Chapter 121: Do You Know That He's Breaking the Law?
Alia led Erika to a relatively spacious wooden cabin and handed her the key.
"Keep it safe—there's only one copy, and getting a duplicate made is a real hassle."
Erika took the key and said a quiet "Thank you."
Alia waved her hand and turned to leave.
Erika opened the door and stepped into a very cozy room.
The furnishings inside were simple—just 2 chairs and a long table, along with a bed.
Red firelight burned in the hearth.
Several animal hides hung on the walls, and in the dim glow of the flas, a wave of drowsiness washed over her.
Erika was no exception.
Though she hadn't forgotten to take a hot bath first.
About half an hour later, Erika erged from the bathroom.
Her clothes had been dried with a spell, and only a few droplets of water still trailed down her long golden hair.
Feeling the drowsiness take hold, she slumped into the hide-draped chair.
She gazed at the steadily burning hearth, and in her eyes, a flicker of red firelight seed to swirl and dance.
The room was warm, but Erika felt a quiet sense of lancholy.
In a daze, she drifted into mory.
She thought back over the past several days of travel, over the snowswept northern frontier.
She wondered how things were back ho.
Fragnts of mory flickered through her mind.
She thought of Professor Viktor.
She rembered that day—the terrifying sight of Professor Viktor unleashing his full power against her.
All things consud in fla, the sky drained of all color.
She curled her body inward without thinking.
That overwhelming sense of dread—every ti she recalled it, it left her trembling uncontrollably.
The impact Viktor had left on her was imnse—so imnse that she no longer knew what direction to strive toward.
No matter how hard she tried, it felt as though she could never close the distance between them. That gap felt like an unbridgeable chasm.
As the mories slowly faded, exhaustion finally draped itself over Erika like a blanket.
She really should have been sleeping in the bed...
But the hearth was so warm. Sleeping right here in the chair would be fine too, wouldn't it.
Suddenly, the wind outside the window picked up.
Sothing seed to press itself against the glass, making a sticky, clinging sound.
Erika found it strange. The noise pulled her back to her senses, and without thinking, she looked toward the window.
It was a piece of paper—but in the dim firelight, she couldn't quite make it out.
The northern frontier hadn't adopted Magic luminescent lamps, so she had no choice but to stand, walk over, and take a closer look.
She conjured a small Fla magic in her palm, letting it glow faintly, and held it up toward the window.
This ti, she saw it clearly.
It was a wanted poster.
The face drawn on the wanted poster looked extrely familiar to her.
She didn't quite dare to believe it—that it was the person she was thinking of.
Perhaps the resemblance was just a coincidence.
Professor Viktor—why would he ever appear in the northern frontier?
And even if he had co here, why would he be wanted for committing a cri?
None of it made any sense.
But the more Erika told herself that, the more unsettled she felt inside.
Finally, she swept her gaze down to the bottom of the poster, and her eyes went wide.
Her lips moved slightly, and in a hushed voice, she read the na written there aloud.
"Viktor Clavena."
Ti passed quickly. Counting the days, Erika had already been here for 3 days.
She had gradually grown accustod to life here.
Out on the snowfields, she had begun training early each morning.
Several dozen Mage-soldiers around her were going through the sa exercises.
They were not only here to protect Erika—they had also been sent by Duke Livi for intensive training.
Mountain climbing, snow-terrain load-bearing marches…
Every kind of physical conditioning was being piled onto Erika all at once.
At first, Erika had struggled to adapt to such high-intensity training.
But after only a short 3 days, she was already growing noticeably more capable.
***
Vladimir stood to the side with his arms crossed, supervising, and every now and then he would give a satisfied nod.
"General."
Hearing Dike's voice, Vladimir turned around.
"Those little bastards—showing their heads at the border again?"
The little bastards he was referring to were, of course, that infuriating pack of Savage Beasts.
But Dike only scratched his head and said:
"It's exactly the opposite of what you're thinking, General. The Savage Beasts haven't shown themselves in quite a few days now."
"For no apparent reason, they've started behaving themselves."
Vladimir looked puzzled. He exchanged a glance with Dike, and the 2 of them quickly made their way to the Pallid Mage Society's waystation.
They moved with great discretion—no one else noticed them leave.
"What's going on?"
Vladimir swung up into the saddle and asked.
After fighting the Savage Beasts for so many years, the old man understood perfectly well that these tribesn were not the sort to sit still.
Among their ranks, there were naturally so formidable opponents.
They possessed a special class—a kind of being that seed born for war. The people of the northern frontier called them Berserkers.
Unlike ordinary warriors, those Berserkers seed to feel no fear of pain. In battle, they were utterly savage and devoid of reason, acutely sensitive to blood—as if blood itself was the fuel source that drove them forward.
When he encountered Savage Beast warriors of that caliber, even Vladimir found them a genuine headache.
That was precisely why the Savage Beasts had been able to run rampant in the northern frontier for so long, and why the Pallid Mage Society had still never managed to drive them out.
Even if they wanted to push them back—to shove the Savage Beasts' living space a hundred miles further north—it still depended on whether their Mage-soldiers had the ability to go head-to-head with the Berserkers.
Mage-soldiers did possess close-combat capabilities that surpassed ordinary Mages, but they weren't as durable as Knights.
And those northern frontier Knights?
Hmph—their hearts weren't aligned with the Pallid Mage Society.
The bitter cold of the north was exactly the kind of environnt where those Berserkers thrived.
Vladimir turned it over in his mind as he sat in the saddle, staring into the wind and snow, his thoughts filled with confusion.
Could it be that the Savage Beasts were gathering their forces, planning sothing big while the northern frontier Knights were in disarray?
But Dike quickly dispelled that theory.
"According to the reports coming in from our scouts who went deep into the north—Savage Beast settlents within a hundred miles of the border have been almost entirely burned to the ground."
"Whether it was the Blazing Sword or the Glacial Fang, the sub-tribes both major clans had stationed near the border have been wiped out almost completely."
The Glacial Fang—that was the other of the 2 great clans, on par with the Blazing Sword.
The extre north was ho to countless small tribes, but only the Blazing Sword and the Glacial Fang had built themselves into vast spheres of power.
Just like the Blazing Sword, the Glacial Fang also worshipped a demigod giant.
They too had received divine power from that demigod, which made them immune to bitter cold and granted them the power of frost.
And yet, 2 clans this powerful had suffered devastating casualties in what seed like a single night.
"Not a single survivor in any place they passed through. Only countless charred corpses left behind."
As Dike spoke, he found himself reliving a shock that had stayed with him for days.
Even the Savage Beasts deployed to those border positions had been specifically selected—because they were stationed near the border, only the finest warriors among the Savage Beasts would have been chosen for those posts.
In terms of overall strength, they were absolutely not weak.
These Savage Beasts even had ans of communicating with each other, which was precisely why the Pallid Mage Society had never been able to deal with those border-stationed tribes.
The mont they set out to launch a punitive attack, if they couldn't swallow these Savage Beasts quickly—
The surrounding tribes would imdiately send reinforcents.
Yet according to the intelligence reports coming in from the scouts:
These settlents were being annihilated one after another.
They hadn't even had ti to contact the surrounding tribes—as if it had all happened in an instant.
The Savage Beasts had barely managed to resist before their distinctive structures were engulfed in raging flas that still burned fiercely even now.
Even to this day, the fires continued to burn.
The savage wind and snow couldn't put them out at all.
Those unfortunate tribesn seed to have had no ti even to send word before being erased by what might as well have been a natural disaster.
Such terrifying destructive power—Dike had never seen anything like it with his own eyes, let alone the fact that right now he was only hearing about it secondhand from the scouts.
Vladimir fell into deep, contemplative thought.
Could this truly have been caused by a natural disaster?
Perhaps not.
He seed to think of sothing, and turned to ask Dike beside him:
"Those Knights—have they found Viktor yet?"
Dike shook his head.
"They've had no news at all. It's as if Viktor has already left the northern frontier."
Then, all at once, it seed to click.
"You're saying…"
Vladimir clapped Dike on the shoulder and reached into his coat to produce a cigar.
Then he fished 2 flint stones from his pocket and struck them together. A small spark leaped out.
It caught the cigar perfectly. A red ember glowed and pulsed with each breath Vladimir drew.
The lit cigar spun a few turns between the old man's fingers before he placed it back between his lips.
"Go tell the boys downstairs to get ready."
"Ready for what?"
Dike hadn't yet caught up when he heard Vladimir continue:
"Get ready to drive those Savage Beasts out."
In an instant, his voice was filled with an authority that brooked no argunt.
It was like a lion of ice and cold suddenly opening its eyes—inspiring both awe and dread in equal asure.
For a fleeting mont, Dike seed to see the young general who had once galloped across battlefields in his pri.
"And one more thing,"
Vladimir took a long draw on the cigar—a drag so deep that even Dike felt a twinge of suffocation just watching.
He exhaled a ring of smoke, let out a hearty laugh.
"We need to bring that kid back."
***
Viktor walked out of a hide-walled tribal camp, cold and unhurried.
In his hand he held a mass of fla, and the mont Viktor stepped away, the flas seed to gain a will of their own—leaping onto the camp.
BOOM!
A trendous blast rang out, and the camp behind him erupted into a towering inferno.
The fire burned without relent, as though it intended to swallow the entire camp whole.
And clutched in the Lava Arm behind Viktor was a basket woven from wooden vines.
Inside it sat 7 or 8 Savage Beasts—red-haired, blue-haired, male and female, all kinds.
Without exception, their clothing had been burned away to charred scraps, yet their bodies bore not a single burn mark.
Their limbs had been bent into grotesquely unnatural positions—as if broken—and tossed into the basket. Their skin looked as though it had been scraped raw again and again, leaving them a bloody, mangled ss.
Even a Savage Beast who witnessed this sight would probably be retching.
Viktor's face was ice-cold. He continued carrying the basket and walked deeper into the northern frontier.
Weija yawned from her perch on Viktor's shoulder.
"How much longer until we get there?"
"Almost there."
With that single reply, Viktor kept walking north.
At first, Weija had been puzzled.
They couldn't use Teleportation magic, but why wasn't Viktor using flight magic or an acceleration spell to reach his destination faster?
But after these past few days, Weija had co to understand what he was doing.
He simply walked slowly through the snowfields like an ascetic monk enduring a long, drawn-out pilgrimage.
Yet whenever he entered any Savage Beast settlent, he would carry out only 1 action.
That action was:
Annihilation.
Everywhere he went, the furious, agonized screams of the Savage Beasts would echo across the snowfields.
From desperate pleading to mounting rage—they died carrying their resentnt with them.
But Viktor paid no mind whatsoever to the feelings of these tribesn.
No matter how many Savage Beasts he killed, Viktor wouldn't so much as blink.
His na seed to have already spread throughout the snowfields.
A god of slaughter was cutting a swathe through the extre north.
So much so that when Viktor passed by many camps, he found them completely empty.
So settlents had even left behind the food they depended on to survive, having relocated elsewhere.
The Savage Beast camp Viktor had just left was the first one he'd encountered today that still had Savage Beasts in it.
Perhaps they hadn't yet received word—and had been intercepted by Viktor before they could.
In any case, the Savage Beasts had already begun consciously guarding against the human spoken of in the rumors.
They were gripping their weapons even while gnawing on raw at.
Viktor pressed on in silence through the endless snow.
The fierce blizzard seed intent on swallowing this lone, slight figure whole.
He continued forward. The snowstorm gradually began to rage and whirl until it was impossible to tell which direction was which.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking, didn't know how many ridgelines he'd crossed.
Viktor's pace slowed slightly.
A sliver of daylight suddenly pierced through the storm and appeared before his eyes.
The wind and snow ahead began to thin, as though the world had been split into 2.
Viktor walked to the edge of a cliff.
"We're here."
He stood where he was, gazing out at the vast and boundless expanse before him, and said quietly.
Ahead lay an endless, surging frozen ocean—ethereal and boundless.
Azure-blue sea and ice-blue mountains lted into one another, filling the heart with stillness and calm.
Scattered ice crystals covered the snowfield, shimring with mystery beneath the pale green aurora.
The light was reflected and scattered by the crystals, forming a breathtaking tableau of color.
"This place—is the Extre Northern Ice Plains."
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