The Snow Wood Monster
KRRRRRRR!
Overhead, a roar rolled through the passage like the entire cliff tearing loose at once.
I watched the red dots on the board—dots that had been multiplying one by one—bleed together into a single unbroken field. Panic could wait. I shot mana threads out and cinched them around Perry's waist, then wrapped hundreds more around my own body until they held me fast.
"Wh-what—?"
I met his thoroughly rattled stare.
"This is going to be fast."
A razor-edged root punched through the ceiling and dropped. The threads yanked Perry clear, and the root sheared past by a hair.
BOOM!
Shattered rock sprayed in every direction. The color drained from Perry's face.
"Wh-what the hell is—!"
I didn't answer. I moved. The threads I'd already cast ahead seized a jut of stone and hauled both of us at once. My feet left the ground, and my body shot forward.
I'd never meant to sprint that uneven floor on foot in the first place. A mage's gift leans toward mana control, not raw physical ability, and for getting out of a passage fast, mana threads would always win.
Shhk!
A flame orb shaped to a blade's edge sheared through a root. I punched back through the spray of burning ash, retracing the path we'd come at speed.
KRA-KOOM!
Thunder rolled at my back. I didn't have a second to look. The way was open, but the board was already drowned in red. Nowhere was safe.
In a crisis my head goes strangely calm. Only one answer surfaced.
Running was the losing play. Mana might be infinite. Mental strength is not. Trade blows with the roots, and I'd die miserably in this passage.
"We're going for the cavern."
I said it like a vow and hauled hard on the threads. My body whipped forward. A root lunging for the back of my skull fell away behind me, and I caught a condensed flame orb in the threads and flung it back.
KRA-KOOM!
Flame Burst, cast with the full expectation that the passage would collapse. Under that hideous force, every root chasing us burst apart.
Fwoosh!
"AAAAAH!"
A root speared in from the front, a blink from punching through Perry's forehead—then his body dropped straight down. The threads seized the root and tore it apart. The shredded thing tumbled across the floor.
"......"
We'd lived. Barely. The situation was still rotten.
Squirm, squirm, squirm!
Hundreds of plant roots packed the passage leading into the cavern. Too soon to give up. I gauged the distance left and drew mana to the limit.
Maybe this was the only chance I'd get.
Fwoosh!
Dozens of fireballs rose into the air. More than forty flame orbs rushed our line of retreat all at once. I drove the fire filling the passage with Crimson Flame, shoving it hard, and I didn't stop there. I thrust the mana threads straight ahead.
They followed the blaze and clamped onto the outer edge of the passage. A root from behind was a heartbeat from piercing my back when the threads hurled me bodily clear.
CRASH!
I tumbled hard across the rock. Through the spinning blur of my vision, a faint wash of pure white light caught. Snowstone.
We'd made it out of the passage and into the cavern.
"W-what in the world just happened!?"
"Ngh..."
I pushed myself up slowly and looked back. The passage we'd barely escaped was vomiting roots—thousands of them, tangled together, spilling out into the cavern.
I looked at Lee Chan.
"A giant plant has completely overrun the upper cave."
"...What?"
"No time to explain. Get ready to fight—"
RRRRUMBLE...!
The cliff studded with Snowstone shook violently, a quake so immense it felt as if the whole cave would come down any second. The Altheon crew screamed and collapsed where they stood. The workbenches they'd set up shattered like dry kindling. At the same time, the upper face of the cliff began to crack apart.
Crack!
Fissures spiderwebbed outward, swelled in an instant, and the entire cliff gave way.
Rrrumble...!
Then it collapsed completely.
"Oh... oh God...!"
"What is that...?!"
The people staring into the newly exposed interior cried out in horror. A tree white as snow. A trunk so vast there was no way to even guess its thickness.
...Damn it.
An overwhelming presence—enough to make perfect sense of why the whole board had gone red.
Drrrrrr...!
I couldn't see them, but hundreds of roots were already racing through the earth toward us. No time.
I turned and fixed my eyes on Workshop Master Lee Joo-ha. A trembling voice forced its way past his lips.
"It's a Snow Wood Monster...! A thing that feeds on the cold and grows. They're found now and then around Snowstone, but... I've never even heard of one on this scale...!"
Snow Wood Monster. I remembered it from the Association archives.
"It parasitizes ore the same as any other plant that feeds on mana-rich minerals, and it needs extreme cold and a heavy supply of mana behind it. But its lifespan is supposed to be extremely short—everyone knows it can't survive for long...!"
Listening to him, the situation slowly came into focus. I nodded.
"You're right."
"...What?"
"You're right, Workshop Master. It couldn't survive for long. Not if it were alive."
A colossal wood-monster had packed solid a cliff some sixty-five feet high. It had claimed half the vast cavern as its domain. I'd already burned well over a hundred of its roots, and still it reached for us as if that meant nothing at all.
A thing that had thrown off every constraint a living creature is bound by.
There was only one reason that was possible.
I hadn't felt it from the roots at the extremities. On the trunk that had smashed through the cliff, though, it was unmistakable—the black aura that appears only on the undead.
A Death Core.
"There's a Death Core in the trunk. Cutting the roots down won't mean a thing. We have to smash the stem up on the cliff."
But how?
Roots pouring out of the passage kept widening their territory, blocking the way ahead, and unseen roots had already seized the ground beneath us. I had to admit it. This was, without question, the Snow Wood Monster's domain. We were the intruders.
That didn't mean I could give up. Maybe if this were those last eight years—the miserable ones. Not now. I'd only just crawled out of that pitch-black dark. I wasn't going to lie down and quit.
Even with the suffocating feeling of running a tunnel that had no exit, a mage's reason kept hunting for a way through.
"Lee Chan."
Now that I'd accepted this was its territory, I wouldn't get more than one attempt. One strike to neutralize it and end this.
When he came over, Lee Chan's face was corpse-pale.
"Wh... what do we do, Mage?"
He hadn't lost his head, but fear filled his expression. I told him, flat.
"If I fail, we all die anyway. So don't freeze. Listen."
Dozens of flame orbs rose into the air. Not Flame Burst, which dumps overwhelming firepower in a single instant—this was a way to burn the air itself and hold the enemy off for even a little longer.
"While I finish the spell, keep me alive."
I looked him straight in the eye.
"Whatever it takes."
The flame orbs shot forward, and the taut balance broke. Hundreds of roots writhed and charged them. Fire burst outward and became a towering wall of flame, melting the roots down.
I immediately wrapped myself in mana threads and rose into the air.
"Underfoot! Don't fall back—protect the Mage!"
KRRRUMBLE!
The shock of something erupting beneath my feet came with Lee Chan's shout. I didn't focus on it. I scattered my senses instead.
If the security team couldn't buy time, we died. If I couldn't bring the monster down, we died just the same. I had to do the one thing I could, and do it clean.
FWOOOOSH!
Flame Burst's condensed fire rose into the empty air. I pushed the size up, and heat sucked inward like something gone mad. Mana refilled in a blink. Mental strength did not. Inside my skull, the line went wire-tight.
The strain of a mind about to snap closed in on me, and I didn't stop. I endured a mana drain so immense my whole body locked, and I forced the flame in anyway.
I couldn't stop. If there was even a sliver of a chance, I had to trust myself and push.
When had any of this ever been easy?
"GRAAAAAAH!"
A scream tore out of my mouth. I ignored it, opened my eyes, seized a flame orb easily a meter across, and hurled it past the wall of fire as that wall began to fail.
KRA-KOOM!
A crimson blaze filled my vision with the roar. An explosion vast enough to end the world. Destruction on a completely different scale from what I'd watched from above the gorge.
Just looking at it stole my breath. My whole body went numb. My mind went white.
Could I really control that fire?
"...Let's try."
I closed my eyes and sank into the sense of it. I'd come this far. There was nowhere left to retreat. With Crimson Flame I caught the raging blaze—fire that looked ready to blow the entire cavern apart.
Impossible.
The flame trampled my will and surged in like a tidal wave. At this rate I'd burn to death before the Snow Wood Monster did.
"Damn it."
I narrowed the range. If I couldn't control the whole blaze, then at least steer it clear of the people—
BANG!
A huge impact rang inside my skull. My head went blank. Something warm ran from my nose, and the smell of blood filled my mouth in an instant. Instead of grimacing, I lifted the corner of my mouth.
Good news, if anything. The fire that had refused the bridle had answered me for the first time.
RRRRUMBLE...!
By some miracle the blaze sheared past me and the Awakeners. Heat that could have melted flesh scraped by, and instead of pain a thrill rang through my whole body.
The fire was following my will.
I'd had it completely wrong from the start. Not control—open a path. Let that enormous power run wild on its own. That was the true essence of Crimson Flame. A fact no one had ever told me. I'd found it myself.
KRA-KOOM!
The heat packing the cavern burst along the path I'd opened. A chaotic explosion took on life at my will and found a shape. In a moment the enormous flame became a beast's forepaw and slammed the cliff.
BOOOOM!
The Snow Wood Monster's scream, its Death Core struck, rang out deafeningly. Countless roots flew at the flame and scattered as nothing but powder.
Too late, the roots that had finally registered me instead of the fire came rushing in. A second enormous forepaw followed and smashed the half-burst Death Core. This was no simple flame.
White holy light erupted from inside the fire, blanketing the black aura in a blinding flash.
BOOOOM!
This time there wasn't even a scream. The Death Core was utterly destroyed. The black aura collapsed in an instant, and the roots went limp. The board, dyed red, turned black all at once.
A monster that had drunk the Crystal Cave's condensed mana and been reborn, even after death, as a thing with a will. It had finally drawn its last breath.
"......"
I opened my eyes. A single razor root had stopped dead, right in front of my pupil. Thankfully, it didn't move.
Success.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Blood pattered from my chin, and then the strength ran out of my whole body.
Was I falling, or was the cavern floor rushing up? In that instant, someone's arms caught me.
A voice mumbled something, for a moment. Then a deep darkness came down over my eyes.
© Domhwangcha#1ylk2