Chapter 382 – Blizzard Kings
“Phil?” Damion questioned when he saw the Demonic Beast in the sky. He reached out through his companion bond with the Demonic Beast, but the connection he felt was distant. As if Phil was far away.
“That is not Phil,” Mage Teft said after a moment. “We left Phil on the previous floors. Your companion could not have followed us without us noticing. That is…”
“Another Blizzard King,” Damion realized.
“Precisely. And it appears this Blizzard King is the guardian of this floor. This does complicate things a bit. Guardians on one floor tend to be commonly found Demonic Beasts on higher floors. If you are on such a floor in the future with Phil once we open the labyrinth to the public, there is a good chance someone will mistake your companion for a wild Demonic Beast.”
“I guess we will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” Damion said. There was nothing he could do about it right now. Perhaps the only thing he could do would be to avoid training on any floor that had Blizzard Kings on it.
While Damion and Mage Teft were speaking, the wild Blizzard King let out another cry and dove towards them. Mage Teft, sensing Damion’s reluctance to attack a creature so similar to his bound familiar, quickly cast Torrent, cutting through the Demonic Beast’s heart and dropping it from the Sky.
“I don’t know what reaction Phil will have, seeing one of its own kind dead. I would suggest having everything processed but feed Phil this creature’s core. This Blizzard King was mid B Rank. Stronger than you or Phil, the core should help Phil to quickly raise its magic power.”
Damion silently collected the carcass of the Blizzard King in his personal spatial storage and then destroyed the core to the floor. Even though he knew this Demonic Beast was not Phil, he still had a sick feeling in his stomach from when Mage Teft had so easily killed the creature.
The two mages headed through the passageway to the twenty-sixth floor and found the landscape was mostly the same. The only difference was that there was now more snow on the ground. Damion’s map showed them the core for the floor was a few hundred meters away, much closer than they thought it would have been. When they pulled the core out of the snow drift it was hidden in and crushed it, they had one last look around at the snowy mountains they were in before heading to the next floor.
Damion was thankful the twenty-sixth floor was brief; he did not think he could handle it if they encountered a flock of Blizzard Kings. Since the floor did not appear to have a guardian, the Magic System apparently felt it a good time to send over fresh notifications.
*Ding*
{Spell Cold Resistance mastery increased to E Rank}
*Ding*
{Quest Completed}
[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit.]
*Ding*
{Spell Ice Mastery mastery increased to D Rank}
*Ding*
{Quest Completed}
[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit.]
Increasing two spells in Rank and gaining more experience and credits was enough to take his mind off Blizzard Kings for a moment. When they moved on to the twenty-seventh floor they found they were no longer in snowy mountains, but in the middle of a frozen tundra. For as far as they could see in any direction was white. No hills, no trees, just a blanket of snow.
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Damion walked a few paces from the safe area around the entrance. As soon as he left the small safe area his foot sank half a meter deep into the snow. He pulled himself out of the thick snow and used his Belt of Purification to rid his shoe and pantleg of the dampness brought by stepping into the snow.
“What does your map say?” Mage Teft asked after seeing Damion’s foot sink into the snow.
“The core is ten kilometers away, due east, and there are Demonic Beasts throughout the area. I guess they are all under the snow.”
“They could be Ice affinity Demonic Beasts, like the Blizzard King before. But I think it is more likely they are other affinities, and they are hibernating.”
“Really? Underneath all that snow?”
“Do you see any movement?” Mage Teft asked.
“No. None of them appear to be moving.”
“It is likely that once we get near the Demonic Beasts they will wake up from their hibernation. Similar to how the skeletons on the graveyard floors rose from their graves as we passed them.”
“Well, at least we can fly over them” Damion told her, summoning his Ice Sword and stepping onto it.
A few minutes later they arrived at the core, which happened to be buried beneath the snowdrift. Damion cast Ice Mastery and willed the snow to part, revealing the core. A quick cast of Earth Shard and the core was shattered causing the snow beneath them to recede and the entrance to the next floor to reveal itself.
"On to twenty-eight,” Damion announced as he flew through the passageway.
Mage Teft followed behind and they emerged on another floor that seemed identical to the last. The snowy plain stretched out in all directions and if Damion was not sure he had just flown through to a new floor he would have been tricked into thinking that this was the same place they had just left.
“The map says the core is… ten kilometers to the west,” Damion said feeling like the Realm Breach was playing tricks on them.
“How deep is the snow?”
Looking at the map, he was able to see the snow was close to three meters deep throughout the tundra. What was odd was that the Demonic Beasts showing up on the map were not static, as was the case on the previous floor, they were moving about under the snow. The surface of the tundra showed no sign of it, so Damion guessed the creatures must have been compacting the snow around them as they moved through it without causing it to clump up on the surface.
“What kind of Demonic Beast could do this?” Damion asked Mage Teft.
“Any Ice affinity Demonic Beast probably. The cold won’t bother them, so they are simply moving around along the ground, trampling or pushing the snow away, forming their own territories beneath the surface. Come, let’s hurry to the core and move on to the next floor. I suspect the thirtieth floor will be the final B Rank floor.”
“What makes you think that?” Damion asked as they flew towards the core.
“Symmetry. There were five F Rank, five E Rank, five D Rank and five C Rank floors. Since we have already exceeded five B Rank floors, I suspect that there will be ten, instead of five, making the thirtieth floor the final one.”
“Oh, then how many A Rank floors do you think there will be?”
“At least ten, possibly more. The gap between B Rank and A Rank is large, but the jump from A Rank to S Rank is even larger. I would not be surprised if the S Rank floors did not begin until floor fifty.”
“That is likely to take you a while to reach.”
“Indeed, it will. That is why once I get there I will remain for some time to train and then head back to report to the other S Ranks allied with us my findings. You’ll be able to report on everything up to the A Rank floors and that will be enough to secure the support of the Adventurer Association. Though, they have been somewhat reluctant to assign our city a branch manager.”
“I bet it is the same nobles that paid to keep me out of the Association dungeons causing more problems.”
“I’m sure you are right. Still, the Adventurer Association plays a key role in the economy of cities. The missions they post and contract out to guilds keep gold moving through everyone’s hands. If we can’t get a branch set up we will have to start our own, which means creating our own database of adventurers and managing the missions. It is not something easily looked after.”
“Perhaps we can entice them to assign someone to set up the branch here with better terms for entrance into the labyrinth?”
“No. That we can’t do. We set the requirements for entering the labyrinth to attract people willing to send their children to us to attend Avalon. If we start making exceptions now, we will be forced to continue making exceptions until there is no difference between us and the other White Zones.”
“Then what should we do?”
“We just need to find someone willing to do the job. The problem is getting someone for the manager position. For a city our size the Association requires an A Rank at least.”
“Would it be possible to get someone close to advancing to come with their family so they can use the labyrinth to advance and then take the branch manager position?”