The group moved at a brisk pace through the forest.
Morning light filtered through the canopy in pale golden shafts, and the air carried the wet, earthy sll of dew evaporating off moss and fallen leaves. It was the kind of quiet that made you feel the world hadn't fully woken yet.
Ellie led at the front, her wolf ears twitching at irregular intervals, nose raised just slightly as she parsed the air currents.
She had said little since camp. Ellie rarely said much to begin with, but today there was sothing more deliberate in her silence, a kind of careful composure that Lin Mo noticed but chose not to address.
Behind her, Finnie walked with her large white hat pulled low over her reddened ears, staring very intently at the ground directly in front of her feet.
She hadn't t Lin Mo's eyes since waking up.
Huck, naturally, had not let the morning's scene go unremarked.
"So," he said, falling into step beside Benny, voice barely lowered, "the priest just... leaned right in, huh?"
"She was asleep," Benny said flatly.
"Sure, sure." Huck scratched the back of his neck with a grin. "Asleep. On his shoulder. Very professionally."
Sheila, walking just ahead of them, glanced back. "You do realize she can hear you."
"Can she?" Huck looked toward Finnie's back. The tips of her ears had gone from pink to distinctly crimson. "Oh. Yeah, she definitely can."
Sheila gave him a look that communicated, with great economy, that she was not impressed.
Lin Mo kept his eyes forward and said nothing. There was a certain wisdom, he had found, in simply not engaging.
By mid-morning, the trees had grown denser and the air noticeably colder.
It was the kind of cold that ca from sowhere specific — not weather, not elevation — but from sothing present and wrong. A sourness underneath it, faintly sweet.
Ellie stopped.
Everyone behind her stopped as well, instinctively falling into a looser formation. Hands drifted toward weapons.
"Death sll," Ellie said quietly. "Stronger than before. Multiple sources, not just one."
Lin Mo stepped forward beside her. "Which direction?"
She pointed northeast — toward a depression in the land where the trees thinned around a rocky outcrop draped in frost. Even from here, Lin Mo could see a faint shimr in the air, the kind of distortion that intense cold sotis produced.
"That's a nest," Landon said from behind, frowning at the map. "Or sothing close to it. The mission description ntioned the cold corpse sotis establishes temporary territory using its ice magic. Creates a kind of... domain."
"How large?" Lin Mo asked.
"Unknown. The patrol team that reported it retreated before getting close enough to assess."
Sid checked the edge of his blade without comnt.
"Finnie." Lin Mo turned. She had already straightened, hands folded around her staff, the embarrassnt of the morning packed sowhere out of sight. Her expression was calm, focused, and genuinely professional in a way that caught him slightly off guard each ti. "How is your mana?"
"Full," she said. "I rested properly." A pause. "...I apologize for this morning."
"You have nothing to apologize for."
Her ears moved under her hat. She looked away. "I should still apologize."
Lin Mo decided not to pursue it further.
They advanced carefully, spread out in a loose arc.
The frost appeared first on the rocks — thin white fingers creeping along the stone, spreading outward from the northeast like sothing breathing slowly in and out. The grass underfoot crunched with each step. The temperature had dropped enough that breath was visible.
Then the first skeleton appeared.
It stood motionless beside a tree, head slightly bowed, as if resting. Only the faint blue light behind its eye sockets indicated it was active at all.
Then another. And another.
Arranged loosely around the depression's rim, a loose periter of sentinels in varying states of decay, so skeletal, so Rotted Corpse variants, one draped in sothing that might once have been armor.
"They're not moving," Sheila murmured.
"Waiting," Huck said, and his voice was noticeably quieter than usual. "They know we're here."
Ellie confird it with a small nod.
Lin Mo surveyed the formation. Twelve visible units, probably more within the depression itself. And sowhere beyond them, the cold corpse — the actual target — radiating that faint shimr of compressed ice magic.
"Landon," he said.
"I see it." Landon had already nocked an arrow, adjusting angle and wind in small incrents. "There's an elevated position on the left ridge. If I can get Sheila up there, we divide their attention and prevent flanking."
"Do it. Huck, Benny, Sid — hold the center line, keep anything from reaching Finnie." Lin Mo glanced at Ellie. "With on the right. We push through the thin side of the periter and collapse inward."
Ellie touched two fingers to her belt knife in a small, habitual gesture. Ready.
"And if the cold corpse attacks from range before we reach it?" Landon asked.
"I'll handle it."
Nobody questioned this. There was sothing in the way Lin Mo said it — not arrogant, just precise — that tended to settle the question.
Finnie raised her staff slightly, the pale blue gem in its head beginning to gather light. 【Light's Assistance】 spread outward in a quiet wave, settling over each of them in turn like warm cloth.
Benny exhaled. "Good timing, miss."
"Please be careful, everyone," she said.
The sentinels moved the mont Landon's first arrow flew.
What followed was not elegant.
It was the kind of fighting that required constant adjustnt — reading eight things simultaneously, reacting to six of them, and hoping the other two resolved themselves. Huck's axe cleaved through two soldiers in the sa swing while Benny took a hit to the shoulder that he shrugged off with a grunt. Sid fought with the economy of soone who had done this very long and didn't see the point of excess motion.
On the right flank, Lin Mo and Ellie cut through the thinner periter cleanly. Ellie's knives found joints and tendons with practiced accuracy, disrupting movent and control. Where she disabled, Lin Mo finished.
【Rushing Punch】 sent a skeletal soldier airborne. 【Backstab】 collapsed a Rotted Corpse from behind before it could turn. The destruction elent flared through his sword arm in quick, controlled bursts — not showing off, simply efficient.
And then the ice arrow ca.
It ca from the depression's center — fast, precise, aid not at Lin Mo but at Ellie, who was exposed mid-strike.
Lin Mo's 【Rock Shield】 materialized between them with perhaps half a second to spare.
The impact shattered the shield and staggered him back a step, but Ellie was unhard.
She looked at him. Sothing passed across her expression — not surprise, but sothing more considered.
"Thanks," she said.
"Don't slow down," he replied, and they pressed forward.
In the depression, the Icy Rotted Corpse stood waiting.
It was not like the others — not shambling, not mindless. It stood with a kind of terrible stillness, the long frost-covered spear held at rest, the ice armor across its body catching and scattering the cold light. Only half its pale face was visible beneath the carapace.
It watched them approach.
And then it raised its hand.
From the sky, a massive ice crystal began to form — larger than anything it had thrown before, large enough to take three people off the field simultaneously.
Landon saw it from the ridge. 【Piercing Gale】 flew before Lin Mo had to call for it, the wind-wrapped arrow striking the crystal's center and shattering it mid-formation into a hundred harmless shards.
The Icy Rotted Corpse's gaze moved to Landon. It shifted the direction of threat.
"Now," Lin Mo said, and raised his sword.
The battle for the cold corpse's domain had begun in earnest.
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