"They? The three students or the other groups?" Emily asked. "I suppose the dark corps and paladins would leave traces more easily."
"The second group… I don't feel the traces of the mana of the three students," Nuvian scratched his chin thoughtfully. "I already expected that given what you told me, but this is bad… I don't think that they fully understand what their actions could have caused."
"They don't care in one way or the other; the world might as well explode if it doesn't follow their whims… that is what some people think," Ethan shrugged while he was making the wagon turn. "We are changing directions; inform me when you notice anything again."
Nuvian silently nodded. The others didn't look very surprised by what Ethan said, and it seemed that they agreed with him… Nuvian wanted to believe that Hannah had all the help necessary to have an easy life while she was working in his world. Still, it looked like the kids around him right now could see life in a more bleak way… it was a pity since he sure hoped that kind of life wasn't common among them.
Regardless, half an hour later, the group arrived in an area free of mountains, but the wind was blowing against them. Ethan and the shadow clones would have a hard time enduring that completely… even if their body temperatures don't drop, they will get a bit wet, and that will affect them in one way or the other.
In any case, soon the group slowed down since Nuvian felt something weird ahead… he couldn't quite feel what had happened since the mana on the environment looked like a mess, at least according to his explanation. Eventually, Emily and Hana also felt the same things since they had decent magic senses as well… Ethan didn't have to sense anything; he could see in the distance, something off.
After approaching a bit more, the others also saw what Ethan was able to see… the wind stopped blowing in a certain area, but the temperature had dropped even more. To the point that the cloaks were suffering damage since they weren't strong enough to fight that cold… still, that wasn't important; what was important was the fact that they could see some ice statues ahead… dozens of them, the group didn't like that.
Nuvian closed his eyes and showed a regretful expression, but the others jumped from the vehicle to check the statues. Ethan and Ian were the first to reach the statues, and they couldn't help but frown when they stopped in front of one another and saw a paladin wearing heavy armor completely frozen… even his armor had turned into crystal due to the cold.
"There was no fight here… someone or something froze them instantly," Ian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It doesn't look like they made much progress, and I can only imagine that the enemies were waiting for them."
"So it seems…" Ethan muttered. "They didn't feel the need to get rid of the evidence as well since the humans would be too busy to send another team. These guys are C rank, right?"
"Almost B rank; they don't have rare skills, but they become stronger with training and the magic items that they received after completing their training," Ian explained when the others reached them. "It looks like the dark corps didn't notice the ambush until the end… I thought that their specialty would be to scout ahead to avoid this kind of situation…."
"That is their usual Modus operandi; I guess they changed a bit to cooperate with the paladins to make their intentions more clear," Hana said with her face down while trying to control her feelings.
"Anyway, we can't send the data now, but recording what happened to them and revealing it later might help," Ian said while taking another wristwatch from his backpack. "Father told me to bring this in case of emergency."
No one asked, but it looked like Ian wanted to reveal that his father was on their side. In fact, it looked like Ivan would be on anyone's side as long as he gets new Intel about other worlds. It must be rough to look like a mobster that doesn't have many friends…
"... Wow, this is nasty," Ian frowned after he recorded the situation of the corpses and got some data from them as well. "They were frozen on the spot, and by the data, it looks like they were frozen by an attack that was at minus two hundred degrees. They didn't even have time to suffer…"
"Absolute Zero is minutes 273.15 degrees… but I never met an enemy that could get their ice magic this low," Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"You never faced ice dragons?" Ian frowned while showing a small smile but soon made it disappear since it wasn't the right place to do so.
"Not; most of those I dealt with were demon kin, they had dragonkin in their ranks, but only a small variation, and they were giant dragons or could transform," Ethan replied.
"... It looks like a single large-scale spell got them, so there is a chance that an ice dragon did this," Nuvian explained. "My apologies, they don't exist where I come from, so I can't say if this is accurate."
"No problem; it would be weird if we could get all the information we want this soon," Ethan shrugged. "Anyway, it looks like we can't solve this peacefully… what do you have in mind?"
"We will have to keep following north… while we didn't find traces of those three, most likely, the paladins and the dark corps did," Nuvian replied while looking around. "I don't think that they are waiting for a group like ours, but the likelihood of finding traps along the way isn't low, so we will have to be careful."
Everyone nodded, and then they headed back to the vehicle… Emily stopped for a moment and turned around. The dark corps and the Paladins were using some decent gear, and they were trained well, not to mention they had a high C rank strength. With all that and forty people on their side, they didn't have the chance to fight against apparently a single enemy that wiped them out.
Once Emily returned, Ethan and the shadow clones began to pull the vehicle again toward North. The next day had already arrived, and they could be found with more ease, but that didn't stop the group… they had less than a day to make some progress with the mission, clandestine or not.
Fortunately, it looked like they picked the right direction, or maybe the enemies made a mistake somewhere. Either way, Nuvian picked a magic frequency in the middle of the morning and then alerted the others. Two hours later, they found some mountains in the distance, and Nuvian also felt some high concentration of mana behind it… after leaving the vehicle behind, they approached the area by walking. Nuvian confirmed that there were no scouts ahead, so they climbed the mountain quite fast… only to find a massive valley between several mountains where dozens of thousands of enemies were camping; they looked exactly like the guys that invaded Earth. They were blue and were wearing the same type of gear…
Ian suddenly pointed to beyond the giant camp, and then everyone found a passage between the mountains further North where even more soldiers were coming all the time.
"I can't see the portal… but it is clear that this is their main base," Emily said while looking around.
"It is quite a weird place to set camp… wouldn't it be better for them if they had opened it in one of their cities?" Hana asked while frowning.
"Some of them are marching to the right side of the camp, and it looks like there is a cave there…" Kei whispered. "It looks like a small group, but since time here flows ten times faster, they don't have to send a lot of people at once."
"I can feel a lot of mana active in there… but I can't tell if it belongs to a portal," Nuvian declared. "Anyway, it is hard to say if the three students came here, but either way, it doesn't seem like we can negotiate with anyone here… the bloodlust is almost visible in the air. We need to confirm that the portal is there… we can't attack it before confirming that since it will put us in a bad spot on the enemy's camp."
"It is time to make yourself useful with your slimy skills, Ian," Ethan declared.
"They aren't slimy… they are cool skills that only those who are skilled enough can use… you can die of jealousy," Ian snorted.
Ian made some drama for a while, but eventually, he disappeared after using his skill, which became impossible to detect. It was quite useful to become invulnerable to all kinds of attacks, but it probably wasn't that pleasant… Ethan didn't know how that kind of power would help his fighting style, so he wasn't interested either.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢