The merciless blizzard of the North had long since swallowed the sounds of the massive army they had left behind. The freezing cold of the surface felt like thousands of tiny needles stabbing into their lungs with every breath.
Hope and Lypin were pushing forward through a dark, endless forest formed by towering pine trees, their legs sinking into thick snow up to their knees. On the endless white blanket, the only deep tracks were the ones the two of them created, yet the wind was so violent that every step they took was erased within seconds by fresh snowfall.
It was the only mercy nature offered them.
Without footprints, it would be far harder for the Royal Army to track them.
For three hours, they had walked without stopping, without speaking, and without looking back.
Lypin was wrapped tightly in her thick cloak, following the trail Hope carved through the snow with trembling steps. Suppressing the dark cosmic parasite inside her already drained all of her energy, and fighting against this freezing cold was pushing the girl to the very limits of her physical endurance.
Right behind them, another small silhouette was struggling through the snow.
Mira.
She was hopping forward while scattering tiny blue electric sparks around her, but her energy was nearly exhausted as well. The crackling sound she made with every jump was growing weaker.
Finally, her small body sank into a thick pile of snow, and she could no longer move forward.
With a faint, defeated hiss, Mira let herself fall backward.
But she never hit the ground.
Hope had already turned around and, with a single smooth motion, pulled her out of the snow. Carefully, he placed the small creature on his right shoulder.
Mira nestled against Hope's neck gratefully and trembled softly, as if trying to share body warmth.
As Hope looked at his tiny crackling companion, a soft, human smile appeared on his face for the first time in hours.
"Tired, little one?" Hope whispered, gently stroking Mira's electric head with his gloved finger.
"We've been moving nonstop for about three hours. And it looks like…"
Hope lifted his head and looked deep into the massive, dark pine forest surrounding them.
There was no sound other than the howling wind.
"…no one is following us. I think we can rest now."
But no matter what he said, Hope could not suppress the gnawing anxiety within him.
His mind kept whispering that he was lying to himself.
Deniz's final seismic message had drawn King Khronos's army directly toward them.
That army would not give up.
Without letting Lypin or Mira notice, Hope directed his green flames toward his pupils.
[ARCHITECT SIGHT: MAXIMUM SCAN]
His vision was suddenly covered with a green analytical filter. He scanned kilometers behind them, behind trees, beneath the snow.
He searched for heat signatures.
He expected to see the immense mana concentrations of the Royal Army… the golden aura of the King himself.
But there was nothing.
The system detected no organic or mana-based threats behind them.
Only an endless blizzard and trees.
"Hope, look!" Lypin's trembling voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
She pointed ahead with a shaking finger.
Right in front of them, between two massive rock formations and the tangled roots of enormous pine trees, was the entrance of a dark natural cave. The inside was protected from the wind and looked quite deep.
It was a perfect shelter to survive the night without freezing to death.
"Good," Hope said, adjusting the heavy packs on his shoulders.
"Let's go inside. We'll start a fire and check our supplies."
But the moment Hope stepped across the pitch-black threshold of the cave…
The System in his mind, after the long months spent beneath the ocean, suddenly went completely insane as if reminding him of the brutal and savage rules of the surface world.
A massive hologram of crimson red and icy blue appeared before his eyes.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[DANGEROUS AREA DETECTED][NEW REGION DISCOVERED: SNOW DUNGEON — LVL 1]
[STATUS: ACTIVE DYNAMIC DUNGEON]
Hope froze where he stood.
"A dungeon…?" Hope murmured.
During his time in Atlantis, he had learned almost nothing new about the System.
The kingdom beneath the ocean was a closed and isolated ecosystem with its own rules. From what he had seen there, dungeons did not exist.
There were only politics, wars, and ancient curses.
But the surface world…
The surface world existed under the absolute dominion of the System.
The forests, mountains, and caves here were not ordinary geographical formations. They were deadly dungeons where mana condensed into monsters, places that possessed levels.
And apparently, this cave they had entered for shelter was not an ordinary refuge.
From the depths of the cave came sounds that were nothing like the wind outside.
Low, guttural, blood-chilling growls.
In the pitch darkness, two glowing icy blue eyes appeared.
Then two more.
Then ten more.
"Stay behind me," Hope said, dropping the heavy bags from his shoulders.
He raised his right hand into the air, summoning his emerald-flamed scythe, tearing through the darkness of the night.
Mira sensed the danger as well. Her crackling static electricity intensified as she assumed an attack stance.
The first things that lunged out of the darkness were white wolves.
But these were not ordinary animals.
They were as large as lions, and their fur was covered in sharp ice needles as hard as steel. Their eyes glowed with blinding blue light, and freezing vapor leaked from their mouths.
[WHITE ICE WOLF — LVL 9]
One of the wolves leapt through the air, aiming its razor-sharp teeth directly at Hope's throat.
Hope did not even take a step back.
He simply swung his scythe in a perfect horizontal arc.
SHLAAAK!
The green flames melted the wolf's icy armor within seconds and split it in half.
Before the wolf could even hit the ground, its body dispersed into a cloud of green mana.
[SYSTEM: NEW SOUL ACQUIRED — WHITE ICE WOLF]
"Good," Hope whispered.
In Atlantis, he had tasted the peak by acquiring Ignis's soul. But he still needed to strengthen his army.
Was this the true purpose of the Architect class?
Turning every enemy he killed into his own pawn… wasn't that the power of a necromancer?
But Hope didn't have time to think about that.
Because the wolves were not alone.
The true horrors emerging from the depths of the cave were creatures that turned humanity's innocent winter legends into nightmares.
They were snowmen.
But they had no carrots or coal on their faces.
They were massive three-meter-tall golems formed from enormous piles of snow fused together. Their arms were sharpened black branches of ancient pine trees, and their mouths were filled with horrifying jagged teeth made from frozen blood and ice.
[BLOODY SNOWMAN — LVL 13]
One of them raised its massive tree-branch arm like a war hammer and brought it down toward Lypin's head.
[Shadow Step]
Hope moved in front of Lypin in less than a tenth of a second.
He raised the shaft of his scythe and blocked the massive branch, but the physical weight of the attack was tremendous.
Hope's feet slid backward across the icy floor of the cave.
"Your turn, little one!" Hope shouted.
Mira didn't hesitate for even a single second.
[LIGHTNING ARROW]
A pure golden bolt of lightning shot from Mira's body and struck the snowman directly in the chest.
The high-voltage electricity instantly boiled the water inside the snow mass, causing the creature to explode from within.
Snow and ice fragments scattered across the cave walls.
Hope drove his scythe into the remaining core.
[SYSTEM: NEW SOUL ACQUIRED — BLOODY SNOWMAN]
"AWAKE!" Hope roared.
The pitch-black forms of the Ice Wolf and the Snowman they had just killed erupted from the ground beside him, veins glowing with green energy.
"Defend!" Hope commanded.
His newly created soldiers clashed with the incoming wave of enemies pouring from the darkness.
As Hope watched the chaos unfold, a wild satisfaction appeared on his face.
The surface world was dangerous, yes.
But it was also a massive resource that could endlessly feed him and expand his army.
He was testing his System.
And perfecting the battle synchronization between himself and Mira.
However, Hope had forgotten one small detail in the System notification he had received earlier.
[DYNAMIC DUNGEON]
As blood spilled onto the ground and mana density in the area increased, the cave walls began to tremble.
The ice crystals around them started glowing with a strange crimson light.
[SYSTEM WARNING]
[SUFFICIENT BLOOD AND MANA DETECTED]
[SNOW DUNGEON HAS LEVELED UP — LVL 2]
"What?" Hope frowned.
"The dungeon… is leveling up?"
There was no time to wait.
From the cracks in the cave walls, not only wolves emerged this time, but also flying razor-winged bats and massive spiders weaving poisonous ice webs.
The variety of enemies had suddenly increased.
The lethality of the attacks had doubled.
[Ice Bats — LVL 16][Frozen Spiders — LVL 17]
"Lypin, stay behind me!" Hope shouted, spinning his scythe like a turbine and shredding the bats raining down on him.
His army of souls was growing rapidly. Every bat, every spider he killed was instantly pulled to his side with the AWAKE command.
But the dungeon seemed to react with growing fury to Hope's power.
[SNOW DUNGEON HAS LEVELED UP — LVL 3]
[SNOW DUNGEON HAS LEVELED UP — LVL 4]
The temperature of the environment was no longer simply freezing.
It was approaching absolute zero.
The kind of cold that froze cells themselves and restricted movement.
Even Hope's green flames struggled to produce warmth.
The icicles hanging from the walls had turned into pure magical diamonds.
With an army of more than thirty soul soldiers, Hope was pushed deeper into the cave, which gradually widened and eventually opened into a massive underground glacial arena.
Blood, sweat, and green mana covered everything.
And then…
It happened.
The System screen suddenly shifted from green to blood red.
The largest, thickest warning text Hope had ever seen was carved directly into his mind.
[CRITICAL WARNING]
[SNOW DUNGEON HAS REACHED MAXIMUM LEVEL (LVL 5)]
[REGION BOSS AWAKENING]
Inside the massive domed glacial arena, all the smaller creatures suddenly retreated in fear.
The wolves.
The spiders.
The bats.
The battle stopped instantly.
Silence returned with deafening intensity.
Only the sound of large snowflakes falling from the dark ceiling echoed through the cavern.
"Hope…" Lypin's voice trembled with fear.
She pointed toward the dark elevated mound at the center of the arena.
"Look up."
Hope tightened his grip on the scythe and lifted his head.
From the pitch-black void in the arena ceiling, a massive shape that defied gravity dropped straight toward the center of the cavern.
BOOOOOOM!
When the creature struck the ground, the entire underground cavern shook with a violent earthquake.
The diamond-hard ice at the impact point shattered instantly.
The shockwave destroyed several of the weaker Bonebreaker spirits in Hope's army.
As the cloud of ice and dust slowly settled, the terrifying figure standing before them was revealed.
It was a Yeti.
But not one of the clumsy winter beasts from fairy tales.
It was at least seven meters tall.
Its shoulders were as wide as an elephant.
But the most horrifying part was not its size.
Half of its fur had rotted away, revealing glowing blue magical bones beneath.
Its eye sockets were nothing but deep, soul-devouring black voids.
Broken chains dangled from its neck and arms.
[REGION BOSS: ANCIENT GLACIER YETI — LVL 35]
The Yeti slowly turned its massive head toward Hope.
The way it looked at him with those bottomless black sockets was not the gaze of a predator at prey.
It was the gaze of a king looking at a challenger who dared enter his domain.
The Yeti slammed its enormous clawed hands against its chest, releasing a deafening roar that shook ice loose from the cavern ceiling.
[ANCIENT GLACIER SHACKLE]
The air around Hope froze instantly.
The ice beneath his feet climbed upward within seconds, sealing his legs and the arms holding his scythe inside a thick, unbreakable layer of ice.
Hope was completely immobilized.
He couldn't move.
Even his green flames couldn't instantly melt this magical ice.
The Yeti pulled its arms back, its massive muscles swelling as it gathered all the surrounding cold mana into a single point within its fists.
[ECHOING AVALANCHE]
The gigantic Yeti lunged forward, bringing down its devastating punch meant to destroy the entire arena directly toward Hope, who was trapped in ice and completely defenseless.
The bottomless darkness in its eyes met Hope's emerald-green gaze.
The surface world was saying only one thing.
"Welcome back."