Winters Bite 5 (1/2)

The area guardian of the Eternal Library has been slain.

To the victor go the spoils.

The Eternal Library can now be accessed freely for the next 24 hours.

Yet another in a series of dungeon-wide notifications passed through Drea’s head, and the Stalker sighed dejectedly as a result. This meant that she would be the last one among Boxxy’s group to complete whatever challenge that annoying dungeon master had forced onto each of them. And that was assuming she would be able to survive this place at all.

Drea had been teleported to an area called the Howling Chasm, which was an extremely fitting name. It was some sort of narrow crevasse or canyon that had a harsh wind blowing through it non-stop. The frigid air current whistled ominously as it passed through the iced over passageway and wrapped around the protruding rock formations. It also carried with it a good amount of snowfall, resulting in what was essentially a localized blizzard.

The topography of the area was so rough that even mountain goats would find it ludicrous. Any invader who felt brave or stupid enough to try to scale the sheer cliffs surrounding them would have their work cut out for them, to say the least. Even if they were to somehow maintain their grip on the ice-covered rocks and make actual headway towards scaling the cliffs, they wouldn’t get far. A violent gust of air or a foothold suddenly giving way would make sure to send them tumbling down to the bottom, sometimes accompanied by a rockslide or avalanche.

These occurrences were not at all random, but rather the dungeon’s not-so-subtle way of forcing ‘guests’ to traverse the Howling Chasm by following it down its length. Which was a challenge in and of itself, as the terrain at the bottom was every bit as treacherous. Various obstacles such as glaciers, boulders and pitfalls would force invaders to clamber up and down constantly to the point where merely being able to take three steps on level ground was a luxury. This, when combined with the oncoming freezing winds, made it so that they’d rapidly run out of energy just by trying to move forward.

In short, the Howling Chasm was a place where the environment itself was the greatest enemy.

But, even if freezing to death was a very real threat even for the hardiest adventurers, it was by no means the only one. Ice elementals, aberrations of nature that only appeared in extreme environments such as this, could be seen skittering around. They looked like boulders of ice with jagged shards jutting out of them at random, a few of which had grown into needle-like legs that helped them move around in an insect-like manner.

Overall their appearances were rather similar, but by no means uniform. The shape and size of their main body varied wildly, as did the number of appendages. They also had limited shapeshifting ability, which they demonstrated by growing various bladed limbs when the need demanded it. They could attack at range as well, mostly by firing a barrage of deadly ice shards that could easily pierce through rock and stone. The complete and total lack of any sensory organs, on the other hand, implied that they relied on some sort of Mana Locator Gland to perceive their surroundings.

It was this last bit that made them truly troublesome opponents for someone like Drea who relied on sneak attacks to be effective. They would detect her presence without fail once she got within five or so meters of them, rendering her Assassination Skill completely useless. Being literal blocks of living ice also meant they had no weak points she could strike at, such as tendons, necks, or hearts. Binding them with her webbing was also quite useless, as the elementals could just sprout blades of ice from their bodies and rip it to shreds. They truly were an assassin’s nightmare, and Drea could see why the dungeon master would leave her in a place like this.

The Stalker demon was currently huddled up in a small outcropping of rocks that provided some measure of shelter from the frigid winds. Her mandibles chittered without end while her practically naked body shivered uncontrollably as it desperately tried and failed to warm itself up. Her limbs had gone completely numb by this point, and she frequently felt the need to check whether all of them were still attached. It wasn’t like they were going to freeze up and snap off in the wind, but they could still be hacked or ripped off in a scuffle, and she probably wouldn’t even feel it.

And those animate lumps of frozen water were quite the troublesome bunch indeed. The big ones that were tall enough to give Kora a run for her money were so tough that attacking them felt like digging a tunnel through a cliff with just a needle. Their attacks were slow, clumsy, and easy to avoid, but the sheer amount of time and effort it took to bring them down took its toll on her. There were also small ones that did not reach a height of even a meter, but those were arguably worse. Even if they were easily dispatched in one or two hits, they had a tendency to swarm her from all sides, resulting in seemingly trivial yet also unavoidable injuries.

But no matter how shallow the cuts were, each wound she sustained was permanent. Her body was suffering from the initial stages of hypothermia, which resulted in her automatic HP recovery being completely halted. But even if her cuts and bruises would not recover, it could have been much worse. She imagined she’d be actively losing HP right now if she wasn’t still under the effects of Boxxy’s cold resistance potion. Not to mention that, even if this place was able to deplete even a demon’s stamina, she was still able to rest up and recover some of it. That was why she was currently hiding away in this dark corner to begin with, as every fight she went through felt like running a marathon underwater.

One might argue that all she needed to do was avoid fighting the elementals altogether, but that was easier said than done. Even if a bunch of them could be seen wandering around aimlessly and could be easily sidestepped, there were many more of them hiding in her surroundings. Their natural camouflage was so good, that it was impossible for her to tell whether an object buried in the snow was a harmless rock or a dungeon monster taking a nap until she was right on top of it. Meaning that no matter what she did, she still ended up being ambushed and forced into a fight.

And yet she had been making relatively good progress in spite of all those obstacles. The demoness poked her head out of her hidey-hole, wincing a bit as her face was pelted with snow and her hair was whipped back by the vicious wind. Visibility was terrible, but she still managed to make out what seemed to be the canyon’s exit up ahead. The passage had gradually been growing wider and flatter for a while now, and seemed to open up completely about forty meters further ahead.

However, even though this seemed like the home stretch, she couldn’t help but worry about crossing it. She only had about half of her 5,153 HP remaining despite her best efforts, and the road ahead was filled to the brim with agitated ice elementals of all sizes. It wasn’t impossible to fight through them, but it would be extremely difficult to say the least. Not to mention that, even if she won, it would leave her in a much-too-injured state to properly deal with whatever guardian awaited her at the end. The upcoming boss battle was also why she was currently doing her best to recuperate, as it was sure to be yet another test of endurance.

Truthfully speaking she was already as well rested as she could be under the circumstances, yet she ducked her head back in and curled up on the cold ground. She clenched her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as she was thoroughly reminded of how miserable she was and how pathetically weak she felt. Surely her Level advantage meant that she should be blowing through this place with little to no difficulty, right? And yet here she was, struggling to even deal with the small fry properly. It was a feeling so frustrating that it made her bite her own lips until they began to bleed.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

The dungeon master’s voice made the Stalker open her compound eyes and stare at the djinn’s Mistborn Projection. The shimmering apparition was being distorted by the howling winds, but it was still easy to tell she was smiling maliciously.

“It seems the poor little bug has hit a rough spot, has she?” she began gloating. “I was a bit worried since all of the other ones were absurd, cheat-like anomalies, but you’re not like them at all! You’re not some mysterious tree spirit, an incomprehensible Hero or an abnormally Ranked Up demon. You’re just a Stalker, an itsy bitsy cowardly little spider who’s completely helpless once she’s out of her comfort zone!”

“Hrrktktktktktktktktktkt…”

Setre’s words felt like they stabbed through Drea’s chest. Those were the same worries and doubts that the spider-girl had been trying to ignore for the longest while, well before she even come here. They probably started rearing their ugly heads at around the time where she failed to take down that bald Psionic during the war, and were only amplified further following the Rank Ups of her co-contractors. The depressing feeling that maybe she wasn’t good enough to serve as Boxxy’s familiar after all was now rapidly boiling to the surface due to her sordid circumstances.

“Oh me, oh my! It seems like I hit a nerve, did I?” added the djinn.

Seeing that her venomous remarks were finally having some sort of effect on one of her guests made Setre’s smile even wider. The fact that she, a demon, was the custodian of the Palace of the Crystal Maiden meant that the basic ‘no teleportation’ restriction available to all dungeon cores had been upgraded to ‘no spatial travel.’ The difference between the two was that the latter was much broader in scope and was able to block both a Warlock’s Summon Familiar Skill, as well as the Transfamiliar Spell.

In other words, if this Stalker were to die here or be otherwise rendered unwilling to continue, then her shithead of a master would be weakened for the final confrontation.

“Can’t say I blame you. I’d feel useless too if I couldn’t even beat a bunch of literally brainless ice cubes!”

Which was why she decided to keep pouring it on, so that the seeds of doubt may take root inside the demon’s wavering spirit. She wasn’t sure how, why or when these familiars had grown attached to their summoner, but it was hardly an unprecedented state of affairs. The important thing to take away here was that this Stalker clearly had some sort of emotional attachment to her master. And Setre would not fail to use that connection to pressure her into submission.

“I bet he’d just discard you and replace your sorry ass with a much more capable demon. Face it, you’re only holding your master back.”

“Ktktktktktktkt…”

And it seemed to be working wonderfully if the way her mandibles’ chittering was increasing in frequency was any indication.

“I’d suggest you kill yourself to spare everyone the trouble of your pointless existence, but not even that would work on a demon like you, regardless of how pathetic a bug you are.”

“Tktktktk-!”

However, Setre had pushed too far. Something in her words had suddenly lit a fire under Drea’s butt. Her eyes snapped wide open and her mouth stopped producing noises for the first time since she was deposited in this damnable chasm.

Why am I so afraid of death?! she exclaimed inwardly. Ah, right, it’s because I’ll fail if I die… but what am I going to fail, exactly? It’s not like I was told to survive at all costs or make sure I clear the zone!

Indeed, those goals were just things she had somehow decided for herself. Being cut off from her Master had made her unconsciously shift into total self-preservation mode, which was unnecessary. She could just be called back to Boxxy’s side should her physical shell be destroyed. In fact, that may actually be a good thing in and of itself, as she could relay important information back to her master. She might have thought differently if she knew the Summon Familiar Skill would not work in this dungeon, but that simply wasn’t the case.

That’s right, I just need to be ‘shiny’ in my own way!

Brimming with newfound determination, the Stalker stood up and crawled out of the small alcove, eliciting another snide comment from Setre.

“What now? Finally decided to go back to the Beyond where it’s nice and warm?”

Well, the Beyond wasn’t really ‘warm’ so much as it was ‘not bone-chillingly cold,’ but Drea did not wish to argue semantics with the djinn. She did not even want to see her face, so she idly sliced up the apparition as she walked by it, forcing the magic to disperse. She then lowered her stance to the extreme, allowing her bladed limbs to carry her weight while she tucked her hands and legs closer into her torso.

She then waded straight into the sea of monsters at full speed without even trying to sneak through them. Almost immediately she saw a wall of blades and spears strike out at her, which she avoided by leaping through a small gap in between them. She landed on the frozen uneven ground with an awkward cartwheel and resumed dashing ahead. The elementals ahead of her kept trying to intercept and block her advance while the ones she left behind gave chase while shooting frozen darts at her back.

This sort of scenario was why she couldn’t allow herself to just dash past the elementals she’d faced earlier. Once they had acquired a target, these elementals were relentless in chasing it down. She might have been able to lose them if she went out of the range of their MLG, but simply running away like that was much too risky. Not only would it leave her open to ranged attacks, but would also invite the monsters hiding in the ground to strike at her and make things even worse. That was why she had decided to slowly but surely clear a path through the Howling Chasm by engaging groups of two or three of them at a time whenever giving them a wide berth was not an option.

This very clearly wasn’t her goal this time around, though, as she just kept relentlessly moving her limbs. Her body was cut up by razor-sharp edges, but she just kept running. She had to leap over a giant club swing that clipped her dangling knees and made her fumble her landing, but she got up and resumed running. Jagged shards of ice flew at her from almost all directions, yet she did not allow herself to stop running. She ripped open whatever minor elementals she could with her hands, but only if she was sure her attacks would not interfere with her running.

And the more she ran, the more she heard the sounds of ice clashing against ice.

This area was so thick with elementals that they couldn’t even walk around without bumping into one another. It was only natural they’d end up hitting their own allies when they just mindlessly attacked the intruder in their midsts. They weren’t just getting in their own way, though, as the ‘brainless ice cubes’ would lash back at each other on reflex whenever they were hit. They were so simple that not even the dungeon core’s influence was able to reign them in before the whole thing devolved into a massive brawl.

Which was precisely the sort of chaos Drea had been aiming for. She already knew full well that these things were way too dumb to understand concepts such as ‘friendly fire’ or ‘teamwork,’ and that they moved more like machines than living beings. The large ones were especially useful to that end, as their huge swings and massive range meant they caused the most collateral damage. They also pulled double duty as improvised cover, as the Stalker was able to duck under or behind them to avoid being skewered by the constant barrage of icy projectiles.

However, even that small comfort came to an end when Drea cleared the unruly mob and found herself out in the open. She may have passed through the danger zone, but she wasn’t out of the woods quite yet as a good chunk of the horde of pissed off monsters were still on her tail. Not only would they have a clear shot at her retreating back, but there was also no telling what sort of nasty surprises awaited her ahead. But the time for hesitation was over, and the Stalker forged on ahead without even considering the consequences.

Except that, as it turned out, there were no more elementals or traps or anything of the sort beyond that point. Nothing popped out of the ground or leaped at her from the walls, no matter how much noise she made or ground she covered. Even the stampede behind her was growing quieter at a much more rapid pace than she thought possible. The Stalker hid behind a particularly big boulder and allowed herself to peek back at the path she’d covered. To her great relief, she saw that the lumps of living ice were shambling back to their original locations, where the free-for-all she’d started was already winding down.

“Yessss!” she shout-whispered to herself with a fist pump. “Also, oplaints. Well, at least it didn’t feel as numb as it did, so that was a start. She quickly looked herself over, only to find that she had barely 1,600 HP left and that the topmost pair of her back-mounted scythes had been chopped off in the confusion. Still, it was clearly a much better outcome than if she had actually tried to fight her way through that mess the hard way. It was obvious she lucked out hard to achieve such a favorable outcome, but she didn’t let that take away from her feeling of triumph.

The realization that she was now two limbs short had already squashed that sliver of joy anyway.

Once she confirmed her body’s condition, she proceeded cautiously down the path. Much like she had seen earlier, it opened up to a wide, completely flat space that was entirely unlike the damnable canyon. Even the wind had died down somewhat, but this only allowed her to realize that what she had perceived as an exit was actually an entrance to some sort of arena. It was a generally circular space that was about fifty or sixty meters wide and was surrounded on all sides by yet more of those blasted unscalable cliffs.

As the Stalker got closer to the center, she couldn’t help but feel more and more on edge. Even though she was initially glad to see this flat space, right now she couldn’t help but feel strangely exposed. The ground beneath her feet also felt weirdly solid, prompting her to shovel the snow around a bit with the sole of her foot. Once she removed the top - and indeed only - layer of fresh white powder, she found herself staring down at a corpse. One that had been encased in a layer of impossibly clear ice that had a vibrant blue hue to it.