And Then Everyone Froze

Up we went, Sre's wings beating as we climbed into the sky.

The colossal white body stretched out below me, too vast to take in at a glance, and beside it I could see the stream chat dissolving into absolute chaos. I glanced over it once, then turned my attention to Sgaredo, or what was left of her. An empty shell now.

The soul had certainly made it across. All that remained in that thing was the husk.

Given time, or another one of those strange special circumstances like before, the residual action-instincts left in the body would kick in and it would move again…

GRROOOOAAARRR!

KRA-KAKAKAKAKA!

"Ugh…"

"Fall back."

What remained in that thing was no more than the dregs of a fragment. A consciousness birthed by a fragment that the System had roused awake. And that fragment belonged to a Demon King.

Twist. I spun the spear in my hand.

Divinity funneled into a single point, and the frost dragon's mana began, little by little, to push back against the brutal chill right in front of me.

A low keening rumbled through the blizzard. The silent spear within the storm moved.

"The subjugation begins now."

The white spear hurtled toward the monster.

At Lily's signal, the subjugation force that had been lying in wait crashed into the Snowy Mountain.

The opening act belonged to the Rank 70 magician, a wielder of ferocious flames. As guildmaster of the Magic Society, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he twirled a single card between his fingers, and a suit revealed itself.

Seven of Hearts.

"Not bad."

Fwoooosh!

Scarlet flames erupted from the card, canceling out the mountain's extreme cold and planting a fire buff of precisely "Seven of Hearts" into everyone around him. Until they reached the summit, the bitter cold would be no enemy of theirs at all.

"It's st-still freezing?"

"Huh?"

"Hey! Your buff's running out!"

"Shut it! It's because I leveled up! It'll hold for another twenty minutes at least!"

With the Magician's buff trailing behind them, the rankers who could move from the start began scaling the mountain at speed.

"Opening is mine, then."

The Dual Ranger — Rank 589, one of Black Moon's elites — drew back his bowstring, and a second bow materialized beside him and drew its own string in perfect unison.

PA-PA-PANG! PA-PANG!

Two arrows punched through the blizzard and struck Sgaredo dead-on.

The problem was that she took no damage whatsoever.

And yet the Dual Ranger just grinned.

"Boom."

WHUUUUM!!!!

An explosion tore through the frost dragon's colossal body.

Attribute infusion. As a Dual Ranger, he could imbue his arrows with elemental properties. The arrows he'd just loosed were coated in "Inferno Boom," an enchantment commissioned from the Grand Magus Ahn.

Forty gold per arrow. Eight hundred thousand won in real money, each shot…

Grrrrrr…

"Huh?"

Eight hundred thousand won apiece, and beyond a light scorch mark, they'd done precisely nothing. These were arrows capable of one-shotting even a Level 70 field boss if you hit the right vitals…

Just as his confidence began to crumble, his leader — the man wielding the black greatsword — came alongside him.

"Hey. Stop rationing those. Just fire."

"…Boss. You do know those are 800,000 won apiece, right?"

Black Moon might be one of the top guilds, but that didn't mean its members could burn 800,000-won arrows like water. Normally arrows like these were saved for finishing blows or targeting weak points.

But Vlack simply let his black aura bleed out, indifferent.

"That's why I said fire. Everything you've got. Spent or not."

Because I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠get the feeling we won't survive if we hoard them.

"I'm ready."

Waiting beside the ranger was a priest who served the World Tree. The unofficial ranker known as Now let green light flare from his hands, and through the white-shrouded mountain, blue-tinged leaves began to surge upward.

KWA-DEUDEUDEUK!

A colossal tree erupted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from behind Sgaredo. Its branches wound around the dragon's massive frame, and the rankers, seizing the gaps the moment they opened, unleashed their signature skills one after another.

None of it dealt serious damage, but the attacks landed as genuinely effective hits. Blazing arrows spread the scorching further, and razor-sharp killing intent carved out thin rivulets of blood.

Vlack drew on every ounce of his power, and as he did, Lily's words surfaced in his mind.

'Once I'm done with what I need to do, Sgaredo will become even stronger. Fighting her properly then will be all but impossible.'

'But there will be a chance. One single moment, while I'm holding her gaze.'

Less than a minute — the sliver of time while he hovered in the sky, dragging the dragon's eyes toward his spear. That window was…

'Now!'

GUUURRRUNG…!

The sky darkened, and the black moonlight of the Black Destroyer seethed with gathered power. Every scrap of strength he possessed, condensed into a single technique.

'Moon Cleaver.'

The strike that split the very moon came down upon Sgaredo.

…And then, everyone froze.

Fsssahhh…

The deep cold swept past my body. I drew a slow breath through my slightly sluggish frame.

It stung. No — it was colder than that.

Even for an angel, who barely registers temperature differences, this was a searing, biting chill that made itself unmistakably felt. I wrapped divinity around myself like a cloak. That volcano-hot divinity blanketed my body and, as if proudly announcing who its master was, drove the cold out — and my sluggish frame returned to normal.

"You're okay?"

"Mm-hm."

Sre, still perfectly fine despite this vicious chill. Well, that made sense — she wielded the same deep cold herself, so cold was the one thing she couldn't feel.

"Huuuuu…" — though the howling blizzard did seem to bother her a little.

Absolute Zero, hm. Terrifying stuff.

Cold of this caliber fell just shy of Sgaredo's glaciers from her prime. By an angel's standards, you might call it a lower-rank angel in the middle of a growth spurt. Of course, against one who had awakened their innate authority, it wouldn't even be a contest — but for a fledgling who'd mastered nothing, the numbers lined up convincingly.

"She won't be able to use it more than a few times."

Crrrick. I gripped the spear again and fixed my gaze on the monster. Cold on this scale wasn't something she could unleash in that incomplete state through her own strength. It was only possible because the Demon King's fragment was channeling power indirectly, dragged out by the System. No matter how ancient a dragon she was, if she kept drawing on demonic power like that, she would freeze solid and become nothing but a lump of ice.

"Sre."

"Uuu!"

FWA-AANG!

Sre shot forward at blistering speed. Perhaps because the size difference between them was so absurd, it looked like a moth flitting around a mountain. As we closed the distance, I wrenched the spear into a twist, pouring in far more divinity than before. More. More still.

The twisted spear blazed pure white and split into many strands — no, into dozens. Spear-waves bloomed like petals, unfolding outward from Sre and me in a vast sweep, painting a single image across the storm.

Dozens of spears, forming pure white petals. Those petals gathering into one immaculate white flower. And that unspeakably beautiful flower simply swallowed the monster whole.

GRROOOOAAARRR!

Hundreds of spears plunged into the monster's flesh. Leaving the creature to howl behind us, I committed the sight to memory through slowly dimming eyes.

The Flower of Spears.

A technique I'd created by warping the Spear of Division. They said it was made by a high-ranking angel who loved flowers…

"I'll teach it to you, sure, but it's a technique with no real foundation. Honestly — these young ones chase nothing but style, and this sort of wasteful extravagance is exactly what…"

"Then why are you teaching it to me?"

"…Because."

It's a useful technique when you need to hold someone's attention, that much is true.

The Flower of Spears was, exactly as that old angel had grumbled, an extravagantly wasteful technique. It demanded several times more divinity and stamina than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠any other skill of comparable power, so an immediate wave of exhaustion hit me and I collapsed face-down across Sre's back.

Sre bolted out of the mountain as if on the verge of tears, and with that, the first raid ended in failure.

Leaving behind that one small achievement: 13%.

"I wouldn't say the results were terrible, at least…"

"…You think so?"

"Yep!"

And now I lay sprawled in a lavish room, watching Yena peel an apple beside my bed.

"Hnnnngh… it's coooold…" Beside her, a bear-sized dragon slept under the bed, muttering in her sleep. The sleep-talking was bad — clearly she'd been worried sick.

I stroked her head with a hand far smaller than it used to be.

"By the numbers alone," I said, "thirteen percent off a world boss in one raid isn't bad. Purely mathematically, eight more runs would clear it."

The deadline had been extended to 100 days, so there was breathing room, too.

But contrary to my words, Yena's expression had gone a little dark.

"That's the problem, nyaa. You shaved off almost 11% of it all by yourself, Miss Lily."

"Still, everyone else landed a fair amount too, didn't they?"

"Vlack said he personally got 2%, which means everyone else combined managed 1%. Realistically, this is unc-clearable without you, Miss Lily."

Leo hadn't even entered the fight yet, and everyone else had been wiped out by Absolute Zero. Aside from Vlack, I was the only one who'd dealt meaningful damage — and even I had dropped flat the moment I used a single technique. Looking at the situation alone, it was fairly bleak.

"And there's another problem."