Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Castle in the Snow

“…nica?”

“Mmm…”

“Monica? You alive still?”

“Chkchk chk…?”

“Nnnnn…”

“S-She looks dead…”

“Hmm… someone maybe slipped in overnight…”

“Eh…? Why’re you all so loud, go to… sleep…”

“O-Oh, she’s not dead!”

Tangled up in her own robes, the kitsune had left herself sprawled out on the cave floor, so completely conked out that the others had all assumed she’d been killed while they slept.

Not all that far from the truth, really.

“Huh…? Oh it’s… g’morning everyone…”

“Glad to know you were wide awake keeping us safe…”

Monica pushed herself upright, rubbing her eyes as she rebooted her brain, having been more soundly asleep than she’d been in weeks of real world time.

“Right, yeah… sorry, just kinda passed out before I could wake one of you-”

“Oh, y-you’re hurt…!”

Elise dropped into panic, the others all noticing after she had. The mage reached up at their concerned looks, fingers brushing over her right ear. Sure enough, a good little chunk of it near the tip had been sliced through, a trickle of dried blood sticking in the newly-made gap. Silk was already on her lap, the tiny spiderling beside themselves with worry.

“Mm… looks pretty recent, too…”

“Hells, you get in a fight or something last night? What happened?”

“Oh, just… just a monster roaming by is all, nothing major. I’m perfectly fine, see?”

She twisted her ears around, hiding the knife wound from them as she pushed herself up to her feet, lifting the worried familiar with her as she held them a bit tighter than usual.

“I-If you’re sure you’re okay…”

“No worries, just need a second to wake myself up is all. No use wasting daylight, right? We’re getting to that castle today, no questions!”

All things considered, she mostly wasn’t sure to make of the events of last night still, and if she spilled everything here now, the others would all lock her straight into maximum security overprotection mode.

It could wait until the event was over to bother them all about it, at the very least.

“Right, right. Yeah, you’re the one I should be the least worried about.”

“We woke up safe, so… no problems, I guess…?”

Shrugging it off, they all regathered their things, slowly peeking out from their hideaway to be sure the coast was clear before heading back out again. The sun had only risen just a bit ago, and the grass peeking out from under the stony gravel still carried that fresh morning dew.

The rest of the guilds that had been waging their own battles in the field nearby had either moved on or slept in, a calm settling in as only the occasional fight broke out.

Settled and prepared, Primonilise set out proper, Elise once more taking point with the others staying between her and the rocky hillside, making their way towards their original destination once more, refreshed and revitalized.

“Mm… no one really stuck around, huh…? Wonder if some of those guilds just got completely wiped out…”

“They never mentioned if people can get eliminated entirely but… I guess if you just keep getting swarmed for too long you’d probably just quit anyways, yeah?”

“I-I guess… seems awful to get s-stomped out so early on though…”

They all stayed silent for a bit, squeezing their weapons a bit tighter.

As they walked, their overly-cautious defenses slipped bit by bit, all of them loosening up some as they sped up towards the snowfields just beyond the rise. The total lack of any other guilds in the area let them ease up on their defensive approach before breaking into a brisk morning jog, Glass and Moni occasionally having to slow themselves down to let the others catch up again.

Finding not so much as a single obstacle impeding them, they all made it to the edge of the arctic zone without issue, smiles all around as they crossed their first goalpost, an overeager fox diving headfirst into the pillowy snow, both tails poking out behind her.

“Aaahhh, that’s the stuff… nice and soft and chilly, perfect~”

The rest of them eased into the cold a bit less enthusiastically, toeing the edge of the biome as they tested it. The temperature had certainly dropped just by crossing the border, but not by nearly as much as it should have for a tundra climate like this, more of a mid-autumn afternoon kind of cold surrounding them.

“Oh, that’s n-not so bad. I-It’s actually kinda pleasant really, it’s been so w-warm almost everywhere else.”

“You said it, I’ve been dying for some good cold weather already, enough of this summer heat already!”

“I never really took you for a cold weather kind of person, Moni, I’m surprised.”

“What’s not to love about it? There’s snow to play in, schools gets closed, you get to stay snuggled up in bed and drink hot cocoa and warm soup, it’s perfect!~”

“Chkchk! Chk chkchk!~”

Silk had joined in as well, the furry little arachnid making eight-winged snow angels beside her, totally unperturbed by the cold.

“I guess I get why you wanted to come out here then… well, no use wasting daylight, let’s keep moving- Glass?”

Prim turned back to their other melee, trying to get everyone moving again, only to find them standing a good ways back, arms tightly wrapped against their decidedly bare midsection as they shivered violently.

“…don’t like the cold…”

“Oh, right, you’re not really dressed for he season, huh? Hang on, lemme throw together something warmer for you to wear…”

They nodded weakly, nearly frozen over entirely as Elise frantically scooped them up and carried them back into the sunlight to try and warm up while they waited.

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A little bit of crafting and a lot of warming up later, the party was off again, Monica pried out of her snowy nest as Glass clambered behind them, the Brawler wrapped tight in piles of cloth, their team crafter having combined half a dozen spare coats together into a monolithic mountain of warmth for them.

“Not really a winter person, I take it?”

“No… being cold is bad, I don’t like it…”

“Aw c’mon, winter is great! You’re just wearing summer clothes, you big baby.”

“…don’t like wearing this much… too bulky to do anything…”

“I could always set you on fire if you want, you pyromaniac-”

“N-Now now, we’ll be fine once we get into that castle, yeah? It’s probably l-lots warmer inside than it is out here.”

“Elise is right. So stop bickering like little kids.”

“What, he started it-”

The halfling was already decidedly ignoring her, speeding up her pace as she pulled her own work coat tighter against her body as they kept moving forward.

A snowstorm stirred up not long after they began their trek, even the cold-loving fox being forced to bundle her robes tighter around herself, Elise’s shields doing their best to block out the worst of the winds battering them as they pushed through it.

Even their idle chatter died down, the blizzard around them too thick to hear much through it anyways. Struggling to even keep track of one another, they huddled close, slowly moving through the storm whipping around them, physically clinging onto one another’s coattails to keep from getting themselves separated.

“Elise, you see anything up there…? I can’t tell if we’re just getting ourselves lost, or if this storm is just that bad…”

“N-Not really, no! Just… lots and l-lots of snow…”

“Chhhk…”

No amount of nostalgic appreciation of winter could keep their spirits up in conditions this severe, visibility down to a couple feet in any direction as the icy gales whipped around them. The ground rose under them, the guild having to stomp their way uphill as their boots dug deep into the hillside, slowly scaling the rise before them.

As quickly as the snowstorm had started, it slowly snuffed itself back out again, the partially-icicled party breathing heavy sighs of relief as sun returned once more, right in time for them to reach the summit they’d been climbing towards.

And as the storm cleared around them, the five of them both quickly gained a deep appreciation of the storm that had covered their entry into this new biome, as well as immediately understood why the battle-rich fields before had been so devoid of anything more than a handful of other guilds.

In every direction from the vantage point they stood at, the same guilds waging war upon one another in the event’s opening field had pushed on just as they had, the bloodshed having now migrated to the tundra around them as the sounds of combat finally bled past the dying howls of the deafening blizzard.

Directly ahead of them stood the object of their journey: the towering obelisk of a castle, dark and heavy stonework almost entirely iced over as it loomed over the bloodshed around it, the fighting centralized around its front gate as guilds struggled to enter inside.

Only a stone’s throw from their destination, Primonilise now found themselves completely stranded and surrounded on this lone isle of peace amidst the chaos below.

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“Gah, we got this close too…”

“Mm… we could try and rush through them… maybe hope for another storm…”

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“Even if they d-didn’t start attacking us, I think the b-bodies alone would keep us from getting to the door…”

“Moni could probably jump over them all, but that leaves the rest of us stuck back here, and I don’t think this is really the time to go for a second solo clear. We may as well try and cut our losses and try somewhere e-”

“Not yet. It’s just the front door that’s blocked, yeah?”

“…what are you getting at?”

All of them still staying low atop the hill, the caster pointed over at the base of the towering castle itself, directing their attentions to the overly-popular dungeon.

Sure enough, though the number of guilds vying for control of the entrance gate was staggeringly high, they were all clumped tightly around it. After all, there was no point to trying to lay claim to a side wall when there was clearly only the one way inside.

“We go around everyone here, and we go around the back instead. Not a single person to compete with if we stay entirely out of the main fight, see?”

“Mm… she’s right, it’d be a lot easier…”

“A lot easier sure, but for what purpose? We can’t just scale the wall and enter through a window, you know.”

“Okay but… I just have a feeling it’ll work out, y’know?”

“A feeling? You want us to push through all of this just for a feeling you have?”

“My instincts haven’t ever failed us before, have they?”

“…”

“Well?”

“…I hate to admit you’re right about that… fine, we go around back, unless anyone else feels like doing something less suicidal?”

“We get to fight something, so… I’m in support…”

“I trust Moni, s-so I’m all for it!”

“Chkchk chk!~”

“It’s unanimous then? Great! Then… actually, how are we gonna get down there…?”

Even as they all agreed on what to do next, there remained the issue of reaching the rear of the fortress to begin with. While there was little to no fighting past the entrance, the bulk of the guilds fighting over the castle were still between it and them.

“Hmm… I-I think I have an idea, actually… Prim said you could j-just jump over all of this, right Moni?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem. I don’t really think I can do a passenger though…”

“H-Heh, don’t worry about that part~”

It was rare getting to see their timid tank this confident about something, so the rest of them all agreed to let the Elise handle their traversal concerns for a second time in as many days.

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“Rising Sun…!”

There was a crack light lightning, several of the less focused combatants in the battlefield below having their attention suddenly drawn to the cap of a nondescript hill nearby, a sudden inferno erupting from the thick snow cover as the silhouette of what looked like a player shot up and over the fighting below.

“Bodyguard!!”

Not far behind them came a significantly larger mass, the early morning sunlight reflecting off blue-tinged steel as it trailed after the living fireball that came before it.

On closer inspection, this second living projectile was a mountain of a woman, eight feet of heavy armor sailing overhead as her own skill dragged her forward at a breakneck pace, each arm tightly wrapped around a significantly smaller member of her own guild as they were helplessly carried through the air with her.

The soaring flame and its trailing follower flew fast and far across the fields below, nearly clearing the entire warzone in a single bound. The chitin-armored kitsune landed gracefully amidst a pair of dueling parties, both sides stunned in place, too shocked to even attack the impossibly agile girl before them.

“Ah, ‘scuse me gents, don’t let me get in the way~”

Before either side could even begin to react, she leapt once more, leaving a rush of fire behind her as they hapless players were blow backwards away from the launch zone.

“That was… that was her! She is real, that was the Spi-”

An excited realization came a moment too late, a poor Ranger excited at the sighting of a figure they’d only heard about in passing rushed forward to watch after them… unfortunately leaving them directly in the landing zone for the rest of her guild, almost a ton of high-speed armor slamming into them hard enough to crater the snowfield beneath before being dragged skywards once more.

Bounding and leaping forward, ripping through anyone unfortunate enough to be standing in their landing zones, Monica carried her own personal wrecking ball behind her as she barreled onwards, the combatants below them rapidly growing more aware of the siege weapon ripping through their ranks as they dove for cover, Elise and the rest still managing to steal a kill or two off of those a bit too slow to react in time to escape.

Their warpath left the hordes of players below in complete disarray, the majority of them never even seeing the twin meteors crashing headlong into them. And that total chaos was just enough to allow the decidedly non-stealthy party to slip right on through.

A final flame-kissed landing capped off the Gloom Mage’s havoc-fueled charge, skidding to a stop as the frosted ground ignited under her feet, incredibly smug and satisfied with how well she was handling her superhuman leaps already.

“I gotta say, I’m impressed Elise, that really was a great-”

She turned to congratulate her friend on an idea as terrible and functional as anything she could’ve come up with… and promptly met with the same fate as countless other players recently, the poor fox being flattened by a terminal-velocity Vanguard as her skill finally carried her directly to the target it had been chasing after.

“I-I’m… I’m gonna be dizzy…”

“Nnn… head’s spinning…”

“I’m never… wanna be airborne… again…”

The other threes stumbled blindly apart, all sense of balance lost as they were finally returned to solid ground. Monica and Silk clung desperately to life, prying themselves off of the castle wall they’d been splattered against.

“C-Chkchhhk…”

“Oh, t-there you are Moni… happy to report a f-full success on the trip…!~”

“Great job… kid… guh…”

The newly steamrolled kitsune struggled to stand, barely alive as she leaned against the cracked ice coating the ancient stone walls. But the moment she put more weight against it, the crack split wider at once, chunks of the frost covering it breaking off and falling all around her.

“Did we make it… I can’t… open my eyes still…”

“We m-made it, no problems! And Moni is right- oh! Oh, Moni, you were right…!”

“Eh? What do you mean…?”

She shook her head violently, trying to clear her dizzied thoughts and following Elise’s gaze to what she was talking abaout.

Behind the cracked and cratered ice she’d incidentally smashed open on impact laid a small, almost imperceptibly squat doorway, set smoothly against the bricks around it with only a single keyhole to denote it even was a door.

[Frostbite Manor – Servant’s Entrance]

“Huh… there really was another entrance hidden back here…”

“See, what’d I tell you? A fox’s intuition never fails!”

She puffed her chest out proudly as the others gathered around, inspecting the secret entranceway, Prim rushing right ahead to try and pull it open… only to immediately find it sealed tightly shut, not so much as a doorknob to yank at.

“A secret door is all well and good, but how do you want us to even get inside from here? This way seems even more locked up than the front gate was.”

“Well… I do have one thing that should work here…”

Stepping in, Monica slipped her newly re-gifted present from her bag, the permafrost key almost freezing her fingers solid as she forced it into the open keyhole.

“…huh. Where did you…?”

“I, uh… I found it around.”

“W-Where’d you find a key that specific? We haven’t been that many p-places…”

“I… think you’d all be worried about the answer to that question.”

“Knowing you? Yeah, that sounds right. I’m half expecting this to lead us right into a dragon’s open mouth.”

“Mm… if it’s a way inside, then… it’s what we were looking for, right…? No reason not to use it…”

“Chk!”

“Mmhmm. E-Even if it is a little sketchy, we should try it anyways. Not like we’re getting i-inside any other way.”

More than a little concerned about their all-too-convenient VIP entrance, each of them was still determined to keep pushing on at this point, too committed to this dungeon by now to give up. Four hands and one chitinous forelimb pressed against the dungeon’s doorway in unison, whisking them all away into the gargantuan structure.

As they appeared inside, they were greeted by a massive and ornate foyer, spiraling stairs lining the walls towards the massive doorway behind the front gate as pillars strained to lift up the sprawling manse, thin layers of ice wrapping around every surface within the fortress.

Their servant’s entrance point had taken them to a tucked away little balcony above the main hall, giving them a wonderful view of the entire room around them.

And that view was all it took for them all to see the first problem of this dungeon.

Despite how well they’d managed to avoid fighting any other guilds so far, that was a fantasy that was now entirely unsustainable any longer. Because down in that hall, piling in through the entirety of that expansive foyer as they filled the room like blood-soaked water, were raiding parties from each and every one of the guilds fighting right outside, the dungeon completely full to burst with countless other players, all vying to take the coveted prize of first completion.

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