The power of the Ice Maxim exceeded Merlin's expectations. The very moment his hand wrapped around the Ice Maxim, everything seemed to come to a complete stop.

If he was an ordinary person, it would be futile to even attempt to seize the Maxim as it would be a suicide mission. Even without anyone's control, the Maxim contained insurmountable power. The fact that this Maxim was strong enough to suppress the Ice Goddess for thousands of years by itself, was a testament to its power.

Moreover, an Honored Legend's Maxim was not the same as ordinary Maxims. In order for a Spell Caster to be known as an Honored Legend, he must first be able to produce an ultimate Maxim, namely the strongest Maxim of one of the elements!

Only after producing an ultimate Maxim, the Spell Caster was worthy to become an Honored Legend. This also meant that their ability to control the particular element had surpassed the gods.

This Ice Maxim was one of those ultimate Maxims. When Merlin took the risk to seize the Maxim, he was immediately attacked by it. His entire body became frozen, and all the power of the Maxim shifted to suppress Merlin.

The Ice Goddess' body, on the other hand, without the suppression of the Ice Maxim, swiftly decomposed and eventually turned into dust scattered across the jade bed.

Just as Merlin had predicted, the Ice Goddess had long since lost her divinity, and was nothing but an ice-cold corpse that had died a long time ago.

Once the Ice Maxim ceased its suppression, the corpse began to decompose and turned into dust.

Merlin did not pay any attention to the disappearance of the Ice Goddess as he was in a rough spot himself. He had fallen into a grave situation. The power of the Ice Maxim was too overwhelming, so all his strength and abilities were rendered useless in an instant.

"Hum hum."

Finally, the Flame Maxim inside Merlin's body flickered to life. Sensing the suppression of the Ice Maxim, the Flame Maxim leapt up with urgency.

A blazing heat spread rapidly all over Merlin's body. Two auras – one hot and one cold – began to struggle for dominance inside his body.

Merlin regained his consciousness but his heart was filled with fear. Losing his consciousness for a split second earlier was like a nightmare. He knew that if the Flame Maxim had not been there, he would have been suppressed by the Ice Maxim forever.

This time, it had been too risky for him to rush into seizing the Ice Maxim! It was a completely different experience from receiving the Flame Maxim. Although the Fire Maxim was also uncontrollable by Merlin, it was intended by the Legend Nikola as a reward for any Spell Caster who had successfully defeated the challenge. Therefore, despite Merlin being unable to control the Flame Maxim, it still would not cause him any harm.

On the contrary, the Ice Maxim was originally intended to suppress the Ice Goddess hence, its strongest power was suppression. Regardless of what it encountered, it would suppress it to the best of its ability.

Right now, the Ice Maxim was doing exactly that, which was using all its power to suppress the Flame Maxim. Once the Flame Maxim was completely suppressed, Merlin would be suppressed as well.

An Honored Legend's ultimate Maxim naturally had extraordinary powers that far outstripped the Flame Maxim's. Even right now, Merlin could feel that the Ice Maxim had occupied most of his body in addition to penetrating his Awareness and "suppressing" the Flame Maxim.

The Flame Maxim too, was in an unstable state as if it would disappear any time soon.

Once Merlin regained consciousness, he realized the danger he was in. Despite the fear in his heart, he held no regrets. He already had a plan in his mind so he grunted. "Matrix, derive Fourth-level Thunder-type spells!"

This was Merlin's plan all along. As long as he could introduce the Ice Maxim into his Awareness, he could activate the Matrix. After some strange transformation, the Matrix appeared to be able to absorb the power of Maxims to derive new spells.

Merlin's intention of seizing the Ice Maxim was not to control it. A powerful Maxim like this, if it was not specifically produced with the intention to be absorbed by another, even a Great Wizard would not be able to control it.

Thus, Merlin did not even consider controlling the Ice Maxim. All he wanted was to provide raw power for the Matrix to derive spells. The Flame Maxim had almost been exhausted and Merlin did not want to consume it anymore, so when he encountered the Ice Maxim, it was an opportunity he simply could not miss.

Nevertheless, whether or not this plan of Merlin's would be successful was contingent on the ability of the Matrix to absorb the power of the Ice Maxim to derive new spells.

"Beep. Derivation successful. A total of two hundred and eighty-six Fourth-level Thunder-type spells have been derived!"

Upon hearing the beep from the Matrix, Merlin was ecstatic. This meant that his plan had worked, and the Matrix was able to absorb the power of the Ice Maxim to derive new spells.

Merlin carefully inspected the Ice Maxim and sure enough, it had diminished slightly though the difference was not very noticeable. After all, the Ice Maxim was far more powerful than the Flame Maxim.

However, this was just the beginning. The Ice Maxim was still very powerful, so Merlin would need to consume larger amounts of its power.

"Matrix, derive new Fourth-level Ice-type spells!"

This was already the last of Merlin's Fourth-level spells. Once he had derived all the spells, then he only had to wait until his Mind Power achieved the Sixth-level, construct the last two Fourth-level spells, and voila, he would become a Fourth-level Wizard!

The Ice Maxim diminished a little more but still, it was not noticeable. Merlin took a deep breath. He had to quickly exhaust the Ice Maxim in one swoop. Otherwise, it would remain in his Awareness and could not be controlled. It was a huge ticking time-bomb!

"Matrix, derive Fifth-level Darkness-type spells!"

"Matrix, derive Fifth-level Fire-type spells!"

…

Merlin activated the Matrix and began to derive Fifth-level spells one after another. The power required to derive Fifth-level spells, of course, exceeded the power required to derive Fourth-level spells. Therefore, with every successful derivation of Fifth-level spells, the size of the Ice Maxim diminished at a speed visible even to a naked eye.

"Thud."

Finally, after deriving four types of Fifth-level spells namely Darkness-type, Fire-type, Earth-type, and Wind-type spells, Merlin stopped the Matrix.

The Ice Maxim had diminished from the size of a fist to the size of a fingernail. At this stage, the Flame Maxim was also barely able to balance out the power of the Ice Maxim.

Additionally, with the intervention of Merlin's Mind Power, the Flame Maxim also managed to suppress the now-diminished Ice Maxim.

Merlin did not fully exhaust the Ice Maxim. After all, it was still a Maxim. Moreover, it a Maxim which belonged to the Great Legend of Ice. Merlin was sure that it possessed some unique characteristics and would be of great help for his Ice-type spells.

Of course, the most important reason was because Merlin wanted to obtain the memory fragments from the Ice Maxim. Every Maxim carried some memory fragments from its Spell Caster.

The Flame Maxim from the Legend Nikola also carried some memories with it. The greater the size of the Maxims, the more complete the memory would be. Otherwise, they would just be disjointed memory fragments.

However, in Merlin's case, he merely wanted to understand some of these memories, so even the memory fragments were sufficient.

Thus, Merlin quickly extended his Mind Power into the Ice Maxim.

"Boom."

There was tremendous aura that gave people a shudder. In the memory, Merlin "saw" an almost perfect woman standing in the midst of a snowstorm, like the holiest of all goddesses. It was none other than the Ice Goddess.

Around the Ice Goddess, there seemed to be many other gods surrounding her. They protected the Ice Goddess in the middle as she was the most powerful god in Thule and also kept a large group of gods under her command.

Whereas in front of the Ice Goddess, stood a tight pack of ordinary-looking Spell Casters. These were Great Wizards, and they stood so tightly packed that even at a single glance, there were more than a hundred of them gathered together.

Merlin felt extremely shaken to the core. If the number of Great Wizards alone were already more than a hundred, he could not imagine how impressive the Spell Casters were during the golden age of Spell Casters. This was just the tip of the iceberg. It was not surprising that the Spell Casters managed to exile even the most powerful gods.

This scene was obviously from the fateful day three thousand and six hundred years ago when the Spell Casters and the gods went to war with each other. Under the leadership of the Great Legendary Wizard, the Spell Casters had fought against countless gods.

In the end, they managed to kill, suppress, and exile most of the gods, subsequently securing the respectable leadership position for the Spell Casters.

The Ice Goddess, too, must have been suppressed by the Legend of Ice for this reason until thousands of years had passed and her divinity diminished away, then the Ice Goddess was truly dead.

The scene changed, and a gigantic palm appeared in the sky. This gigantic palm descended from the sky like a country. Inside, infinite Ice Elements transformed into several huge dragons and swallowed all the gods.

Even the Ice Goddess was unable to control the Ice Elements from this country because the ultimate Maxim was controlled by the Legend of Ice!

Although the Ice Goddess was powerful, her control over the Ice Elements was far from the Legend of Ice, who possessed the power of its ultimate Maxim. Therefore, once the Legend of Ice attacked, she could not resist and was subsequently suppressed.

However, due to the continuous worship from her numerous believers in Thule over thousands of years, the level of divinity attained by the Ice Goddess was so incomparably powerful that it was impossible for the Great Legend of Ice to kill her. All he could do was produce an ultimate Maxim to suppress her for an indefinitely long period of time to rid her of the divinity.

These memory fragments were from the Ice Maxim the size of a fingernail, so the memories were extremely scattered and disjointed. It was Merlin who organized them and arrived at the conclusion. Nevertheless, Merlin's focus was not on the war between the Spell Casters and the gods because it was already a common mention in most ancient books where they contained information of Great Legendary Wizards who led the Spell Casters to exile the gods.

Merlin was more interested about the tiny memory fragment in the Ice Maxim that described the powerful tactics used by the Legend of Ice to suppress the Ice Goddess. Other than the power of the ultimate Maxim, there was a Glacier Country that descended from the sky and enveloped all the gods!

"Glacier Country, a special Pandora Demon Ability!"

Merlin mumbled softly, his eyes sparkling with excitement. Glacier Country was like Darkness Eye where both of them were special Pandora Demon Abilities. Since Glacial Country was invented by the Legend of Ice, its memory was deeply weaved into every strand of his Maxim.

Therefore, even a single strand of the Ice Maxim contained a complete memory of Glacial Country. Merlin had braved a huge risk to seize the Ice Maxim but now he was about to reap its benefits. He quickly immersed himself into the memory of Glacier Country and investigated the cultivation methods of this special Pandora Demon Ability.