Chapter 282: What the Ice Cannot Touch
Chapter 282: What the Ice Cannot Touch
The air inside the abandoned processing plant was stagnant and freezing. Heavy rusted chains swung gently from the exposed steel rafters, clinking softly in the cold wind.
Reina Frost stood thirty feet away from the quiet engineer. Her silver hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. She gripped the heavy handle of her massive double-sided battle axe. She did not take a defensive stance. She reached up with one gloved hand and tapped the secure comms unit in her ear.
"Target located," Reina whispered. "Sector Three processing plant."
She immediately reached up and clicked the microphone off. She did not ask for reinforcements. She did not wait for the Captain to coordinate a perimeter breach.
She had found the monster that murdered Lord Commander Vell, and she wanted this fight entirely for herself. The suffocating guilt of the past three days had finally boiled over into pure, concentrated violence.
She tightened her grip on her weapon. The ambient temperature in the massive room plummeted. A thick layer of white frost crawled rapidly across the broken concrete floor, creeping toward the man in the oversized wool coat.
Reina did not offer a warning. She simply lunged forward, letting her rage carry her directly into the jaws of the ancient entity.
Reina closed the distance in a fraction of a second.
She poured her mana into the heavy ice core embedded in her weapon. She swung the massive blade in a devastating horizontal arc, aiming cleanly for the engineer’s neck.
FWOOSH.
The freezing energy erupted in a blinding trail of white mist. The heavy steel blade should have severed the man’s head from his shoulders instantly.
Instead, the weapon simply passed right through him.
Reina stumbled forward, her momentum carrying her past the target. There was no sickening sound of tearing flesh. There was no resistance against the steel. The heavy ice core did not shatter against a hidden shield. It was as if she had swung her axe through a thick cloud of smoke.
She spun around, her eyes wide with confusion. The clone was still standing in the exact same spot.
It felt entirely wrong. It was not a dodge. It was a localized spatial distortion. The physical space the entity occupied did not align with its visual projection. It reminded her of the sickening, anomalous roots they had encountered deep in the Wildlands, but this was far worse. This was a deliberate, highly calculated manipulation of reality.
She was trying to hit something that was not entirely there.
The clone of Malakor slowly turned to face her.
He wore the stolen face of Elias Thorne, but his dull brown eyes were completely vacant. He held a rusted hunting knife loosely by his side. He did not raise the weapon to defend himself. He did not attempt a counterattack.
He simply watched her.
Reina swung again, launching a furious combination of vertical chops and sweeping kicks.
SWISH.
SWISH.
The clone evaded the strikes with minimal, terrifying effort. He leaned back a fraction of an inch, letting the freezing blade graze the fabric of his coat. He was incredibly patient. He moved with the exact same suffocating restraint as General Marek, absorbing her aggression without returning it.
He could end this fight whenever he wanted. He possessed the strength of an ancient god squeezed into a mortal shell. But he chose to wait.
He knew her comms unit was open on the squad’s frequency before she muted her own microphone. He knew the heavy, erratic sounds of her breathing and the crashing of her weapon were echoing in the ears of her teammates. He was deliberately using a broken, desperate girl as live bait to draw the rest of the squad into his web on his own terms.
Reina let out a frustrated growl. She poured everything into one final swing, aiming a hyper-condensed wave of sub-zero energy directly at his chest.
The clone decided she needed a reminder of her own mortality.
He did not phase through this attack. He stepped into the physical plane for a microscopic fraction of a second. He shifted his shoulder, letting the freezing energy graze his arm, and smoothly stepped inside her guard.
SHCK.
The rusted hunting knife darted forward with blinding speed. It slipped perfectly beneath the heavy plating of her armor and sliced deeply across her outer thigh.
It was not a fatal strike. It was a cold, calculated message.
Reina gasped. Hot blood spilled down her leg, instantly freezing as it hit the frosted concrete floor. The sudden, searing pain forced her to drop to one knee.
The entity stepped back, returning to his relaxed, observant posture. He had drawn first blood effortlessly, proving that he could touch her whenever he pleased, even while her ice could not touch him.
Reina gritted her teeth. She planted the shaft of her axe against the floor and forced herself back up to her feet.
Reina’s breathing was ragged and shallow.
The deep cut on her thigh burned terribly. Her heavy boots felt like blocks of lead. The localized sub-zero aura radiating from her skin began to flicker, threatening to fail entirely under the immense physical strain. She was exhausted, bleeding, and fighting a phantom she could not even touch.
She knew she was losing this fight. She knew she was completely outmatched.
But she refused to yield a single inch of the factory floor.
She remembered the sight of Lord Commander Vell lying dead in the crater of the primary intersection. She remembered Draven telling them that the merchant lord had spent his life force to hold the line for the slums.
She was a member of Strike Team Zero. She was not going to let this monster walk away from his crimes unpunished.
"You are not leaving this room," Reina snarled, gripping her weapon with both hands.
She charged again. She swung with every ounce of remaining strength in her body, burning her mana core to a dangerous, critical level. She fought with the desperate, unyielding ferocity of a girl who knew she could not win, but refused to surrender anyway.
The clone stepped backward, effortlessly avoiding her wild swings.
Reina pushed too hard. She planted her wounded leg on a patch of slick, bloody ice. Her knee buckled completely, throwing her center of gravity entirely off balance.
The entity did not let the opening pass.
He stepped perfectly into her blind spot. He raised his heavy boot and drove it directly into her already fractured ribs with terrifying, mechanical force.
CRACK.
The sickening sound of snapping bone echoed in the empty processing plant.
A raw, involuntary scream tore violently out of Reina’s throat. It was not a coordinated tactical call for backup. It was a guttural, desperate sound of pure physical agony.
The sound carried across the open comms network. In the distant streets, Aegon, Lucien, and the Captain heard the terrifying shriek clearly. The sound of her pain shattered their coordinated search grids instantly.
Reina collapsed onto the freezing concrete, clutching her chest. She gasped for air, but her lungs refused to expand fully.
The clone of Malakor stood over the fallen girl.
He looked down at her bleeding, broken body with total clinical detachment. Draven’s squad had heard the scream. The bait had successfully served its purpose. The trap was now primed, and he no longer needed to play with his food.
"Your utility is exhausted," the entity stated.
His voice was a hollow, echoing resonance that scraped against the inside of Reina’s skull. It was the exact same ancient voice that had condemned the Lord Commander.
The clone raised the rusted hunting knife. He stepped fully into the physical plane, his dull brown eyes locking onto the exposed flesh of Reina’s neck.
He intended to sever her spinal cord with a single, flawless strike. He moved with impossible, glitching speed, ready to end her life before her teammates could even reach the front doors of the building.
Genuine, suffocating danger flooded Reina’s senses. She tried to raise her heavy axe to block the descending blade, but her arms simply would not obey her commands. She was completely out of time.
The rusted blade descended rapidly toward Reina’s throat.
It never made contact.
In the darkest corner of the abandoned processing plant, the ambient shadows suddenly stretched and violently warped. A sleek figure melted out of the shadows.
Nyx Vespera materialized completely silently. Her dark eyes were locked onto the clone. She gripped her jagged obsidian daggers tightly in her hands. The Phantom Queen had arrived, moving faster than the wind itself to redeem her failure in the rationing warehouse.
CLANG.
Nyx drove both of her obsidian daggers upward, perfectly catching the rusted hunting knife just millimeters away from Reina’s neck.
The clone stopped his blade mid-air. The massive kinetic impact rattled the rusted chains hanging from the ceiling.
He slowly turned his head to look at the assassin. Nyx did not blink. She stood her ground, radiating a cold, lethal killing intent that easily matched the ancient monster in front of her.
The standoff had fundamentally shifted. It was no longer a one-on-one slaughter. Reina was no longer alone, and the entity finally had a genuine fight on his hands.