Inside the silent limousine, Neve sat rigid, staring at the city passing by without really seeing it. The air-conditioned interior suddenly felt colder.
The driver, a man with an impassive face, spoke without turning.
— Young Mistress. The Patriarch requests your presence.
Before she could respond, a bluish, icy hologram appeared in the seat opposite her. It depicted a dark office, lit by a single lamp. A man—the Patriarch of the Frost clan, her father—sat there, an imposing figure swallowed in shadow. Beside him, the old clan butler stood, as motionless as a specter.
Neve immediately lowered her head, a habit carved into her flesh.
— I salute the Patriarch.
No greeting came back. No question about her health or state. Only a voice, as sharp and cold as a stalactite:
— Is the examination finished?
— Yes, she replied, her voice unnervingly neutral.
— What is the point gap between you and the second place?
She hesitated for a microsecond—a crime in itself.
— I… I am second.
The consequences were instant and atrocious.
An unimaginable pain pierced her chest. It wasn't a blow, but an internal freezing. Her blood solidified in her veins, her lungs contracted in an icy vice, every nerve seemed to crystallize. It was as if thousands of tiny frost blades tore and froze her organs from the inside. Frozen blood, red and crystalline, gushed from her nostrils, ran from the corners of her eyes and ears.
— Not only did you fail to enter High School Number One, but you can't even dominate this nest of mediocrity? A dangerous gleam flashed in the Patriarch's single visible eye. How much do you wish the Frost name to be tainted by your incompetence?
The pain was total, overwhelming. But a scream, a complaint, would have been another mistake. She clenched her teeth until they threatened to shatter, hands gripping the leather seat, body shaking with uncontrollable tremors.
---
Meanwhile, in the lavish Jinjiang Mayor's residence.
Jett slammed against a marble wall, the impact muffled by a priceless tapestry that tore. He slid to the floor, one hand on a probably fractured rib, blood on his lips.
Standing before him, his father—the Mayor, a man whose gaze was as cold as his title was warm—held a tablet. The screen looped the sequence of his team being neutralized by Serene, then Remedy soaring towards the Boss. (Mayor — Level: ???)
— What an incapable son. What a waste.
He cast a disgusted glance at Jett, barely conscious, trying to rise, then at the tablet.
— You're so pathetic I don't even have the patience to watch the entirety of your humiliation.
He turned on his heel and handed the tablet to his butler, a man with eyes far too intelligent.
— Pack his things. Have him at the main barracks by dawn. The army might be able to do something with this mud.
— At your command, Mayor.
As he left the room, the Mayor tossed over his shoulder a final instruction, cold and calculated:
— And contact your men. I want information on that girl and that boy.
---
In the limousine, the Frost Patriarch's hologram issued a verdict:
— Upon your return, report to the Frozen Cave. You will not leave without my order.
The transmission ended. The hologram vanished.
The Frozen Cave. An extreme training ground of the clan, where the magically maintained temperature was so low that even the air crystallized. Staying there was brutal training. Being confined there was cruel punishment, bordering on torture.
Neve finally slumped onto the seat, freed from the active pain but broken, trembling, her face streaked with frozen blood. The driver didn't glance in the rearview mirror.
In the Frost clan's dark office, the Patriarch turned to his butler.
— Contact the young heir immediately.
His eyes, in the shadows, shone with interest as cold and dangerous as ice itself.
— I want everything. On that boy. The first in the ranking. Remedy.
The hunt, of a very different nature, had just begun.
---
About five kilometers deep, in the abyssal darkness of the ocean, a figure floated weightlessly, surrounded by a silence only the deep could offer.
A sharp, intrusive mental communication shattered the calm.
— Here's what happened, the butler's voice detailed coldly: Neve failed, and the Patriarch's punishment has been decided.
The figure slowly rotated in the icy water, with no apparent effort.
— Oh? replied a mental voice, laced with languid amusement. My little sister couldn't even manage to be first in her sandbox? And she got put in the corner again? How shameful for the name…
A crystalline laugh, devoid of warmth, echoed in the telepathic link.
— Why am I being disturbed with these childish matters during my bath? I was so comfortable… thought the voice.
— These are direct orders from the Patriarch, the butler insisted, inflexible. You must return. It is not proper for the young heir—
— Yes, yes, I know, I know… she cut off the communication with an annoyed thought.
Silence returned, heavier than before.
Tss… not even allowed to finish a bath in peace.
Her thoughts then drifted to the most intriguing information.
— Someone… managed to defeat my sister? Even a mediocre opponent shouldn't make her yield to provincial kids…
A spark of genuine, sharp, dangerous interest ignited in the abyssal darkness.
She made no move. No visible spell. But the ocean, hundreds of meters above her, obeyed.
The water began to freeze. Not at the surface, but from her feet upward, racing like lightning toward the distant light. In seconds, a gigantic column of black-blue ice, fifty meters wide and five hundred meters tall, shot from the depths, erupting to the surface like an inverted mountain, an absurd and terrifying monument to her capricious power.
At the top of this astonishing structure, the ice took shape. A human form, sculpted into a female figure with perfect, cold features—a slightly imperfect but still imposing replica of the heir.
First Ice Clone of the Frost Heir — Level: ???
It was her very first creation, forged in her childhood. A limited trial, unable to evolve with her, but still a weapon far beyond anything the school dungeon had seen.
The heir's voice whispered through the link that bound them, soft yet relentless:
— Go. Bring him to me. If you succeed… I may consider not turning you to dust.
A spark of primitive consciousness lit in the clone's icy eyes. Without a word, it dashed forward. Her steps froze the water beneath her, leaving a solid trail across the ocean's surface. Then, in an explosion of cold vapor, she cut through the waves at monstrous speed, exceeding 300 km/h, tracing a straight and deadly line toward the continent, and the city of Jinjiang.
The original silhouette, satisfied, let her body sink back into the abyss, resuming the descent to depths where even light dared not follow.
---
Chapter 19 — End