**Chapter 42: Magical Beasts**
A thick bolt of lightning, carrying the scorched scent of sulfur, struck the ground, blasting a bowl-sized crater into the gray rock.
Unfazed, Jie Ming’s earth-element shield stood firm, absorbing the wild current completely.
Before him, a thunderstorm beetle, over five meters tall and covered in black carapace, hissed angrily, brewing another blinding arc in its mouth.
“Ordinary beasts rely on brute force or simple corrosive and venomous attacks. Only creatures that directly manipulate elemental forces can be called magical beasts.”
Jie Ming glanced at the gathering storm above, recalling relevant knowledge: “Their attack methods are more complex and powerful, with far more refined energy control, making them far stronger than ordinary beasts.”
This thunderstorm beetle was a prime example. It could unleash powerful lightning, and its tough carapace resisted physical impacts, posing a significant challenge to wizard apprentices.
To Jie Ming, however, it was merely an ideal target for testing his talisman artifacts.
Jie Ming didn’t retreat. With a flick of his wrist, his attack talisman artifact activated instantly.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three high-explosive fireballs tore through the air with a piercing whistle, striking the beetle’s joints with pinpoint accuracy.
Each explosion shook the beetle’s massive frame, halting its charge as it roared in pain and fury.
Seizing the moment, Jie Ming spun his movement talisman, darting like a specter to the beetle’s flank. Another salvo of fireballs targeted the softer underbelly beneath its carapace.
The wild fire element blasted gaping, charred holes in the beetle’s abdomen, the searing flames severing its limbs.
With a final wail, the thunderstorm beetle collapsed, its lightning fading.
The battle lasted less than ten seconds, and Jie Ming hadn’t even broken a sweat.
He stowed the talisman artifact and approached, using alchemy and analysis to scan the remains, discovering an organ infused with lightning essence.
He deftly extracted it, storing it in a large beast-hide backpack.
“This bag’s almost full. Looks like I’ll need to figure out a spatial ring when I get back.”
In the wizarding world, spatial knowledge was complex, accessible only to third-level wizards and above.
But with enough people, spatial equipment and skills weren’t rare.
The training ground in Jie Ming’s lab, for instance, had its internal space expanded at great cost.
The academy had countless small spatial items like storage bags, expensive but affordable for Jie Ming.
The issue was that spatial constants varied across planes. Such equipment often worked only in specific planes.
If brought to another plane, they might simply fail to open—or worse, cause spatial distortions, potentially swallowing the user upon entry.
Even the best spatial equipment was limited to planes charted by wizarding civilization, carrying risks in unknown planes.
The spatial ring Jie Ming mentioned was an exception.
Requiring a sixth-level wizard to craft, its creation was demanding, but it stabilized its internal space with fixed rules, functioning anywhere.
Correspondingly, its price was astronomical.
Worse, due to the difficulty and high failure rate of crafting, even those with purchasing rights often found no stock.
“Teacher Clark is a sixth-level wizard. Maybe he has connections… I’ll ask when I get back. Hopefully, he knows a spatial wizard.”
As he mused, Jie Ming noticed a glowing blue point token beside the beast’s corpse.
He picked it up: “A magical beast of this level already drops a point token? And it’s worth a decent amount. Lucky me.”
He pocketed it without much thought.
Points were a byproduct; the talisman artifacts’ combat data and this plane’s rare materials were his focus.
Suddenly, Jie Ming looked in a direction, sensing intense elemental fluctuations—not scattered energy bursts, but the chaotic aura of large-scale wizardry clashing with magical beasts.
He activated his movement talisman, flying swiftly toward the source.
Nearing the site, he stopped, landing behind a massive red crystal ore and extending his mental energy with analysis.
Through rolling rocky hills and dense red crystal forests, he “saw” the battlefield.
A team of wizard apprentices was locked in a bitter struggle against a colossal fire-element magical beast, formed entirely of pure flames and molten lava.
Ten meters tall, each step shook the ground, and every attack unleashed a tidal wave of fire elements.
Though not quite at the level of a first-level wizard, its destructive power surpassed that of third-level apprentices, making the fight grueling for the team.
Jie Ming observed from a distance. The team, about twelve or thirteen strong, maintained a dispersed yet coordinated formation, clearly trained and tactically arranged.
As he watched, one apprentice unleashed a barrage of ice spikes toward the beast.
“Ice wizardry for suppression… decent condensation speed for the ice spike spell,” Jie Ming noted.
“But it lacks continuity. Against this fire-element beast, it’s like pouring a cup of water on a blaze.”
A tall, lanky apprentice stepped forward, waving a wand. A high-pressure water jet roared out, striking the beast’s head accurately.
“Not bad. Water elements are suppressed in this environment, yet he managed this effect. Solid mental control. But the water arrow spell’s power is too low, and the casting frequency is lacking.”
Jie Ming shook his head.
These combat-focused wizards were clearly elites, likely using pre-purchased spell models.
Such models were considered unorthodox because they required casting time, lacking the burst and continuity of self-developed spell models—a critical flaw.
Jie Ming’s alchemy and analysis spells, by contrast, were as instinctive as breathing, requiring no casting time.