Chapter 169: 3-51 Frost Cavern I

[Condtions met. Revenant activated]

[Experience lost -10% - Level Progression: 39]

The cold ripped through her skin and she woke, lurching from where she lay and shuddering. She gasped deeply. Her hands clutched her body, not to stave the cold but the lingering phantom pain. She lifted her gaze, slowly and wearily. The light was spilling from the hole she fell through but lost its glimmer halfway down. She had fallen into a cavern that spanned the length of a mansion. Tunnels, craters, holes, and crevices filled the cavern. It looked homely in both meanings. Eerie too, Erin thought. She looked around, ice was all she saw. The walls, ceiling, and ground were ladened with layers of snow and ice. Though the light withered halfway, the snowflakes fell until they hit the ground. One such flake was a pebble and it bounced off of her shoulder. She took the ice pebble into her hand. It looked queer. There was no glint in it, not a streak. The ice wasn’t what was queer. She was shrouded in darkness. It took her quite a while to realize. She could see in the dark as one could see under the light of dusk.

Once she had gathered her bearings, recollected her senses, she rose to her feet but they betrayed her by turning jelly. She fell back into the ice, face-first. She pushed herself to her rear and wiped ice flakes off her cold burning face. She moaned when she tried to rise again. She dawned on another realization. Her whole body was numb and she could feel the pain creeping up. She had a long fall. In all likelihood, she might have broken everything there was to be broken in her body. Revenant mended them all back as good as new but not her senses. They remembered and they would make sure she remembers too.

“This is no gift,” Erin spat. A hot puff of white spewed from her mouth. “This is a lease… a debt…” There was always the sweet release at the end of every suffering and affliction. The promise of death, a promise she could no longer make. Her so-called Divine Guardian had seen to that. To do her or his bidding, Erin would live until her goddess deemed otherwise. She cursed her but she thanked her. She cursed Nyx for not granting her relief and an end but she thanked her for making sure her loved one’s smiles stayed. “No doubt Lyra would be devastated, to say the least, if she heard of my demise,” Erin mused in her throbbing heart.

She tapped around her waist and the empty feeling raised all the alarm in her head. She spun around. She looked to the snow-covered ground. She hoped for it to be there or somewhere close. She wished it in her heart and the stars heard her prayer. A silver stuck an inch out from the snow. She dipped her hand into the snow and pulled out her silver steel sabre. The sheathe was nowhere to be found. The blade of her sword was cracked more than before but the blade was still whole, good for a few more cuts and strain from her spell before it gave in. Her face brightened in joy, nonetheless. At least if something came at her, she could properly defend herself with the weapon she was most familiar with.

Her heart was racing due to the chill. She didn’t feel afraid. She wouldn’t die and she wouldn’t spend long in this despairing-looking place. She had experienced worse and she had always found a way out. Her only dread was her imminent agony. She retreated to a corner where it offered her the widest view of the cavern, the best spot to look out for any possible threat with nothing behind her but a wall. The cavern was deprived of the Spirits that favoured her. A different kind of Spirits lingered around, one that did not respond to her summons. Therefore, she couldn’t use Life Sense. She could neither smell nor hear any other presence but she didn’t believe she was truly safe. Time and time again it was proven that there were many ways to trick her nose and ears. There could be some beast lingering in another corner, waiting to strike and she would never know until she showed her back.

When the pain from her passed-and-went death came, she curled into her belly and screamed. The ice and snow shook with her agony. Her tails flailing vigorously, slamming into the ground along with her fists. She felt her bones break and pierced through her flesh and nerves. She felt all the warmth leaving her. She felt empty where her limbs were. She felt… everything one would presumably go through when they had their body ruptured from the pull of the earth.

She passed out from the surging pain and woke in a similar manner but no pain threatened to torture her again when she woke this time. Only the cold tormented her then. Her garbs were torn from the fall. She tore them into a makeshift brassiere and a loincloth. She soothed herself in warmth with her tails. They were cold too but much warmer than her bare body. She wondered that was so but she didn’t question it. The answer wouldn’t help her even if she knew.

Her stomach rumbled and the empty cavern bred the unsavoury noise. Had she not been alone, she imagined burying her head into the snow to avoid the embarrassment.

“I need to make a fire,” she told herself. The smoke would let Olivia know where she was but what could she use to make smoke? She looked around again but everything was encased in ice. If she didn’t get herself warm soon, she too would be encased in ice. “I need to make a signal… but how?” She looked at the hole, donned in a cape her tails fashioned by draping over her shoulders. “No, not a smoke. Just a signal is enough.”

She could climb the steep slope around the pit with her quick feet and hopped from one narrow step to the other but the ice was slippery and her numb tired limbs made it into a feat that proved to be too perilous to even try. A single mistake equalled death and with every death she faced, a piece of herself was lost, or so she felt. And it wasn't as if success was guaranteed if she kept trying.

She spread her arms and stood perfectly still. Amidst the cold, there was warmth. It was the warmth of the Mana drifting in the nature and wild. Mana wasn’t scarce here, she thanked the stars. She activated Mana Harvest and drew in as much Mana as she could. Immediately, she felt a tinge of warmth returning to her freezing body. She was hungry but the Mana helped with the hunger. She still felt it but it wasn’t too bothering.

However, her exhaustion was plain and undeniable. She might not be dying or deprived of Mana, she was tired, extremely so. As she raised her arm and herself, her world whirled and her feet scrambled to keep her straight. She found her footing before she toppled. Her limbs weighed rock to her joints. Her eyes could barely stay open. Still, she found her strength and will. Lightning erupted from her palm and ascended through the pit into the sky above. A storm roared as her spell hit the clouds. A sharp flash surged into the pit and dyed the cavern for a brief moment.

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Her eyes widened and her hands moved to her sabre, which she stabbed into the snow as a replacement for her belt and scabbard. It was only a glimpse but that was all she needed. There was something at the far end of the wall. It blended well with the walls and snow. It had looked all the same in her eyes but the brief flash of thunder revealed all that was wrong. She lowered her head and bent her knee. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She laid her sword gently on the snow. She tucked her hands under her armpits.

And it moved. She heard it. It had many legs, more than four. It was quick and unbothered by the snow. It was skittering towards her. It moved so silently that the walls did not bounce the noise.

She strained her ears further and moved not a hair. She didn’t know what it was hunger was something she could hear in all creatures’ steps. This one moved eagerly the moment she showed weakness. It moved only when it saw Erin weak. The creature is weak but cunning. She couldn’t see the creature well but she didn’t need to. She would let it come to her.

The skittering on the snow got louder and louder until it was just a few feet in front of her. She stayed her hands. The creature was fast and she was tired. She wasn’t sure if she would be faster than the creature in her current state.

The creature hissed with a jittery stutter in its throat, a cry similar to an insect. The creature was a bug-type monster, Erin surmised. It had more legs than an insect did. It had eight, she counted. A spider, she wagered The creature hissed again and this time, she could feel and smell its breath. She moved. Her hands darted for her sword as she conjured an Arcane Aegis between her and the insect. The creature proved to be faster as its fangs clashed into her barrier before her sword touched its flesh. She opened up the wretched creature from down to up, a clean slice but slower than she liked.

[Experience gained +5% - Level Progression: 44%]

She raised her gaze, then, and saw the creature for what it was. It was a spider but in an odd shape. The legs were long, longer than its body, and arched. Its head and body were broad and flat as a pancake. A tailless whip scorpion, she remembered such a creature was called but no tailless scorpion she knew was encased in ice and pale blue. Whiplegs, Appraisal told her the grotesque creature’s name.

“Fitting,” she muttered. The creature before her was anything but weak and meek in hindsight. Its appearance alone would stiff its prey with fear. It had no reason to be cautious other than one, there was something far worse in this cavern. She was sure they were watching over her. Her performance as a meek prey was no longer cogent. “Olivia… you better hurry.”

To keep herself warm and the creatures in the dark away, she swung her sword with the cold air as her opponent. She wasn’t practising a form. She was merely moving to keep herself from rusting. Hopefully, she hoped, the display of her swordsmanship would unnerve whatever lay in the dark.

An hour passed as she swung her sword in an empty form. The winds remained unchanged and the air was only getting colder. She had shot out more lightning bolts into the sky but it attracted no one’s attention. Either the mist was thicker than the flash of lightning or they were engaged with the enemy. She didn’t know which would be better so she hoped for neither. She hoped for them to come and sweep her off this forsaken place.

A stone tumbled down the wall and it made her rise with her sabre brandished and lightning crackling in her other hand. She saw a stir but gone it was before she could sharpen her gaze. From a tunnel down her right, a snarl travelled the dark chill and reached her eyes. Shivers went down her spine. And the winds shifted and change but not from above but from a hole on a wall to her left. The shift was strong and brazen. Something was moving and in droves. Whatever they were, they were moving towards her and something told her they weren’t friendly.

“I can’t stay here,” she came to such a conclusion. “But where would I go?” She looked at the tunnels and holes. None looked to be her salvation. Surely a creature of a different manner of outlandish resided in each of these dark places. Her eyes fell on a tunnel with a height around twice hers. She didn’t know what awaits her in the depth but it was spacious and should anything unsightly and menacing emerge, she would have plenty of space to respond in kind. Besides, the air was warmer down this tunnel and the warmth was a great sway in her decision.

She waited half an hour more in the cavern and the sounds around her only grew louder. They sounded hungry and eager. She couldn’t stay here. The numbers alone would overwhelm her even if she was in her prime. The tunnel was her best bet. Holding her breath, she trod into the tunnel just as the hole to her left burst, spewing streams of palish green creatures like a gushing hose. The creatures were glowing and they seemed to be weightless. They barely made any sound as they ran and scrambled.

Erin felt her hair and her tail fur standing stiff. Frost Wraith, the creatures were called. They were half the size of the Whiplegs but there was a hundred of them and more as they kept pouring out of the hole. She banished all hesitation out of her head and ran down the tunnel without looking back.

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