Chapter 25: Frozen Hell [2]
In the end, only Ilya remained standing with the unconscious Elise.
There was no time to look back, and certainly no time to question whether he had made the right decisions.
For now, Elise was far safer unconscious than awake. As long as she remained unconscious, she wouldn’t panic, she wouldn’t run, and most importantly, she wouldn’t move.
If his deduction about the Distortion was correct, remaining perfectly still gave her the highest chance of surviving, though there was still no guarantee she wouldn’t unknowingly roll over or shift once she awoke, an action that could very well cost her life. And who was to say the Distortion would leave just because it detected no movement?
Moreover, it wasn’t certain this Distortion would remain here forever. So long as Elise survived this encounter, that alone would be enough for him, even if he himself never made it out of these mountains alive.
After all... she had witnessed every one of her companions die before her eyes.
Soon enough, he would probably die as well, and whether she wanted to or not, she would be forced to live with these memories for the rest of her life.
"...Consider this my little revenge against you."
With that, Ilya turned away without another glance, leaving the unconscious Elise behind.
———!
Behind them, the Black-Labeled Distortion immediately shifted its attention toward the last remaining movement before giving chase.
According to Siegfried, running would be meaningless.
Eventually, the Distortion would catch whoever tried to flee, which was why he had tried to buy everyone else time.
Even so, Ilya refused to accept that conclusion, gambling everything on the possibility that the speed granted by his Domain would be enough to escape the creature’s pursuit.
"Shit...!"
The forest rushed past him in a blur.
He swerved between trees with only inches to spare, struggling to maintain control over the ice as each glide seemed to send him careening into another trunk.
"Haa...!"
He narrowly avoided crashing headfirst into the dense forest as he desperately searched for any path that might keep the nightmare behind him at bay. Every glide across the ice pushed him faster through the forest, yet no matter how much distance he covered, the overwhelming presence behind him refused to fade.
The next moment, the Distortion suddenly stopped.
"...!"
Ilya didn’t dare look back.
He continued sprinting through the forest, his mind racing as he tried to understand why the creature had suddenly stopped instead of continuing its pursuit.
Whatever it was doing, he knew turning around to confirm it would only slow him down.
"...."
———!
The next instant, the Distortion’s unnaturally long black hair, which had been dragging across the snow until then, suddenly writhed as though it had come alive.
Swoosh—Swoosh—Swoosh——!
Countless strands shot forward like whips, slicing through the forest with terrifying speed as they relentlessly closed the distance between themselves and Ilya.
"Ukh...!"
One strand caught him on the shoulder.
Its impact spun him sideways before a sharp pain flared through his body, forcing him to stumble as blood immediately stained his clothing. The hair was sharp, slicing through both flesh and the Iron Reinforcement protecting his body as though neither had existed in the first place.
"Ghk...!"
Indeed, it was a Black-Labeled Distortion. Each strand of hair lashed through the forest with enough force to cleave towering trees in half, leaving deep scars across the mountainside as though the landscape itself were being carved apart.
Even so... Ilya continued running.
Sooner or later, an attack on this scale would inevitably draw the attention of the professors and instructors scattered throughout the mountain.
It was a reckless, desperate gamble, but at this point, it was the only chance he had left, and so he bet everything on someone noticing before the nightmare behind him finally caught up.
"Ah..."
...Unfortunately for him, reality had never cared for desperate hopes.
"Shit."
His footing slipped.
The ice that had carried him this far betrayed him at that moment, and before he could recover his balance, his shoulder slammed hard into the trunk of a towering tree.
Crash——!
The impact alone was enough to halt his momentum.
It was all the opening the Distortion needed.
———!
Countless strands of black hair surged forward from every direction, tearing through the tree and Ilya alike. The massive trunk cut apart in an explosion of wood and snow, while the force of the attack hurled both him and the shattered remains high into the air.
"...How pitiful—Cough!"
Blood spilled from the corner of his lips as he let out a weak cough.
Only then did he realize where he was.
Beyond him was nothing but empty air.
At some point during the chase, he had unknowingly reached the edge of the mountain, and now, suspended high above the forest, there was nothing below him except a sheer cliff and the endless drop waiting below.
"...You must be happy now, Anastasiya."
A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
Soon enough, there would no longer be a half-blooded rat standing in the way of House Belozersky’s succession, even if that rat had never once desired the position he had been born into.
In the end, perhaps this was always the conclusion everyone had expected for him from the very beginning.
A useless death.
A death that had accomplished nothing, changed nothing, and saved no one. A death that, in the end, would likely pass unnoticed, unmourned, and eventually forgotten, no different from the fate that had awaited the original Ilya in the story.
Whoooosh——
The wind roared past him.
His body continued to plummet through the freezing air as the mountain rapidly disappeared above him, while the unbearable pressure and accumulating injuries slowly robbed him of what little consciousness he had left.
Before long, his vision blurred completely, and the darkness swallowed him whole.
"...."
...And then his eyes slowly opened.
Whoosh——
The cold greeted him first.
"Haa..."
An endless white expanse stretched in every direction, covering the world in a blanket of snow. The same frozen landscape that had haunted him ever since he arrived in this world.
"...Unfair."
His skin felt brittle, his fingers had turned a deep shade of purple from frostbite, and every attempt to move sent a dull ache through his body, as though even his bones had begun to freeze.
Even so, Ilya gritted his teeth and forced himself upright, refusing to remain sprawled upon the frozen ground despite every part of his body pleading with him to stop.
If this were the afterlife... then this could only be hell.
Slowly, Ilya began to walk.
His fractured arm hung limply at his side, swaying with each step, yet he paid it no attention whatsoever.
Whether the pain had become too much to register or the cold had long since numbed every sensation, even he could no longer tell, and so he simply continued forward, leaving footprints in the snow as frost spread wherever he passed.
"...."
The rumbling shaking the mountain, the screams echoing from somewhere far above, and even the thought of Elise’s survival gradually left his thoughts until there was nothing left except the endless white stretching toward the horizon.
One step became another, then another, until the passage of time itself seemed to lose all meaning.
Eventually, he stopped.
———!
A torrent of flames flashed before him, surging across the frozen landscape with enough intensity to swallow everything in their path.
Yet the moment they reached the invisible winter surrounding Ilya, the fire rapidly dimmed before scattering into countless glowing embers.
Ilya slowly raised his head.
"...Senior."
"I thought I told you never to come down the mountain."
Standing amidst the endless snow was Vera.
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