“I’m against it,” I stated firmly.

  Ragnar nodded and turned to Elfina. “That’s two against one, priestess. We’re taking the longer route.”

  Elfina took a deep breath, her expression unwavering.

  “The route mapped out by Mr. Ragnar will have us skirt around the edge of the forest, but that will take at least four days. Since we don’t know how long it will take to find the Guardian, it’s better to head straight for the trace. There’s no wildlife or fruit here — we could run out of supplies before we even see the Guardian.”

  “But taking the longer route lets us avoid one of the most dangerous areas,” Ragnar countered. “The forest isn’t just the Fiend Forger’s lairs; it’s also filled with strange magic that confuses our sense of direction. Before you know it, you will end up back where you started. That could waste even more time.”

  Elfina’s response was immediate. “That would be true if we didn’t have this.”

  She held up the golden tree branch Thnari had given us.

  Ragnar shook his head. “I’ve already explained its limitations. That branch only grows more leaves as we get closer to a trace. It’s useless as a compass.”

  “There is a way,” Elfina said, her voice resolute.

  Ragnar paused, sensing her certainty. “Can you explain?”

  Elfina met his gaze. “As a priestess, I can do things that humans, and even most Frost Elves, can't. Please watch.”

  Holding the tree branch in her hands, she closed her eyes and began to hum. The sound was clear and beautiful — a bright tune that carried the grace of a singing bird in spring.

  *Ding

  [Harmony has been activated.]

  A soft glow enveloped Elfina as the branch in her hands began to react. Golden light coursed along it, and a single leaf sprouted. The faint hum seemed to resonate with the environment around us, almost as if the world itself was responding to her call.

  The moment felt sacred. Even Ragnar closed his eyes to appreciate the tune.

  When Elfina opened her eyes, the only leaf on the branch stretched out and pointed firmly in one direction, like the arrow of a compass.

  “This,” she said, “is how we’ll navigate through the forest without losing our way. As long as I maintain Harmony, the branch will guide us directly to the Guardian’s trace.”

  “Fascinating,” Ragnar murmured.

  “Interesting,” I said at the same time.

  Elfina held the branch close to her chest, nodding at us with a triumphant smile. She even let out a soft, pleased hum. I had several questions brewing in my mind about what she had just done, but now wasn’t the time.

  “That’s one problem taken care of,” Ragnar said, rubbing his chin. “But what about the Fiend Forger’s lairs? That’s still a major obstacle.”

  “We can use your relic,” Elfina suggested.

  Ragnar shook his head immediately. “It won’t work. Unlike the Abyss Crawlers that rely on sight and sound, the Fiend Forgers can sense life force. The relic can’t hide that. Walking into their lairs would be no different than throwing a fresh piece of meat to a pack of starving Hell Hounds.”

  Elfina frowned, her brows knitting together as she considered his words. She proposed a few more ideas, but none of them satisfied Ragnar, whose responses grew shorter with each suggestion.

  “Professor, I have a question,” I interjected.

  “Yes, what is it?” Ragnar replied.

  “How are the Fiend Forgers still alive when there’s no life force here for them to feed on? The Abyss Crawlers don’t have life force, and there aren’t any large animals or monsters around, either.”

  “They aren’t,” Ragnar answered curtly, as though the explanation was self-evident.

  “I see.” I nodded. It was a logical assumption, but I wanted to confirm.

  Elfina’s eyes widened slightly as realization struck. “...They’re frozen?” she asked hesitantly.

  “That’s right,” Ragnar said with a sigh.

  “Then why are they so dangerous?”

  “The Fiend Forgers become agitated whenever anyone gets close to them. Their frozen state isn’t permanent — it’s more like dormancy, like the one inside the barrier. But these ones, when disturbed, they thaw quickly. If we’re unlucky, we might end up walking right over a group of them without even noticing until it’s too late.”

  Ragnar leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as if the memories weighed heavily on him. “We lost too many people to those fiends... Their surprise attacks when they broke out from the ice caught us off guard too many times.”

  Something about his words tugged at the edges of my thoughts, piecing together a realization I didn’t want to face. If my hypothesis was correct, we were in far deeper trouble than we imagined.

  “The Fiend Forgers and Abyss Crawlers were frozen by a Guardian when he froze this sea, right?” I asked, looking between Ragnar and Elfina.

  “That’s right,” they answered in unison.

  “Then doesn’t the fact that random fiends can break out of the ice and the number of Crawlers is steadily increasing mean that... whatever Skill or magic the Guardian used is losing its effect?”

  My words hung in the air, heavily. Elfina’s complexion paled as the implications sank in.

  The Guardian wasn’t here, and his power — the force that had kept these creatures contained for so long — was failing. If his Skill was weakening, the only logical conclusion was that the Guardian himself was slowly dying.

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  And with his death?

  The ice would shatter, releasing countless Fiend Forgers and Abyss Crawlers. The System had already summarized the result: a flood heading south.

  It wasn’t just a disaster waiting to happen — it was the potential spark of a new world war.

  “…That is indeed bad,” Ragnar muttered, standing abruptly. “We’ve rested enough. Time to move.”

  Elfina looked at him, her voice tinged with hesitation. “Does that mean…?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed, his tone resolute. “We’re taking the shortest route. We’re going through the forest.”

  *****

  As the blizzard subsided, we ventured out of the shack, making our way toward the forest.

  From a distance, it resembled any other willow forest. But the closer we got, the more I realized something was different.

  The “trees” weren’t trees. They were towering pillars of black rock, shaped like trees. Their twisted forms stretched upward, cloaked in thick, elongated shrubs that clung to the tops of the stone as if they were leaves, creating the illusion of foliage.

  The ground beneath our feet was soft and slippery, making each step a battle. Every movement felt unstable, as if the earth itself shifted beneath us. Then I noticed a faint, rhythmic vibration coursing through the ground.

  “Undercurrents,” I muttered, stopping mid-step.

  Ragnar turned, his expression grim. “You feel it too?”

  I nodded. We were walking atop a frozen riverbed, but not all of it was solid. The soundless rush of water flowed beneath us, hidden but menacing, waiting for us to make a single misstep.

  I swept away a thin layer of snow beneath my feet to reveal the ground.

  We were walking on a frozen riverbed composed of two distinct layers: the upper layer, thick ice that encased the Fiend Forgers, and the lower layer, a flowing river where fish still swam freely.

  The sight was almost serene. A deceptive serenity.

  If the Fiend Forgers woke up, the ground beneath us would shatter, sending us plunging into the icy depths of the river. It wasn’t just dangerous — it was fatal.

  This place just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?

  Fortunately, the rock forest provided some relief. Its jagged formations acted as a fragmented wall, blocking parts of the blizzard from hitting us directly. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.

  We pressed forward, letting the leaf on Elfina’s branch guide us. Sometimes, it pointed unwaveringly toward the snowless mountain. Other times, it seemed to shift erratically — left, right, even behind us. At first, I doubted its reliability and wanted to whip out my minimap, but that was proven to be unnecessary.

  “Stop,” Ragnar said sharply, thrusting his arm in front of Elfina to halt her — and, by extension, me, since I was behind her.

  “Do you sense that?” he asked, his voice low and tense.

  Elfina and Ragnar immediately extended their Mana Waves, scanning the surroundings. I sent out my Qi to do the same, letting it ripple outward in search of anything unusual.

  Yet there was nothing — no energy signatures, no magical disturbances, no lurking threats.

  “Odd,” Ragnar murmured after a moment, his brow furrowed. “Maybe my nerves are getting the better of me.”

  He exhaled and motioned for us to continue. “Let’s keep moving.”

  As we trudged forward, the wind began to subside, but the air grew colder and an unnatural chill sank deep into our bones. Somehow, the temperature felt even lower than when the blizzard was raging. The biting cold clung to us, sapping our strength.

  My teeth chattered uncontrollably, and every step became more laborious. My fingers had stiffened, and my breath, now a visible mist, seemed to freeze in the air before dissipating.

  “Something’s wrong,” Elfina muttered. Her voice was raspy, strained, and tinged with unease. Even she — despite her natural resistance to the cold — was visibly struggling. Beads of frost clung to her hair, and her breath hung in the air like a ghostly veil.

  The deeper we went, the more oppressive the cold became. It wasn’t just the weather. Something else was at work here. That something held no malice toward us, it simply existed.

  As we continued forward, the branch in Elfina’s hands trembled slightly. Suddenly, a tingling sensation washed over me, as if we had just crossed an invisible barrier. I turned my head, scanning the snow-covered forest surrounding us.

  But all I saw were the same tree-like rocks and swirling snow.

  I couldn’t sense a large concentration of Mana or an abundance of Runes — indicators of a formation.

  The only abnormality, and the most concerning one, was the leaf on Elfina’s branch.

  It had been guiding us steadily, but now it was spinning wildly, like a compass needle caught in a magnetic field. The branch was our compass, and the leaf its needle, but whatever we had just entered had completely disrupted it.

  We had been traveling for hours on a relatively clear path, but now it felt like we’d stumbled into something deadly.

  “It’s one of those disorientation spells I warned you about,” Ragnar said, pulling a flat metal disk from his pack. He activated the numerous Heat Runes inscribed on it, warming us as the bitter cold pressed in. “Don’t move carelessly. We’ll lose our way.”

  “Priestess, where should we go?” Ragnar asked, turning toward Elfina.

  But she didn’t respond immediately. Her eyes were closed, her grip on the tree branch tightening as she communicated with it.

  We stopped, waiting for her. Once the leaf stabilized, we would continue toward our destination.

  At least, that was the plan. Suddenly, a massive rumble shattered the quiet, followed by the piercing sound of cracking ice.

  My senses flared as I detected tens of Fiend Forgers smashing through the ice beneath us. Rumbling growls echoed below, the ground trembling slightly under the weight of their movements.

  “Elfina, which way?” I asked, my voice sharp as the enemies closed in with every passing second.

  “Give me a few more minutes,” she replied quickly, her tone strained. Beads of sweat dripped from her forehead, falling onto the spinning leaf.

  I took a deep breath and checked my status.

  The timer on [Full Body Restoration] was ticking down.

  ===============

  Name: Karl Xanderson

  Race: Human

  Level: 18 (91%)

  Class: Otherworldly Demon

  Class Skills:

  1st Branch – Qi Control:

  | Plundering Qi – Level 7

  General Skills:

  | World Walker’s Comprehension – Level 6

  | Four Directional Protectors Arts – Level 4

  | Rune Crafting – Level 5

  Status Effect:

  | Void Heart (Permanent)

  | Full body restoration (1 day 16 hours 43 minutes 09 seconds)

  Inventory (4/10):

  | Image Keeper x1

  | Image Caster x1

  | Recording Crystal x2

  | Isolation World Tree’s Leaf x1

  ===============

  Still enough time to fight our way out of this mess. The question is: should I?

  “We need to buy some time,” Ragnar said as he pulled a thin book, about a hundred pages thick, from his backpack. The book's cover was brown, adorned with intricate alchemical diagrams drawn in yellow ink. The book’s edges were framed with the same ink, and each corner featured alchemical symbols. The pages’ edges were worn and tattered, much like his tundra map.

  Once he opened it, pre-carved Runes glowed faintly, ready to be activated.

  “Here,” he said, taking out two small tubes filled with a transparent liquid.

  At first glance, I would’ve thought it was water, except carrying such a small amount in test tubes didn’t make much sense.

  He tossed one to me.

  “Thank you. What is it, professor?” I asked, catching the tube mid-air.

  “It’s a potion I brewed to enhance Mana usage efficiency,” he explained, popping the cork off his tube and drinking it down in one go.

  Following his example, I opened mine and drank it as well.

  *Ding

  [You have consumed an enhancing potion. Your Qi usage efficiency is greatly boosted]

  A slight smile tugged at my lips. Well, would you look at that, a way to minimize my Qi consumption.

  The icy ground beneath us cracked. Long, dark claws shot up from below, tearing through the surface. Snow exploded into the air as large bodies, once frozen beneath the ice, emerged one by one.

  These Fiend Forgers were different from the ones I’d seen at the barrier. Patches of obsidian-black skin covered their distorted forms, and their most grotesque feature was their identical mutation — massive hands with elongated, sharp claws that scraped against the icy rock with a grating sound.

  Parasitic Demonic Qi swirled in their eyes like black vortexes, eerily similar to the Abyss Crawlers.

  One, two, three… fifteen, sixteen. Too many. And we are surrounded.

  The creatures opened their mouths, revealing rows of jagged, pointed teeth, and let out ear-piercing shrieks before lunging at us like rabid dogs.