Frederick von Ashford was trembling.
It wasn't because of the cold.
Well, partly because of the cold.
The temperature in this damned place was probably around minus twenty degrees Celsius. The wind and snow drilled into the gaps in his bones like knives. His academy uniform was absolutely not designed for this kind of extre environnt.
The thin wool coat was like a sheet of paper against the blizzard. The chill effortlessly penetrated every layer of fabric, reaching straight to his skin.
But the main reason he was trembling wasn't the cold.
It was those few laughs from earlier.
"Hey."
He hugged his arms, teeth chattering, and turned his head to look at Reinhardt, who was squatting beside him.
"Did you... hear those laughs just now?"
Reinhardt didn't answer imdiately.
The gloomy young man was poking the campfire with a branch. The firelight cast two dancing orange spots in his deep-set eye sockets. His expression was as indifferent as ever, as if the snow-swallowed battlefield around them was rely so boring backdrop.
"I heard them."
"Then don't you think..."
Frederick swallowed hard. "...it’s a bit spine-chilling?"
Reinhardt poked the fire again.
"There are all sorts of madn on the battlefield."
His tone was as flat as a weather report. "It's normal."
"Normal?!"
Frederick's voice rose by half an octave. "That laughter sounded like soone was humming a lullaby while twisting off an enemy's head. You call that normal?"
"Mhm."
"Do you always have so kind of misunderstanding about the word 'normal'?"
Reinhardt ignored him.
Frederick buried his face in his knees and let out a muffled wail.
Not long ago, maybe ten minutes ago, maybe half an hour ago.
He had been taking a severe beating from Sebastian in the training area of the underground classroom.
The instructor, dressed in a butler's uniform, looked refined, but when he moved, he was like a bear wearing a tailcoat.
Frederick couldn't rember how many tis he had been thrown.
Five tis? Eight tis? Twelve tis?
In any case, every single ti hurt enough to make him question his existence.
The last ti was a shoulder throw.
A textbook perfect, rciless shoulder throw, filled with the subtext of, 'I am extrely dissatisfied with your rate of progress.'
Sebastian tossed him out like a sack of potatoes.
Then he crashed into the ground.
Literally. He crashed into the ground.
He clearly rembered the feeling at that mont—the impact of his back hitting the ground suddenly vanished, replaced by a sensation of weightlessness, of falling.
It was as if the floor had suddenly turned into a thin sheet of ice, and his weight had just exceeded its limit.
The surrounding scenery changed drastically in an instant.
The gray stone floor disappeared.
The giant steam chandelier disappeared.
The intricately patterned walls disappeared.
In their place was—
Blizzard.
An overwhelming blizzard.
He plumted from the sky with a scream, like a pebble casually tossed aside by fate, smashing a perfect human-shaped indentation into the thick snowdrift.
"Aaaahhhhh— *Pfft*."
His scream was completely muffled by the snow filling his mouth.
He struggled in the snow crater for about thirty seconds, kicking his limbs wildly, like an overturned turtle.
Snow poured into his collar, sleeves, and pant legs from all directions, chilling him to the bone.
Then a hand reached down.
It was Margaret's hand.
The Major General pulled him out of the snow crater with a helpless expression, like lifting a drowned cat.
"Stand steady."
Frederick hadn't processed what had happened yet. His mouth was open, and his face was covered in snow, making him look exactly like an apprentice baker who had just climbed out of a flour bin.
"This... this is..."
"The void realm."
Margaret's voice was calm, but there was a gravity in her dark green eyes that Frederick had never seen before. "Your new classmate has prepared a grand gift for us."
That was the first ti Frederick had witnessed the void realm with his own eyes.
To be honest, he wished he hadn't.
...
Currently, the four of them—Frederick, Reinhardt, Alicia, and Margaret—
were crouched in a rock crevice offering shelter from the wind.
Calling it a rock crevice was generous; it was more like a gap ford by two massive rocks leaning against each other, ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) barely accommodating four people.
The rock overhead blocked most of the wind and snow, but the cold still seeped in through every crack.
The campfire was started by Reinhardt.
Frederick had no idea how he found firewood in this environnt, nor how he managed to light it in the blizzard.
He only knew that when that orange fla flickered to life inside the rock shelter, he almost wept with relief.
Although the warmth provided by that small fla was probably only enough to change his nose from 'completely frozen' to 'just very cold.'
But having it was better than nothing.
At the entrance of the rock shelter, the air was subtly distorted, as if viewed through an invisible curtain of water.
That was Alicia's illusion barrier.
The girl with platinum blonde hair sat cross-legged in a corner of the shelter, her purple eyes half-open, a ball of silvery-white light hovering above her fingertips.
The light pulsed rhythmically, brightening and dimming like a breath. Each flicker made the air at the entrance distort more intensely.
From the outside, this rock shelter shouldn't exist at all.
Any straggler passing by, whether from Usar's forces or Victoriana's, would only see two ordinary, snow-covered rocks, with no gap in between, no firelight, and no trace of human activity.
Path of the Moon, sequence iv.
Deception, illusion, sensory manipulation.
Frederick had to admit that although Alicia usually looked like a white balloon ready to float away, her abilities were reliable at critical monts.
It was a pity Sebastian couldn't enter.
It was said that due to the influence of so special constitution, he was difficult to affect by anything related to The Way Back.
This made Frederick extrely envious right now.
And at the deepest part of the rock shelter—
Major General Margaret von Oppenheir was sitting cross-legged, her hands suspended about ten centiters above her knees, fingers slightly spread.
Dozens of translucent light screens floated in front of her.
Those light screens were pale gold, with fine text and graphics flowing across their surfaces, like docunts projected into the air by so invisible force.
So screens contained dense textual records, so were topographical contour maps, so showed unit designations and deploynt logs, and others displayed symbols and formulas that Frederick couldn't understand at all.
Path of the Magician.
Transforming spiritual will into a weak influence on matter.
This was the most basic description of the Path of the Magician.
But in the hands of soone at Margaret's level, the word 'weak' clearly needed redefinition.
She was doing two things simultaneously.
One hand manipulated the stored archive screens, rapidly flipping through pre-saved historical records of the Eastern Front Campaign from the Military Intelligence Bureau.
Dates, locations, participating units, weather conditions, terrain features, casualty data.
The other hand was drawing a map in real-ti based on the surrounding terrain.
A pale gold three-dinsional terrain map slowly took shape above her palm: ridges, valleys, craters, wreckage distribution...
Every detail was continuously supplented as her range of perception expanded.
Then, she superimposed the two.
Comparing the real-ti terrain with the historical records.
Narrowing the scope using the direction of the wind and snow, the thickness of the snowdrift, and the model of the wreckage.
Frederick watched the data on the light screens scroll rapidly, feeling dizzy.
"Did you find it?"
He couldn't help but ask.
Margaret didn't answer.
Her brow was slightly furrowed, and her dark green eyes darted quickly between the screens.
Frederick wisely shut his mouth.
The campfire crackled.
The blizzard howled outside the rock shelter.
Distant, muffled explosions occasionally sounded, shaking the rocks overhead, causing fine debris to fall.
Frederick shrank his neck and turned his gaze toward the campfire.
"...Speaking of which."
He lowered his voice and leaned toward Reinhardt. "Where do you think our new classmate... Pavela... is right now?"
Reinhardt's movent of poking the fire paused slightly.
"I don't know."
"Aren't you worried?"
Frederick rubbed his reddened fingers. "This is her void realm, right? But what about her? Isn't she in danger?"
"This is her void realm."
Reinhardt repeated, his tone still flat. "She is the center here."
"So?"
"So, she won't easily die in her own void realm."
"'Won't easily' and 'won't' are two completely different concepts..."
Reinhardt didn't reply again.
Frederick sighed and turned to look at Alicia in the corner.
"Alicia, what do you think?"
The girl with platinum blonde hair tilted her head slightly, and her purple eyes opened a little wider from their half-closed state.
"Mmm..."
Her voice was soft and ethereal, as if drifting from a great distance.
"I think... she should still be alive."
"You think?"
"Because the void realm is still here."
Alicia blinked. "If she died, the void realm should collapse."
"...That's true."
"And..."
Alicia tilted her head, a thoughtful glint flashing in her purple eyes. "That laughter from earlier..."
Frederick shivered.
"Don't ntion it, don't ntion it, don't ntion it."
"...It sounded very happy."
"That wasn't happy! That was insane!"
"Happy and insane can sotis be very similar,'"
Alicia said seriously. "They are both expressions of emotion. The difference lies only in the standards of the bystander's judgnt."
"My standard of judgnt is very clear: anyone who laughs while killing soone is insane!"
"But what if the person being killed is her enemy?"
"Even then—"
Frederick opened his mouth, realizing he couldn't actually refute that. "...Fine, you have a point. But that laughter was still very scary."
"Mhm,'"
Alicia nodded. "It was a little bit scary."
She paused.
"But the crying that followed was more heartbreaking."
The rock shelter fell silent for a mont.
The campfire crackled.
Frederick closed his mouth.
Yes. After that laughter ca crying.
Heart-wrenching, desperate crying, the kind that sounded like it was tearing the soul apart.
That kind of crying...
Frederick lowered his head and looked at his hand, reddened by the firelight.
His palm bore large burn scars; the skin was shriveled and distorted, like wrinkled parchnt.
That was the result of an accident in the past.
When his Path of the Chariot awakened, the uncontrolled power ignited the entire training room.
He rembered that feeling.
The feeling of power being unrestrained, his body refusing to obey, watching a disaster unfold while being utterly powerless.
The feeling of looking at the destruction he caused afterward and wishing he could chop off his own hands.
So, he could sowhat understand.
The despair contained in those cries.
Oh, wait. He didn't actually know or experience this new classmate's past; he didn't have the standing to claim understanding.
Frederick decided to retract his previous thought.
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