Chapter 324 Fortress Of Solitude Pt.I
??? POV
After walking through the ice for quite a bit, we stumbled across an interesting sight. A creature covered in snow-white fur, with horns made of ice stood in our path. Icy breath escaped the creature’s fang-filled maw as it scoffed at us. It’s blood-red eyes glowed dimly in contrast to his ugly blue face and snow-white mane.
Oddly enough, this grotesque image wasn’t enough to stir any emotions in my heart. I wasn’t sure why I was certain I was supposed to feel something.
The little girl to my left tugged on my arm, making me look at her. Strangely enough, I understood her perfectly just by looking into her eyes.
“You want to fight him? You can beat him? Have at it then.”, Our conversation ended there. The girl let go of my hand and jumped at the creature, but an explosion of snow stopped her mid-air.
When the snow settled, it revealed a person of short stature, wrapped in numerous dirty rags that perfectly hid their body, standing there with a staff in hand. The person wore a witch’s hat, and their rags were so numerous, it gave them a rotund figure.
The little girl retreated, hissing at the person. Even the creature on the other side made no movements.
The person searched through their rags, eventually pulling out a book. They flipped through the pages, reading briskly, before eventually settling on one page.
“Hashimoto Rensuke-kun and Kanata Suzuki-kun, right?”, They said, causing the creature on the other side to wince.
I might have had the same reaction if I was bothered enough, although the name, Hashimoto Rensuke, sounded uncomfortably familiar to me.
“Great. I found most of you. Just six more students, and we can return to Earth.”
At the mention of Earth, all my memories started to flood my brain. I was a student on Earth, and I suddenly appeared here. How weird.
“Please abstain from killing each other. It’ll be a hassle searching for your souls again.”, Having said this, the person held their staff, then slammed it into the ground.
A circle filled with markings formed beneath the person. The crystal on the staff glowed, producing a power that filled the circle beneath them, causing another explosion. As soon as the explosion settled, there was nothing there anymore.
The little girl looked into my eyes, once more as soon as the odd person left.
“Sorry, but I don’t think you can kill this creature anymore. Just put it to sleep or something. What? I’m the one who should do that? How am I? Oh? That so? I see.”
According to the little girl, I possessed the ability to put anyone to sleep. If that was so, how did I do it? Was I supposed to simply raise my arm? Make a grand gesture? Yell out some embarrassing nonsense?
But that was too much work. I wasn’t in the mood to do that. Couldn’t he just fall asleep and not make me do such tedious work?
As such thoughts flowed through my mind, the little girl tugged on my arm again. I looked down at her, but she was facing forward. I traced her gaze to meet the unconscious body of the ugly creature from before.
‘Oh… that works too.’
The girl squeezed my arm tightly, signalling for us to proceed with our earlier march.
Honestly, walking was starting to feel like a drag. If only there was a way to cancel out the need for me to walk entirely. Like a self-driving car. Unfortunately, there was no such thing nearby. Maybe I could make it for myself? I didn’t know why, but creating such a thing felt incredibly possible to me.
“Wait there… boy it’s tough moving in the snow.”, Stopping us in our tracks once more, a new person arrived before us. This person was clothed in what I remembered to be a traditional yukata.
“Who are you?”, I asked, curious about something for the very first time.
“Are you looking for work?”, She asked, ignoring my question.
“No.”, I didn’t want to walk, much less perform work for a stranger. A dangerous stranger at that.
“In that case, don’t go in whatever direction your instincts are telling you to.”
“Hm?”, Truly, this stranger was interesting. Somehow, she was aware of my instincts and my drive. Before, I was unbelievably confident that I was safe, but now… even the little girl holding my hand was shaking.
“You see, in that direction, there’s a dangerous forest there, ruled by an extremely dangerous monster. If it catches sight of you, you’ll end up in a lot of trouble. Rather, follow me.”, She elaborated vaguely.
“Who are you?”, My intrigue was now replaced by a sense of wariness.
To my sharp and cautious tone, she replied with a wide grin and glimmering eyes that betrayed the sickening aura I could feel from her.
“You can sense it right? I’m the ruler of this world, obviously!”
HINOTORI POV
We came to the conclusion, that more time was needed for Shiro to recover, although she was in perfect physical condition. Unfortunately for them, I couldn’t allow them to move about too freely, so as to maintain as many secrets as possible. They were allowed to go about certain places in the mansion, of course, but the treasury, cellars, occupied bedrooms, and Sylphie’s workshop were completely off-limits.
I honestly wanted to talk to Shiro, but she couldn’t tell who I was.
Obviously, there’d be no way for her to tell who I was given my new appearance. Still, I felt that there should have at least been an instinctual feeling there. Maybe I was expecting too much of her. Yeah, it wasn’t right to expect her to automatically know who the hell I was.
I’d have to talk to her later, but Julian wasn’t having it. The bastard wanted me to begin my training as soon as possible. I’d managed to push it back this far because I had recently evolved and effortlessly stopped the dispute, but Julian now wanted to test me.
The selection was going to start in two weeks, and he was getting a tad bit anxious. It would seem that his very life was riding on my success. Which was why, at this very moment, we were both in the winter zone, standing on one of the peaks.
“I don’t see why I have to be naked for this.”, I complained, getting a bit self-conscious about the whole thing.
“To ensure that you are not receiving any sort of buff from anything. The whole point of this event is to ensure that you yourself are in top-notch shape.”, Saying this, Julian spread apart my arms and started to feel me all over.
“Nice. Very nice.”, I couldn’t feel a thing, but it still felt extremely weird having him glaze over my body like that.
“Are you done?”
“You definitely have the body of a child with the strength of a named dragon.”
“10 named dragons?”
<<By named dragon, he means a dragon with a title. Most dragons, being creatures with whole souls, don’t get any significant boost from receiving a regular name. However, titles are very different and are only given to exceptional dragons.>>
‘Hm, I see.’
“Yes. Maybe more? I’m just going off your physical potential here. Lord Maou will be stronger than this one day.”, He started to compare me to my own child yet again.
“Yes, yes. Can we get this over with?”
“Of course. Now, we are about to begin. Please refrain from using any and all magic.”
“What? Why?”
“I simply wish to see how good your combat prowess without magic is. I intend to make you participate in the [Demon Lord Selection] without magic. Imagine everyone assuming that you possess no magical capabilities, only for you to reveal them in the final competition.”, Julian begun his rant. ““Ha! You, a mere demon lord candidate, believe that you are worthy of my magic? Nay! I am simply choosing to bless your final moments with it!”. Imagine the crowd! Oh my days, I’m getting heated by simply thinking of just how epic such a display would be.”
“Don’t push your chuuni fantasies on me.”, I immediately recoiled after hearing his plan.
Still, Julian’s idea wasn’t half bad. I didn’t mind participating in the selection without magic, as long as I could actually do it smoothly. The less anyone knew about me, the better.
“So, what exactly is the test?”, I asked, looking around.
I’d scanned the nearby area and found that there were a lot of C-rank and above creatures. There was a shocking amount of B and A ranks nearby too, but nothing that could give me any problems.
“You want me to fight the monsters around here?”, I asked, feeling like this wouldn’t take very long.
“No. Those beasts are too weak for you. We are here to clear one of the most dangerous dungeons in the world! Kaleb Zen’s Fortress of Solitude!”
“… I know being a reincarnator means no copyright or whatever, but there should be limits to how shameless a person can be.”
While I was having such thoughts, a monster came up to me. The monster shook timidly as it slowly approached me, clearly not wanting to step any further.
‘Fight! Fight it!’, The monster shouted in its head.
It was an Ice oni. A decently powerful monster, although not so much that a party of experienced A-rank adventurers couldn’t handle.
What made this monster even more interesting was the fact that it was a reincarnator. I wanted to ask some questions, but this monster just wanted to fight me. What to do?
“Rubbish.”, Julian said, quickly attending to the issue by punching the monster away. By the time I realised what had happened, the beast had been thrown quite a distance away.
It was no issue to fly over to him to ask some questions, but looking at him, he wasn’t going to get back up any time soon. I didn’t mind waiting just a bit longer. Who knew? He could have been one of my classmates.
“Shall we?”, Julian led the way into the dungeon.
It was an impressionable gate of ice that reached as far as the human eye could see and looked impossible to move by mere brute force. Of course, Julian brute-forced it open, but that was beside the point.
We entered the dungeon to begin my training. Hopefully, this wouldn’t last too long.
----------------------------
DING!
[Unexpected mana levels detected]
[Converting Dungeon Room to accommodate intruder]
[Altering Floor Terrain]
[Generating Multiple Dungeon Mobs]
[Activating, Project CATH: Y]
The Fortress of Solitude’s internal structure begun to morph.
Dungeons were locations with multiple floors, each of which became more difficult the more a person descended. Kaleb Zen, as a researcher and explorer, preferred to try things out in a different way. The second-most dangerous dungeon in his series, the Fortress of Solitude, possessed only one floor. An icy, frozen lake, with nothing but freezing snow as far as the eye could see.
The floor could cause a freeze effect that could kill even B-rank adventurers 10 minutes after setting foot inside. No one who had entered had ever made it out.
Now, this frozen lake was being converted into a massive forest. A frozen winter land with icy-blue trees covered in snow and thorns of ice spikes, mountains as tall as the sky, and multiple frozen lakes.
Rather than a simple floor. The entire room had been converted into a massive forest on a scale that no normal dungeon core could ever hope to process.
This wasn’t the only thing the dungeon core was busy with.
An autonomous unit Kaleb Zen had been painstakingly working on for years had been activated.
It was in the form of a humanoid machine that was bound to the core of the dungeon by multiple wires. The humanoid machine was fed its status and objective, as well as the necessary tools to eliminate the intruder.
The automaton moved itself from the core as it looked at the intruder on a screen.
“It emanates demonic energy, but seems to possess a holy barrier. The blessings of a few gods also give it immunity to some elemental and mental attacks. Mana reserves are voluminous, and magic power is potent. Physical stats, are about B-rank, but skill [Mythril Body] can change that. Estimated physical stats: SS-rank. Analysing other skills… battle difficulty: Impossible. Activating the Skill Barrier. Activating the Anti-Stellar Barrier. Recalculating battle difficulty: Extremely Difficult.”
“Personal report on the matter: It may not look too good, but a salaryman has no choice at the end of the day.”
Foll𝑜w current novℯls on fre𝒆web(n)ovel.co(m)