Chapter 517: The Ice Fairy (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 517: The Ice Fairy (2)
Just because I had mastered the martial arts of extreme yang and achieved immunity to cold and heat didn't mean I was completely impervious to the cold.
Case in point.
Shiver—
Blood dripping from the tips of sharp icicles stained the greenhouse floor red.
Trapped in ice, wearing a thorny collar of icicles like some medieval prisoner, I shivered uncontrollably.
...This feels like déjà vu.
The feeling in my hands and feet was fading, but I couldn't voice a single complaint.
The Tower Lord’s glare was filled with a killing intent more intense than any I had ever seen.
Was this what it meant to reach the state where one's killing intent alone could inflict injury?
The sheer murderous aura she projected felt like it could give me internal injuries.
“What... did you just dare to say?”
Rumble—
Ultimately, a mage’s magic is influenced by their emotions.
The Tower Lord’s voice was thick with raw fury, and her magic, swirling in the air, was more violent than ever.
The entire greenhouse began to shake as if it would collapse at any moment.
Any ordinary mage would have suffered internal damage and fainted just from standing nearby.
The only silver lining was that the Tower Lord hadn't completely lost her grip on reason.
The proof was that the plants in the greenhouse were largely unharmed.
Am I actually going to die here...?
But that was a separate issue. The fact remained that the Tower Lord's rage was directed squarely at me.
Worse, the chill from the ice prison was seeping into my body. At this rate, I was going to freeze to death.
Even if I resisted with all my might, escaping this ice prison right now was impossible.
I was completely at her mercy.
But the moment she killed me, she would truly have no other choice but to rely on Belmoras.
That must be why she was hesitating, her expression a mess of conflict, as if her head were about to explode.
She was desperate to cling to even the slimmest sliver of hope.
“Tower Lord.”
“I did not give you permission to speak!”
The moment I opened my mouth, the Tower Lord’s face contorted in rage.
But I pressed on.
“The symptoms of the Demonic Flower vary depending on the demon who cast the curse. Your daughter grows weaker by the day because the demon’s flame is slowly eating away at the yin energy in her body. You’ve tried to replenish that energy with elixirs, or conversely, to suppress the flame by infusing her with extreme yang energy, but...”
I trailed off, meeting the Tower Lord’s gaze.
“Surely you know that’s like pouring water into a bottomless jar? What’s needed now is to eliminate the root cause, not to provide life-prolonging treatment where she’s cooped up in a room, just barely surviving day by day.”
“I know that!!”
CRUMBLE—!!!!!
As the Tower Lord’s emotions reached their limit, the natural mana in the area began to flow violently in reverse.
I swallowed the blood that rose in my throat.
The shock seemed to have severed some of my magic circuits.
“But there’s no other way...!!” the Tower Lord muttered, running her hands through her hair as if to torment herself with her own powerlessness.
“No. There is a way.”
“That again?! What in the world does removing the root cause have to do with you and my daughter having se—”
Her tirade, which she had been spewing while glaring at me murderously, suddenly stopped. She took a deep breath and began to suppress her emotions.
The atmosphere changed completely.
But this sudden shift sent a cold sweat trickling down my spine.
It was clear she had almost killed me without realizing it, only barely managing to stop herself.
“...What does removing the root cause have to do with you having sexual intercourse with my daughter?”
I could tell just from the slight tremor in her voice.
How much she was holding back.
I forced a relaxed expression and continued.
This was the most critical moment—the turning point that would determine whether I could save my own life and the Tower Lord’s daughter.
“You are already aware that the curse has nested in your daughter’s uterus. You must also know that to remove it, a more direct form of contact is necessary.”
“Ha! Do you seriously think that’s possible? That you can erase a demon’s curse with such a vulgar act?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the Tower Lord with confident eyes.
“I know that for the past twenty-three years, you have researched the Demonic Flower more desperately than anyone. You must have at least a vague idea of how to break the curse.”
A woman’s uterus is the part of the human body with the highest magic resistance.
Normally, it should be unaffected by curses, but who knows what price the demon paid to successfully place a curse there.
There was a reason why the great Archmage, the Tower Lord herself, had failed to break it for twenty-three years.
High magic resistance also meant resistance to external treatment.
“A hysterectomy via surgical procedure. That was the only method you found, wasn't it?”
Removing the part of the body where the source of a curse resides was a time-honored method of dispelling them.
But those who cast curses weren't fools.
They usually cursed vital organs like the brain or the heart.
The uterus was a truly unusual case.
“I understand. It was a choice you could never make.”
To remove her daughter’s uterus to save her life?
It was something no one could bear while sane.
Even if it meant becoming a pawn for demon worshipers, even if it meant surrendering her own soul to a demon, she wanted her child to live a normal life.
“But you must have already guessed that those Belmoras bastards have no intention of keeping their promise, haven't you? At this rate, you’ll just be used and discarded.”
Slump.
The Tower Lord finally broke.
Her hair was a mess, her eyes had lost their light, and her magic fluctuated erratically.
I could only imagine the immense mental pressure she was under.
But as someone who was practically an orphan, I found it difficult to truly understand the heart of a parent who had to watch their child grow weaker day by day for twenty-three long years.
Fwoosh—!!
At that moment, the Black Flame and the extreme yang energy I had been condensing in my body since being trapped in the ice prison finally merged into one.
As I said before, with my current skills, escaping the ice prison the Tower Lord had created was impossible.
But in a situation like this, where the Tower Lord was mentally cornered and the flow of her magic was unstable, if I were to burn all my magic power and internal energy as fuel—
Sizzzzzzle—!!
I could create an opening just big enough for me to slip through.
“I don’t usually repeat myself, but for you, Tower Lord, I’ll make an exception.”
I knelt on one knee before her and extended my hand.
“No matter what, I will save your daughter. So please, don’t worry and leave her to me.”
*
The first time I met the Tower Lord’s daughter and checked her pulse, I was quite taken aback.
Her entire body’s meridians were filled with pure yin energy.
For a moment, I thought she might possess the legendary Extreme Yin Physique, but it didn't take long for me to realize I was mistaken.
“An Ice Fairy...?”
“Yes.”
After somehow getting the situation under control, I was checking on the Spirit Tree when the Tower Lord told me a few things about her race.
“There is likely no one who knows about us. My daughter Anastasia and I are the only Ice Fairies left on Earth.”
“Anastasia? Is that your daughter’s name?”
The Tower Lord slowly nodded.
“Our race originated from the Ice Spirit King, who descended upon this land tens of thousands of years ago. It is thanks to his blood that my daughter has been able to resist the demon’s curse for so long.”
Hearing her words, I tilted my head.
A Spirit King.
According to what Iris had told me, Spirit Kings were transcendent beings, practically gods.
Naturally, they resided only in the spirit realm, and their descents into the mortal world were extremely rare.
“Can spirits get pregnant?”
“Ordinary spirits cannot. I can only surmise it was possible because he was a Spirit King. In any case, there are two main ways we procreate. One is through normal pregnancy and childbirth, like other races. The other is by hatching an ice crystal.”
“An ice crystal?”
“It is a sacred grace bestowed by the Spirit King for our race, once every few hundred years.”
The Tower Lord added that in the northernmost part of Siberia, there was a rugged mountain range where blizzards raged year-round, and somewhere within it lay their race’s holy land.
Not only ordinary people but even ferocious magical beasts could not approach it. The Ice Fairies would visit it once every few decades to perform a sacred ritual.
And when the Tower Lord, once the sole survivor of her race, visited the holy land alone to perform the ritual, the Spirit King had bestowed upon her an ice crystal.
“The hearts of our people are made of ice. By taking a piece of it and letting it inhabit the crystal, one can see a child with whom they are deeply connected mentally. Anastasia was born that way.”
“Uh... is there a particular reason you have to have children that way?”
“Because there are those among us who cannot conceive through the first method.”
“...You mean they’re infertile?”
“No. The partner cannot withstand it.”
Sitting on the bench, the Tower Lord continued, a somewhat bitter expression on her face.
“Only female children are born to our race. Among them, there are occasionally children like me who inherit a particularly strong concentration of the Spirit King’s blood. We possess a cold so intense that an ordinary human cannot endure it. The partner freezes to death during intercourse.”
“Does IVF not work either?”
“They say the sperm freezes upon meeting the egg.”
“...”
“It is so that we, too, can have heirs that the Spirit King grants us the ice crystals.”
It wasn't a pleasant story, and the mood sank slightly.
...If Iris heard this, her eyes would sparkle, and she’d bombard the Tower Lord with all sorts of questions.
After all, this was a race that might have inherited the bloodline of a Spirit King.
For an Elementalist like Iris, there could be no more stimulating research topic.
“For your information, Anastasia was born with even greater qualities than I. You might very well freeze to death during the act. Will you still do it?”
“Of course.”
Pat, pat, pat.
After patting down the soil where the Spirit Tree was planted, I stood up, a confident look on my face.
“When it comes to this, I’m more of an expert than you are, Tower Lord.”
Twitch.
“And you say that like it’s something to be proud of?!”
“?!!”
In that instant, dozens of icicles materialized in the air and shot toward me in unison.
I threw myself out of the way in a panic.
I barely managed to dodge the attack by rolling across the floor.
Seeing this, the Tower Lord clenched her fists and trembled with rage.
Fortunately, she just scowled and sighed, not launching another spell like before.
“Haa... To think I have to entrust my daughter to a philanderer like him...”
Glancing at her cautiously, I quickly fled the greenhouse.
If I stuck around, I was bound to get hit again.