Chapter 241: Heaven-Falling Blizzard Edge! (Kofi Donation Bonus)

The moment Instructor Varien’s arm dropped, the atmosphere inside Arena Prime didn’t merely change—it froze solid.

Alan Snow did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. The deep, burning humiliation of being handed an unearned three-strike advantage had stripped away every shred of his practiced aristocratic poise.

His crystal-blue eyes burned with an icy, murderous light. He knew that if he failed to put Creed Walden in the ground under these terms, his name would be the laughingstock of the entire academy by nightfall.

’Three attacks?!’ Alan’s mind shrieked, every drop of his noble blood screaming in outrage. ’I won’t even need two! I’ll carve your arrogant heart straight out of your chest!’

BOOM!

The granite beneath Alan’s boots detonated into crystalline powder as an apocalyptic storm of freezing blue Force erupted from his core.

His ice-type bloodline ignited with the roar of a waking glacier, his silver hair disintegrating into a cyclone of fluttering, razor-sharp snow crystals.

Path of Ice — Faint Realm!

The temperature within the dueling ring plummeted past the threshold of absolute zero. Frost didn’t just crawl across the stone; it grew in massive, jagged teeth of pure glacier stone, locking the moisture in the air into suspended needles.

Alan’s body blurred into an icy gale.

"First Strike!" Alan’s voice echoed like cracking permafrost. "Art of the Glacier: Piercing Frost Dragon!"

His silver rapier thrust forward, and the sheer volume of his Faint Realm Path of Ice manifested a forty-foot dragon of compressed, diamond-hard rime!

The beast coiled through the air, its fangs wider than a war chariot, screaming with a high-pitched sonic shriek that ruptured the eardrums of several freshmen in the lower spectator rows.

It was an Art refined to terrifying perfection—an attack designed to flash-freeze internal organs while drilling through three layers of reinforced plate armor.

The thousand spectators held their breath.

Many leaned forward in horror. Against a frontal assault of that magnitude, even an early Gold-stage fighter would be forced to deploy heavy defensive barriers or dodge!

And Creed?

Creed Walden didn’t even shift his feet. He stood there, his left hand casually buried in his trouser pocket, his navy-blue headband fluttering softly in the freezing headwind.

His right hand held the Pale Horizon, its butt-spike resting idly against the granite.

He didn’t activate an Art. He didn’t even manifest a drop of active Force!

As the forty-foot frost dragon descended upon his skull, Creed simply exhaled a breath of warm vapor and allowed his Profound Realm Path of the Mountain to hum through his skeleton.

Oooom.

There was no flashy barrier. No blinding light.

Instead, behind Creed’s silhouette, the phantom mirage of a colossal, ancient continental peak materialized for a microsecond—so dense, so infinitely heavy, that the ambient light bent around its contour.

CRRRRRRRRAAAASH!

The terrifying frost dragon slammed into Creed’s left shoulder.

And shattered.

It was like a crystal wine glass hurled full-force against the side of a mountain. The dragon’s head pulverized into harmless white powder, its forty-foot body snapping into millions of glittering shards that rained harmlessly over Creed’s boots.

Creed’s body didn’t move a millimeter. His boots didn’t slide an inch. The fabric of his dark blue uniform didn’t even tear.

He looked at Alan through the cloud of falling snow, his blue eyes calm, cold, and utterly deadpan.

"That’s one," Creed murmured, his voice cutting through the silent hall like a dull blade. "Lacked density on the snout. Good draftsmanship, though."

The entire arena gasped in absolute horror.

"He... he didn’t even flinch?!" Damien Blackthorne choked out from the elite stands, his fingers gripping the silver railing so hard the metal groaned. "He took a full-power Glacier Art on the bare shoulder without an energy shield?!"

Alan’s breath hitched, his pupils shrinking to needlepoints. The shock tore through his veins like acid, but it was instantly swallowed by a wave of frantic, blood-boiling fury.

"Die! Second Strike!" Alan shrieked, refusing to let the gap close.

He lunged forward, closing the distance to ten meters, and threw his entire reserve of Force into his rapier. Four massive, towering constructs of black-edged ice erupted from the floor, encircling Creed in an inescapable box.

"Art of the Glacier: Four-fold Absolute Coffin!"

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

The four coffins snapped shut, sealing Creed in a solid cubic monolith of condensed, hyper-dense spatial ice!

The sheer pressure of the sealing Art made the air around the platform implode, the frost turning black as it began to detonate inward with the destructive fury of a collapsing star!

"Detonate!" Alan roared, his face twisted in feral triumph.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The concussive shockwave blew the frost fog across the spectator tiers, rattling the hexagonal force-fields forty feet overhead.

Alan dropped into a panting crouch, a breathless, wild grin spreading across his lips. No human flesh could survive an inward spatial detonation—

Tap.

A sound, quiet as a falling leaf, echoed from the center of the smoking crater.

Alan’s grin froze.

The smoke parted.

Creed was standing in the exact same spot. Around him, a subtle, ethereal sphere of weightless, shimmering light drifted—the Profound Realm Path of Freedom.

The devastating spatial implosion hadn’t been blocked; the physical force had simply been told it had no authority to touch his mass. The explosion had slid off him like water off an oily feather.

Creed reached up, lazily brushed a speck of gray soot off his collar, and looked down at Alan.

"That’s two," Creed said softly. "The timing on the collapse was a microsecond slow on the western flank. I could’ve eaten a sandwich in that gap."

Up on the instructor’s observation platform, Varien’s jaw had gone completely slack.

The seasoned Gold-rank veteran, who had fought in some of the bloodiest dimensional rifts on earth, was gripping his clipboard so tightly the hardened composite cracked.

’That isn’t Faint Realm,’ Varien’s mind screamed in absolute, disbelieving panic. ’That isn’t even Partial! The Mountain... the Freedom... he’s operating at the Profound Realm! How?! He’s a freshman! He’s an early Silver who entered the academy three days ago! What did he do in that Resonator?!’

Down in the ring, Alan Snow had completely lost his mind.

The sight of Creed standing untouched—hands still relaxed, expression still carrying that unbearable, bored condescension—snapped the last thread of Alan’s sanity.

"I AM THE HEIR OF THE SNOW FAMILY!" Alan roared, blood spraying from his lips as he forcefully burned his own life-essence, igniting his core into a blinding, suicidal blue inferno.

He didn’t just unleash his Path; he forced every drop of his remaining Natal Force, his bloodline rime, and his soul into a single, apocalyptic thrust!

"FINAL STRIKE: HEAVEN-FALLING BLIZZARD EDGE!"