Chapter 44: Glacial Weave

Just seconds before the earthen spear could impale her father and brother, a blinding surge of silver light burst through the barrier restricting her breakthrough."

Her entire frame shuddered.

DING!

A cold, crisp system chime vibrated through her consciousness:

[Ability Evolved: Sub-Zero Glacial Domain]

[New Skill Acquired: Glacial Weave]

A sudden, terrifying drop in temperature swept across the immediate sector. Even General Ashford and Asher, trapped beneath the rubble, felt the dense wave of sub-zero Qi radiating from her.

General Ashford wiped blood from his mouth, a cold grin touching his lips despite their predicament. That’s my girl.

With her Qi Core refilled to maximum capacity by the breakthrough, Nyren raised her right hand, her silver hair whipping in the freezing draft.

The ice drills slammed into the shattered pavement simultaneously.

For a fraction of a second, the battlefield fell quiet. Nyren closed her eyes, tuning out the noise around her.

"So beautiful..." a panicking student whispered from behind a defensive barricade.

"With President Nyren here, we might actually make it out of this!"

"She looks like a goddess..."

Nyren shut out every voice, letting her consciousness dive deep into the bedrock. She mapped the subterranean vibrations, searching through the layers of crushed stone and dirt.

A second passed. Then two.

"Found you," she murmured.

She snapped her fingers.

CRACK!

An avalanche of frost surged through the earth, freezing underground aquifers and sealing off every escape tunnel within a fifty-meter radius.

Trapped in the frozen bedrock, the thousand-eyed armored centipede was forced to abandon its stealth.

BOOOOOOM!!

The earth exploded upward. Chunks of reinforced concrete and crushed vehicles shot into the air as the 15-meter armored monstrosity burst back into the open, its mandibles clicking in pure fury.

Asher and General Ashford reacted instantly.

Asher lunged with a golden Sword Qi slash, while the General drove a white-hot Qi fist forward. But the centipede twisted its segmented body in mid-air with fluid grace, dodging both attacks before crashing heavily onto the asphalt.

Thousands of crimson eyes along its armor shifted, locking directly onto Nyren.

It recognized her. Absorbing the dense, evolved Qi within her Core would allow it to break through its own evolutionary threshold.

WSHHH!

Dozens of pitch-black tendrils erupted from the road beneath her, shooting forward like strike snakes.

Nyren executed a flawless mid-air spin, landing gracefully twenty meters back. As she reset her stance, her sharp eyes caught a tendril wrapping tightly around a nearby Level 2 Silver-Horned Wolf.

Instead of crushing the wolf, the black vine pulsed. The silver lightning crackling from the wolf’s horn was violently drained, flowing backward into the centipede’s hide.

Within five seconds, the massive wolf withered into a dry, hollow husk before crumbling into gray dust.

Nyren’s heart chilled. It absorbs host energy to regenerate...

Asher and General Ashford saw it too, their expressions hardening into absolute seriousness. The beast wasn’t just physical armor and high speed; its parasitic absorption made every second it stayed alive a massive threat to the entire force.

Yet staring at the terrifying creature, Nyren felt no fear. Only a cold, burning ambition.

If this world has turned into a survival game... I’ll hold my own fate.

She leaped into the air, a wall of jagged ice spikes erupting behind her as footboards. Reaching out her right hand, she summoned a thin, white blade directly from the condensed moisture in the air. The rapier-like weapon hummed with pure, unyielding frost.

The centipede whipped its heavy, spiked tail toward her aerial path, but a barrage of glacial crystals slammed into its side from Nyren’s left, while thick ice forged around its lower legs, locking it to the earth.

Nyren twirled the thin ice blade, a trail of silver mist following her movement as she dived straight for the beast’s head.

HISS!

The centipede’s black tendrils surged around its legs, their high-corrosive aura melting through her ice bindings. It snapped its tail around, aiming a pressurized stream of black venom directly at Nyren’s chest.

"Shit!"

Nyren contorted her spine at an impossible angle mid-air. The stream of black acid passed mere inches from her nose, hissing as it dissolved a concrete pillar behind her into green sludge.

She recovered her posture mid-flight, her cold gray eyes locking onto the thousands of crimson eyes covering the beast’s head. For a millisecond, she caught a flicker of genuine irritation inside the creature’s gaze.

Human and monster stared at each other, isolated in their own realm of kill-or-be-killed focus.

Then the centipede struck.

It slammed its massive, armored tail into the asphalt with terrifying force.

BOOM!

Dozens of massive stone blocks and boulders were launched fifty feet into the air, raining down across the battlefield like a volley of meteors.

It wasn’t just targeting Nyren—it was trying to wipe out the entire human vanguard in one strike.

"Protect the survivors!" General Ashford bellowed.

Asher dropped low, raising both hands. A broad, golden shield of Qi flared above a group of thirty students.

On the opposite flank, Adrian slammed his blade into the ground, raising a secondary golden barrier.

Daniel slammed both palms onto the earth, raising massive stone roofs above the faculty survivors, while Professor Sy and Lucan shielded another section of the perimeter.

High above them, Nyren stared at the falling shower of boulders.

She didn’t retreat. She didn’t slow down.

She accelerated straight into the trajectory of the falling meteors.

The centipede’s crimson eyes twitched, clearly caught off guard by her suicidal charge. It slammed its tail down again, launching another wave of heavy concrete blocks directly at her.

The soldiers below stared in sheer disbelief.

"Is she insane?!" a soldier yelled from beneath Asher’s shield. "That’s the General’s daughter! What is she doing?!"

"She’s going to get herself killed!" Asher shouted, his face darkening with panic.

He wanted to break formation and catch her, but leaving his post meant thirty students would be crushed instantly.

"General! Do something!" Asher roared toward the General.

General Ashford stood frozen, his weathered fists clenched so hard his knuckles bled. "It’s too late... I can’t reach her vector in time."

His voice was calm, but the vein pulsing on his forehead betrayed his internal agony.

"What is she thinking?" Oren muttered, watching his sister from the ground.

"She’s trying to intercept the main mass," Adrian said, his eyes tight with concern.

Oren glanced at Adrian, then subconsciously scanned the chaotic front line, looking for the one person he couldn’t get out of his head.

No sign of her.

"Wait... where are Lothe and Seana?" Oren blurted out, a sudden spike of panic hitting his voice. Did she leave the perimeter with him? Is she safe? What does she even see in that guy?!

Jealousy flared in his chest despite the death falling from the sky.

"They didn’t run," Adrian said coldly, keeping his eyes on the sky. "The main perimeter is completely blocked by that 30-meter behemoth. No matter how strong Lothe is, they’re fighting their own way through."

Before Oren could respond—

BOOOOOOM!!

A sharp, metallic explosion echoed through the upper air.

Nyren had reached the first falling meteor.

Instead of slashing it, strands of silver Qi slid from her fingers like liquid mercury, wrapping tightly around the five-ton boulder.

The speeding meteor froze mid-air. Frost spread across its surface in a fraction of a second.

Without pausing, Nyren threw her other hand wide. Dozens of silver Qi threads shot across the sky, tethering every single falling meteor, suspending the entire rain of boulders thirty feet above the battlefield!

Sweat poured down her face, mixing with the faint line of blood at the corner of her lips.

Her Qi Core was screaming under the immense weight. Holding tons of falling concrete in mid-air while infusing her own elemental frost into their structure pushed her body to its absolute breaking point.

Yet she stood suspended in the center of the hovering boulders, her long silver hair dancing in the freezing wind, bathed in a celestial halo of white and silver light.

The survivors below forgot to breathe.

"Is she... even human?" a student stammered.

To the terrified crowd below, she no longer looked like a fellow student. She looked like an unyielding goddess of frost ruling over the battlefield.

Nyren’s cold gaze locked back onto the centipede.

The hovering meteors began to vibrate.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The thick frost coating the boulders reshaped the crude concrete blocks, forging each one into a colossal, thirty-foot glacial lance.

Dozens of giant ice lances hovered above the street, their razor-sharp tips pointed directly at the thousand-eyed beast.

The centipede’s blood ran cold. Shock flickered through its thousands of crimson eyes.

BOOM! VRMMMMMM!

In a desperate counter-move, the centipede slammed its head and tail into the street, launching dozens of jagged, black rock spears straight up from the earth to meet her volley.

Nyren wiped the blood from her chin with her sleeve.

No words were exchanged. None were needed.

She pointed her thin ice rapier downward.

WHOOSH!

The army of glacial lances plunged from the sky, with Nyren diving right at the center of the formation.

Simultaneously, the black rock spears shot upward like a erupting volcano.

Both forces collided mid-air.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!

An apocalyptic shockwave shattered the surrounding viewports for three blocks. The explosive impact blasted hundreds of nearby zombies into crimson dust, while the wind pressure forced even veteran soldiers to cover their faces.

A massive, impenetrable cloud of stone dust and silver mist swallowed the center of the boulevard.

Silence descended. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the smoke to clear.

Some survivors shook their heads in despair, convinced no human could survive the epicenter of such a collision.

Then—

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!

A deafening, agony-filled shriek tore through the dust cloud, shaking the very foundation of Crowns Academy.