The Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave
“Hmm. You, my boy, have far too many useless habits.”
The Pure White Knighthood’s training grounds.
I lay face-planted on the floor like a discarded rag.
“Ghk…”
That rotten uncle of a man, Rubellion, had beaten me black and blue without the slightest mercy.
I could see the strikes coming. I really could.
I just couldn’t stop them.
“Rather than adding more, you would do well to focus on stripping away the excess.”
“...Yes.”
I had a rough idea of what he meant.
I had rocketed up to four Cores and fourth Class at a breakneck pace, but I had never walked the proper, orthodox path of training to get there.
As the Third Imperial Princess, Seriel’s connections had been too thin to arrange proper private tutors for me. On top of that, I was a commoner of completely unknown origin.
So Seriel had simply taught me everything she herself had learned.
Her teaching style was pure injection-style Spartan training mixed with complete amateur hour. She would pick up whatever sounded vaguely plausible, dump it on me, and I would cram it into my head and body by any means necessary.
Usually by getting the living daylights beaten out of me.
After enough thrashings, the lessons sank in one by one. I would wake up the next morning fully recovered, my dantian and Cores growing thicker and stronger by the day.
I had always thought it was thanks to Seriel’s bizarre teaching methods…
Fuck. I was just a genius all along.
If I had been born into a proper noble house and received proper education, how smoothly would my path have been paved?
Ah, well. No point thinking about that now.
If Seriel hadn’t scooped me up off the street, I would have died right there as a five-year-old beggar. I was always grateful to her.
So I settled for a quiet inner sigh instead of actual resentment.
“...I believe I already told you.”
Clack.
Seriel set her teacup down with a sharp little sound.
When I came back to myself, I was standing behind her chair.
“If you have something to say, spit it out at once.”
The Jindo dog was about to be unleashed.
I denied it at top speed.
“Ah—no, Your Highness! Nothing at all!”
“...Truly?”
“Yes. I was just spacing out.”
“Spacing out?”
“I was briefly lost in thought…”
“While carrying out the weighty duty of being my personal escort, you were thinking of something else?”
“Ah.”
Somehow I had walked straight into a verbal landmine.
“A single stray thought from you is the same as handing an enemy one free chance to take my head. Do you still not understand that?”
“I am sorry.”
“...I will let it pass this once.”
“Thank you.”
I had just finished getting thoroughly wrecked by Rubellion. If I had taken another beating right now, I might actually have died. I patted my chest in relief and shoved the wandering thoughts aside.
“How was the instruction from the Commander of the Pure White Knighthood?”
“...It is new every single day.”
So this is another way I can get beaten.
Even when I block like this, I still get beaten.
I was making fresh discoveries of that sort every day.
“It seems you only ever come back covered in bruises. Is there any actual progress?”
“Yes.”
I answered instantly, though in truth I still felt completely lost.
Four Cores. The very entrance to Sword Master.
I had reached a realm where half the knights of the Empire stood beneath my feet, yet facing a six-Core knight left me feeling utterly pathetic.
If I said that out loud, though, I would definitely get hit again, so I kept the answer short.
“...I see.”
Seriel’s cute pink head nodded slowly.
Fortunately, I escaped without a beating today.
Another half year slipped by.
I turned nine. Seriel turned nineteen.
My height had grown until it reached her chin.
Rubellion’s private lessons remained truly, unspeakably vicious. The moment I lay down in bed, that distinctive laugh of his still echoed in my ears.
Even so, his teaching produced clear results.
Perhaps it was the Spartan method multiplied by even more Spartan method.
I succeeded in shedding most of the bad habits left over from my previous life.
I also stood on the very threshold of five Cores and fifth Class.
Every day of sparring against Rubellion had been hammering on the door of my fifth Core.
Growth of this magnitude at my age was said to be unprecedented.
“Ricarton.”
“...Yes.”
“What exactly did I do to make you flinch like that?”
“Ah—nothing, Your Highness.”
Seriel shot me a look of clear dissatisfaction and took a loud sip of her tea.
“Hm?”
“W-what is it, Your Highness?”
“Tsk…”
The sound of her tongue clicking made my whole body tremble.
Had she peered inside me? Had she already seen the breakthrough that was about to arrive?
No advance payments, Seriel! You always say you’ll hit me later and then hit me anyway!
“...It is bitter. Throw it out.”
“Ah—yes, ma’am.”
Thankfully I made it through another day without a beating.
The next day.
Under bright summer skies the maids prepared for an outing. After spending the entire winter cooped up inside the castle, Seriel had declared she was going stir-crazy and wanted to go outside.
Of course, even in summer this was still the North. The weather was roughly equivalent to midwinter in the central regions.
Seriel stepped out of the castle fully armed in heat-enchanted boots, a fur coat, and gloves.
“This is the place His Grace the Northern Grand Duke recommended.”
The escort knights set up a table and chairs on a hillside covered in fresh green flowers.
To the north a massive mountain range rose like a folding screen; to the south a stream burbled gently along.
Just sitting still and listening to the water and birdsong was enough to make one pleasantly drowsy.
Of course, I still had to stand behind Seriel.
“Ricarton.”
Suddenly she called my name.
“Yes.”
“...”
“...?”
She called me and then said nothing.
“Is something the matter, Your Highness?”
“I simply felt like calling you.”
“Just... that?”
“What, am I not allowed to call you for no reason?”
“That is not what I—never mind. It is nothing.”
Slurp—
Standing behind her, I could not see her expression.
First time for everything.
She had never just called my name for the sake of it before.
She must be bored out of her mind.
Well, stuck in this frozen wasteland, living as a guest in someone else’s territory—even a princess did not have many options. Her only leisure was reading books or drinking tea like this.
“Your Highness! Princess!”
Down the slope a knight in pure white armor came sprinting toward us in a panic.
“What is it?”
“Huff—huff—it has appeared! The entrance to the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave has opened!”
“Is that true?!”
Seriel shot to her feet.
“You must go at once, Your Highness!”
“Understood.”
The Pure White knight took the lead; Seriel and the rest of the knights followed close behind.
The Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave.
A cavern packed full of mana that had absorbed ten thousand years of glacial cold.
For an ice-attribute mage like Seriel, there was no better place to refine her dantian and circuits and gain new insight.
Its entrance revealed itself only one day a year—on the warmest day of midsummer.
So today was that day.
For Seriel, who had been stuck at fourth Class for nearly five years, this was an irreplaceable opportunity.
One of the main reasons we had lingered so long in the Northern Grand Duchy was precisely this cave.
Perhaps that was why Seriel’s steps as she ran looked so light.
“This is the place!”
A cave made entirely of ice. Inside it, a massive ice door stood wide open.
“Normally it is sealed by a door of ice, but for one day each year the door opens like this.”
A mage waiting in front of the entrance bowed his head as he spoke.
“As Your Highness already knows, from this point you must enter alone. The mana that has gathered inside over the past year must be delivered solely to Your Highness. Moreover, the cold within the cave is lethal to anyone who is not an ice-attribute mage. Those without resistance will not last even three minutes.”
“Very well. Wait here.”
“Yes.”
Seriel stripped off every piece of heat-enchanted gear and stepped inside barefoot, wearing only her red dress.
Tap. Tap. Tap—
Her figure vanished into the darkness, and soon even her footsteps faded away.
I kept staring at the spot where she had disappeared for a long time afterward.
“Even standing outside the door, the cold is this intense…”
The knights shivered as mana-laden wind drifted out from within.
“Mage, how long do you expect Her Highness to remain inside?”
“At the very least half a day. The mana within the cave is simply that vast.”
“Hmm. Then we can wait outside the tunnel in the meantime, yes? There should not be any magical beasts inside anyway.”
“The interior of the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave is an extreme environment where no magical beast can survive. As long as I stand guard here, no living creature that could threaten Her Highness will set foot inside.”
“Then we will trust you and wait outside. Call us if anything happens.”
With that the knight led the others out.
The mage looked at me, the only one left behind.
“...Will you not go as well, Sir Knight?”
“I will wait here. I have some ice affinity myself.”
“Ah. Then shall we chat for a while?”
“Gladly.”
We smiled and sat down on a nearby ice boulder.
He turned out to be a rather decent storyteller. Time slipped by as we exchanged various bits of idle talk.
“Hm?”
“What is it?”
Suddenly I felt a foreign mana from inside.
“There is something in there. Do you not feel it?”
“I sense nothing at all…”
The cold that had merely settled on my skin until now now stabbed into it like thorns.
“I am going in.”
“Wait—!”
Before the mage could stop me I plunged straight inside.
Seriel!
While running I projected my mana deep into the cave. The mana that stretched all the way to the end of the tunnel touched the central chamber and mapped the entire layout into my mind.
Seriel sat in the middle of the chamber.
And right in front of her, some alien presence snagged on my mana.
What the hell is that?
A height that easily exceeded three meters. A human-shaped outline so blurred it barely counted as human.
I realized what it was almost immediately.
“A ghost?”
A woman’s form floating in midair, radiating a soft blue light from her entire body. Long, slanted eyes with no visible pupils, and fluttering blue burial robes.
She looked exactly like a specter.
“It is a spirit.”
Seriel, still seated in the center of the chamber, corrected me.
I rushed over and caught her as she listed sideways.
“Your Highness! Are you all right?!”
“Kh… how did you get in here?”
“I sensed foreign mana. More importantly—your body!”
“I am fine. ...For now.”
Even as she spoke, half of Seriel’s body had turned pure white with frost. White rime bloomed across her skin like flowers, steadily expanding its territory.
Absorbing the mana of the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave was a high-difficulty task even for an ice-attribute mage. It demanded enormous concentration during the refinement process.
The result of that process being interrupted was written all over her body.
A high-rank spirit?
“...It is coming.”
At her words, clear malice poured down from behind me.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—!!
Dozens of icicle spears like stalactites came flying.
I dodged while still holding Seriel; the spirit stretched out a hand and fired more icicles at my next landing spot.
Whoosh—!
There were too many to dodge them all.
I raised a wall of flame between us and melted the icicles.
The mana consumption is insane.
Not only was the power of fire magic severely reduced by the cave’s cold, the mana itself was being sucked out of me in torrents.
“Your Highness!”
“Your Highness, are you unharmed?!”
“Wait—that is a spirit!”
Just then the mage burst into the chamber with the knights.
I tried to switch to the offensive together with them.
KWAHHHH—!!
A violent blizzard erupted from the spirit like a tidal wave and froze every last one of them solid.
“Crazy.”
My wall of flame scattered like dry leaves in the wind.
“Ricarton.”
“Yes.”
“Destroy it.”
“...Please hold on just a little longer.”
I carefully set Seriel down.
The instant her body touched the freezing floor, frost swallowed her completely.
[Human. For the crime of laying hands on what is mine… repay it with your life.]
The spirit’s voice spoke directly into my mind.
“That is my line.”
Crack—
Fissures spiderwebbed across the ice beneath my planted foot.
Rage bloomed like frost flowers.
Hatred spread like the cracks under my feet.
But there was no time to surrender my body to emotion.
“For the crime of laying hands on my woman—repay it with your life.”
The moment I gathered every last scrap of that emotion and opened my Cores, I felt it.
And I cut.
Recalling the back of Rubellion I had once seen on a snow-covered plain.
——Clang!!
A sword carrying the mana of my fifth Core cleaved the high-rank spirit clean in two.
[A mere human…!]
The spirit’s dying scream whipped up a storm inside the chamber.
At this rate everyone would die.
There is only one way…
I sat down in a full lotus position beside Seriel.
I closed my eyes and stripped away the heat magic wrapped around my body. Freezing air flooded into my nostrils.
It felt as though my lungs would freeze solid in an instant.
Kh! Refine it—refine it…!
My fifth Core guided the mana.
The mana that had been about to freeze my circuits warm under the Core’s influence and began to circulate.
My dantian grew hotter as well.
And so I stepped onto the fifth floor.
Shhhhh…
The moment I absorbed every last scrap of mana inside the chamber, the storm vanished as well.
I tried to transfer the mana I had heated and refined inside my body to Seriel.
She was an ice-attribute mage; if I simply helped her mana circulate, she would wake on her own.
I placed one hand on her lower abdomen near her dantian and poured mana in.
This is too slow.
The warm mana could not easily melt circuits that had already frozen solid.
The pathway that accepts mana most readily is…
I took one deep breath.
Then I pressed my mouth over Seriel’s slightly parted, frozen lips.
They were so hard and cold they hardly felt like lips at all.
Do not misunderstand.
This was the same as a life-saving measure.
It was pure and sacred—exactly like giving artificial respiration to a drowning person.
Yes. Artificial respiration.
I repeated that to myself as I breathed mana into her.
Again and again.
Again and again.