Chapter 508 – Hellish frost [14]

I spent several long minutes simply admiring the tower rising before me, stretching through the clouds and partially disappearing among them, with the enormous castle resting majestically at the top.

Maybe it was because I had just witnessed an entire tower being built from scratch out of nothing but simple snowflakes. Maybe my brain had simply decided to go into standby mode after witnessing something like that.

Either way, I stood there for quite a while, doing nothing but staring. It was only after several minutes that I finally realized what I was doing: "... Oh" I shook my head a few times, as if that were enough to drive away the strange sense of sluggishness that had taken hold of my mind.

Once I finally came to my senses, a single glance around was enough for the urgency of the situation to settle back into my thoughts. The city was changing right before my eyes. Buildings, streets, and entire structures were slowly being covered in layers of ice and snow, while new structures continued to rise on top of one another.

The landscape I had once recognized as a city was beginning to disappear beneath this gradual transformation, giving way to something that could only be described as a true kingdom of ice. And honestly, watching the change happen so quickly did absolutely nothing to ease my growing sense of crisis.

As a matter of fact, the dome I had asked my Alter Ego to install around the city, with the purpose of mitigating the effects of the cold, was slowly losing its effectiveness. It wasn't as though it had simply stopped working all at once. The problem was that the air around us continued getting colder with every passing moment.

The temperature was steadily dropping, little by little, causing the difference between the outside environment and what my dome could withstand to gradually shrink. If my calculations were correct, within two or three hours, the dome would become practically useless. Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as just increasing its power.

Doing so would require a considerable amount of energy from me and, consequently, leave me weaker. It wasn't worth wasting my strength right now, especially when I had no idea how much longer this situation might last. For now, the current method would have to be enough. At least until I found a way to deal with the anomaly once and for all.

I sighed for a moment. Deep down, I felt tired, as though all this time spent in this place was finally beginning to weigh on me. On the outside, however, my expression remained completely impassive, revealing not even the slightest fraction of what I was feeling.

Then, I simply let myself fall from the edge of the building I had been leaning against. My body dropped several feet before entering my dark world, and the familiar sensation of the space enveloped me almost immediately. My first action was to take one last look back. The enormous tower stood before me, piercing through the clouds like a black spear pointed toward the sky. ℴ

At the top, the castle remained imposing and seemingly impenetrable, its presence dominating the entire surrounding landscape. I watched it for a few seconds. I didn't need much longer than that. Soon, I began floating toward the castle. The journey was surprisingly uneventful.

No anomaly appeared to attack me, no strange event occurred along the way, and nothing demanded my attention enough to make me alter my course. After everything that had happened up to that point, the calm almost seemed suspicious. Still, I continued forward. That lasted only until I was a few meters away from the tower.

BOOOOM!

An explosion erupted in the distance without warning, and the sudden flash illuminated part of the dark landscape. A distant street was bathed in an intense red glow. I stopped in midair. My attention naturally shifted in that direction.

I gave the tower one last glance in the distance, watching its silhouette for a few seconds, just before another explosion echoed through the surroundings, followed by a sequence of sounds I recognized almost immediately.

Damn it. I definitely didn't want to play babysitter for anyone, but that didn't mean I was cold-hearted enough to simply ignore all of them. Even if, after the way they had treated me, a small part of me really did want to do exactly that. I sighed and changed course, beginning to float toward the explosions.

As I approached, the booming sounds became increasingly clear, accompanied by screams, impacts, and the sound of something heavy being hurled into the ground. And, exactly as I had imagined... The agents sent by the High Council were there. They were fighting more of those damn snowmen, although there were a few variations this time.

One of them had wings and remained airborne, moving rapidly between the agents, while another was practically a hulking brute covered in muscles, with enormous, powerful arms that looked as though they had been specifically designed for smashing things.

A steroid-pumped snowman. At least, that was the best description I could come up with. And, to be honest, calling this a fight felt a little too generous. They weren't exactly fighting. They were surviving. And apparently, they weren't doing a very good job of it.

***

(POV - Gregory Veyder)

If Gregory had known he would have to survive an attack by snowmen in weather this brutally cold, he probably would have brought a coat. Of course, that wouldn't have changed much about the current situation, but at least it would have kept him from feeling that agonizing cold gathering around his neck, precisely in the small area where his helmet failed to provide protection.

There were several parts of their suits that weren't completely connected, leaving small gaps through which the cold seemed to find the perfect path to torment them. Unfortunately, neither Gregory nor any of his men had thought to bring anything remotely similar. After all, who would expect to fight a horde of snowmen in a region where the weather itself seemed determined to kill them?

So, for the time being, everyone was doing their best to survive while fighting these enemies made of snow. The problem was that the damn snowmen didn't seem to care in the slightest about their situation. Gregory, on the other hand, was already beginning to lose feeling in his fingers.

He gritted his teeth as he dodged yet another attack, feeling the freezing wind slip through every tiny gap in his gear: “I hate this place...” he muttered before raising his weapon again. And considering the temperature around him, that wasn't exactly an exaggerated complaint. The cold was so intense that it made the North Pole feel like a tropical beach by comparison.

The worst part was that, in hindsight, the attack Gregory and his companions had suffered on the outskirts of the city seemed like nothing more than a probing attack compared to what they were facing now. This time, the anomalies were attacking with everything they had. ℴ𝒗ⅇ𝑙.

Snow creatures were advancing from all directions. Some were capable of flying and diving at the soldiers at terrifying speeds, while others possessed enough strength to tear massive paths of ice and snow straight from the ground, as if the street itself were nothing more than an extension of their bodies.

Gregory and his men were losing. They had the proper equipment for this kind of situation. Their clothing and protective gear allowed them to withstand the cold far longer than an ordinary person, and they had been trained specifically to deal with situations like this. But at the end of the day, they were still only human.

And humans got tired. Humans hesitated. Humans made mistakes. One of those mistakes ended up being one too many for Gregory. He barely had time to notice the creature approaching from behind.

One of the hulking snow creatures grabbed him with absurd strength and hurled him away as if he weighed absolutely nothing. Gregory flew several yards through the air before crashing violently into a parked car.

BAM!

The impact made the vehicle shudder. For several seconds, Gregory couldn't even breathe. He tried to move. Nothing. His legs simply refused to respond to his commands. When he finally managed to feel something, a sharp pain shot through his body, making him grit his teeth hard.

Broken? Probably. Actually, Gregory had no doubt about it. He tried to plant one hand on the ground and push himself up, but his arms were trembling with exhaustion as well. The cold had already seeped deep into his body, making every movement slower and more painful.

His companions weren't doing any better. One after another, they were being surrounded by the anomalies. Some had already suffered injuries far worse than Gregory's, while others could barely remain standing.

Their screams and the sounds of battle blended together with the howling wind as snow continued to fall over the scene as if nothing were happening. Gregory looked at them. Then he realized it. There was no way out. They weren't going to win this fight. And if no one came to help them... They were all going to die.

Gregory closed his eyes just before he caught sight of the same stupid brute that had thrown him into the car charging toward him. At that moment, he simply accepted that he was going to die. After all, how else would someone like him die if not at the hands of an anomaly? It wasn't exactly a dignified death, but Gregory had no regrets.

He had lived his life the way he wanted to. Even when he lost people he cared about, even when life took things from him that he could never get back, he kept moving forward and continued living in the way he found most fulfilling.

Besides, he had saved plenty of people. He had prevented countless others from ending up with a fate similar to his own. Maybe he hadn't been able to save everyone, but he had done everything he could. For Gregory, that was enough. He took a deep breath and waited.

He waited for the impact. Waited for the pain. Waited for the inevitable... And waited. Nothing happened. Gregory remained motionless for several seconds, his eyes still closed, waiting for death to finally come for him. But it never came. The only thing he could feel was... Heat.

An increasingly intense heat: “... Huh?” Gregory frowned slightly.

Why was it so hot? This definitely wasn't how Gregory had imagined things would go. He opened his eyes. And then he froze. The brute charging toward him was being consumed in the middle of a concentrated beam of energy, its body literally melting before his eyes. The light was so intense that Gregory had to squint, while the air around him shimmered from the heat.

For several seconds, he simply stared at the scene: “... What the hell?”