After doing a little cleaning up by tossing the bodies into the middle of the fortress's courtyard, Kayn began his preparation.
He modified the fortress a little, raising ice pillars and ice walls here and there to make it possible for him to look ahead without flying and giving him a platform where he could move without having been surrounded by earth, which could be used by earth demons against him.
Kayn also took a note from the ice demon's book to make a field of ice all around the fortress.
He couldn't use the spell that turns a whole ice pillar into an ice field quickly, but Kayn could manually create a layer of ice above the ground.
Kayn had also given up on the ice skating part.
Not only did he not have a single idea on how the hell the ice demon could make the ice field move, following him, but Kayn also had never ice skated before.
He lived in a tropical climate nation, the only experience he had interacting with ice was either when it was in his drinks or his fridge.
Kayn got a pair of wings either way, he would use the ice just to give him a terrain advantage against his opponents, not for bamboozling his enemy like the ice demon did.
Kayn had also summoned rigid ice spears and stabbed them into the ground, scattering them all over the area to make use of them.
He still couldn't figure out how the heck the ice demon controlled them, no matter how he wanted to have that ability for himself.
Just imagining himself standing in place and commanding the ice spears like an orchestra to stab his enemies from afar really made him realize once again that the ice demon couldn't just be any ordinary ice demon that had just evolved a few weeks ago.
But visualizing a spell wasn't just having a clear picture in his mind, especially when the spell was a complicated one.
For the rigid ice spears, Kayn just needed to imagine the many ice spears combining with each other, the mana condensing with each other, and making the structure more solid and able to stay materialized in the real world, even with some damage.
On the other hand, imagining the ice spear vengeance spell, Kayn didn't know how to even begin imagining the ice spears moving to his command.
He simply thought about moving his spear with his mind, and he did succeed in moving the spear, but it was just a one-time thing, where he would need to constantly cast the spell every time he wanted to move the spear.
And there's no way in hell he would be able to control 30 spears individually flying and changing directions in a second using that method.
It would just be better to summon new spears every time if it reached that point.
But Kayn still got his own use for the rigid ice spears, so he scattered them all over his surroundings.
Kayn had also tried coming up with traps, like the landmines he saw in movies, where a spell would activate whenever somebody stepped on them.
But he couldn't just get the image right. He even used manual casting for it, and he still couldn't do it.
Kayn didn't know how to add the condition so that it would only activate when someone stepped on them.
When he tried making them, it would only activate right away or activate with a delay. Just those two outcomes.
Well, he could try delaying the spell to activate in an hour, but he didn't know when the so-called reinforcement would come, or whether they would even come at all.
He would just be wasting his time, trying to play guesswork and relying on his luck that his "traps" would do anything useful for him.
In the end, Kayn just decided to add more ice fields and more rigid ice spears and be satisfied with those.
Kayn then waited on top of the ice platform he created, trying to think of new applications for his ice affinity. And he did, in fact, come up with a spell to make use of the ice fields even more.
Even though at the end, he ended up stressing and cursing the ice demon because he still didn't have a single clue about how to use the ice spear vengeance skill, something that would be very useful against a large number of enemies.
'That guy must have had so much free time residing in that region where he was the strongest! He even got the time to learn how to ice skate!'
But his spite towards the ice demon was soon thrown back into the back of his mind as he saw the first sign of the crops that he would harvest.
Flying in the sky from his left, several demons locked their eyes onto him.
They seemed to circle the area a little before flying back to where they came from.
"It must be their scouts. I'd better get ready." Kayn said as he stretched his wings and manifested his ice claws and armor.
Meanwhile, quite a distance away from the icy fortress, the flying demons landed on the ground and kneeled to another demon.
The demon was slightly shorter than Kayn in height, but their bodies had a similar build.
If Kayn saw the demon, then he would certainly be intrigued, as he had never seen such a demon before.
Physique wise, he just looked like an ordinary winged demon with a build that looked a little too heavy to be able to fly using his wings.
However, his skin was yellow from head to toe. And gusts of wind seemed to constantly blow around the demon, moving the dirt and dust around him.
The demon was indeed a wind elemental demon. A demon that came from the opposite side of the icy region, one that also bordered the mountain region.
Currently, he was listening to the reports of the scouts that he had sent out.
"Are you sure about that? Only a single, unwounded demon and all the demons in the fortress were wiped out?"
Without raising their heads, the scouts answered.
"Yes, we didn't see or smell any other soul other than the one that belonged to the ice demon."
"I also saw the corpses were being gathered in the middle of the courtyard."
"We couldn't see each of the corpses' faces, but we were sure that not one demon was left inside or near the fortress other than the ice demon."
"There wasn't anyone there yet, we would be the first ones to arrive."
The fire demon thought hard about the chance that the ice demon really did massacre the whole fortress alone.
It wouldn't be an impossible feat for him to do, but he would have been left with countless wounds covering his body by the time he did it.
'It is possible that the inhabitants and the master of the fortress had succeeded in running away, and the corpses he gathered there were just the demons who were late to run.
It could also be possible that he did such a peculiar thing, gathering the corpses in the middle of the courtyard to make the scouts believe he killed all the inhabitants of the fortress, giving him bargaining ability.
Well, there's no need to overthink about this… I'll just let the wind take me wherever it blows.'
The wind demon was about to give the command to continue moving forward, but before he could do so, he could feel a faint hint of coldness carried by the wind passing by him.
Jerking his head upward, his eyes stared at a certain black dot in the sky that seemed to get bigger and bigger as seconds passed.
Then he finally felt it. A chilling wind that seemed to threaten to invade his bones and freeze his limbs.
The gray skin covering his whole body and the aura of frost that followed him whenever he went, the wind demon knew what would arrive soon.
The ice demon had come to him.