The newfound power of [Frost Descent +2] was a living thing within him, a tamed blizzard coiled and waiting for a command. Alvian felt the shift in his own capabilities on a fundamental level. He had walked into this frozen hell as a scalpel, a tool for precise, single-target elimination. He would walk out as a sledgehammer, capable of shattering armies.
He pushed aside the rubble blocking the alcove and stepped back into the main cavern tunnels. The hostile, oppressive cold of the environment no longer seemed to affect him. The attunement to the Heart of Frost and the perfection of his new skill had granted him a near-immunity to the [Piercing Frost] debuff. The mountain's passive aggression was now nothing more than a mild chill on his skin.
His objective was complete. The logical, efficient path was to leave the caverns immediately and report his success to Rogge. But logic was only one part of his decision-making process. The other was an instinct, honed in the crucible of a dead world, that screamed at him to test his new weapon, to understand its limits and its might in the unforgiving laboratory of live combat. An untested weapon was a liability.
As if the world itself was conspiring to grant his wish, a new sound reached his ears, overriding the constant howl of the wind. It was the distinct, furious roar of a Frostfang Ursid, followed by the sharp crack of spells impacting ice armor and the desperate, panicked shouts of human voices.
A fight. Close by.
Alvian moved towards the sound, his steps silent and sure. He melted into the shadows of a massive ice pillar at the edge of the large chamber he had bypassed earlier, the one that had served as the Ursids' fortress. The scene that greeted him was one of chaos and desperation.
A party of five senior students was trapped, their backs to a solid wall of ice, surrounded by a dozen of the hulking, Level 32 Frostfang Ursids. He recognized their uniforms—the deep crimson sashes marked them as members of the Vanguard, the academy's elite faction of frontline fighters. They were powerful, their coordination was flawless, and they were being systematically crushed.
A brawny tank with a massive tower shield stood at the front, his shield groaning and cracking under the relentless assault of three bears at once. Two damage dealers, a swordsman and a spear-wielder, flanked him, their attacks creating showers of sparks as they glanced off the Ursids' ice armor. A healer at the back was desperately trying to keep the tank alive, her face pale with mana exhaustion, while a mage unleashed volley after volley of fireballs that seemed to sizzle and die in the frigid air, doing pitiful damage.
"Hold the line!" the tank roared, his voice strained as another claw strike sent him staggering back a step. "Their armor is too thick! Arin, can't your fire melt it?!"
"It's the environment!" the mage, a young man with an arrogant scowl, shouted back in frustration. "My spells are at a quarter of their normal power here! We need to retreat!"
"Retreat where?!" the swordsman yelled, narrowly dodging a swipe that would have torn his head off. "We're cornered! This was a mistake!"
Alvian watched from the shadows with the cold, detached interest of a scientist observing a failed experiment. They were strong, well-equipped, and tactically sound. But they were inflexible, their strategies completely undone by an environmental debuff. They were products of the academy's rigid Faction system, powerful within their designated roles but helpless when the rules of the battlefield changed.
This was the perfect canvas on which to paint his masterpiece of destruction.
He took a single, deliberate step out from behind the pillar. His sudden appearance, a lone figure in mismatched gear emerging from the depths of the cavern, drew the immediate attention of the beleaguered party.
"Who the hell are you?" the tank grunted, his eyes wide with disbelief. "A freshman? Get out of here, you'll be killed!"
The arrogant mage, Arin, sneered. "Look what we have here. A lost little lamb. Did you wander off from your orientation, kid? Run home before you get hurt."
Alvian didn't grace them with a response. Their words were the meaningless buzzing of insects. His gaze was fixed on the pack of Ursids, who were now turning their attention towards this new, seemingly insignificant threat. He raised a single, empty hand. The air around him began to shimmer, a visible distortion as he gathered a terrifying amount of mana. The temperature in the already-frozen cavern plummeted even further. A fine, glittering frost began to form on the ground around his feet.
The Vanguard students felt it first. A profound, primal cold that had nothing to do with the cavern itself. It was the feeling of a natural disaster being born right in front of them. Arin's sneer froze on his face, replaced by a look of dawning horror. The sheer density of the mana Alvian was gathering was beyond anything he, a senior Arcanist, could comprehend.
"[Frost Descent +2]," Alvian said, the words barely a whisper, yet they seemed to echo through the cavern like a death sentence.
He brought his hand down.
The world exploded into a vortex of white. A swirling, hyper-dense blizzard materialized from nothing, centered directly on the pack of Frostfang Ursids. It was not a gentle snowfall; it was a grinder of ice and wind, a maelstrom of razor-sharp shards that tore at the bears' thick hides and impenetrable ice armor.
The effect was instantaneous and absolute.
The roars of the dozen Ursids turned into howls of agony as thousands of damage numbers erupted from their bodies in a constant, blinding stream.
[-2,850!] [-3,100!] [-2,975!]
But the damage was only the beginning. The second, more terrifying effect took hold. The [Crippling Frost] debuff washed over the beasts. Their furious, charging assault slowed to a pathetic, drunken crawl. Their powerful, lightning-fast swipes became telegraphed, clumsy movements. Their attack speed and movement speed were cut by more than half, turning the terrifying predators into lumbering, helpless targets.
The five Vanguard students could only stare, their mouths agape, their minds refusing to process what they were seeing. The insurmountable wall of enemies that had been about to crush them had been transformed into a gallery of frozen, slow-motion statues.
Alvian walked forward calmly, entering the edge of his own blizzard, the tamed storm parting around him like a loyal servant. He drew the jagged golem crystal, his one crude weapon. To the crippled, slow-moving Ursids, he was a blur, a phantom of death weaving between them.
He moved from one bear to the next, his strikes precise and fatal. He slid under a clumsy, telegraphed swipe, driving the crystal into the soft joint behind a bear's knee. He leaped onto the back of another, hammering the shard into the base of its skull. Each strike was a killing blow, delivered with an unhurried, terrifying efficiency.
In less than a minute, it was over. The last Frostfang Ursid crashed to the ground, its massive form dissolving into motes of light. The blizzard he had summoned faded away, leaving behind a profound, ringing silence and a chamber floor littered with the glowing blue drops of monster loot.
Alvian stood in the center of the carnage, not even breathing heavily. He calmly bent down and picked up a particularly large shard of [Ursid Ice Armor], a rare crafting material, and put it in his inventory.
He turned to leave, his task complete, his test a resounding success. He didn't even glance at the five senior students who were still frozen in place, their expressions a mixture of shell-shocked awe and a deep, existential terror.
"What… what was that?" the healer whispered, her voice trembling.
The tank lowered his cracked shield, staring at the lone freshman's retreating back. The arrogance of the Vanguard, their pride in being the academy's strongest, had been shattered into a million pieces. They had been saved, not by an instructor or a team of elites, but by an anomaly, a monster hiding in the skin of a first-year student.
As Alvian disappeared back into the frozen tunnels, Arin, the arrogant mage, finally found his voice.
"Did you see his face?" he stammered, his face ashen. "He wasn't even trying."