Chapter 35: The Assassin in the Snowstorm

Behind Luke, there was only forest. Snow-covered trees stretched endlessly in every direction. No roads, no smoke, no signs of life.

In a way, he was grateful. Nothing had tried to kill him while he slept—not a beast, not another player. Even with the fire burning, nothing had wandered close.

“Charlie, did you see or hear anyone?” he asked.

The skeletal warrior shook her head.

He didn’t know how long he’d slept—maybe a few hours at most. Which meant he had probably arrived sometime before dawn. The system message had congratulated him on surviving his first night. Now the sky was growing brighter, and he could finally see the terrain better.

“Midnight Terror, huh?” Luke murmured. “So that’s the name of this tutorial. But what does it mean?”

Tutorials always had a central event or structure—an internal logic that governed the challenge. Some lasted a week. Some, a month. There were rumors of rare ones that stretched across an entire year.

Luke opened his system log and reread the notification.

Find the city.

That was the first step.

He pulled up his inventory and tapped on the crocodile chestplate. The armor materialized over his torso—light, flexible, and surprisingly durable. Then he equipped the gloves taken from the Crypt Guardian. Anything that could shield him from the cold, even a little, was worth using.

One kukri in hand. The other, he passed to Princess Charlie.

Even though he’d survived hypothermia, the cold still bit at his skin. Moving away from the fire felt like punishment. His breath left his lips in thick clouds.

He looked down at the fire ring on his finger.

If it weren’t for this, I’d be dead.

The faint warmth radiating from it pulsed against his skin like a heartbeat—just enough to remind him that he wasn’t alone in the cold. He clenched his fist around it.

“The weather here… it’s just as deadly as any monster.”

If he’d had to make a fire manually, rubbing sticks or striking flint, he’d already be a corpse.

Staying put too long was dangerous, though. He was exposed, vulnerable. Anyone or anything could come by at any moment. He scanned his surroundings again.

Where to go?

To one side, a dense stretch of snowy forest. In the distance, the foothills of a mountain range. That must’ve been where he’d first fallen from—his long, chaotic descent through the snow starting high above.

Ahead of him, a wide, frozen lake. Its surface glazed over in solid ice. And in the center, a small island.

He stared out over the water and remembered what he’d seen beneath it—the bodies. Dozens of them.

“People like me,” he muttered, his voice low. “They came through the portal… and ended right here.”

Cold. Forgotten. And drowned in silence.

Luke scanned the area around the lake.

Was a tutorial supposed to be this difficult from the start? Wasn’t I supposed to wake up near other survivors? Some kind of safe zone?

Something about this didn’t sit right.

Those bodies beneath the ice… they weren’t ancient. The way they were preserved—perfect, untouched by decay—it didn’t feel like time had passed at all. And the lake had been frozen when he arrived, yes, but only just. The surface was thin, fragile. It had refrozen recently.

That meant one thing: those people had fallen in hours before him.

Not days. Not weeks. Hours.

They were part of the same wave. The same tutorial. The same batch of victims.

They hadn’t even made it to the first trap.

They’d just… died early.

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He pushed the thought aside. Lingering on it wouldn’t help.

“I’m going to scout the area,” Luke said, glancing at Princess Charlie.
She nodded as he turned toward the nearest tree.

He climbed with difficulty, occasionally using a knife from his holster to help. The wood was cold and icy, but Luke had equipped the gloves he got from the dungeon. At least his hands weren’t touching the freezing bark directly.

He hauled himself upward. The tree wasn’t tall by any means, but the elevation gave him a clearer view.

What he saw stopped him.

In the distance was a massive forest. The trees were towering and white, but it wasn’t just snow. Their leaves shimmered with a strange, unnatural blue—almost crystalline, like sheets of ice swaying in the wind.

“What the hell is that…”

He tried to see beyond them, but the height of the trees blocked his vision entirely. Looking back down, he noted his surroundings again.

Two options. Cross the frozen lake, risking another plunge into death, or head toward the strange forest, risking whatever unnatural things lived beneath those icy leaves.

Neither was ideal, but standing still wasn’t an option.

Fear began to creep in again, but Luke smothered it.

“I just need to keep going,” he whispered. “Keep surviving. One minute at a time.”

He dropped from the tree, rolled to his feet, and pulsed mana into his fire ring. The warmth flared faintly around his hand, and he began to walk, Charlie close beside him.

***

Hours later, Luke was shivering violently. The cold wasn’t fading. If anything, it was getting worse.

Each gust of wind that swept through the skeletal trees was like a blade, slicing across his body with ruthless precision. The air itself seemed to bite him, freezing his breath mid-exhale.

He kept pumping mana into the ring on his finger, using it as a makeshift heat source—a flickering ember he clung to near his core. It wasn’t much, but it was something.