An Unworthy Sacrifice
The middle-aged man spoke with feverish intensity to the Ice King, who had apparently taken Cha Seok-jun’s earlier words to heart and was now discussing Yu Seongjin while looking straight at them. “They aren’t even worth comparing to Yu Seongjin! How could anyone possibly compare that man to these pathetic creatures who nitpick every little thing, terrified they won’t even be able to handle a single monster?”
“Wow. He’s really outing his own lack of logic, isn’t he?”
“Shut your mouth! I am the apostle of God! I cannot be compared to useless hunters like you who can’t even fulfill their proper roles!”
Lee Jun had spoken in disbelief, and for a brief moment Mina wore a thoroughly fed-up expression. The man who had been groveling and begging them for help only moments ago was now standing tall behind the Ice King, shouting with complete confidence.
Crunch. The Ice King, who had been sitting quietly on a chair seemingly carved from ice and radiating a bone-chilling cold, slowly rose to his feet. Mina reflexively pulled up her mana and formed a sword in her grip.
“I don’t particularly like the sound of that.”
The Ice King only spared her a brief glance before turning his attention away entirely. He looked down at the middle-aged man standing nearby and spoke as though the woman before him were beneath notice. It was utter, one-sided disregard, yet instead of anger Mina felt only relief and broke into a cold sweat.
“D-did I do something wrong?”
Though he wasn’t as distracted as he had appeared in the video, the Ice King was still unmistakably gigantic compared to a human. Simply comparing heights with the man who called himself an apostle, he looked at least twice as tall. If the cave hadn’t been unnaturally wide, even stooping would have been insufficient.
“Did you truly intend to offer me something so trivial as a sacrifice meant to be dedicated to me?”
The middle-aged man’s face drained of all color as he realized his mistake.
“That’s not what I—”
“If not, then what? Is that how you’ve viewed every sacrifice until now?”
“N-no, of course not! It was my own shortsightedness! This sacrifice is a hunter who possesses mana, so I thought she might be of help to our Lord!”
He panicked, throwing himself to the ground and begging for forgiveness.
“His talent for chewing out subordinates is first-rate!”
“Is now really the time to be impressed?!”
Mina shouted at Lee Jun, who sounded genuinely admiring. At last the Ice King’s red gaze turned toward them.
“Still, this once I have no choice but to offer praise.”
At those words Mina froze solid.
“I had assumed that if every sacrifice so far had been of that quality, recovering my strength would take quite some time. But with this one… I should be able to regain a considerable amount of power.”
Because that gaze was unmistakably fixed on her.
“T-then… may I withdraw now?”
“Yes. You still need to manage the village, after all.”
At the Ice King’s light wave of the hand, the middle-aged man scrambled past them through the half-revealed entrance and fled. They might have tried to slip out in the same moment, but they could not. The Ice King had already stretched out one crystalline, transparent hand as though to seize them.
“Come to me! Become the sacrifice that will prepare me for the day I fight that detestable woman’s contractor once more!”
He had merely made a reaching gesture, yet Mina’s legs locked in place as if they had frozen to the floor. It was the exact sensation of a frog freezing before a snake, unable to flee no matter how desperately it wished to.
But as the silence stretched on, she began to wonder why nothing was happening.
“What is this? Why is my interference… hm?”
The Ice King seemed to share her confusion. He tilted his head, then looked down as though he had realized something. Mina followed his gaze to his feet and finally understood.
A strange rope was wrapped tightly around the Ice King’s foot—a foot as clear and transparent as carved crystal.
“Ice Bear. The meter?”
Seok-jun’s low voice asked.
“No abnormalities.”
Lee Jun’s answer came immediately. Mina’s eyes widened as she remembered exactly what Seok-jun’s mana could do. When she checked the meter again, its needle sat perfectly on F as though it had never moved at all.
—BANG BANG BANG!!—
“You think you can face me with toys like that!”
The moment Seok-jun opened fire, the Ice King swung his hand. A threatening whoosh tore through the air as the bullets were either snatched out of flight or bounced off without leaving so much as a scratch. Yet even to Mina the movement looked noticeably slow.
“Mina.”
She met a pair of murky teal eyes.
“Now.”
Without wasting a second on thought, Mina kicked off the ground.
Crack! Frozen earth exploded outward from the impact as her body shot forward like a bullet toward the Ice King. The instant she spotted the transparent hand swinging toward her, she brought her sword up to meet it.
—CLANG!—
“Ugh?!”
The Ice King’s arm collided with her blade, sending a clear ringing note throughout the cave. But the result was nothing like what had happened with the bullets.
Crack!
The transparent arm that had met Mina’s sword dented inward and crumbled slightly. The Ice King’s red eyes flashed with shock. Feeling a rush of wind from below, Mina kicked off his arm and leaped backward.
Whoosh!
The impact that followed shook the cave, revealing that his foot had slammed into the spot where she had been standing only a heartbeat earlier.
“Did you think I would miss?!”
He refused to let the momentum die. Just like her, he kicked off the ground, reaching out to seize the retreating Mina.
—BANG! BANG!—
“Hm?!”
The rapid shots would have blinded the Ice King if they hadn’t. His lens-like eyes suffered neither crack nor shatter despite being struck, but the momentary obstruction was enough. Mina slipped free of the transparent grasp.
Clatter…
The Ice King paused. He brushed the bullets from his eyes, caught them in his palm, and examined them. A quiet sound escaped him. At first Mina thought it was simply a sigh.
Then his voice drifted through the cave, low and calm.
“You… did you form a contract with the King of the Abyss?”
He was no longer looking at Mina. His red gaze had shifted to the owner of the rope still bound around his ankle—Seok-jun.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Seok-jun answered with an innocent tone, Winchester rifle already leveled.
“Don’t play dumb! The power that severed my interference can only belong to the one who swallows the world itself!”
His voice rose to a roar.
“How in the world did you form a contract with him? There is no possible way he would stoop to the same deeds as those detestable creatures…!”
The Ice King’s voice cut off. Silence swallowed the cavern.
Mina could have used that opening, but she could not move. She had been searching for a gap since the fight began and had found none worth exploiting. Moreover, from the moment his words stopped, the Ice King’s entire presence had changed. She dared not charge in recklessly.
“Kuk… kuhahahahahahaha!”
The silence shattered beneath a sudden explosion of laughter.
“I see. I was mistaken for a moment. None of you carry even a trace of my scent.”
His voice had grown calm again. He studied each of them in turn, as though truly seeing them for the first time.
“What a shame. Such a terrible shame. To think I would meet someone like you in a body that is not at its full strength.”
It truly was regrettable beyond words.
“Still, I will not complain.”
—BOOM!—
He slammed his foot down with all his might. The transparent ice floor split wide open with a deafening crack. The Ice King thrust his hand into the fissure.
“As I thought. I cannot catch it.”
Goosebumps raced across Mina’s skin. He had shattered the floor in an attempt to seize the rope Seok-jun had created. It seemed he could not grasp it for some reason, which was fortunate, but that relief lasted only a moment.
“Even if this form is that of a defeated and disgracefully fallen being, it remains my body.”
What he pulled from the ice was not the rope of Seok-jun’s mana. Instead he drew out a large, crudely fashioned sword. Yet its color was the same transparent blue as the Ice King’s own body, sculpted like living crystal. Its beauty far outweighed its roughness.
“Then I shall simply fight with all my strength using this vessel!”
The moment the sword swept toward them, the beautiful crystalline blade transformed into something closer to a giant guillotine. At the same swing, dozens—hundreds—of sharp, transparent shards sprayed toward them like deadly hail.
Mina’s instincts screamed that she must not be struck. She instantly created a wide greatsword and used it to shield herself, but then she remembered Seok-jun.
“Seok-jun!”
“Do you have the luxury to worry about someone else?”
“Kyaa?!”
A tremendous impact slammed into the greatsword she had raised. The force tore it from her hands and sent it flying until it embedded itself in the cave wall. When she looked up, a crystalline giant was staring down at her with red lens-like eyes.
“First I must use you as a sacrifice to restore my strength.”
The crystalline sword swung down toward her. The shield-sword was gone, but she still had the one she had prepared earlier. She swung it up to meet the blow, yet she knew in her heart she could not stop it. The opponent was a giant easily twice her size; the sword he wielded was terrifyingly massive. Still, she could not simply give up. The instant their blades met—
—BANG!—
“Tsk!”
The bullets struck the Ice King’s eyes once more, but he ignored them and continued his swing. He had already seen his sword descending toward Mina; he clearly believed the outcome was decided.
That was the moment she doubted her own eyes.
The instant her blade met the Ice King’s, something else collided with both weapons and stopped the attack cold.
—CLANG!!—
“Hm?!”
The Ice King noticed the anomaly and brushed the bullets from his eyes.
“I thought you were simply standing still because you were no different from the rest. So you had a hidden card after all?”
He looked at Lee Jun—who had blocked the blow alongside Mina—and laughed with clear delight.
“That does not appear to be the proper use of a weapon.”
The Ice King’s observation was entirely fair. What Lee Jun had used to stop the attack along with Mina’s sword was, after all, bright pink.
“Yet it stopped my blade. It must contain special power, or perhaps it was forged by a master. You people grow more interesting by the moment. What is the name of that weapon?”
“Well, that’s…”
Mina hesitated, unsure how to explain while the Ice King continued lavishing praise. The shape looked strangely familiar. She could describe it if pressed, but it was somehow different from the one she remembered.
“Cardcaptor Yuuki. Hand-Chopping Edition.”
Seok-jun’s voice answered for her. She was genuinely relieved he was unharmed, but—
“When did those two do a collab without me knowing?!”
Mina shouted, completely forgetting their dire situation. Because the object Lee Jun had swung to block the Ice King’s sword was the magic wand from that cartoon she had watched as a little girl. Only instead of the star she remembered, a card bearing a dark crimson vortex spun inside a diamond shape.
“That’s because it’s a cheap counterfeit they sold at the stationery store.”
“A counterfeit? This is fake? If a fake can do this much, I am truly curious what the real one could accomplish!”
If you ever found out, it would definitely cause a huge problem!
Mina felt her head spin at the unmistakable interest in the Ice King’s voice.