Lotus Deer were quite gentle Demonic Beasts. Someone could walk right up to them and harvest their nectar, but the moment one of the herd was attacked, the entire group would become hostile, and their nectar would turn to toxin.

Damion had no interest in harvesting the nectar, nor did he have an interest in the toxin. He wanted Light and Holy affinity materials, and these Lotus Deer were Light affinity.

Of course, if he attacked one, the rest would charge at him. They were only early D Rank Demonic Beasts, but trying to fight all of them at once would not be easy. Unless he simply attacked all of them at once.

Summon Ice had long since proven its versatility to Damion. And since he increased his mastery of the spell, enlarging the size of the cube of ice he could conjure, he was able to create a spell that was impressively destructive.

First, since the Lotus Deer were passive and would only attack after they were attacked, Damion cast Ice Wall several times and enclosed the Demonic Beasts in. They might be able to jump out, if given room to get a running start, but he was fairly confident in his ability to finish off the entire herd before they could figure out how to escape.

Once his Ice Wall was in place Damion cast Summon Ice and began splitting the block of ice into deadly ice crystals. When Damion reached his limit in controlling the multitude of icicles, which was now close to a hundred separate ice crystals, he willed his spell to rain terror down on the Demonic Beasts.

The hail of ice sliced through the herd of Lotus Deer. The Demonic Beasts dropped quickly. Only the largest buck survived the onslaught. Instead of fleeing, the buck turned and charged towards Damion. Wanting to practice some of his spells, he raised his Rock Shield and let the Lotus Deer smash into it.

Not being as proficient with Rock Shield as he was with Ice Shield, a large crack appeared in Damion's shield and a few large chunks actually broke off. Pushing the Demonic Beast back with the remains of his shield, he then cast Flame Breath at the Lotus Deer. The burst of flame struck the buck in the head and instantly burnt out the Demonic Beast's eyes.

Through the pain and disorientation of Damion's attack, the Lotus Deer still managed to swing its head and its dangerous antlers towards him. Since the buck's fur was still ablaze, he jumped back, avoiding the antlers and the flowers on their tips that were certainly now filled with toxin instead of nectar.

A quick cast of Earth Shard sent a sharp rock the size of Damion's fist through the Lotus Deer's throat. A moment later the buck collapsed on the ground. A cast of Clean Water sent a stream of water over the Lotus Deer, putting out the residual flames from his previous Fire magic attack.

"That could have gone better," Damion said to himself and Phil who was perched in a nearby tree to watch the action.

'Eat now?' Phil sent through their bond.

"Yes, you can eat this one," Damion said, indicating the large buck he had just killed. "But don't eat the flowers."

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The last thing Damion wanted was his Snow Hawk companion to get sick from the toxin in the Lotus Deer's flowers. He was not sure it if actually affected Ferocious Beasts or not, but Damion did not want to risk it.

While Damion collected the other carcasses in his personal spatial storage, he reviewed the Magic System notifications that had come in.

*Ding*

[Spell Ice Wall mastery increased to D Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

*Ding*

[Spell Rock Shield mastery increased to E Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

*Ding*

[Spell Flame Breath mastery increased to E Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

*Ding*

[Spell Clean Water mastery increased to E Rank]

*Ding*

{Quest Completed}

[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]

Four spells advanced. Four quests finished. This meant he was only 1,200 experience shy of getting the Magic System to level 3. Damion pulled up his status to check his progress. It had not been a week since he last checked, but he wanted to review his standings before moving on to the next area.

[Magic System]

[System Level: 2]

[User: Damion Wells]

[Age: 18]

[Magic Talent: EX]

[Magic Affinity: Ice EX, Water E, Poison D, Spatial D, Fire A, Earth A, Shadow A, Holy C]

[Mana: 3,784/3,797] (5%) - 3,986

[Magic Power: 8,725] (5%) - 9,161

[Mana Recovery: 51 P/S] (5%) - 53

[Strength: 115]

[Dexterity: 119] (5%) - 124

[Vitality: 213]

[Intelligence: 145]

[Experience: 8,800/10,000]

[Store Credits: 123,446]

He had not made much progress in raising his strength during the exam, but seeing his Earth and Shadow affinity now at A Rank brought a smile to his face. Another big smile was brought on by his credits. He was still well less than one percent of his way towards his 100,000,000 credit goal to afford the Anti-Regression Potion, but it was still far higher than where he was just a few weeks ago.

Now what he needed to do, was decide if he should spend a few of those credits. He was quite close to advancing the Magic System to level 3 and thus gaining access to the Magic Core Converting, which hopefully meant, a steep increase in his ability to gain credits. He was already starting to stockpile cores from Demonic Beasts and depending on the exchange ratio, he might be able to simply use a bit of real money to increase his credits by a lot.

A general rule of thumb for Demonic Beast Cores was that even the lowest demanded F rank cores still sold for 1 gold. But the standard rate was 3 gold. F Rank cores that were in high demand could sell for anywhere between 5 gold and 10 gold, depending on the rarity of the affinity. E Rank cores were obviously higher in value than F Rank cores, though of course, how much more they were worth, depended on the market. An extremely rare F Rank core could sell for more than a very common E Rank core.

Because of this real-world market variance, that got more and more extreme with the rarity and Rank of cores, Damion thought he might be able to play the market a bit. He had no way of knowing right now, but he had the feeling that to the Magic System, a core was a core. If he acquired an extremely rare core, he might be able to get five or even ten other cores in exchange. In that situation he could then feed the more common cores to the Magic System earn more credits than he would have if he just feed the one rare core to it.

All he had to do to find out if this was the case was, unlock the next level of the Magic System. And being only the completion of twelve spell mastery quests away, Damion got to work practicing his weakest spells.

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