Thaw
Past the Root Stigmata, I combed through the other stigmata one by one.
"……"
A stigmata was a record — the crystallized result of everything its owner had ever done.
Lee Eunha's tree had her maximum roll distance, her vitality, her regeneration, all fully activated. But here, across this trail — the Valley of the Snowy Mountain — there wasn't even a trace of that kind of struggle.
Attack, attack. Attack again.
Not a single thread of a will to survive anywhere.
A life that had always chosen to kill first rather than live on.
A total-war doctrine that dumped every last point of firepower into the fight, with death assumed as the price of admission.
That extreme way of fighting was carved into this frozen mountain, plain as day.
"Hah."
It was almost laughable.
Even in a game, the moment your character starts dying on repeat, you burn out. And she'd been playing this way with her actual life on the line?
I shook my head.
"So a build path really can be this much of a dead end."
A blizzard sharp enough to flay skin.
Desperate screams carried on the wind.
From every peak along the range, a mournful murmur rose like a dirge.
"I'd rather tour a haunted house at night."
I forced one foot in front of the other. My leg sank into the snow with a crunch, and a cold that gnawed at the bone bored its way in. I gritted my teeth and pressed on, and slowly, more stigmata hidden behind the whiteout came into view.
All mana is stripped away; maximum life is amplified by 10%.
Spells consume life instead of mana.
"……So it wasn't just a lack of will to survive."
A golden-trimmed border. Proof that she had chosen this stigmata herself.
The cold damage ticking away from her Root Stigmata.
The life shaved off with every spell cast through Blood Magic.
Burning her own vitality like that, she'd walk herself straight into Low Life territory.
From that moment, Pain Attunement would amplify her damage, and Frozen Terminal would flash-freeze everything around her.
And at the very end, Last Incantation would crank her cast speed to its absolute limit.
After which she'd spam spells without pause until Death Deferral triggered.
"She's basically a bomber that detonates itself."
That was my honest assessment.
"Let's keep looking."
Laboriously shoving aside snow that came up to my waist, I surveyed the mountain again and again. By the time the cold had dulled not just my limbs but even my sense of time, I'd reached my conclusion.
"The build itself is exactly what I expected."
Every remaining stigmata was pure damage scaling. There wasn't another special mechanic to be found anywhere on the tree.
I threw my exhausted body onto the snowfield and sprawled out flat. Feeling the faint sting of sweat soaking through my clothes and freezing solid, I pulled a Shard of Regret from my pocket and closed my hand around it.
Crunch!
It felt like gravel shattering in my palm.
Consuming 1 Shard of Regret.
Reverting the Core Stigmata, 'Blood Magic'.
That instant.
Grrooonk—
Somewhere across the snowy mountain, a sound like ice splintering boomed out.
The raging blizzard held its breath for a moment.
And then, the golden stigmata that had stood tall at the peak's summit began, slowly, to crack like fractured glass.
Tkk. Tkkt-tkk!
The fissures of light spread wider and wider.
Until, at last—
Pshhk—!
With the sound of a mirror shattering, the stigmata burst apart into tens of thousands of ice fragments that scattered into the blizzard.
"……Wait, what? Can't I re-roll that?"
Every hair on my body stood on end. But before long—
Whoooosh—!
The blizzard howled back to life.
The scattered shards of ice drifted slowly back into place.
Only now, the stigmata that had blazed gold moments ago had turned a dull, lightless gray.
"Phew."
The frozen wind slackened, just for a breath, as if it had finally stopped to exhale.
And then I turned to face the exact opposite direction of the path Jung Hayul had carved for herself — an uncharted tract of the tree where the blizzard raged fiercest.
├─ Maximum Energy Shield +5%
├─ Maximum Energy Shield +10%
├─ Absorb 0.8% of spell damage as Energy Shield
├─ Energy Shield absorption rate +30%
└─ Energy Shield recharge rate +10%
Energy Shield. A stigmata that answered the problem of survival.
I closed my eyes for a moment and ran the numbers in my head.
"……Tsk."
With all of them active, she wouldn't drop into Death Deferral mid-combat anymore.
But outside of dungeons, the Root Stigmata would keep gnawing her life away all the same.
In daily life, the distance between death and death had merely stretched a little longer. She would still, in the end, have to keep dying.
This wasn't the answer Jung Hayul wanted.
"Well. Nothing I can do about it."
It was a stopgap measure — but right now, it was the best one available.
Every other stigmata on this tree was aggressively offensive. Since this could at least serve as a temporary fix, my choice was already made.
If I take the shield nodes…… she'll never hit Low Life mid-combat, so the nodes that only mattered there have to go.
I pulled another Shard of Regret from my pocket and closed my fist around it.
Crunch!
[Reverting 'Pain Attunement'.]
The blizzard eased, just slightly.
[Reverting 'Frozen Terminal'.]
The screams that had been threaded through the wind fell silent.
[Reverting 'Last Incantation'.]
The whispers that had echoed through the mountain range stopped.
With every node erased, this snowy mountain was changing.
"Incredible……"
It felt like repairing a broken life with my own two hands.
Next, the more marginal of her firepower stigmata came onto my operating table.
"Crit damage multiplier? You don't even have enough spell crit to trigger it — why did you spec into this?"
[Reverting 5 points of 'Crit Damage Multiplier +15%'.]
"Everything's melted before the chill even lands — what do you need increased chill effect for……"
[Reverting 3 points of 'Chill Effect +20%'.]
"Cold damage is just a flat increase, so this one…… oh, it's got freeze chance bundled in. Keeping that one. Cold resistance penetration, huh. Shame, but……"
[Reverting 3 points of 'Damage Penetrates 6% of Cold Resistance'.]
That left me with 24 points of unallocated stigmata.
Which also meant 24 of my Shards of Regret had gone up in smoke. Feeling how much lighter my pocket had gotten, I sank a little into gloom.
"Sigh. Eunha's going to have to grind hard."
With that small sigh, I began scattering the freed-up points across the uncharted territory of her tree.
Fash.
One gray, sleeping node was the first to light up.
Pat! Pa-pat—!
A constellation of stigmata strung along a crimson line. With each node that lit, the flesh-flaying cold eased back, just a sliver at a time.
Like a street on Christmas Eve, the dark corners of the frozen mountain began to glow, one light at a time.
Even as Jung Hayul placed her hopes on Kang Hyunwoo, part of her had been terrified of the result.
He was, admittedly, her only hope. She had tried every avenue conceivable, and the last person her search had led her to was him.
But that was precisely why a darker thought kept pressing in.
So many others shook their heads at me. What could this man possibly do differently?
The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment.
She had grown accustomed to pain that stretched back years. She had adapted to a life that used her suffering as fuel to freeze her enemies solid.
Believing all of that could change now — that would be the stranger delusion.
Perhaps I'm simply being greedy.
Jung Hayul quietly studied Kang Hyunwoo where he lay across her lap.
His eyes were closed, his breathing even.
The moment she herself had spoken the word "I agree," he had abruptly collapsed.
She couldn't very well leave him sprawled across the sofa like a discarded coat, so she had laid him across her knees instead.
"……A remarkable ability indeed, Your Honor."
Ever since she had chosen pain as the fuel for her spells, not a single drop of mana had flowed through her body. And yet, in that body, she could feel a faint warmth of mana stirring.
It was warm. That warmth stirred memories of heat she had long since forgotten.
How long had she been gazing down at him like that?
"……Your Honor?"
Suddenly, the warmth beneath her lap began cooling fast.
Through the fingertips she'd rested on his forehead, cold seeped in.
"Ugh…."
Kang Hyunwoo groaned.
"Your Honor!"
Her instincts screamed it. This was dangerous.
She had to wake him.
The instant she frantically shook his body—
Crack!
The frost coating Kang Hyunwoo's skin shattered into fine powder and scattered.
"No, no—"
It was unmistakable. The same symptoms Jung Hayul herself had suffered in the earliest days of her awakening.
It had never once occurred to her — that her curse could transfer to another person.
Jung Hayul's mind went blindingly white.
"Your Honor, you must wake up. Please!"
She hauled Kang Hyunwoo up into her arms. Without a second to register his weight, she rushed headlong for the bathroom.
She ran the tub full of hot water and lowered him into it.
The scalding water rose around his body.
The frost blanketing his skin began to melt away, slow and steady.
"……Thank goodness."
Just as she was about to let out a breath of relief—
Kzzt.
From the very spot that had thawed, white frost bloomed again.
The frost spread along Kang Hyunwoo's skin, and even the water in the tub began cooling with alarming speed.
"Ah……!"
The tub was freezing over. Starting with the water, the entire steam-filled bathroom was slowly turning into a walk-in freezer.
A bitter chill bored into Jung Hayul's fingertips. The vicious cold that had once devoured her own body was now gnawing at Kang Hyunwoo.
The exact moment guilt and terror closed a hand around her throat—
CRASH!
The sheet of ice across the tub's surface shattered violently outward.
"Puhaaah! God, damn it. I swear I nearly froze to death."
Kang Hyunwoo shot upright, water spraying in every direction. The chatter of his teeth rang through the bathroom.
"Y-Your Honor! Are you in your right mind?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. That headwind was brutal, though."
Shaking the water from his soaked hair, Kang Hyunwoo stared at her, panting.
"It's done. You've been running a life-drain keystone. Are you out of your mind?"
"How…… could you possibly know that?"
Her life-for-mana tradeoff was a sealed secret — within the guild, only the Guildmaster himself knew of it.
"I removed it. I've restructured your stigmata, so check your status and confirm."
"Restructured…… you say?"
The instant she echoed his words back—
Dding—
A status window unfurled before Jung Hayul's eyes. Not the usual teal she was accustomed to — the message gleamed gold.
The moment her entranced finger pressed [Y]—
Vmmm—
The vicious pain that had always coiled in the deepest chamber of her heart, piercing and tearing at her limbs, began to fade as though it had never been.
In place of the sensation of her blood vessels shattering with every spell she cast, a soft blue radiance of protection wrapped itself gently around Jung Hayul's body.
A feeling of peace she had never once known in her life.
"Ah……"
Between her faintly trembling lips, a soft breath of wonder slipped free.