Chapter 40

Chapter 40 : Ice Blue (4)

[Achievement 〈Stepping into Sky’s Domain〉 achieved.]

[You gain points +1P]

When the light vanished, the scenery that appeared was an empty expanse.

A pure white snowfield, at that.

Dazzled, I shaded my eyes with the back of my hand and quickly swept my gaze over the surroundings.

I was the only one who had been moved.

“Fuck. He really abandoned me……?”

When he had whined at me to come along, and now that he did not need me anymore, he threw me away?

I rubbed a hand over my face and forced the corners of my mouth, trembling in little spasms, back under control.

The place where I stood was almost at the edge of a cliff. More precisely, it was close to the tail fin of the gigantic whale Phantasmal Species.

I understood what he had meant by saying I had to go to the second city only after I saw, far below the cliff, a whale dozens of times larger than the ground I was standing on swimming through the air.

The whale I had seen from below, the one that had swallowed the sky, was down there.

In other words, that was the main body, and the place I was standing on was a slightly smaller whale following it.

There were three whale Phantasmal Species in total. They were far too enormous to be called creatures, and felt more like landmasses, but in any case, that was what they were.

Unless I stood at the edge of a cliff like this and looked down, there was no difference between this and ordinary land.

Still, once I thought about the fact that I was currently standing on top of a Phantasmal Species, the sight of plains, low hills, and everything else harmonizing together only felt even more grotesque.

Was it because ages had piled up and endured here?

Far in the distance, I could even see an Ice Castle.

“A castle?”

A pure white snowfield stretched out, and an Ice Castle like an artisan’s sculpture glittered there.

Once again, I was faced with the problem of survival.

And this time, it was in the biting cold of a vast wilderness where I would constantly have to worry about hypothermia.

They said it was easy for a person to adapt to something they had experienced once.

Ahahahaha, in other words, a mere survival story like this had done no damage to my mental state at all.

“Pan, you fucking bastard―!”

An echo rang out from far away.

A person had to know when to give up.

Scratching my head, I chewed over the situation. Since I had to survive first, I turned my feet toward the only visible structure, the Ice Castle.

As I walked, I took out the paper Pan had shoved into my pocket.

Fortunately, the crow-tit seemed to be struggling to adapt to the cold and had burrowed deep into my pocket with no intention of coming out.

On the half-crumpled ivory paper, this was written:

『First, go to the Ice Castle.

Go there and resolve the commission.

Ice Blue is there.

―Postscript―

The person who invited you is there too, so meet them.』

Mm.

As expected, Pan knew everything about the commission.

A hollow laugh escaped me, but soon a fierce wind swept in, and I clenched the paper in my fist before shoving my hand back into my pocket.

It looked as though there would be plenty of ice here, if not Ice Blue, and curses rose naturally to my lips, but I kept my mouth firmly shut.

“And who is this inviter now?”

How many times had I told him to fix that habit of throwing me somewhere without explaining……

“What is this?”

Blinking at a strange sense of déjà vu, I started in surprise when snow landed on the bridge of my nose and scrubbed my face roughly.

My fingertips tingled faintly.

Blinking, I drew in a deep breath to steady myself.

The cold air, full of icy particles, scraped down my throat.

I felt a faint, peculiar creaking.

Tilting my head, I glared at the Ice Castle in the distance.

I checked the pure white snow at my feet, then turned around and checked my footprints.

Only after the crow-tit settled inside my pocket pecked at my finger did I come back to myself and start moving again.

There had been no choice to begin with.

In this snowfield, the only place that looked fit for people to live was that Ice Castle, and if this were a game, anyone could see that place was the final boss map. Pan’s quest was there too.

“Ah…….”

Following that line of thought, I belatedly realized that my brain had been steeped in the system.

They said humans were creatures of adaptation.

I crumpled Pan’s rewardless quest together with the paper.

Whether I resolved the commission or not, I was curious about the inviter’s face. Was there anyone in Sky’s Domain who might know me? There was no way.

It was obvious.

Someone who had made some kind of deal with Pan―that was all.

What choice did I have? Slave No. 1 already had his hands full just staying alive.

If I were the protagonist, the title would surely be something like “Slave No. 1’s Harrowing Otherworld Life”……

While I was busy entertaining useless fantasies, the scenery around me suddenly darkened, and I quickened my pace.

The sky had been so clear, yet thick dark clouds had already gathered and covered the sun.

It was something I had seen in the Original Work. Since the whale Phantasmal Species itself carried the weather around, the current weather could become meaningless at any moment.

“That does not mean it is fine for me to take a direct hit from that gloomy weather.”

The atmosphere looked as though a blizzard might start whipping around at any moment, so I hurried before I ended up achieving something like 〈Frozen Underfolk〉.

No wonder he had handed me a fur-lined coat and told me to dress warmly. His scheme all along had been to abandon me in a place without the slightest trace of warmth.

“Just wait until I get back.”

No, before that, let us see exactly how I can wreck that negotiation table.

Clenching my jaw, I chewed over every stray thought one by one and began making a kill list.

Chirr―.

Perhaps my pocket had grown stuffy, because the crow-tit popped out.

Thinking it would be cold, I tried putting it back into my pocket, but the crow-tit dodged this way and that, flew outside, then hopped across the snowfield.

A crow-tit with vivid red feathers against the pure white snowfield. The color combination struck me as strangely eerie, and I scratched my forehead for no reason.

The snow on the ground seemed to have hardened from perpetual snow, its surface firm and dry enough to crumble crisply. Thanks to that, the crow-tit could run about the pure white snowfield as though it were its own home, without sinking in despite its tiny feet.

I followed after it, watching its antics with a strangely pitying gaze.

It was so cute now, but I found myself worrying about what would happen if, once complete, it became a horned monster like Woldeer or the other Phantasmal Species.

Trill, chirrup, chirp-chirp, and so on—the crow-tit chattered out all kinds of cries as it drew pictures across the snowfield, which had been so completely white that it had felt stifling instead.

They were rather lovely red scribbles.

---

Perhaps because I was on the back of a living Phantasmal Species, no crevasses or dangerous terrain appeared, thankfully.

Thanks to that, although my legs ached a little and the icy particles mixed into the air made my lungs feel as if they were being torn apart, I was still able to reach the Ice Castle without any major trouble.

The Ice Castle was made entirely of ice. The castle gate, the walls, and even the spires of the inner castle that peeked beyond them.

I stroked the head of the crow-tit sitting on my shoulder, then placed a hand against the door with a light heart and pushed.

Naturally, the door did not open.

It was not a matter of my strength being lacking, nor of it being locked from the inside.

The part I had thought was a door was not actually a door, but an ice carving shaped like one. A single smooth, solid mass of ice whose seams had fused completely and would not come apart.

They said panic left a person speechless. That was exactly me.

After letting out a few hollow laughs, I checked the blizzard that had begun growing stronger from afar and was just wondering whether I needed to break my way in when—

Something dropped with a whoosh before my eyes. It was a rope.

“Use that to come over.”

I lifted my head and searched the top of the castle wall, but saw nothing at all.

If they had thrown me a rope, that meant I was allowed to come in…… right?

I wondered how they knew who I was and why they were letting me inside so readily.

They lived with a gate that was little more than decoration and existed only for defense, and yet their wariness toward outsiders was thin. Perhaps I simply looked that insignificant.

“Excuse me?”

Thinking it might be the person who had invited me, I called out a few times, but there was no answer.

The rough rope dangled before my eyes.

Behind me, a fierce blizzard swept closer.

Once again, I had no choice.

If I did not want to die, I had to climb.

I grabbed the thick rope and climbed the ice wall. It was a wall-climbing experience that let me fully feel just how slippery ice became once it turned so smooth it was almost transparent.

It would have been better if there had been even a single place to put my feet. By the time I had been knocked around and slipped this way and that, barely managing to climb onto the castle wall, only a hollow wind was there to greet me.

Neither the person who had thrown the rope nor any sign of other people could be found. Only a cold, eerie wind curled snow around my eyes as it blew past.

Was this solid wall not for defense?

Below the wall, which sat there alone without even guards standing watch, houses similarly built of ice were packed densely together.

For a moment, I thought it looked like a 1:1-scale theme park.

Like a model garden made of ice sculptures.

Perhaps there had been no guards because there were no people to guard it. And even if there had been people to guard it, there would hardly be anyone willing to invade a tall, moving island in the sky.

That geographic advantage was why the negotiations were being held here in the first place.

Unless they had wings like Hwipone……

“Then who threw the rope?”

I shook the snow off my body and hair, which had grown heavy where it clung to me.

There was no time to think, with a blizzard that would make it impossible to see even an inch ahead right before me, so I rubbed my arms and climbed down from the castle wall.

‘Surely it was not a ghost.’

Seen up close, the inside of the castle wall was even more grotesque.

The houses built of ice could not possibly have been made for people to live in from the start, and yet they held the traces of people having lived there exactly as they were.

The scenery seemed to insist that it had not originally been ice, and it left my insides tangled.

I turned my head and looked up at the inner castle farthest within.

The last spire that had held the sunlight was being covered by dark clouds and losing its glow.

“I do not know who invited me, but their taste is really…….”

The main city of Sky’s Domain, where the main body was, had looked quite lively from above.

It must have been crowded enough for Konu’s parents to go sightseeing there. There would have been souvenir shops too, and the various sights would probably have felt mysterious just to look at.

But this place was not like that.

From outside the castle to inside its walls.

This empty space, where not the slightest warmth of human presence could be found, felt cold even aside from the snow and ice, making it hard to take even a single step.

In truth, it was such a desolate scene that I could not help suspecting a ghost had sent me an invitation because it wanted someone to play with.

Just before the snow grew so fierce that my sight was swallowed in white haze, I reached the inner castle at last despite shivering all over.

The Ice Castle, with pure white snow clinging to it, looked cold in and of itself.

I glared at the pointed arched castle gate and hesitated for a moment, wondering what I would do if that too was only a door in shape.

Still, I had come this far.

Lacking even the strength to open the door, I shook the small bell attached to it.

Clack―clatter―.

Even the bell was made of ice, so it did not make a very loud sound, but with a RUMBLE, the snow clinging to the door seams fell all at once.

Soon, the doors, which had been fitted together as precisely as if carved, opened wide to either side.

It was excessively weighty for a welcome.

Under the illusion that I was facing the entrance to a lost dungeon, I hesitated to go inside even as my hair whipped and tangled wildly in the blizzard.

Whoooooosh.

The wind thrashed at my back and pushed me forward, and I reluctantly stepped inside, because, well…… it was a little cold.

Creeeeak―THUD.

The moment I entered, the door closed on its own. It resembled an effect from an outdated horror movie, and the corner of my mouth tugged upward. So you want to do this?

“Um…… excuse me? Mr. Owner? If you invited someone, should you not show your face?”

Muttering softly, I went farther inside.

The central staircase, which split to either side, was also made of ice. Even weak light seeped into it and scattered in glittering fragments.

Because of that, I only realized someone was standing at the middle of the stairs after I had set my first foot on them.

“……Etel?”