The Journey to the Empire – Part 3
The ominous din closed in from just ahead.
I sprinted toward the bonfire the instant I registered the emergency, boots pounding the frozen ground.
Parr-parr-parr—! Swarms of snakes followed, kicking up clouds of dust behind me.
My heart hammered like war drums.
The panicked crowd thrashed wildly, snatching at anything—swords, branches, fists—to drive the serpents back.
“What the hell is going on?!”
“Where the hell did all these things even come from?!”
“Aaaah! It bit my leg!”
The deep midnight silence shattered into a storm of screams and clashing steel. Only a few among the refugees carried proper weapons; the rest swung burning branches or hacked at thick logs with makeshift clubs.
The snakes were weak. A single well-placed strike dropped the first ones in seconds, but their numbers multiplied faster than anyone could kill them.
“This is… crazy…”
I stood frozen, staring at the sea of black scales that completely blanketed the ground. No path remained. The writhing mass looked like the ocean itself in a storm.
“It’s the Snake God…! Sent by the Snake God! We’re all dead now!”
The despair in that man’s voice triggered the thought immediately.
They were small, but unmistakably the Snake God’s minions. The lesser spirits or vassals of the true god. I’d heard the name—“little black snakes”—in some of the game’s lore. These weren’t the main creature itself, and definitely not its core manifestation.
A few of the serpents leaped straight at me.
Their target was my neck. I whipped a freezing breath across the air and scattered them.
This was dangerous.
Quickly scanning the chaos, I saw no sign of the Snake God itself. Still, that was no comfort. If the main body hadn’t come, these lesser ones alone could finish us off.
At that moment, something unseen sliced through the snakes’ necks. Anasha’s voice rang out.
“Everyone! Form a circle around the bonfire! I’ll set up a formation!”
She had been rattled a second ago, but composure returned instantly. The calm in her voice made the crowd instinctively follow her lead.
Smart move.
Snakes had terrible vision. They relied on vibration and heat. Darkness was their natural home.
Humans, on the other hand, needed light. Lose it and we were finished in an instant.
Fighting in the brightest spot possible gave us the best chance, and the fire already had most animals fleeing in terror.
“Mister Quillere! I saw you use absolute freeze just now. Were you a mage?”
Anasha shouted urgently from right beside me.
She had slipped in unnoticed.
“…Yeah.”
“Thank goodness. One combatant is worth its weight in gold right now…! Please support me!”
Her confident tone left no room for refusal. I followed without a word.
Anasha was truly skilled. Her chant speed, spell power, and mana control all outstripped mine. She was the one carrying the battle, and I backed her up with cold breath.
Whoosh—! The wind again parted the snakes’ necks.
She pointed her wand forward.
“It has to be the Snake God’s doing, right?”
“Probably.”
“They launched the pursuit the second we left the city. What an awful god.”
Indeed.
Even during game play I had hunted lesser gods, but the Snake God’s cruelty in Uristia had been on another level. It felt… wrong. Like the game itself had been corrupted.
Only now escaping the city and already sending this many vassals. As if they meant to wipe out every last human still inside.
“Anasha! The numbers… Aaaah!”
We had plenty of able-bodied refugees, but the snakes’ numbers were infinite. Every time we cut one down, three more took its place.
Dark shadows crossed Anasha’s face.
These little black snakes weren’t dangerous in single combat. Their defenses were weak, their bite almost harmless, and they didn’t even have venom. The only way to kill them was to keep ripping them apart.
But… if they formed a horde, the story changed completely.
Even their low killing power turned into pure terror when backed by numbers. We would rather die than die slowly in endless agony.
Screee—! Aaaah—!
The battlefield rang with screams of pure revulsion.
The noise pounded my eardrums until my head throbbed.
The first thing that came to mind was the special mage skill I had created—Transmutation.
If I used it, I could just run away.
“Everyone hold on! Don’t fall!”
Inside my chest something coiled like a black snake.
Originally I wasn’t supposed to be in this world, in this kind of danger. The game had forcibly dropped me here, and this treatment was too much.
For more than a year I had lived alone in that empty land, rotting away with boredom and monotony.
It was only natural that I would want a little excitement. So I left the continent and immediately ran into this mess.
Then what the hell was I supposed to do?
Live the rest of my life in that pure white paradise? Or did my Snow Woman character even have a natural death setting?
Quillere as I had made her wasn’t supposed to be a living being at all—not even a mental construct.
The surroundings were a hell.
The refugees were slowly dying, surrounded by vicious black snakes.
Blood trickled from raw wounds. The bleeding spread. Soon every inch of skin would be torn open.
“It… was the Snake God.”
The one who had thrown me into this world was some kind of deity, wasn’t it? The hatred burned hot.
How could such powerful beings casually ruin someone else’s life?
And why did they push me into this uncomfortable moral crossroads? People had to survive.
That was true. But I already knew every one of their faces, every voice. If things kept like this, they would all meet different ends. What if I alone kept scraping through existence? Would I ever be able to forget this moment?
It would haunt me forever.
Maybe someone would call me an idiot, but I wasn’t that strong. I was just an ordinary citizen.
“Mister Quillere?”
My shoulders tensed. Anger boiled up.
The moment my support stopped, Anasha turned to me. My eyes must have been blazing with fury.
“Disgusting.”
“What?”
“Gods.”
She stared at me in stunned silence. I scanned the battlefield.
Most were ordinary civilians. I had assumed we’d be enough with me and Anasha, but I was wrong.
There was one more.
A calm woman with short purple hair. Sigilla, she called herself. She had tied a rapier to a sturdy branch and now used it like a spear.
Even in this dire situation she remained perfectly composed. She cleaved through snakes with surgical precision, never missing once despite the sheer number. One swing took down several.
The skill and mindset behind that… I had never seen anything like it. She was clearly no ordinary person.
Curiosity burned, but allies were allies. The stronger, the better.
A small laugh escaped me.
I might not show it on the surface, but it didn’t matter.
“Hey, you…”
Everyone else fought with everything they had. Yet I was sitting here thinking about running away.
I was just an ordinary citizen with no options.
Transmutation gave me a chance. While the form lasted I could move outside the snakes’ range. But would that actually save me?
The black sea stretched endlessly. I didn’t know how far it went. And Transmutation drained mana like crazy. If I ran out mid-flight, I’d fall. Even if I escaped, the snakes would keep chasing. Could I fight them while mana was gone?
That gamble was too risky. There had to be a safer, cleaner, better way that let everyone live.
“Truly stupid…”
Only a moment’s thought was enough to figure it out.
Yet panic had frozen my brain.
I was supposed to be clever, witty, famous for my ideas. How had I become this idiotic?
A self-deprecating laugh slipped out.
Only yesterday I had been trying to figure out how to defeat the Snake God. I hadn’t found the necessary item, but if the god itself was missing…
These vassals were nothing a single person couldn’t handle with raw power.
“Aaaah! Help me!”
Then a wail more pitiful than anything before tore through the night.
Someone had fallen. Black snakes swarmed over his entire body.
“Damn…! Mister Quillere! Quick, help…!”
The situation was life-or-death. I couldn’t watch someone die in front of me, so I lifted my hand.
Mana surged from my outstretched palm.
At the same moment, snow began to fall.
Crystal flakes and snowballs swirled in a graceful dance. What had been gentle snow soon turned into a raging blizzard.
…Anyone who knew would understand—snakes are cold-blooded animals.
And cold-blooded creatures are extremely sensitive to temperature changes. Unlike warm-blooded mammals, they have no constant body-heat system, so even small shifts in air or water temperature disrupt their lives.
Plus, these were lesser gods—normal animals that had mutated after touching divine power. The flaw was obvious.
The weakness that stood out most was the side effect: they couldn’t handle extreme cold.
Normally overwhelming power would solve everything, but I could. In fact, I was literally their natural enemy.
So the blind spot beyond their weakness…
The black waves froze solid.
“This… what the… Mister Quillere, are you…?”
Anasha muttered in disbelief.
“…Wait… isn’t it summer right now…?”
Sigilla’s voice trembled with shock.
Their reactions were so perfect that I laughed out loud.
Exactly as expected.
The Snow Woman’s ultimate magic—Blizzard.
I had created it purely for dramatic effect from the beginning. It was one of my signature spells.
A violent gale summoned endless snowfall that swept the entire battlefield.
But there was one problem.
I had expected this exact issue. The massive mana cost of Blizzard was nothing compared to the real problem.
I couldn’t even control the ice crystals with absolute freeze. How could I possibly manage a full blizzard?
The mana inside me surged wildly.
Instead of stopping it, I accelerated the flow. To wipe out so many snakes, I couldn’t spare a single drop of mana.
Mana began to vanish in a rush.
The mana circuit felt like a broken truck engine, lurching wildly.
For the first time in forever, my body felt transparent.
I watched my own hand as it grew see-through, then looked up.
The world was pure white.
…Anasha Sheril stared at the scene in a daze.
She had been a mage tutor for the Griant family. Not some average mage, but a true elite who had received real respect.
She had even formed a close bond with the duke’s young daughter through their lessons.
The duke’s over-attachment to his late-born daughter had been the root of everything. After Anasha accidentally nicked the girl’s hand during a lesson, she was dismissed.
It had been an absurdly harsh judgment.
The duke already had a genius son whose name had earned him the title “Sword Duke.” What kind of monster had he planned to create with his precious second daughter?
Losing her job hadn’t been the end of the world. She had saved enough money, and she had always dreamed of traveling the continent. After wandering for years, she finally settled in Uristia.
A small but peaceful city.
Until the Snake God appeared out of nowhere.
Suddenly the harmony they had enjoyed for years collapsed in a single day. Many soldiers who had bravely fought back on that first night died.
She had some battle experience, but that only made the impossible harder.
She had known she couldn’t win alone. So she had asked for help from the Empire.
Her casual remark to me—“Even if you suggest hunting the Snake God, there’s no hope”—had been nothing but a joke. She had been determined to find any way to get help.
Yes, Quillere.
The moment Anasha first saw me, she had thought her eyes were playing tricks. She was simply too beautiful. A perfect goddess from myth. If she had been an ordinary woman I might have felt jealous, but I had passed that threshold long ago.
That was why she had struck up a conversation.
Quillere was cold and blunt, almost like she hated everyone. At first glance she seemed to hate the world itself.
Deep down, Anasha had wanted to ask what had happened to her, but she didn’t. The cold attitude felt like a character rather than a real person. Before long Quillere had isolated herself from the group.
Anasha had worried about her and stayed close, keeping watch.
…And this was how the current disaster had begun.
The black snake horde had attacked, and she had only just realized the woman beside her was a mage. A rare ice-attribute expert.
Until that moment she had thought she was just an outstanding mage. Then…
Snow began to fall.
The blizzard intensified.
In the center stood a woman in a white sobok, her hair the color of cold blue-white.
Anasha stared at her in utter shock.
A memory flashed before her eyes.
-Can we actually catch it?
The casual joke she had thrown at the terrifying Snake God—Quillere had answered as if discussing the weather.
Was she really serious? Had that been the truth, without a single ounce of exaggeration?
Unconsciously, Anasha took a step back.
She had seemed so close. Then suddenly she was worlds away. She had missed the one tiny opportunity to dodge the falling snow.
She slipped.
Shhhwaaa—!
The blizzard still raged mercilessly.
The bonfire had long since died out in the freezing air. Anasha slowly lifted her head.
The sight before her eyes was breathtaking.
In the heart of the blizzard, a woman stood with perfect posture and an icy, elegant expression.
Beyond the snow-white robes, her skin was so transparent it looked like it belonged in a snow fairy tale.
…Stars were falling.
The blizzard summoned by the Snow Woman’s ultimate magic sweeps the battlefield.
Effect:Freezes all cold-blooded enemies solid.
Mana Cost:Extreme (continuous drain).