inside the glacier, a similar feeling to the mana he felt when he fought the ice demon, but slightly different.
The glacier didn't exude any mana that felt demon-like.
There were floating magical runes all around it as if they were sealing the glacier, preventing it from spreading its cold and freezing all the demons around it.
Kayn tried reading the runes, but this time, he couldn't make sense of the runes as if what he was reading was gibberish.
But Kayn didn't come here to study some runes, he was here to pass the trial and gain the ice affinity.
Following his instincts, Kayn sat on one of the empty ice chairs and closed his eyes.
He sent out his mana to the chair and waited.
Kayn began thinking that he might be doing something wrong when nothing happened, but he almost screamed in pain as an intense cold spread from his feet and instantly went into his head.
Kayn's mind turned blank, his vision turned to dark before a set of runes appeared in front of him.
"Welcome to The Trial of Ice.
May the fiery and unforebearing be damned in eternal ice."