B3 Chapter 393: Winter’s Scorn, pt. 1

Another bonus to Authority control? Kaius hoped it was a simple indicator of importance — and not future difficulty.

He pored over it quickly, pleased with what he found. At the very least, they were in the first five and had a solid chance of being the ones to reap the rewards for sharing. Likely, they were first — Xenanra had certainly implied as much.

“What now?” Porkchop asked from behind him.

“Well, my first thought is that we have a beast to slay,” Kenva replied. “But we’d talked about how we should keep pushing for some honours before we go through our class selection, right?”

Kaius nodded, but it was a conversation that could wait.

“Let’s save it. We’ve been through much, and I think we all deserve to blow off a little steam. How about we summit these peaks, maybe take on a couple of Champions if they happen to be nearby our destination? Then we can camp out near the Guardian and plan out what we do next.”

“Sounds good to me. Though, I hope I can entice you to top it all off with a hot meal amongst everything else,” Ianmus interjected with a grin.

Kaius returned it with one of his own. That he could do. It wasn’t camp without something hot to eat, after all.

“Well, let’s get going then.”

They set off, their boots clacking on the void glass beneath their feet. They walked at a fast clip, still fizzing and eager to actualise the growth they had earned within. Their skills were almost entirely capped; they’d gained honours and touched on something ineffable.

All in all, well worth the detour.

….

Glacial winds cut through him like a knife. Sinking through Kaius’s thick woollen cloak, it slipped through the gaps in his scalemail to assault him directly. For all that his Vitality did to him from mortal worries of frostbite and exposure, it did little for the biting discomfort.

Kaius pulled his cloak tighter around him, hunching his shoulders against the wind. Crouching down, he huddled behind a rocky outcropping at the very peak of a mountain.

Their camp was a bare few longstrides behind him. The rest of his team was huddled inside their dimensional tent, enjoying the warmth within. He would join them soon — he’d had his fill of the fresh air. He just wanted a last look at their next challenge.

One he hoped would be simple, after all they had experienced.

A quarter league below and across from him was another mountain peak. It looked as though it had been shorn by the sword of a titan. Flat and open, snow and ice made it into a treacherous battleground.

Deep within himself, he felt a tug pulling him straight towards the plateau — or more accurately, toward the swirling behemoth of ice and snow masquerading as a snowdrift in its centre. That was no beast, he was damned sure.

It would make it one of the few he’d fought that was not a creature of flesh or blood. It was a thing of pure magic, aspected to the elements of winter that forged its form.

It was a large quadruped, ten strides at the shoulder, with a squat body and a blocky head, reminiscent of a bull’s head stitched onto a wolf’s body. Gossamer-thin icicles glinted in the summer light, sparkling crystals in place of hair. Every pseudo-breath it made puffed frost and fog, and when it hunkered down it was utterly camouflaged.

Not that it could hide from him, with Persistent Survivor leading him straight for it. Kaius grinned hungrily. Staring at the behemoth, he pulled up its system description with Truesight once more.

Glacial Sovereign – Level 256:

Guardian, Depths-born, Spirit, Vanguard

He couldn’t wait for their fight.

On their ascent up the mountain they’d gotten into plenty of fights with ridgechargers and other beasts. Unfortunately, they’d all fallen like wheat before them and their new strength.

To make matters worse, their hopes of finding a Champion close to the Guardian’s peak were dashed – the nearest one was at least two days’ diversion, something none of them were eager for.

It meant they hadn’t had a fight that had pushed his blood to the boiling like he so craved. It would have been easy enough to hold his want at bay, knowing that a challenge lay on the horizon, but having it sitting right in front of him was almost torturous.

Oh, how he longed to sprint down the mountainside with his team at his back and charge into the fray, hacking at a living ice sculpture with blade and spell.

It had to wait, they had some important planning to do.

At the very least, for all their fights had been easy, there had been many of them. It was good to take a moment to rest — to centre the body and mind before contending with a true threat.

It bloody better still be a true threat. It was lower level than the Crucible Guardian, and likely had lower stat scaling, and they had all grown stronger.

Kaius scowled.

Still. A spirit. There was hope — they were hard creatures to put down.

Rare things, he’d barely even seen them before. Hells, before the integration had increased the mana density, they were quite impossible to find outside of high-mana zones.

One of the few notable times had been the brambleball he had fought so long ago — on their way to their first mission for the Guild, and others of the same kind they had occasionally encountered on the plains. Those had been alien things that glowed virulently in his mana sight, and this one would no doubt be far more potent in its magic and durability. Somewhere inside it, there would be a core, and until they destroyed it, it could simply reform itself with its mana endlessly — or until they managed to burn out its reserves, of course.

Ianmus and Kenva had done their best to watch it over the last day in an attempt to ferret out any weaknesses or abilities. Unfortunately, nothing had challenged the Guardian’s domain, and it seemed happy to lie limp and rest next to the circle of system runes at the centre of the plateau.

Kaius breathed, a cloud of fog billowing out.