Chapter 575 Reaching Peak Three-star

"How unlucky!" She muttered under her breath, looking helpless. Even though the beast rushing towards her was just a two-star beast, she knew she wouldn't be able to outrun it and if she wanted to survive, she had to kill it, or scare it away.

Thinking this, she closed her eyes. The beast growled in excitement when it saw its prey did not try to escape, and increased its speed. However, just when it was ten meters away from its delicious prey, an indistinct, pure white halo appeared around her. In the beast's eyes, its vulnerable prey had suddenly transformed into a god-like existence, and it felt it wasn't running towards a delicious meal but its death. It yelped in fear, turned on its heels and fled without looking back.

Phew~!

Watching the beast disappear from her sight, Lily released the breath she was holding until now, and relaxed.

'Fortunately, it was a low level beast, and had yet to gain intelligence. If not, my rudimentary [Ice God Halo] wouldn't have been effective.' She thought. If Oliver had seen her use the [Ice God Halo], his face might have turned black due to jealousy because she had achieved the same feat while in the four-star realm which he barely managed to achieve at peak five-star.

Lily had also comprehended the [Ice God Technique] while she was in seclusion. Before she had the chance to share the good news with her master, she found out she was 'asked' to leave with Oliver to gain experience in the war. She knew Oliver's intention towards her and knew it was risky to go with him. If she wanted, she could reveal her Ice God Halo, gain a status equal to or even higher than that of Oliver. But she didn't do that because she knew she wouldn't be allowed to leave the Ice God mountain before she became strong enough to protect herself. However, she wanted to leave, and find a chance to go to the Green Leaf kingdom and find her young master, whom she was so worried about and missed so much.

After recomposing herself, she looked around but only saw barren land. Although she didn't know her exact location, she knew she was in the Black Dragon Empire. 'The Green Leaf Kingdom is in the southwest of the Black Dragon Empire.' Turning around, she started running in the southwest direction while hoping for the mana restrictive poison to wear off as soon as possible. She needed her strength back to fight or flee in case she happened to encounter more beasts or demons. Besides, she had a premonition that Oliver would be able to find her…

After running for over 20 minutes at full speed, she grew tired and breathing turned ragged, causing her to slow down.

Just then, she heard the wind whistle behind her in the sky. For a moment, her heartbeat stopped, thinking that Oliver had arrived. But when she saw it was a golden sparrow-like flying beast, she heaved a sigh of relief because it wasn't Oliver's flying beast.

Seeing this flying beast, she suddenly remembered her friend, little Snow.

'I hope you escaped too, little Snow.' She prayed in her heart as the golden sparrow flew over her.

However, instead of continuing to fly away, it descended and landed in front of her. Lily immediately became cautious, and warily looked at the trio sitting on it.

In front was a man in golden brocade robes. He looked handsome and had a regal air to him. Behind him, on his either side were two middle-aged men in dark robes. Both were expressionless, and looked at ease as they looked at her, but Lily could tell both were alert and ready to act at a moment's notice.

From this, she could tell the guy in the middle was some young master while the two middle-aged were his guards.

"May I ask what your esteemed self wants?" She asked, looking at the young master. Although she looked and sounded calm, her heartbeat had increased because she sensed all three of them were five-star mages, and not ordinary ones.

Swoosh!

The man in golden robes jumped down in front of her, causing Lily to take two steps backwards. With a small smile on his face, he elegantly put right hand on his left chest and slightly bowed in greeting, "Hello, young lady. I'm Eric. Please do not worry. I didn't approach you with any malice, and mean you no harm."

"Hm. May I ask what Mr. Eric wants?" Lily nodded her head slightly in response as she asked.

His two bodyguards frowned when they saw she didn't show him any respect, and were about to say something when Eric said, "I noticed you didn't have any transportation, and because we are going in the same direction, I thought maybe I should offer you a ride. I wonder if you are willing to travel with us?"

Lily looked at him, and then his bodyguards. After considering it for a moment, she asked, "Where are you heading to, Mr. Eric?"

Eric's smile grew when he heard this and said, "We are going to the Green Leaf Kingdom. We can drop you off at your destination if it's on the way. If not, I can give you a flying beast to travel."

Lily's eyes flashed when she heard this. Eric was quite perceptive and immediately noticed the slight change, and left surprised, "Don't tell me young lady is also heading to the Green Leaf Kingdom?"

Lily was silent for a moment before she slowly nodded, "That's right. I'm going there."

Eric clapped his hands and laughed, "That's good. Now, if you don't mind." He was about to extend his hand but stopped and just gestured to her to climb up on the sparrow.

Lily had been paying attention to him ever since she saw him. So, she naturally noticed this and relaxed slightly. It seems he was a bad person. Of course, she still wouldn't lower her guard.

Soon, the golden sparrow took off and flew in Green Leaf Kingdom's direction.

Not long after they left, Oliver arrived not far from where Lily was.

"It has been almost 50,000 miles." He muttered and took out another Blood Sense talisman and dropped a drop of Lily's blood on it.

Soon after, he flew in the direction the golden sparrow went.

…

Although Max's absorption speed was slightly reduced due to the system's absence, it was still several times faster than an ordinary peak three-star mage with a good cultivation technique thanks to the cultivation technique he bought from the system.

After 24 hours of hard work, he had completely absorbed and refined all of his mid-grade mana stones' mana. With all this mana, not only did he break through to peak three-star, he made quite some progress to the limits of three-star. Now, he only needed slightly over 15 thousand more three-star mana to reach the realm limit. Once that happened, he could start the further purification and compression of his mana to elevate it to four-star level and become a four-star mage.

But now he faced a problem which wasn't a problem before–Mana stones. He had stored most of his mana stones, most of which were low grade ones, in the system inventory and only had over 200,000 low grade mana stones in his spatial ring. This amount wasn't at all enough to reach the current realm limit and to convert the mana to four-star level.

Sighing at the problem, he stood up and stretched, "It's time to go to the Royal City."