Chapter 15

Chapter. 15

How was I supposed to charge Mana into Eternal Winter?

How would I know? I had never done it before.

I pulled the long staff from the bag and gripped it in one hand.

With the other hand, I clicked Synchronization on.

In an instant, EX-rank Frost Type Mana began surging up without limit.

I simply shoved it straight into the staff.

As I kept pouring Mana in and shaking it around this way and that, the Mana began moving on its own.

‘Aha.’

It was not difficult.

And on top of that, I felt like I now understood how Eternal Winter’s Genesis Trait, The Winter That Announces the End: Absolute Zero, functioned.

“So this is how it works.”

The core of it was the Ice Dragon’s Heart attached to the tip of the staff in the form of a jewel.

It was a rare material with a viciously low drop rate, one that could only be obtained by hunting Scathach an absurd number of times.

To put it in simple terms, the whole staff was a water gun, and this jewel was the water tank.

Only, right now the tank—the heart—was empty.

Because Han Seol-ah had used it once.

‘If it is empty, then I just have to refill it.’

I began cramming Mana into the Ice Dragon’s Heart with brute force.

My way.

The staff began trembling with a low hum, as though screaming.

I ignored it.

I understood that the proper method was to let a fixed amount of Mana flow through a designated path.

But if I did it that way, it felt like it would take over a week just to fill this little water tank.

I might have become an EX-rank Hunter, but at heart, I was still a gamer.

And not just any gamer, but a proud Korean gamer.

‘…Well, not actually a citizen of Republic of Korea. Then just a gamer.’

Anyway, the soul of a gamer was telling me this.

I could not tolerate inefficiency…!

Hummmm—! Hummmm—!

The staff was shaking like mad, but I forced it through anyway.

By my calculations, there should not be any problem. Though if I messed up the adjustment, the water tank did look like it might explode.

‘Make a mistake? Then just do not make one.’

Would anyone really fumble something as simple as filling a water tank?

You just turned on the faucet and held the container underneath it.

What I was doing now was not all that different.

Someone might look at what I was doing and shout that I had gone insane.

“This body is an EX-rank Hunter.”

What I said was law.

***

[Aaah, aaaagh! It is going to explode!!! It is going to explooode!!! It is explodinggg!!!]

Frozen trembled and screamed at the threat of death.

The place where Frozen resided—his home, so to speak.

The Ice Dragon’s Heart, that precious and important place, was on the verge of exploding.

Because savage, merciless Frost Type Mana was raging through it and overloading the heart.

[O Great One!!! Please!!!]

Frozen was capable of controlling the Frost Type Mana flowing through Eternal Winter as though it were his own limbs, but the rampaging Mana now running wild was far beyond anything he could dare touch.

If he handled something like this incorrectly, that day would be Frozen’s last.

It was fierce. Fast. And far too much in sheer quantity.

To compare it to something, Frozen was a highly skilled rider.

In Frozen’s hands, even an untrained colt could be turned into the finest steed in the world, and even a wild, violent horse could be made into a docile Pegasus.

But what if it was not a horse, but a dragon?

And what if that dragon was not one, but ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand dragons charging at once?

No rider in existence could rein in a disaster like that.

[Uuuugh….]

It feels like it could explode at any moment…

Frozen, exhausted from screaming in spiritual terror, sagged limply.

[…But.]

Strangely, it was not exploding.

Having regained his composure, Frozen carefully examined the flow of Mana.

[….]

And then Frozen was struck speechless.

This… harmony unfolding before his eyes now?

[What is this?]

Was this possible?

At first, he had thought the Great One was overloading the Ice Dragon’s Heart.

And if the heart were overloaded, then yes, it would extinguish the urgent fire for now… but after that, the heart would lose its function as a core.

Which meant the authority granted to the Genesis-rank item—its Genesis Trait—would vanish.

And if that happened, Frozen’s short life would come to its end as well.

But this method of Mana control now…

It was rough, yes. So rough that it looked like utter insanity.

And yet it was beautiful.

Yes. That was the only way to describe it.

[Huh.]

Frozen was a being whose soul had been engraved from birth with the ability to handle every aspect of Eternal Winter.

Eternal Winter had been forged on the only anvil in that world, poured full of every finest material imaginable—including legendary runes so precious their worth could not be measured—and shaped by the greatest craftsman in all dimensions.

And he himself was being chosen as the spirit of that divine object.

There could not be any being better at handling Eternal Winter than Frozen. Such a being should not have existed.

Because that would have been a direct denial of the ability of the Creator who had made Frozen.

And yet that very thing was happening before Frozen’s eyes.

[Huh. Huhuhuh.]

It was not exploding.

This Mana control was, in a word, perfect.

Frozen realized it only then.

Mana was filling the Ice Dragon’s Heart at a tremendous speed.

And not just that.

He could feel the Mana spreading past the Ice Dragon’s Heart and through the entire staff.

[Great One… what in the world are you?]

Then it happened.

The Mana that had been raging like a storm subsided.

The Great One sat before a strange box, wearing an indifferent expression.

Click.

He moved his finger lightly.

Whoosh—

And in that moment, that transcendent Mana—which had been raging like a storm, as though it could freeze the entire world—evaporated.

[…?!]

Frozen doubted his own senses.

It had vanished. Not hidden. Not suppressed.

That overwhelming oceanic mass of Mana had been cleanly erased from this world without leaving behind even a drop.

As though it had never existed in the first place.

Hide Mana? This was not on that level.

No matter how perfectly one hid it, traces remained.

And if it was Frost Type Mana, then it could never deceive Frozen’s eyes, for he was the master of frost Mana.

Even if one closed the floodgates of a massive dam, water would still leak through the cracks.

But this…

This was not merely closing the floodgates.

It was erasing the water itself.

[T-This cannot possibly be…!]

Then it happened.

Click.

That crisp little sound rang out once more.

[Eek?!]

The sea that had been erased returned again!

Click.

…And vanished again.

Click.

[Aaagh!]

And surged back once more.

Click. Click.

As though checking whether the state of the Mana was even, the Great One repeated that bizarre act over and over.

Frozen trembled. His very soul shook.

[Is he manipulating not just the flow of Mana… but whether it exists at all, at will…?]

A Genesis authority by which water existed if he commanded it to exist, and vanished if he commanded it to vanish?

To that Great One, ‘Mana’ seemed to be no more than tap water from a faucet.

Something to draw out when needed, and erase when it became bothersome.

[His level… is different.]

Frozen shrank deep into the staff and held his breath, gripped by a terror beyond reverence.

It felt as though he must not dare make even the sound of breathing.

***

“This thing drinks Mana like a bottomless pit.”

I had just kept jamming it in with the intention of squeezing it out nonstop, and in only a few seconds I had already burned through 50,000 MP—my lifeline.

Fortunately, once I turned Synchronization off, there was hardly any strain left on my body.

“Still, if it is not combat, fifty thousand does seem manageable….”

Drip.

A hot liquid ran down from my nose.

“Huh?”

Since I was not in combat, I had avoided the worst-case scenario, but it seemed the burden on my brain was unavoidable.

A pain like my brain was being gently sanded down came over me belatedly.

Swipe.

The tissue was quickly stained red.

I casually stuffed the tissue clotted with blood into the trash can and grabbed the staff again.

Every time Han Seol-ah screamed from the tub over there, the blood vessels in my own head screamed too.

But I could not stop.

“It is more useful than I expected.”

This was a bullet.

The only bullet capable of punching through the calamity called Scathach.

I had to load in as many rounds as possible.

“Hoo… again.”

I roughly plugged my nose with tissue and turned Synchronization on again.

While Han Seol-ah kept exploding over and over,

I filled the bullet while spilling blood.

In preparation for the destruction to come.

***

Day broke.

Han Seol-ah had not rested for even a single moment.

Boom! Boom-boom! CRACK!

There were still two hours left until the spar count reset. Originally, it had been a blissful stretch of rest I had prepared so she could lie down and recover her exhausted body.

But it seemed she found even that time too precious. She had locked herself away in the tub and kept putting on a self-harm show—

No, a magic experiment.

All night long, the skin-crawling sounds of flesh bursting and bones cracking had come through the speakers.

Because of that, I ended up staying awake the whole night with my eyes open.

‘Seriously… She is relentless. Truly relentless.’

I picked up Han Seol-ah, who was still exploding away in the tub.

[…Lord Nebula?]

Taking Han Seol-ah, who looked puzzled, I moved along the familiar route to the Otherworld Gate.

[Ah, this place…]

It was a familiar sight to Han Seol-ah as well.

This was where she had once faced Scathach with Eternal Winter in hand.

I moved the mouse quickly and summoned Scathach.

[…Surely not?]

“Exactly.”

Yes, exactly that.

In Lost Honor, Scathach was a boss that could be summoned infinitely.

And the Scathach that would appear in reality probably had the same specs.

“This is a mock exam, Han Seol-ah.”

There was no better place to practice ahead of the real battle.

[…I will try!]

Resolve settled on Han Seol-ah's face.

Last time, she had been able to kill Scathach in a single blow because she had Eternal Winter.

But now she does not have Eternal Winter.

She had to face Scathach using only Han Seol-ah's own power.

And so the first attempt began.

—KRAAAAH!

[The Otherworld Boss Raid is beginning.]

[You have been defeated.]

Han Seol-ah failed to resist Scathach’s Fear, fainted, and was defeated in a single second.

“The Fear of Dragonkind is basically like a passive. And with a powerful dragon like Scathach, the rank of that Fear would be even higher.”

Once Han Seol-ah quickly regained consciousness, she seemed to immediately understand why that defeat had happened.

And so the second attempt followed.

“Right.”

Han Seol-ah had apparently put solid mental defenses in place, because she succeeded in enduring Scathach’s Fear.

And the battle began.

Han Seol-ah's opening move! It was to cast Permafrost at the charging Scathach.

[You have been defeated.]

She was struck dead by Scathach’s magic before she could even finish casting.

“It worked that time because you had Eternal Winter. Right now, you are bare-handed.”

I revived Han Seol-ah with a Resurrection Scroll.

Then came the third attempt.

Han Seol-ah began using the new spell she had grasped through sparring with me.

“Wow. That is impressive.”

Not all of them, perhaps…

but it seemed she had become capable of using thirty percent of the spells I had shown her perfectly.

“…But even that is not the answer.”

Scathach was a dragon standing at the pinnacle of Frost Type beings, equipped not with the Frost Dragon’s Frost Reduction, but with the superior passive, Complete Frost Immunity.

Before Han Seol-ah's magic could even reach it, her spells crumbled before that absolute immunity…

and she was killed by Scathach’s magic.

After reviving again, Han Seol-ah fell into deep thought before immediately charging into the raid once more.

“That is right. Think back to what you learned in sparring.”

I knew she could not hear my coaching.

But when I watched Han Seol-ah, I could not help cheering for her.

After organizing her thoughts, Han Seol-ah stepped back into Scathach’s detection range.

[Hoo.]

She exhaled so deeply that I could hear it through the speakers, and sharpened her concentration.

This time, she did nothing at all.

Scathach, who had been charging in aggressively, stopped short, then slowly straightened up and began observing Han Seol-ah.

When Han Seol-ah still did not respond, Scathach began casting a spell.

Boom!

A frost explosion erupted in midair.

It was proof that she had properly dispelled Scathach’s casting.

“Right. That is it.”

Scathach was written to be arrogant and cruel.

If you challenged it, it crushed you with even greater force.

And if you did not challenge it, it ‘tested’ you until you broke.

Like a cat playing with a mouse until it killed it.

And while it was in the middle of that ‘test’…

“Ah.”

Han Seol-ah died.

“Let us see. She lasted six seconds.”

Han Seol-ah's first report card was a failing grade.

“It is fine. I have plenty of Resurrection Scrolls.”

Unlike real battle, where death was the end, Han Seol-ah still had 99,999 more chances.

And besides…

If you are lacking, then I will make opportunities for you as many times as necessary.

So get up, Han Seol-ah.

***

And then.

The day of the decisive battle dawned.