The caravan moved silently beneath a dull, gray sky.
After a week of relative calm, the silence no longer felt uncomfortable. The soldiers marched with greater ease, the refugees spoke quietly among themselves, and even the horses seemed less tense.
For the first time since the disaster, the feeling of simply surviving was slowly beginning to turn into something else.
Hope.
The hope that perhaps they could still go on living.
Then the first snowflakes began to fall.
Emily looked up.
"...Snow?"
She frowned.
"It shouldn't be possible at this time of year."
The others began noticing it as well.
At first, the snowfall looked beautiful.
The flakes descended slowly, shimmering beneath the gray light of the sky like tiny fragments of glass.
But something was wrong.
They weren't normal snowflakes.
Each one seemed to contain a small amount of pure mana.
And when they touched the skin, the cold didn't remain on the surface.
It penetrated.
Beyond the flesh.
Beyond the bones.
As if it were trying to reach the soul itself.
Within seconds, the atmosphere changed.
The air became heavy and dense. Breathing became uncomfortable. Even the natural mana floating around them seemed to have stopped, immobilized by that unnatural temperature.
The wind began to howl between the trees.
It didn't sound like a storm.
It sounded like something dying.
Lusian was moving at the front of the formation.
His expression hardened.
This wasn't a natural phenomenon.
His instincts were screaming it at him.
Then the first figures appeared.
One.
Motionless at the edge of the road.
Then another.
And another.
As the caravan advanced, more silhouettes began appearing among the snow and trees.
Ten.
Twenty.
Fifty.
Human statues.
Albert immediately raised his arm.
"Stop the march!"
The carriage wheels screeched against the frozen ground.
The soldiers reacted quickly, forming a perimeter around the refugees.
Several men cautiously dismounted to inspect the figures.
One of them approached a statue.
He slowly extended his hand.
His fingers touched its shoulder.
CRACK.
The entire body fractured.
The figure collapsed in on itself, turning into a cloud of frozen dust.
The soldier stumbled backward in horror.
"G-Gods..."
One of the captains stared at the remains.
The color drained from his face.
"They're people!"
Yes.
People.
Frozen at the exact moment of their deaths.
Some were turned as if they had been trying to escape.
Others remained locked in embraces around smaller bodies.
One still had its arms raised in front of its face, shielding itself from something it never had the chance to reach.
And all of them had their eyes open.
Terror remained trapped in their expressions.
Death had come too quickly.
They hadn't even had time to scream.
Emily stepped down from the carriage.
She slowly walked toward one of the destroyed figures and knelt in the snow.
Her hands trembled slightly.
She closed her eyes.
She tried to sense its core.
The residual mana.
Any sign of life.
She found nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Emily opened her eyes.
All color had drained from her face.
"They don't have a core..."
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Not even a spark of mana remains."
Her fingers slowly closed around the snow.
"They were drained."
The silence that followed was worse than any scream.
Leonardo stared at the frozen remains.
He unconsciously took a step backward.
For the first time since awakening as a hero...
he felt genuine fear.
"What kind of creature could do something like this...?"
No one answered.
Because then...
The ground trembled.
BOOOOM.
An explosion rumbled in the distance like a gigantic thunderclap.
The horses whinnied in terror.
The refugees screamed.
A second later, another explosion followed.
BOOOOM.
And another.
BOOOOM.
Each impact shook the ground beneath their feet.
Explosions.
Still distant.
But getting closer.
Something was fighting.
And judging by the intensity of those sounds...
Something was being destroyed.
The four heroes exchanged glances.
They didn't need to say a word.
Alejandro drew his sword.
"Let's go."
The four of them shot toward the storm.
They crossed the snow and disappeared among the trees.
Albert reacted immediately.
"Defensive formation!"
The soldiers raised their weapons.
"Protect the carriages!"
The men began reorganizing around the refugees.
"No one breaks formation!"
Fear began spreading through the caravan.
Albert then looked toward Lusian.
"My lord! What are your orders?"
Lusian inhaled slowly.
The movement caused the pain from his wounds to burn beneath the bandages.
He didn't allow it to show on his face.
His eyes swept across the storm.
The frozen figures.
The corpses.
The dead mana permeating the air.
An unpleasant sensation settled in his chest.
This wasn't an ordinary attack.
It was something worse.
Something that even the world itself seemed to reject.
Lusian tightened his grip around Dainslein's hilt.
He stepped forward.
"We keep moving."
The soldiers stared at him.
"But no one leaves the formation."
His gaze hardened as he watched the snow slowly falling over the frozen corpses.
"I'm not leaving anyone behind."
Half a kilometer from the road, the storm finally opened.
For a moment, the wind dispersed.
What appeared on the other side revealed a battlefield covered in frost.
Frozen trees.
Ice-covered ground.
Motionless bodies.
And in the middle of it all...
Two people were still fighting.
A man wielded a long sword covered in glowing blue runes.
Around him swirled an ice storm that seemed to obey his every movement.
Every time he swung his sword, enormous frost blades erupted from the ground and tore across the battlefield, splitting entire trees apart.
Opposite him, a woman held a fractal-looking bow at full draw.
The weapon seemed to be made from pure crystal.
It had no visible string.
It didn't need one.
Every time the archer drew the bow, an ice arrow appeared between her fingers, formed directly from the mana saturating the environment.
She released it.
SHHHHNK!
The arrow tore through the storm.
The man raised his sword.
CLANG!
The projectile exploded against an ice barrier.
Both staggered backward.
They were breathing heavily.
Both were wounded.
Blood covered their clothes and was beginning to freeze against their bodies.
Neither seemed willing to yield.
Then the man slowly raised his sword.
The temperature dropped even further.
Frost began spreading across the ground.
The woman gritted her teeth and drew her bow again.
The Kingdom's heroes came to an abrupt stop.
The monstrous pressure permeating the entire area raised goosebumps across their skin.
The woman with the bow was the first to turn.
Her eyes were sunken with exhaustion.
But there was something else in them.
Desperation.
A desperation so intense it bordered on madness.
When she saw the heroes, a spark of hope appeared in her expression.
"Y-You're alive!"
Her voice broke.
"Heroes! Help us!"
The Imperial man didn't even have time to respond.
He slammed his sword into the ground.
A gigantic wall of ice rose in front of them.
BOOOOM!
An invisible impact struck the barrier.
Cracks spread across the entire structure in an instant.
CRACK.
The wall exploded into thousands of frozen fragments.
The Imperial gritted his teeth.
"Not again... that attack!"
Alejandro stepped forward.
"What the hell is..."
The wind changed.
The cold increased abruptly.
This wasn't simply a drop in temperature.
It was something unnatural.
Something that seemed to be draining the heat directly from the world.
The air grew heavy.
Breathing became difficult.
Then the ground cracked.
A layer of ice began spreading from somewhere within the storm.
First it covered the stones.
Then the roots.
Then the trees.
Within seconds, frost spread across the entire battlefield.
Several Imperial legionaries screamed as black ice trapped their legs.
"What is this?!"
"I can't move!"
"Help!"
The ice continued advancing.
Something was approaching.
Something gigantic.
Something monstrous.
The storm exploded outward.
A colossal silhouette appeared within the blizzard.
And then it emerged.
The Frostwither.
Its body looked like a living fragment of the end of the world.
It was a gigantic creature covered in irregular layers of absolute ice and crystallized flesh. Frost plates formed natural armor across its body, while enormous crystalline structures protruded from its back and limbs.
Its mere presence warped the environment.
Snow floated around it.
It didn't fall.
It floated.
As if even the weather itself obeyed the creature.
Its shadow fell over the heroes.
The Frostwither opened its mouth.
It exhaled.
The air froze.
Several legionaries didn't even have time to scream.
Their bodies were covered in ice in an instant.
Statues.
Alejandro felt a chill run down his spine.
He couldn't defeat it.
He knew it the moment he saw it.
The creature was beyond any monster he had ever faced before.
But he also understood something else.
If no one stopped it there...
the caravan would die.
Alejandro gritted his teeth.
"...I can't defeat you."
His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword.
"But I can stop you."
"Alejandro, don't be an idiot!"
Kara reacted as she felt mana beginning to accumulate around the hero.
"That monster isn't something you can face alone!"
Alejandro didn't answer.
He had already taken a step forward.
And then the flames appeared.
Fire erupted beneath his feet.
It climbed his legs.
Wrapped around his body.
Within seconds, Alejandro was engulfed in a mantle of flames.
Then his divine artifact responded.
The Solaris Sword began to burn.
First red.
Then golden.
Until it finally transformed into a blinding white.
A light so intense it was painful to look directly at.
Holy fire.
The most sacred and destructive form of his power.
The ice around Alejandro began to melt.
Rivers of boiling water spread across the ground as enormous clouds of steam erupted toward the sky.
Even the other heroes had to retreat.
The heat burned their skin.
The Frostwither stopped.
Slowly, it tilted its head.
It observed the flames.
It sensed the divinity contained within them.
And for the first time since its appearance...
it stopped advancing.
Alejandro inhaled deeply.
Fire exploded behind him.
The flames spread like incomplete wings, enormous and fractured, formed from pure burning light.
The ground beneath his feet began to melt.
His eyes shone like tiny suns.
"SOLARIS... LIGHT THE WAY!"
Alejandro advanced.
The world burned in his wake.
Every step destroyed the absolute ice.
Every movement caused the flames to grow.
The pressure increased with every passing second.
Kara stepped backward, shielding her face.
Leonardo gritted his teeth as the heat clashed against the creature's monstrous cold.
Even the Imperial legionaries watched in silence.
Because at that moment...
Alejandro no longer looked human.
He looked like a living torch challenging winter itself.
The Imperial hero stared in disbelief.
The frozen storm reflected a white-and-golden glow across his blood-covered face.
"It's... impossible..."
He couldn't look away.
"That fire... it's true divine fire!"
The archer was also frozen in place.
This wasn't simply powerful fire.
It was divinity.
A power capable of directly challenging the world's mana.
The Frostwither reacted.
Its enormous body slowly lowered.
The ice plates on its back creaked against one another.
It wasn't pain.
It was analysis.
The creature was observing.
Calculating.
That beast had survived for far too long to act on mere instinct.
It was a predator at the absolute top of the food chain.
And predators at that level didn't risk their lives unnecessarily.
Its fractal eyes remained fixed on Alejandro.
The fire could hurt it.
Perhaps it couldn't kill it.
But that was enough.
Alejandro raised the Solaris Sword.
The flames exploded.
The entire world seemed to turn white.
FWOOOOOM!!
A gigantic column of divine fire pierced through the storm like a celestial spear.
The blizzard split apart.
Tons of ice evaporated in an instant.
The attack struck the Frostwither directly in its side.
BOOOOOOM!
A cloud of boiling steam covered the battlefield.
The creature staggered backward.
For the first time...
it roared.
It wasn't a roar of pain.
It was irritation.
Annoyance.
As if an inferior existence had managed to scratch it.
A huge plate of ice on its side melted away.
Something was beating beneath it.
A core.
Dark blue.
Compressed to a monstrous degree.
It pulsed like a heart.
Kara's eyes widened.
"We hurt it!"
She looked at Alejandro.
"Alejandro actually hurt it!"
Emily felt a chill run through her.
Her eyes remained fixed on the white flames.
"Fire capable of burning through mana that concentrated..."
She swallowed.
"Only a divine artifact could do that."
The Frostwither stepped back.
One step.
Then another.
Snow swirled violently around it.
Its eyes remained fixed on Alejandro.
It was studying him.
Recognizing him.
That human could become a real threat.
And it wasn't worth spending more energy there.
Not yet.
The wind changed direction.
The creature straightened.
It shook the melted fragments of ice from its body.
Then it turned.
And disappeared into the blizzard.
No roar.
No threat.
It simply left.
The monstrous pressure began to recede.
The silence it left behind was almost worse than its presence.
Alejandro dropped to his knees.
The flames around his body began to fade.
Exhaustion hit him immediately.
"Haa..."
He breathed heavily.
"Haa..."
"Kingdom Hero!"
Dorian ran toward him.
"You did it! You stopped it!"
Alejandro slowly shook his head.
"No..."
He looked toward the storm.
"That thing chose to retreat."
Emily reached him and caught him before he could collapse into the snow.
Her hands were trembling.
"Alejandro... you're hurt."
He gave her a small smile.
"It was necessary."
"You could have died!"
Alejandro looked toward the horizon again.
"That thing is dangerous."
With effort, he stood again, partially supporting himself against Emily.
The last flames around the Solaris Sword crackled before going out.
"But now we know something important."
His eyes hardened.
"Those things can bleed."
He tightened his grip around his sword.
"They can be wounded."
The surviving legionaries began dropping to their knees.
Some cried with relief.
Others simply stared at Alejandro.
Even the Imperial heroes looked at him differently now.
Respect.
Disbelief.
Hope.
Alejandro had proven something they desperately needed to know.
Those monsters could be hurt.
They weren't gods.
Farther back, away from the center of the battlefield, Lusian watched in silence.
He hadn't participated.
Not yet.
His eyes remained narrowed as he analyzed the melted ice, the marks left by the attack, and the traces of mana the creature had left behind.
He knew that creature.
Far too well.
He had fought it countless times.
The Frostwither was one of the most annoying bosses in the game.
Not because it was the most powerful.
But because it made most strategies stop working.
It constantly absorbed energy.
Drained mana.
Reduced the effectiveness of abilities.
It could even interfere with active techniques during combat.
That was why most players made the same mistake.
They tried to beat it through sheer force.
No abilities.
No special techniques.
Just brute strength.
And they almost always lost.
Lusian slowly closed his eyes.
He remembered the countless times he had died against that creature.
Then an almost imperceptible smile appeared on his lips.
There was a trick.
One that almost no one discovered during the first few weeks of the game.
And if his memories weren't wrong...
The Frostwither had just shown him exactly where its true weakness was.