Chapter 128

WHOOSH!

With a blink, Suho returned to reality. The first thing he saw was a pure-white lotus—no, an ice flower formed from frost.

A single ice flower had blossomed over the steaming hot spring. From within it came Sirka's quiet voice.

"... Suho. I think I just saw my grandfather."

"What?"

'Don't tell me Sirka was the Monarch of Frost's granddaugh—'

Just as Suho began to wonder...

CRACK!

The ice flower surrounding Sirka suddenly bloomed, scattering in every direction. At the same time, the ice crystals swirled together and condensed in her hand.

DING.

[The King of the Snow Folk, the Monarch of Frost, bequeaths 'Item: Icewood Spear' to his successor, 'Sirka.']

CRUNCH!

Ice stretched out from Sirka's hand, forming a trident.

["Kieek! This energy... Could it be?!"]

Having no idea what Suho had just experienced, Beru quickly moved in front of him to protect him.

"It's all right."

Suho gathered Beru into his arms and patted him reassuringly.

"She's on our side."

["Kiek?"]

Beru tilted his head in Suho's arms and looked up at his face. But the conviction in Suho's eyes soon told him what was happening.

Just then, focus returned to Sirka's eyes as she stared blankly into space. She turned her gaze in a particular direction and spoke.

"I can see it now."

Sirka swung the Icewood Spear in her hand, pointing beyond the blizzard obscuring their view.

"... Where Chacha is."

WHOOOOSH.

The blizzard raging through the forest coiled around the frost trident. Its power swirled around Sirka and Suho, lifting them into the air.

Sirka's eyes sparkled as she smiled confidently.

"Hold on tight. We're flying straight there."

WHOOOSH!

A single streak shot across Echo Forest.

* * *

KABOOOOM!

The Scavenger hunters were floundering in terror and despair.

A natural disaster was unfolding right before their eyes. The earth howled, and the frozen forest shook as though the sky were about to collapse.

The Scavenger Guild was America's strongest guild in both name and deed, with numerous clears of notorious dungeons that other guilds dared not even attempt.

Yet the sight before them defied comparison with any dungeon they had ever conquered. They could not imagine returning from this place alive. The despair they felt was beyond words.

'Dragons...!'

Dragons had suddenly appeared in the middle of the forest and were exchanging ferocious blows. Caught in the aftermath, the hunters could only flee desperately, like shrimp caught between battling whales.

"Aah, what the hell is going on?!"

"Oh, please! Guildmaster! Guildmaster! Where are you?!"

"If only Thomas Andre were here...!"

Clinging to a thread of hope, they waited for just one man.

Thomas Andre, humanity's strongest hunter!

If only he would come, he would resolve this entire crisis. There was nothing they could do but pray fervently to God that he would.

But no matter how long they waited, there was no sign of the Thomas Andre they so desperately wanted to see. The entire forest was shaking. With his S-rank senses, he should have noticed what was happening long ago.

"Aah, please, Thomas! Thomas!"

But there was something they did not know...

It wasn't that Thomas Andre had failed to come. He had been here from the beginning.

They could not even begin to imagine it. Yet one person here had recognized that fact from the start.

"Ugh!"

Cha Haein.

"How did he end up here...?!"

A troubled expression had remained on her face throughout the battle.

Cha Haein had been investigating the strange disturbances in Echo Forest with Kaisel when a tremendous presence suddenly appeared in the forest, prompting her to hurry in this direction.

What she discovered was that magic beast: an ice dragon.

In truth, that enormous, horrifying creature was the same kind of construct as the Ice Golems created by the spirits.

The forbidden grounds of the ice elves.

Echo Forest had another name: the Forest of Trials.

The spirits dwelling here sought out intruders and subjected them to trials befitting their strength. Thus, the more powerful the intruder, the more spirits gathered to balance that power.

Those who failed to overcome their trials were eventually bewitched by the spirits and had their bodies stolen. They were left to suffer, frozen forever, neither alive nor dead.

Of course, that applied only to ice elves. Their strong affinity with spirits made it easy for them to command spirits—but also made it easy for spirits to steal their bodies.

Humans, however, were different.

From Cha Haein's experience so far, humans inherently lacked an affinity with spirits. At the very least, she did not have to worry about losing her body to a trial.

Of course, they still faced a number of spirits proportionate to their strength.

'But then why?'

That was why Cha Haein had been so bewildered all this time.

Fighting the ice dragon at closer range than anyone else, she had noticed something. No—to be precise, she could smell it.

An alien scent distinct from the ice dragon's own.

Narrowing her eyes as she studied the ice dragon, Cha Haein soon discovered something impossible.

Deep within the ice dragon's body of solid, frozen ice was a man, frozen after his body had been taken over!

An elderly man with white hair. Despite his age, he possessed an enormously muscular physique—the strongest man on Earth.

Cha Haein recognized his face at once.

'Thomas Andre! Why has he turned into an ice dragon in a place like this?!'

ROOOOAR!

Just then, the ice dragon carrying Thomas Andre near its heart roared and struck Kaisel, whom Cha Haein was riding.

CRASH!

["Grrroooan...!"]

A deeply exhausted cry escaped Kaisel as he fought back.

"Kaisel...!"

Cha Haein looked at him with anguish.

This was bad.

Kaisel's power was steadily weakening. Even before today's battle, he had been growing weaker by the moment for a long time. He was too far from Sung Jinwoo to replenish his depleted strength.

Now that he was fighting an evenly matched opponent, however, the rate of that decline had accelerated dramatically.

'If this drags on any longer, Kaisel will disappear!'

Of course, if Sung Jinwoo had been nearby, Kaisel would not have returned to nothingness. He would simply have been recalled into Sung Jinwoo's shadow and recuperated in the shadow world.

But even that was impossible now.

'The only answer is to end this quickly. I have to do it.'

Cha Haein leaped from Kaisel's back and mercilessly slashed the ice dragon's enormous body with two daggers wreathed in sword aura.

KRRRRACK!

The ice dragon's body cracked and split with tremendous crashing sounds. But the surrounding blizzard swirled in, repairing those wounds without a trace.

New spirits were entering the ice dragon's body and restoring it.

'If I keep fighting like this, it'll just be a battle of attrition! Is attacking Thomas Andre directly my only option after all?'

The problem was that even that would not be easy. The enormous ice dragon was made not of ordinary ice, but of thick ice imbued with immense mana. Its defenses were truly formidable.

No matter how much she smashed and destroyed, new spirits merely appeared to fill the gaps.

Had it been an ordinary Ice Golem, she could simply have destroyed it completely before new spirits entered it. But this creature was so huge that attacking individual parts was useless.

By the time she finished destroying one side and attacked somewhere else, the first side had already recovered.

'Then I have to put everything into a single blow and pierce its heart.'

Back on Kaisel's back, Cha Haein quickly crossed her daggers and drew up her mana.

WHOOOOOM!

The skill Sword of Light.

It consumed so much mana that she could only use it as her trump card.

The two daggers in Cha Haein's hands began to shine brilliantly.

'I only have one chance!'

Cha Haein's eyes gleamed coldly.

"Kaisel! Give me an opening!"

["KRAAAH!"]

Having fought alongside Cha Haein for so long, Kaisel understood her immediately.

CRUNCH!

Disregarding the damage he would take, Kaisel pressed himself against the ice dragon's far larger body. The ice dragon unleashed a freezing breath that wounded Kaisel, but he refused to retreat.

His sole purpose was to ensure that the attack containing all of Cha Haein's strength would not miss!

["KRAAAAGH!"]

'Thank you, Kaisel.'

In time with Kaisel's roar, Cha Haein's skill shot straight toward the ice dragon's heart, where Thomas Andre lay asleep.

KABOOOM!

An immense wave of mana spread outward from the attack in every direction.

'I'm sorry, Thomas Andre.'

A multitude of emotions swept through Cha Haein's mind.

Thanks to Sung Jinwoo, Cha Haein retained her memories of the erased timeline. She knew exactly who Thomas Andre was.

He had once been an American National Level Hunter. One of the strongest humans in the world, he had been a warrior who fought desperately to save Earth from invaders from another world.

But that was a story from a timeline that no longer existed. Now he should have been nothing more than an ordinary human.

His sudden appearance here, and the heavily armed hunters she could see nearby—those details alone allowed Cha Haein to deduce quite a lot.

'People with mana... Has Earth changed back to the way it was then while I've been here?'

Then...

What had happened to her husband, Sung Jinwoo?

For an instant, Cha Haein recalled the last glimpse she had caught of her husband's back before she fell into this place.

Was he...

'Is he still fighting?'

Still.

Was he still fighting there alone?

KRRRRACK!

Even now, Cha Haein's Sword of Light was boring through the enormous ice dragon.

Just a little farther, and her attack would reach Thomas Andre, frozen within its heart.

Just a little.

'Just a little more!'

But then, the eyes of Thomas Andre, frozen beneath a covering of pure-white frost, suddenly snapped open.

"...!"

Cha Haein's eyes widened as she confronted the sinister blue energy dwelling in those empty eyes.

Looking at her brilliant sword aura, which had finally reached right in front of him, Thomas Andre curled his lips into a wicked smile.

["O Itarim, guide me."]

―――――――!

At that instant, light erupted with a deafening ringing in her ears.

It spread rapidly outward like a wave, beginning to engulf everything around it.