The howling wind of the Dead Ridges was utterly merciless, whipping snow and jagged ice particles through the air like microscopic blades.
Alden walked forward, his heavy boots carving a steady, rhythmic path through the knee-deep snow. He didn't look back. He kept his posture straight, his dark-grey cloak pulled tight against the biting gale, and his single crimson eye focused entirely on the mental coordinates pulsing in his mind.
Crunch… crunch… drag…
The sound was incredibly faint, almost entirely swallowed by the roar of the blizzard, but Alden's A-Rank physical perception caught it effortlessly.
Someone was following him.
He didn't need to turn around to know who it was. The haughty, arrogant girl with the jet-black hair and luminescent violet eyes had apparently decided that freezing to death alone wasn't on her itinerary today. She was trailing roughly twenty yards behind him, clutching the heavy dwarven blanket he had tossed her tightly around her shoulders, stumbling over the deep tracks he was leaving behind.
'Stubborn,' Alden thought, a mild wave of annoyance washing over him.
'She couldn't even stand up five minutes ago, and now she's tailing an S-Rank fugitive through a death zone.'
He didn't slow down. He didn't offer his hand. If she wanted to follow him like a frozen, arrogant tail, that was her choice. He had already offered her the blanket; his quota for charity was officially maxed out for the month.
They walked for another two hours.
The Dead Ridges lived up to their name. The terrain was an agonizing mix of slick obsidian glass and waist-high snowdrifts. For Alden, it was a brisk workout. His Nephalem bloodline effortlessly regulated his core temperature, and his newly acquired Manual of the Abyssal Weaver allowed him to continuously circulate a microscopic, perfectly controlled thread of Chaos mana through his limbs to stave off exhaustion.
For the girl behind him, it was pure, unadulterated torture.
Alden could hear her ragged, desperate breathing. He could hear the heavy thud every time her knees buckled and she collapsed into the snow, only to stubbornly drag herself back to her feet a few seconds later.
'She's got grit, I'll give her that,' Alden mused internally, adjusting the matte-black mask on his face.
'Most nobles would have just laid down and waited for a rescue party that was never coming.'
Suddenly, the hair on the back of Alden's neck stood straight up.
The wind shifted. The ambient mana in the air dropped to a freezing, predatory stillness.
Alden stopped dead in his tracks.
Ten yards behind him, the girl also stopped, practically collapsing against a jagged spire of black rock, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
Grrrrrrr…
The low, guttural growl didn't come from the front. It came from the snowy ridge directly to their right.
A Frost Panther stepped out from the whiteout conditions.
It was a magnificent, terrifying beast. Easily the size of a small carriage, its sleek coat was forged from jagged, translucent ice crystals that acted as natural, interlocking armor. Its eyes burned with a pale, hungry blue light, and its elongated fangs dripped with supercooled saliva that instantly froze the snow it touched.
It was a peak B-Rank monster. Fast, lethal, and perfectly adapted to the blizzard.
The panther didn't look at Alden. Its predatory instincts immediately recognized the heavily masked, trench-coat-wearing figure as an absolute unknown. Instead, its glowing blue eyes locked directly onto the shivering, exhausted girl leaning against the rock.
She was the weak link. The easy prey.
The girl's violet eyes went wide with pure horror. She reached a trembling hand down to her hip, searching for a weapon, but her leather scabbard was completely empty. She was defenseless.
The Frost Panther lunged.
It moved like a blur of icy wind, closing the distance in a fraction of a second, its massive jaws opening wide to snap her in half.
The girl squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable.
SWISH~
Alden didn't draw Vajra. He didn't even adopt a fighting stance.
He simply stepped directly into the Panther's flight path, moving with a fluid, terrifying speed that completely defied his D+ Rank aura.
As the massive beast soared through the air, Alden reached out his right hand.
He didn't punch it. He didn't try to shatter its icy armor with brute force. He utilized the Manual of the Abyssal Weaver.
With absolute, flawless precision, Alden channeled a singular, needle-thin thread of dark-gold Chaos mana to his fingertips. He didn't let the volatile energy explode. He kept it perfectly contained, weaving it into a concentrated, microscopic spike.
He casually sidestepped the panther's snapping jaws, his gloved hand brushing lightly against the back of the beast's thick, armored neck.
Zzt...
The dark-gold thread pierced straight through the ice armor, bypassing flesh and bone entirely, and injected directly into the panther's spinal cord. The Chaos element aggressively, instantly devoured the monster's central nervous system.
The Frost Panther's glowing blue eyes went completely dark mid-leap.
It didn't roar. It didn't thrash.
It simply dropped out of the air like a heavy sack of stones.
THUD.
The massive beast crashed into the snow right at the girl's feet, skidding to a halt and kicking up a cloud of white powder. It was completely, utterly dead. No blood. No explosive mess. Just a clean, absolute cessation of life.
Alden slowly lowered his hand, letting the dark-gold thread safely dissipate back into his core without a single drop of internal blowback.
'Eighty percent control is a beautiful thing,' Alden thought, a deeply satisfied smirk touching his lips beneath the mask.
'No broken ribs today.'
He turned his head, looking down at the girl.
She was staring at the dead Panther, her mouth slightly open. Slowly, she lifted her gaze to Alden. Her violet eyes were wide with profound, undeniable shock. She had felt his aura. She knew he was barely a D-Rank. Yet he had just casually, effortlessly deleted a B-Rank apex predator with a single touch.
Alden waited for it. He waited for the barrage of questions. Who are you? What was that magic? How did you do that?
The girl swallowed hard. She looked at the dead beast, then back at his glowing crimson eye.
She closed her mouth, tightened the dwarven blanket around her shoulders, and gave a sharp, definitive nod.
She didn't say a single word.
Alden blinked behind his mask.
'Well,' Alden mused, genuinely impressed.
'She's arrogant, but she's not stupid. She knows when to keep her mouth shut.'
It was a refreshing change of pace. If she wasn't going to annoy him with endless, probing questions about his identity or his chaotic magic, he could tolerate her walking in his footsteps for a little while longer.
He turned his back on the corpse and resumed walking.
The girl immediately fell into step behind him, keeping her respectful, twenty-yard distance.
They trekked for another hour. The blizzard finally began to break, the heavy snowfall thinning out to reveal a landscape of towering, jagged black monoliths.
The coordinates in Alden's mind began to pulse with a searing, urgent heat.
Throb... throb...
He was close. Incredibly close.
Alden slowed his pace, his crimson eye scanning the obsidian valley ahead. Nestled between two massive, jutting spikes of black rock was a narrow, unnaturally smooth archway carved directly into the mountainside. The stone around the archway was lined with faint, dormant silver runes that looked identical to the ones he had seen in the subterranean dragon tomb.
This was the next location that had burned into his memory.
Alden stopped.
He stood thirty yards from the archway. The wind whipped his black trench coat around his legs.
He turned around.
The girl had stopped too, shivering violently, her lips turning a faint shade of blue despite the heavy blanket.
"This is where we part ways," Alden said, his voice echoing cleanly through the thinning wind.
The girl stiffened, her violet eyes narrowing.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, this is the end of the line for you," Alden replied, pointing a gloved finger toward the dark, ominous archway carved into the mountain.
"I am going in there. And you are staying out here."
"Are you insane?" the girl croaked, her aristocratic arrogance flaring up to mask her desperation.
"You can't leave me out here! I have no supplies, no weapons, and my mana is completely depleted! If you leave me, I will freeze to death!"
"If you follow me in there, freezing to death will look like a luxury vacation," Alden stated, his tone dropping into a cold, absolute seriousness.
He walked a few steps closer to her, his single red eye piercing through the gloom.
"You saw what I did to that Panther," Alden continued.
"But that was a stray dog compared to the things I have to deal with. To get the things I need, I have had to walk through trials that would shatter a normal person's mind. I have had my bones crushed, my skin flayed, and my soul put on a dissection table."
The girl flinched slightly at the raw, brutal honesty in his voice, but she didn't look away.
"I don't know what is waiting on the other side of that archway," Alden said, gesturing to the dark ruin.
"It could be an ancient trap. It could be an S-Rank monster. It could be a curse that melts flesh. If you follow me, you are risking a life far worse than simply falling asleep in the snow."
He stared at her, expecting the spoiled noble facade to crack. He expected her to demand he escort her to a city, to offer him gold or titles in exchange for safety.
Instead, the girl lifted her chin.
Her violet eyes burned with a fierce, stubborn defiance that entirely defied her fragile, half-frozen state.
"I am not going back," she said, her voice shaking from the cold, but entirely devoid of hesitation.
"I have nowhere to go back to. And I refuse to die as a frozen corpse in a wasteland."
She took a shaky step forward, clutching the blanket.
"You are my only chance of survival right now, peasant," she sneered weakly, though the insult lacked any real venom.
"So I am following you. Whether you like it or not."
Alden stared at her.
He looked at her trembling legs, her blue lips, and the sheer, unadulterated willpower radiating from her violet eyes.
'She's a lunatic,' Alden sighed internally.
'An arrogant, stubborn lunatic.'
He rubbed the bridge of his nose right above his matte-black mask. He didn't have the time or the energy to physically tie her to a rock, and he couldn't just knock her unconscious and leave her to the elements.
"Fine," Alden finally grunted, dropping his hand.
The girl's shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch in sheer relief.
"But let me make one thing absolutely, perfectly clear," Alden warned, his voice turning to ice.
"I am not a hero. I am not a knight in shining armor. I am not taking responsibility for your life."
He turned his back on her, walking toward the dark, ominous archway.
"If you trigger a trap, I will not save you," Alden called over his shoulder. "If a monster grabs you, I will not trade my life for yours. You follow me at your own absolute risk. If you die, you die. Understood?"
The girl hurried after him, her boots crunching in the snow, desperately trying to keep up with his long strides.
"Understood," she muttered, her teeth chattering loudly.
Alden stepped into the absolute darkness of the ancient ruin, his crimson eye glowing like a warning beacon in the gloom.
He had a god-killing sword at his waist, a newly tamed Chaos core in his chest, and an arrogant, mysterious noble girl trailing behind him like a stubborn shadow.
'My luck,' Alden thought, a dark, cynical smirk curling beneath his mask. 'Truly supreme.'