Chapter 22

Chapter. 22

‘What do I do?’

With death looming before her, Han Seol-ah’s mind spun at terrifying speed.

Her concentration was so intense that time itself seemed to slow.

“6.”

The Apostle’s indifferent countdown pierced her like a dagger.

Han Seol-ah was not the sort of person to stand helplessly before a problem and panic.

This ‘What do I do?’ was the question she posed to herself in order to find the answer that would resolve the crisis.

[Calm it.]

The one who answered was Frozen.

‘Frozen!’

Relief spread through Han Seol-ah’s heart.

Frozen’s knowledge of Frost Type Mana far surpassed Han Seol-ah’s own understanding.

Surely he would be able to help her through this.

‘How do I do it? Quickly!’

[No. Finding the answer is your role.]

Frozen drew the line without hesitation.

[I will only support you so that you do not break before you find it.]

‘What?’

[That is the role the Great One has given me.]

“Gasp!”

In that instant.

An agonizingly frigid chill surged back from Ice Dragon’s Eye in her hand and rushed up through her Mana Road.

At that moment, Han Seol-ah understood.

So this was why the Apostle had handed her Eternal Winter!

‘He knew how dangerous this was!’

[Calm yourself.]

Frozen firmly wrapped himself around the inside of Han Seol-ah.

Thanks to that, she avoided the worst-case scenario of her Mana Road freezing over and bursting apart…

but the cold climbing up her arm remained.

[Do what you must do.]

‘What exactly am I supposed to….’

[Protect people. Is that not what you have always done?]

‘…!’

[Think. Think about how to protect everyone.]

The problem was simple.

She was holding a nuclear bomb that was just about to explode.

So… all she had to do was make sure it did not explode.

Instinctively, Han Seol-ah poured Mana into Ice Dragon’s Eye, that tiny sphere of ice.

It was the same principle as dousing fire with water: to suppress cold, she answered it with an even stronger cold.

It was the method Han Seol-ah had honed for ten long years.

But.

‘Ughhh…!’

The moment she fed Mana into it, the sphere resisted violently.

A fierce chill surged backward and burrowed into her Mana Circuit.

It was agony, as though thousands of needles of ice were stabbing through her veins.

[Endure it.]

‘Stronger!’

Grinding her teeth, Han Seol-ah raised her output.

She sharpened the Mana she was driving into the heart of Ice Dragon’s Eye.

It was a distant, overwhelming agony, like forcing her bare body through a blizzard while clinging to a single thin thread of Mana.

“5.”

Even in the middle of that bone-crushing struggle, the Apostle’s indifferent countdown continued to fall with merciless honesty.

‘Not even this is enough?’

Han Seol-ah focused on the cold that was infiltrating her body moment by moment.

It was cold, her Mana Circuit was freezing…

‘Ah.’

Han Seol-ah remembered the magic she had experienced in the Other World.

There, she had learned that even a Frost Type Awakened could freeze to death.

‘The white snow-mist.’

She remembered the ‘death’ that had approached her.

It had taken the form of pure white mist.

—She remembered that terror.

The Ice Arrow she had fired to keep it at bay had frozen in midair.

Even Permafrost, the moment it touched that mist, had failed to detonate and instead dropped to the ground as a frozen bead of ice.

And then that mist, slow but certain, had approached and wrapped itself around Han Seol-ah.

The Mana dried up at her fingertips.

Her scream froze cold inside her throat.

In the end, she had sunk beneath that cold and begun to die.

The terror of ‘freezing solid,’ and that death advancing coldly toward her!

‘Ah….’

Han Seol-ah’s eyes trembled.

Now she understood just how foolish and clumsy what she had been doing truly was.

Was it not nothing more than a crude contest of brute force—meeting the rushing cold by simply hurling cold wind back at it?

The moment Han Seol-ah released the Mana she had been clutching so violently, the cold surged back like a broken dam.

[…!]

Even Frozen gave off a pulse of shock at Han Seol-ah’s choice, one bordering on self-destruction.

‘It is fine.’

Quietly…

Han Seol-ah changed the nature of her Mana.

Cold.

Colder still.

Just like that death which had crawled toward her so slowly.

‘…I will freeze it.’

Han Seol-ah’s blue magical power began to whiten.

Like frost spreading, it slowly turned white from the very tips of the threads of Mana…

Her Frost Type Mana froze into pure white.

As Han Seol-ah advanced without hesitation, the cold pouring out from within Ice Dragon’s Eye gradually clung to her Mana…

and froze.

‘Frost… yes. It is about freezing.’

Why did Frost Type Mana possess a cold nature?

She had thought it was because that was simply how the Tower had ordained it.

That was a correct answer.

Why, then, was Frost Type magic so difficult to use?

She had believed this as well was merely how the Tower had decided things.

That answer had been wrong.

Frost Type was not magic that merely fired ice.

Rather, it was magic that clung coldly to its target and froze it solid.

Its Authority lay not in projection, but in arrest.

FLASH!

—Freeze it.

The moment she thought that, her Mana extended outward with astonishing ease.

The pain that had always felt as though it were tearing through her veins whenever she used magic was nowhere to be found.

On the contrary… it felt refreshing.

A cool clarity washed through her mind.

CRACK!

In that slowed world,

she watched as the sphere in her hands, which had been trembling violently and spewing insane red light, was instantly covered in pure white ice crystals.

‘…I did it! I did well, right?’

She did not say the words aloud.

She was pouring every shred of attention into controlling her Mana, unwilling to let go of the sensation of frost she had just grasped.

Perhaps because he had read her thoughts,

“Well done.”

The Apostle’s voice came to her clearly.

“You are not planning to stop after freezing that tiny sphere, are you?”

“….”

“Think. ‘Where’ are we right now?”

This place was… Pyongyang.

The coordinates where the Boss Gate was about to open.

“Freeze it. That point, and everything around it.”

“…!”

The senses that had been confined within that tiny sphere suddenly expanded.

She felt the ground beneath her feet.

A land of death, frozen white.

She felt the atmosphere.

…An absurdly immense volume of high-purity Frost Type Mana was drifting through the air, enough to make breathing difficult.

This was not merely cold land.

This was the place where a transcendent Grand Magic, ‘Absolute Zero,’ had erupted—

the magic that had slain the calamity known as the Ice Dragon in a single blow,

and transformed the enormous city of Pyongyang into a pure white hell.

At this moment, Pyongyang had become the place on Earth where Frost Type Mana was richest.

Like a gigantic battery someone had deliberately filled.

‘Surely the Apostle did not… calculate even this?’

And to top it off, Ice Dragon’s Eye in her hand was packed with transcendent cold.

Every condition was perfect.

‘It is possible!’

[Yes. You can do it. Here and now, in this place.]

Drawing a breath, Han Seol-ah concentrated.

Crunch.

Han Seol-ah awakened Ice Dragon’s Eye.

She seized the cold sleeping within the sphere in the palm of her hand.

There was only one image in her mind.

The death she had seen in the Other World.

That slowly advancing white snow-mist.

[I will help.]

Holding that cold, she drew a magic circle.

This time, it was not inside her body, but outside it.

A pure white magic circle rose before Han Seol-ah’s eyes.

FLASH—!

White lines of Mana raced like streaking fire and began to trace a complex Mandala.

Thousands—tens of thousands—of geometric patterns overlapped and revolved.

It was a high-order spell beyond anything a human mind should have been able to calculate.

But Frozen stood behind Han Seol-ah.

Following his guidance, she drove her Mana with all her strength.

‘Ugh…!’

From time to time, a sharp pain rang through her head.

It was the strain of maintaining such a degree of concentration for so long.

Without Frozen’s help, she might have failed already.

She had never realized that the knowledge of not being alone could feel this reassuring.

The moment the thought crossed her mind—that she was truly grateful he was beside her—Frozen’s calm pulse reached her.

[…Then that is enough. Now, activate it!]

Han Seol-ah’s lips moved.

“—Frost Mist.”

Han Seol-ah’s frost, the first spell to contain the enlightenment she had attained.

It was the power she had awakened from the terror of freezing to death in that Other World.

WHOOOOSH—!

With a sound like surf rolling in, the magic circle blazed and began to pour out white mist.

‘It worked!’

The mist that billowed forth began freezing everything around it.

‘But….’

It was different from the magic she had seen in the Other World.

Its range was broader, but the freezing power itself seemed weaker.

And yet Han Seol-ah was delighted.

At last, she had perfectly reproduced the frost of the transcendent Nebula with her own hands.

‘Wow….’

“Now you finally look somewhat like a Frost Mage.”

At the Apostle’s evaluation, Han Seol-ah felt even prouder.

“Now you understand it, don't you? The core of Frost Type Mana is….”

“To freeze cold.”

“Correct. That is what ‘frost’ is.”

“Yes.”

But the Apostle remained firm.

“There is still one step left.”

“…?”

“The system message.”

“…Ah! It did not appear!”

Han Seol-ah immediately understood what the Apostle meant by saying it was still not enough.

“If I had succeeded in delaying the Boss Gate’s appearance with this, it would have notified me that the ‘remaining time’ had increased!”

“You need to freeze the source of the Gate.”

The Apostle spoke heavily.

Han Seol-ah’s eyes widened.

He was telling her to freeze a Gate that had not even opened yet?

“…I do not understand. How do I find the source of the Gate?”

“Right now, this place lies fully within the influence of perfect Frost Type Mana.”

The Apostle’s eyes gleamed coldly.

“Focus your mind. In this frozen world, find the one foreign presence that is roiling alone.”

A foreign presence.

Han Seol-ah closed her eyes and expanded her senses.

Through Frost Mist, she could feel the entirety of Pyongyang.

Everything was cold, still, and silent.

Everything was frozen.

And yet.

‘……Huh?’

Han Seol-ah’s brow furrowed.

On that white canvas, there was a tiny speck, like the faintest blemish.

High above in the sky.

Only there was not cold.

Only there was the Mana not still, but whirling and boiling.

It was like a single drop of hot ink about to fall into the center of a tranquil lake.

‘I found it.’

That was the seed of the Gate.

The instant Han Seol-ah’s gaze locked onto that single point in empty space, the Apostle gave his command.

“Freeze that spot.”

Han Seol-ah drew up the Frost Mist spread across the earth.

The white mist that had covered the ground surged upward in reverse and rushed toward the heavens.

‘Do not break it.’

That point where alien Mana churned.

She wrapped it in the mist.

“Freeze it solid.”

HUMMMMM—!

The moment the mist enveloped that single point in midair, space twisted in a strange, unnatural way.

‘Ah.’

In that instant, Han Seol-ah knew.

She did not have enough power!

Even if she scraped together every last drop of her EX-rank Mana, it still would not be nearly enough to freeze that ‘singularity.’

And just as that dizzying realization struck Han Seol-ah—

[There is a rather excellent tool right in your hand.]

Frozen’s advice pulled her mind back into place.

‘…Right. Of course.’

Han Seol-ah looked down at the sphere in her hand.

The thing the Apostle had first introduced as

a nuclear bomb.

A sphere containing an overwhelming quantity of cold worthy of that name—in other words, Frost Type Mana.

Ice Dragon’s Eye.

Without hesitation, Han Seol-ah shattered Ice Dragon’s Eye.

CRACK!

HSSSS—!

A massive wave of cold burst out.

Han Seol-ah focused every nerve she had and controlled the Mana.

She poured that Mana into the mist wrapped around the singularity.

This was no longer the crude stupidity of struggling head-on against Ice Dragon’s Eye as she had in the beginning.

This was fuel.

Fuel meant to freeze every last thing that made up that singularity.

Now that she was wielding magic for the purpose of ‘freezing’…

controlling the Mana felt astonishingly easy and comfortable.

Crackle… crackle!

Invisible sparks burst in the air.

And then, at last.

CRACK!

‘…Done.’

The moment she perfectly ‘froze’ that invisible point in empty air,the sky began to warp like the screen of a broken television.

At the same time,[Error Detected]

[The summoning route of the waiting Boss Monster has been blocked]

[Recalculating route…]

A red system message appeared before Han Seol-ah’s eyes.

[Recalculation complete]

[Creating detour route]

[Recalculating required time…]

The numbers changed.

2 days.

3 days.

4 days.

10 days…

And then.

[Until the Next Invasion: 15 Days]