The wind in the Northern Lands was never gentle; the mont it grazed one's cheek, it carried an unforgiving sharpness.
The Magician Forest Worm-Eaten Household Investigation Team had been traversing this icy plain for nearly two months.
But it seed to be an almost futile journey.
"Another day with no findings," soone squatted on the ground, letting out a low sigh after a long pause.
"I'm starting to wonder if there's only one Mother Nest. Are we just going in circles, doing useless work?" The voice sounded weary to the point of numbness.
Another mage interjected, "What you're saying isn't without reason. Bumbling around like headless flies isn't a solution."
No one refuted him.
The atmosphere of this mage team had begun to feel sowhat... low.
Archmage Flora stood at a high vantage point, her expression calm, yet hiding a hint of fatigue she herself hadn't noticed.
"I don't believe there's only one Mother Nest," Flora's voice was not loud, but it was enough for everyone to hear.
"But indeed, we shouldn't keep searching aimlessly. Let's persist for a few more days. If we still find nothing, we'll return and change our strategy."
Her tone was less like a command and more like a reluctant compromise.
Even the mage who had complained finally fell silent upon hearing her.
Everyone knew it wasn't anyone's fault, just terribly bad luck.
Ti, resources, and morale all had their limits.
It wasn't until two days later that they finally encountered sothing "unusual."
"...Look, over there," the scout at the front warned via a short magic ssage, his voice tinged with uncertain tension.
They looked in the direction indicated.
The accumulated snow at the edge of the forest was being crushed by a column of heavy footsteps.
It was a marching party, traversing the shallow valley through the woods in a grand procession, their banners tattered, their armor incomplete, but their numbers were imnse, like a Snowsworn tide surging from the heart of the ice plain, hundreds, even nearly a thousand strong.
They were the Snowsworn.
Those wild and fierce Northern Land avengers.
They wore animal hides or tattered cloth, their skin marked with totems, so wielding great axes, others riding on wolfback.
"...Where are they going?" soone asked, but no one could answer.
The entire mage team's steps halted almost simultaneously.
They had seen Snowsworn before.
But that was usually a few scattered individuals, or at most a patrol of dozens.
This was the first ti they had witnessed a thousand-strong force moving in formation across the Northern Land ice plain.
"Another war, I suppose..." Flora's eyes darkened slightly.
She disliked war and did not wish to get involved.
Magician Forest was inherently neutral and could not intervene in the political conflicts between the Empire and the tribes.
They only dealt with magic-related crises and disasters.
However, just then, Dillin, who had been silent, stepped forward.
"I have a premonition," he continued, his tone calm yet certain, "they... are connected to the Mother Nest."
His voice wasn't loud, but it pierced everyone's nerves like an ice blade in the cold wind.
"Are you sure?" Flora turned around.
"I'm not sure," Dillin closed his eyes, "It's just my intuition."
The team stopped moving, turning their heads to look.
Dillin's premonitions were never wrong.
Even if it was just a fleeting thought, if he spoke it, it had to be taken seriously.
Flora took a deep breath, staring at the receding figures of the Snowsworn party.
"Anyway, there are no other clues. Since that's the case—let's follow them and see. Maintain formation, activate stealth and barrier spells, everyone pay attention to suppressing magic fluctuations, no exposure allowed."
So they quietly trailed the eerily disciplined Snowsworn party, crossing the undulating frozen tundra, finally stopping in an isolated place.
It was a narrow, enclosed canyon, like a remnant after the sky had split open.
Ice and snow piled within, and the wind swirled and humd between the walls, as if whispering ancient taboos.
At the bottom of the valley, Snowsworn could vaguely be seen gathering in large numbers, arranged in twisted yet orderly formations, seemingly performing so kind of ritual.
They knelt, chanted prayers, and roared, while priests, wearing masks made of animal bones and gray iron, seed to be welcoming the arrival of a "god."
The mages dared not be seen. They stood inside a distant cave, having cast nurous stealth spells.
"This doesn't look like an ordinary gathering," Flora frowned, ordering soone to record this anomaly.
Everyone discussed, wondering what they were doing.
Then, Dillin, who had been silent, slowly stood up and walked to the edge of the cave entrance.
"Let see," he said.
Dillin extended his right hand, his five fingers gently caressing the air, magic lines rippling like water, slowly unfurling from his fingertips, weaving into an invisible ntal network.
That was his proud sensing spell, "Sensing: ntal Resonance Filants."
His consciousness pierced through the barrier, following the wind currents into the magical vortex at the bottom of the valley.
However, the next second, "Ugh!"
He suddenly fell to his knees, veins bulging on his forehead, as if sothing unspeakable had pierced his ntal barrier.
"Dillin!" a mage exclaid, lunging to support him.
"Don't touch ! Don't touch!" Dillin's voice was hoarse, cold sweat beaded on his forehead, his teeth clenched tight, even his magic was in chaotic tremor.
For a full thirty seconds, only his rapid gasps and the low-frequency hum of his magic resonance remained.
Finally, he slowly unclenched his fist, his eyes refocusing, as if he had just escaped from so ntal purgatory.
"...It's the Mother Nest, no doubt about it—and it's a hundred tis more powerful than the remnant we encountered last ti."
He laboriously wiped away the blood from the corner of his mouth, his voice low and trembling.
The cave was utterly silent.
Though the other mages hadn't personally experienced it, no one questioned him, because they all knew that Dillin's sensing spell was beyond the reach of ordinary mages.
It was precisely this talent for sensing spellcasting that allowed him to join the ranks of Archmages before the age of thirty.
Flora, however, frowned deeply.
Although she was also an Archmage, she wasn't skilled in sensing spells.
After Dillin suffered the backlash, she also tried to focus her mind and perceive the evil lurking at the bottom of the valley.
But she could only vaguely detect a surge of malice sowhere at the bottom of the valley, like a festering tumor growing deep within flesh.
Each ntal touch felt like a dull knife scraping the edge of her consciousness, bringing back a chill.
"...That is not a power the Snowsworn can manipulate," she whispered, looking at the formation at the bottom of the valley.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"No matter how savage they are, they are still mortals. Even with their numbers and organization, they cannot be leading this kind of ritual," Flora analyzed dispassionately.
"Therefore, the true orchestrator of this ritual is a magic manipulator hidden behind them."
As her words fell, an indescribable chill instantly perated the entire cave.
But it didn't co from the bottom of the valley.
It ca from behind them.
"Don't move," Dillin whispered, almost instinctively raising his staff, but his finger was trembling.
There were no footsteps, no premonition of magic fluctuations.
It was as if they had erged from silence itself.
Three figures had quietly appeared at the cave entrance.
Lined up, they blocked all escape routes.
The three were cloaked in grey-black robes, their faces obscured by hoods, yet they couldn't hide the nauseatingly abnormal aura about them.
"How is this possible?!" a young mage gasped softly.
They had clearly set up five layers of stealth spells, even using a silence barrier; the entire cave was as if erased from the world!
Yet the opponents had managed to sneak around behind them without a sound, and not just one person!
These people—no—they had once been human, but were no longer.
They stood there, not awe-inspiring by their aura, but by that strange sense of "existence itself should not be."
It made human minds instinctively repel, shiver, and tremble.
"...Is this the Worm-Eaten Household?" The young mage Aaron's voice was dry, his throat almost constricted.
"They're... completely different from what the reports said."
"I can't move."
They had co to investigate the Worm-Eaten Household, having prepared themselves ntally, but facing these three "living" Worm-Eaten Household mbers made these battle-hardened mages tremble uncontrollably.
Standing on the far left was a person wearing old knight's armor.
The silver breastplate was covered in rust, the cloak tattered, but one could still discern that he had once been a noble knight.
On the right was a tall Snowsworn warrior, still clad in ice beast fur.
The tattoos on his body seed to have been corroded by so black substance, transforming into twisted, wriggling vein-like patterns that extended up to his neck and finally crept into his eye sockets.
And the old man standing in the center,
Wore a tattered blue-gray robe, its edges torn but stained with blood, and as the fabric fluttered, the ancient patterns were still faintly visible.
One glance was enough to know this person had once been extraordinary.
Flora froze, feeling as if she had fallen into an ice cave.
"...Lyk... Senior Uncle?"
She murmured, her voice trembling slightly, almost not greeting him but mourning him.
The younger mbers of the mage team looked up, stunned and speechless.
"Lyk? That Lyk? You an—"
"Grand Mage Jürgen Loken's chief attendant?!"
"Wait, wasn't that a prominent figure from a hundred years ago? Still alive?"
"No, he's not 'alive,'" Dillin's voice was low like an undercurrent beneath ice, "He's already an Worm-Eaten Household—the kind that still retains consciousness."
A red-haired young female mage's face turned pale, as if her last layer of security had been ripped away: "We—we've been investigating all this way precisely to find clues about Grand Mage Jürgen Loken, haven't we?!"
"Then what about him—what about Loken Grand Mage?!"
Dillin closed his eyes.
No one dared to answer that question, but the answer was already obvious.
Since Lyk had beco an Worm-Eaten Household, his lifelong master was probably not faring well either.
Flora gritted her teeth and stepped forward, trying for one last appeal: "Loken Grand Mage, if you can still hear , I am Flora, a mage from Magician Forest. We've t before—"
Lyk did not respond, showed no hesitation.
His human face was covered by a translucent insect mbrane extending from his jaw to his cheekbones, his pupils glowing with a deathly gray luster.
He raised his right hand.
With just one movent, the balance of the entire canyon was instantly shattered.
"Gravity Collapse Field!"
Space seed to be gripped and twisted by so invisible giant claw, and a grayish-white vortex with a radius of tens of ters appeared in mid-air, fiercely ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ collapsing down onto the rock cave where the mage team was located!
A series of "crack, crack, crack" sounds exploded in the air; the defensive barrier was collapsing.
"I... I can't hear the spell echoes anymore?!"
"Sensing spell—all... all cut off!"
"My magic field has collapsed!!!"
Several young mages scread, horrified to discover that they couldn't cast any magic at all!
Even the most basic shield and sound transmission spells seed to have their circuits cut, the incantations congealing in their throats, and magic energy dead in their palms.
They were like being suddenly thrown into a vacuum, not only losing the space to breathe but also losing all their perceptions as "mages."
"Damn it, this is a high-level domain spell of spatial gravity! It's comparable to a forbidden spell!"
Flora roared, her protective barrier erupting with scorching white light, but it only trembled precariously.
"He's not an Worm-Eaten Household puppet—he retains full spellcasting ability and mory! Lyke isn't crazy—his body has been completely taken over!"
She tried to mobilize counter-magic, chanting in a deep voice: "Ice Seal, Frost Vortex!"
The air temperature plumted, and the surrounding water vapor was forcibly frozen. A dozen ice blades ford a ring, releasing a counter-rotating cold storm from around her!
The ice-sealing magic ford a blue-white vortex several ters in diater in mid-air, cutting through the air, dispelling the heavy pressure, and forcefully carving out a breathing space in the "collapse field."
Boom!!
Frost and gravity intersected and collided, and space twisted and lted like wax.
"Defensive formation—deploy!"
Almost at the mont Flora and Lyke clashed, the mages behind also reacted quickly, drawing out their staffs and inscribed crystals, "Barrier, Multiple Guards!"
Layers of magical shields blood like ripples of water in front of them, the barriers overlapping and intertwining, forming a standard defensive grid.
They were not greenhorns.
These were experienced battle mages who had survived various magical disasters, with excellent team coordination, each move made with calm judgnt and practical experience.
But a whistling sound ca suddenly.
A figure, like a black shadow tearing through the air, suddenly appeared.
It was the Worm-Eaten Household-transford knight, still retaining a humanoid form but moving on all fours like a beast, his crimson pupils reflecting the magical glow.
He rushed forward almost sliding along the ground, so fast that he broke through three wind shields in an instant.
"Quick, dodge—!"
"Too late!"
The next second, the wind barrier split like thin paper, emitting a piercing tearing sound.
A middle-aged mage in the front row hadn't even managed to utter a second syllable when his chest was pierced by sharp claws, dying on the spot!
"He... he's at least transcendent level strength!"
"Don't fight him head-on! Pin him down!"
Boom!!
At the sa ti, on the other side, the Worm-Eaten Household warrior, whose skin still bore the Snowsworn tribal tattoos, took a thunderous step.
He seed completely fearless of magical bombardnt, letting molten balls explode on his shoulder and ice spears pierce his chest, yet he continued to step into the formation.
"Stop him! Rock Spike Barrier!!!"
The ground heaved, and thick rock spikes shot out from beneath the earth, blocking the path.
However, the Worm-Eaten Household warrior simply charged forward with his shoulder!
!!!
He slamd his shoulder into the base of the barrier like a war hamr, the spell formation roared, cracking and shattering, and the entire rock spike structure broke and disintegrated like folded paper. "He shattered the rock barrier with his body?!"
A gap instantly appeared in the formation.
Mages on both sides were knocked back by the impact, the support group in the rear was forced to interrupt their chanting, and the spell formation exploded due to the feedback, three people were sent flying in the firelight.
"Retreat! Rear ranks disperse and re-form!"
"Switch to containnt, quick!"
The situation suddenly beca critical.
Although the mage group was experienced, they had never directly encountered a complete Worm-Eaten Household combat unit.
These were not mindless Worm-Eaten Household zombies, but killing machines with tactical intent and suppressive power.
And just as the mage group's formation was on the verge of collapse, a transparent blue light net suddenly appeared in the air, like a battlefield radar projected from the ntal world.
"Attack Path Sensing Map—deploy!"
Dillin stood on a high rock platform, his figure slender but as straight as a driven stake.
His eyes glowed with faint golden magic patterns, and his ntal fluctuations spread like ripples, quickly connecting to Flora and three battle mages.
"Flora, ten ters to the front right—spatial gravity point convergence!"
A translucent light blue view instantly appeared before her eyes, like an additional tactical divine sense, predicting the spell projection one second in advance.
Flora's gaze sharpened, she stomped her right foot on the ice, and her whole body spun sideways like a whirlwind, narrowly dodging Lyke's high-pressure diagonal surge.
The next second, another Worm-Eaten Household warrior suddenly pounced from the flank.
Dillin gritted his teeth and cut off the connection with one mage, forcefully pushing that person out of the attack trajectory, while he himself endured the shock of the aftershock.
The ntal impact pierced his brain like needles, and a sweet, tallic taste welled up in his mouth.
"Don't get distracted!" he growled, his voice hoarse.
His right hand was raised again, magic power burning fiercely, triggering the second spell.
"Frequency Interference Wave!"
In an instant, the entire battlefield seed to be filled with an invisible hum.
The Worm-Eaten Household warrior's movents paused, as if an invisible nerve had been severed, his reaction delayed by 0.5 seconds.
It was this 0.5 seconds that allowed the third mage to flash back, barely surviving by the edge of the claw.
Flora also seized the opportunity to catch her breath, refocus her magic, and slamd her right hand into the ice, instantly deploying an ice formation.
"Frost Domain, release!"
The magic array humd, and silvery-white frost swept across the cliff face.
Water vapor in the air condensed into flying snow, crystalline ice patterns appeared on the ground, and the temperature instantly dropped below fifty degrees Celsius.
"Terrain Freeze!"
Countless ice cones cracked from the cliff face, piercing out from the earth's veins, forcing the Worm-Eaten Household back.
"Ice Spear Barrage!"
More than ten aurorae condensed into form, ice spears falling like stars, aid directly at Lyke's throat and heart.
Frost Chain, this was her most proficient strong control spell combination, integrating offense and defense, instantly locking onto the enemy!
But at this mont, Lyke's expression was indifferent, and he slightly clenched one hand.
"Gravity Crushing Spell."
Boom!
The earth suddenly sank, the ice instantly disintegrated, and the entire ice domain exploded from within like shattered glass.
Flora's spell seed to be crushed by an invisible heavy hamr, disintegrating before it could fully freeze!
"Trajectory Twist Spell."
Those high-speed ice spears suddenly twisted their trajectories at the mont they neared their target, forcibly bent by invisible trajectories in space, all grazing past him.
"Heavy Pressure Impact Wave." A thunderous roar seed to descend from the sky.
The air was compressed and locked down.
Flora tried to raise her hand to set up a shield, but the surrounding space tightened like iron hoops, and magic conduction was instantly blocked.
"Crack—!"
She distinctly heard the sound of her own shoulder bone breaking, and the next mont, her entire body was slamd onto the ice by the heavy pressure, spitting blood, her right arm completely numb.
The mont she fell, she only saw the slender figure on the high rock platform shaking violently.
It was Dillin.
Tinnitus spread throughout the entire world.
The sensing light net was shattered, and magic power flowed from his ridians like blood.
He knelt and stepped back, as if the world was spinning.
Finally, that overdrawn body collapsed with a thud, his eyes open, but no longer focused.
"Forced retreat!" Flora ordered, enduring severe pain, blood trickling from the corner of her lips.
The frost magic array suddenly unfurled, she waved her broken staff, performing "Ice Wall, Fog Shroud Spell, and Tremor Ice Blast" in one go, sealing the cliff entrance along the retreat route.
Thick fog perated, ice walls stacked layer upon layer, exploding in tremors, attempting to block the enemy's path.
Wind mages roared, unleashing waves of gales, disrupting the Worm-Eaten Household's vision.
The Worm-Eaten Household warriors pressed closer, fearless.
They surged like a tide, embarking on a brutal hunt amidst blood and snow.
To buy a glimr of hope, five mages stepped forward to cover the retreat.
Explosion spells, lava traps, and lightning strikes detonated one after another, shattering the mountainside and collapsing rock layers.
Devouring the enemies, and also devouring their last figures.
One was torn apart by the Worm-Eaten Household, two were pierced by giant claws, and the remaining were pushed into the valley by the impact, leaving no bones.
Flora staggered towards the unconscious Dillin in the snow, trying to drag him back with a shield, but the next mont, she was hit by Lyke's "Fixed Pressure Drop Impact."
Boom!!!
Space seed to instantly collapse, compressing into a giant hamr that slamd down.
She was violently slamd into the ice, her ribs shattered, internal magic energy surging chaotically, almost unconscious.
"Take—him—away!!!"
Flora coughed up blood and roared, seven survivors gritted their teeth, holding on at the edge of magic dissipation, jointly propping up Dillin, and dragging Flora to break through with difficulty.
Amidst flying ice and snow, firelight and explosions intertwined behind them.
Ultimately, less than a quarter of the entire mage group escaped.
On the other side, in front of the Snowsworn altar.
Cold snow fell silently, the air seed to be still.
Above the high platform, the Witch of Despair, clad in a pitch-black sacrificial robe, stood quietly.
Her figure was slender, her fingers pale like withered branches, yet she traced elegant and eerie arcs in the air, as if manipulating puppets.
"Hehe... there are still a few little cats who actually managed to crawl out from the sacrificial altar." Her voice was like the shattering of ice bells, or the chirping of insects breeding in rotting flesh, sending shivers down one's spine.
"Never mind," she whispered, a gentle yet hollow smile playing on her lips, "Today is a joyous day worthy of rembrance."
She slowly turned, her sacrificial robe trailing on the ground, dragging through the still-uncongealed pool of blood like spilled ink.
Blood flowed silently along her path, as if extending a red carpet towards the abyss.
Beneath her feet, within the heavy black rock layer, so colossal anomaly slowly awakened.
The giant cocoon covering the stone bones began to pulsate, the wriggling sound like waves crashing on the shore, making the entire high ground subtly vibrate.
Sticky cracks blood from the core, thousands of insect eggs bubbled and burst in the blood plasma, emitting a putrid stench.
Below the high platform, thousands of Snowsworn warriors cheered in disarray, a sight that was both chilling and exhilarating.
She would personally draw back the curtain on this grand chaos, planned for many years.
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