CHAPTER 333: CREEPY ICE TUNNEL

"Ma’am, we found remains—hundreds of them. Drakenar corpses, most at advanced stages of decay. Whatever hit them... wasn’t ordinary magic."

Cecilia walked forward with her cloak brushing across scorched ground. She stopped at a crater that was nearly fifty meters wide with whitish edges.

Her eyes narrowed. "This is another epicenter of the confrontation."

The officers exchanged glances.

Everyone had heard the stories. A first-year S ranked student—Victor Revenant—fighting alongside Elyra Vorn and hundreds of other students after they were pulled into this forbidden sector by a runic anomaly. Outnumbered by the Drakenar legion, surrounded, nearly wiped out... and yet, they’d survived. Barely.

But what they were seeing now... went beyond survival.

"This isn’t a battlefield," one muttered with a tone of awe creeping into his voice. "This is annihilation."

They continued deeper into the ruins. Torn banners bearing Drakenar sigils hung limply from broken spires. Blood had long since dried to a dark crust on the walls.

"Ma’am!" another officer called, waving her over. He was standing near a curvy spire split cleanly in half. At its base lay a massive reptilian humanoid skeleton with black horns.

Cecilia crouched, placing a hand over the remains.

A faint glow appearead around her finger tips as she scanned for mana residue. "Dense bone structure... mana residue is high. This wss no doubt a higher ranked Drakenar. Above foot soldiers by at least three levels," she murmured. "Not something students should be able to face."

Her gaze hardened as the squad exchanged uneasy looks.

"You mean that... kid really did all this?" one asked.

She didn’t answer.

The longer they combed through the ruins, the clearer it became... this entire region bore the fingerprints of an intense battle.

Charred craters, trails of scorched earth, Patches of the ground still vibrating from spatial compression.

Everywhere they turned, there was evidence of Victor’s battle.

And yet...

No trace of him.

Hours passed. Samples were collected, reports filed. Every few minutes, bodies upon bodies of decaying Drakenars were found littered across the place.

"Ma’am, you might want to see this."

Cecilia turned toward a group of officers gathered near a massive wall of stone fused with glass. Embedded in the center was a blackened human-sized remains.

"It’s human," the officer said. "Academy uniform fragments confirm it belonged to a student."

The air grew heavy. This was even more confirmation that this was the location.

It was quite disappointing, confirming the deaths of the students who lost their lives here.

For a moment, there was silence and then some of the officers began gathering up the human corpses.

"At the very least, they should be brought back home..." one of them muttered.

After a while, one of the younger defense mages, voiced out. "The battles... the bodies... it is 100% confirmed that this is the place... but... where are the rest of them? Surely Victor Revenant didn’t kill every single Drakenar, if not there would be thousands upon thousands of corpses here... so where did the others go?"

Cecilia’s expression darkened. "There are no living Drakenar here."

"None, ma’am," another officer confirmed. "We’ve scouted every direction within a five-kilometer radius. Hundreds of bodies, yes—but no survivors. No live mana signatures. It’s like... they vanished."

"Could it be that Revenant killed them all?" one officer asked hesitantly.

Cecilia glanced toward the horizon, where the ashen-red sky met the blackened ridges. Her eyes narrowed. "No. With an elite Drakenar Region such as this, there would be at least tens of thousands Drakenars living here. There are only hundreds of corpses, not thousands. There’s something else at play here."

The squad continued their work, scanning, cataloguing, piecing together fragments of the impossible.

"Legendary Mage Thorn!"

A breathless officer ran toward her while clutching a mana pad glowing with results. "We’ve completed the biochemical tests on all recovered blood samples across the region from both corpses and surface splatter."

Cecilia took the pad. Her eyes flicked across the data. Most were Drakenar and a very few percentage were humans as expected but one line stopped her dead in her tracks.

Sample ID #8821 — Human. Matched 99.9% with Victor Revenant. Status: No corresponding body recovered.

Cecilia exhaled slowly, lowering the pad.

Around her, the officers waited as the wind howled.

"So," she voiced slowly, "there’s no corpse."

"No, ma’am. None."

Her lips curved into the faintest smile. "Then there’s a chance."

The officers exchanged glances.

"A chance that he might still be alive?"

Cecilia’s gaze drifted toward the ruined horizon, where the remains of a Drakenar fortress stood silhouetted against the dying sun.

"That kid is quite the fighter. From the moment I met him... I knew he wasn’t the type to go down easily," she said. "If he’s out there... its only a matter of time before we find him."

...

...

Victor trudged through the white expanse with his boots sinking deep into the snow with every step.

Despite the continous activation of frost bloom, he could still feel a bit of the biting cold.

The little spaces he left in a few parts of his body, made his steps stiffer than usual. His breath came out in visible clouds, scattering in the cold like fading ghosts.

He had been traveling for an entire day now and the terrain refused to show him mercy.

Frost-covered cliffs towered above him like colossal giants and deep crevices cut across the ground, hidden beneath deceptive layers of snow. The further he went, the more lifeless the world around him appeared... yet he knew better. Beneath this deceptive stillness lurked predators born from the cold.

"Brilliant idea, Victor," his voice came out in a muffle beneath the frost. "Absolutely genius. ’Oh, I’ll just take the western path to the icy unknowns, I’m sure it’s the only way to salvation’ Next thing you know, I’m halfway through a frozen hellscape."

His grumbling voice faded into the wind. He sighed and looked down at his trembling hand. The faint blue glow of Frost Bloom Palm trailed along his fingers.

The frost energy encased his entire body like a crystalline suit and remained his only defense against the bitter cold that tried to devour the warmth in his body.

Even then, it drained him.

Every minute it was active, his qi seeped away like leaking water.

He pressed a hand to his chest and felt the uneven rhythm of his qi circulation. The reserves were running dangerously low, and there was no way to recharge.

He exhaled, watching the mist curl away.

"I might eventually end up as beast food," he muttered while glancing at the sky, where snowflakes drifted lazily. "Should be easy for them. Find some poor fool, eat him, go to sleep. Efficient system. Only in this case, I am the poor fool..."

Still, his pace didn’t falter. He couldn’t stop... not until he found that lake.

So far, Victor hadn’t even seen a puddle.

As he walked, the terrain changed again. The path sloped upward sharply, forcing him to climb along uneven rock ledges. His boots scraped against ice, and more than once he had to jab his sword into the frozen wall to keep from sliding off.

When he finally pulled himself to the top, he took a deep breath and froze.

Down below, scattered across the valley, was carnage.

Dark blood was splattered across broken mounds of ice. Enormous claw marks scarred the landscape.

The remains of beasts that were as large as houses lay torn apart, half-devoured.

The scene was... primal.

Victor crouched low behind a ice boulder. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the area.

A massive whitish serpentine beast with wings was gnawing on the carcass of another creature.

However, there were multiple other creatures around.

Victor realized how bad it would be if any of them spotted him.

He was about to turn back when a thought flickered through his mind.

These creatures... they hunt, they fight, they eat. But they also need water.

Every living thing did.

If he wanted to find the water source he spotted when using astral projection hidden somewhere in this tundra... these beasts would know where it was.

Victor’s lips curved into a grin. "Well, look at me being all genius again."

Victor eyes remained locked on the serpentine creature with wings. That was going to be his guide.

Slowly, Victor began tailing it.

The serpentine winged beast roared, shoving away a smaller beast that tried to steal a bite, then lumbered toward the northern slope.

Its heavy paws crunched the snow as it trudged uphill, sniffing the air occasionally.

After a while, the beast leapt into the air with the carcass in between its teeth.

The sound of flapping wings rang out as it sped across the sky.

Fortunately, it wasn’t moving very quickly due to the baggage it was carrying.

Victor followed silently, keeping his distance.

Every few minutes, he used Wind Glide to leap across crevices or climb icy ridges without making noise. His breath came in shallow, measured bursts. The freezing air stabbed at his lungs, but he endured.

After what felt like an hour, the serpentine winged creature finally slowed and descended.

It raised its head, sniffed again, and let out a growl. Then, it proceeded to lumber through a narrow crevice between two glaciers and vanished.

Victor hesitated. "Oh sure, creepy icy tunnel, totally not dangerous."

He sighed and followed anyway.

The passage was narrow and dark, but a faint light glowed ahead. He quickened his pace while pressing one hand to the frozen wall for balance.

When he emerged from the tunnel, his eyes widened.