Chapter LXXXIV (84) - Tross’ Tundra

A horde of students loitered around Kizu as he waited for the room to arrive. Just as he had entered the academy on his first day, the school trip relied on the moving rooms that transported them across the World Dungeon. Unfortunately, each room only fit about forty students. And there were almost four hundred departing. Plus, all their luggage. While Kizu only carried a single bag slung over a shoulder, he was in the minority. Most of the others lugged around massive boxes, likely enchanted to reduce the weight of their loads.

He spotted a few friendly faces, Ione, Evie, and Harumi, each of them wearing their new school trip uniforms which were a darker blue with an orange X stitched across the back. The uniforms also came equipped with fur lined hoods, which Mort adored. The monkey made himself at home hanging on Kizu’s back.

Kizu also spotted Harvey standing next to Ulric, chatting. Kizu’s leg itched. He recalled what Emilia had said about Ulric being in the bottom tier of several of his classes. Astronomy must be among that list.

Ione noticed him and beckoned him over with a wave. It took Kizu a few minutes to weave his way through his peers to reach her.

“You ever visit Tross before?” she asked him.

“No. I’ve only ever been to Hon and the academy. What about you?”

“Same. Sene went on a special trip last year to Edgeland to meet with some bigwigs for Student Council things, but I opted out.”

“Nervous?”

“Not especially. If it’s anything like Krimpt’s tour of Hon last year, it will be safe and sanitized. I’m hoping to at least discover some magical creatures while we’re there, but I’m not holding my breath.”

“Why?”

“Because polar bears are the apex predator. All the magical creatures I’ve read about that live in the tundra adapted to hide.”

“Are polar bears really that scary?” Kizu asked, perplexed. “Surely magical creatures don’t have that much to worry about.”

Ione looked at him like he’d just said the stupidest thing in history. “Polar bears are the only nonmagical creature that will actively hunt humans. They’re easily the most dangerous nonmagical animal in the world. They don’t need magical enhancements or special elemental powers to tear out your throat and eat you alive. They naturally have the ability to track you from ten kilometers away without issue. They can swim, run, climb. No escaping one if you’re caught.”

“Can you summon one?” Kizu asked, curious.

“Of course. I told you; I can summon any nonmagical creature. That’s child’s play.”

Kizu considered. “Can you teach me?”

“What? Here? Nope. Too many people, not enough space. Besides, you couldn’t even summon a puppy before, you want to graduate up to a polar bear? Don’t think so.”

Kizu looked around. He hadn’t actually been thinking that far ahead, just wondering about the summoning circle and the mechanics of the spell. Despite being friends with Ione for several months now, he still knew next to nothing about summoning.

“Come on, the next room is about to arrive,” Ione said before Kizu could ask her more questions. “I want to get out of here. It stinks like teenage boy.”

Resisting the urge to sniff himself, Kizu followed her forward. It wasn’t surprising it smelled a bit. The new uniforms had enhanced warming spells to keep them safe in the arctic. Far stronger than the temperature regulation enchantments on their standard issue uniforms.

Squeezing their way into the next room, Kizu managed to slip into one of the cushioned seats before they all filled up.

“Give it up or I’m sitting on you,” Ione said flatly. “I am not standing this entire trip.”

Kizu called her bluff and refused. Unfortunately, it was not a bluff. Ione just shrugged and laid back on top of him. He tried to shove her off, but other students filled in the empty space quickly with their luggage. After only a few moments, Ione’s head started bobbing and he heard a quiet snore.

His leg followed her to sleep soon after the room started moving. He swore that the next time Kateshi checked up on his leg brace, he would demand she include an anti-sleeping enchantment on it.

When the doors finally opened, revealing their destination, Kizu shoved Ione off him. She stumbled, catching herself before falling to the ground. Then she glared at him.

“You should put on some more weight. It was like sleeping on a bench at one of the churches my parents used to drag me to as a kid.”

“Noted,” Kizu said dryly. He gathered up his bag and slung it over his shoulder again. As he did, he thought he felt something inside shift. He frowned but figured it have been another student jostling into him.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

He followed the stream of students out of the room and a wave of cold smacked into his uncovered face. He gasped at the sudden shock. Several other students were rubbing their faces for warmth, many already with red noses and cheeks.

“This way, this way,” Professor Grove called, hovering over them and bobbing slightly. The students shuffled in her direction down a corridor and up stairs that lead to open air.

Nothing but fields of snow as far as the eye could see. Which, admittedly, wasn’t very far. A clear sky opened overhead, but it lacked the familiar warm sun. Instead, the moon hung accompanied by stars in the horizon, illuminating the tundra. Which was obscured by the winds lashing up snow. The wind ripped through the enchantments on his uniform, biting down to his flesh. The air chilled his insides. Already, he started missing the stuffy room they’d arrived in.

“The inside of my nose is frozen,” Ione complained.

On his head, Mort shook from the cold and tried to bury himself under Kizu’s hood. The monkey wasn’t built for weather like this. The jungle never even reached freezing on the coldest days. For him, this was about as close to monkey damnation as possible.

Kizu reached into his bag and pulled out two potions. The liquid inside swirled with a color similar to that of the molten rock seen in the World Dungeon. He passed one to Ione.

“What’s this?” she asked, eyeing it.

“Don’t trust me?” he said with a cheeky grin before downing his own vial. A sensation of warmth spread from his heart, down his veins, circulating all the way to his fingers and toes. And the warmth should remain for a few hours before ebbing.

Ione shrugged and downed her vial. Her eyes widened.

“Maybe brewing isn’t as useless as I thought.”

“Inspire you to put in a bit more effort?”

“Not a chance.”

There were still a few drops remaining in his vial, so he passed it up to Mort who drank them readily.

Remembering what Roba said about keeping an eye on Evie, Kizu decided to offer one of the potions to her as well. He had stockpiled them over the last couple weeks in preparation, so he had plenty to go around.

“I’m fine,” she said, her quiet voice barely heard over the wind. “I’m used to the weather.”

“Okay,” Kizu said, surprised. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”

A hole in the snowy wind appeared, creating a cylinder of visibility that pierced through the shrouded tundra. Several dogs emerged, pulling a sled occupied by a sizable woman at least two heads taller than Kizu. The dogsled was swiftly succeeded by six larger empty sleighs, dogs excluded. Kizu watched in fascination as the empty sleighs traced her exact tracks in the snow. He figured they must be enchanted to trail behind the dogsled.

“Grove, where you at?” the woman shouted out into the wind.

Professor Grove bobbed down to the woman and they spoke for a minute before the wisp began directing everyone into the sleighs.

As Kizu approached the sleighs, he got a better look at the woman leading them. She wasn’t just tall and broad of shoulder, she actually had brown hair covering her cheeks and features akin to a brown bear. Even her face was warped, with a flat stretch between her eyes that led to a black nose. It was hard to tell from under her parka’s hood, but Kizu thought that her entire skull’s structure might be formed differently from that of a human's. Basil had mentioned Kemon, but until today Kizu had only seen the porcupine-esk variety like Evie. He tried not to stare at her as he climbed in the sleigh.

After chatting with Professor Grove, the Kemon woman reboarded her dogsled and sent them off, with the sleighs zipping into motion in a uniform line directly behind her.

Kizu looked back at the World Dungeon’s entrance as they sped away. An ancient ruin almost entirely buried in the snow with only the tip of it peeking out. But soon that was obscured by the gales of snow.

Kizu quickly discovered a flaw in the potions he had prepared. While it actively warmed him, it did not protect his eyes from the wind and cold. After only a few minutes, his eyelashes gained frozen chunks of ice at the tips, and the wind irritated his eyes into watering. By the time they arrived at their destination, his cheeks were lined with streaks of frozen tears.

Professor Grove floated over to them and started listing off each cabin’s occupants. Kizu was assigned to cabin 3. He only half listened after his name was called, instead looking around at their camp.

A dozen cabins were strewn across an otherwise barren wasteland. Heaps of snow had been packed up against each cabin from the winds and it looked like someone freshly dug out the entrances. Kizu was incredibly grateful for his foresight in preparing the warming potions.

“-and Ulric,” Professor Grove finished.

That jolted Kizu back to the room assignments. Professor Grove started listing off students in cabin 4. Which meant she had only just finished cabin 3. Kizu glanced around and caught sight of Ulric. The large student had a nasty grin on his face.

But he wouldn’t be dumb enough to do anything with so many students around. Harming him in the fighting contests was one thing, but out here was something else entirely. Kizu would just be a bit cautious to always be in the company of others. The older student wouldn’t try anything with witnesses around. Probably.

When Professor Grove finished, everyone started shuffling forward. Kizu heard more than just one person grumbling about the weather as they entered their cabins.

Moonlight poured in from the windows onto rows of beds. It only took a cursory glance with his spellsense to reveal the windows were reinforced by enchantments. It took him a moment to realize a second enchantment laid on them as well. After studying them for a minute, he realized they should be covered by the snowdrifts outside. The glass windows appeared to pierce through the snow to show the building’s exterior.

He decided to hang back and wait until after Ulric picked a bed before choosing his own. Ulric appeared to notice this as he turned to meet Kizu’s eyes before sneering and claiming his spot. Ignoring the glower, Kizu chose a bed as far away from the large fifth year as possible.

“It’s pretty exciting,” Harumi said, sitting down on the bed next to Kizu’s. “I mean, tomorrow night the aurora is supposed to be out.”

“I suppose,” Kizu said. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. It’s supposedly been a thousand years since the last time someone had anything meaningful occur to them.”

“But not that many people in the world make the pilgrimage up here, do they?” Harumi countered. “And people do still sometimes have minor awakenings. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

Harumi's optimism reminded Kizu of the Harvey from before the boy had turned sour. Kizu felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of his friend.

“I still would rein in your expectations. Nobody last week reported anything.”

Kizu would have said more, but he felt something move inside his pack. Frowning, he undid the cords that bound it and carefully spread out his few belongings on the bed. Nothing stood out. Mort hopped down and started to move things around. Kizu was about to repack everything when he heard a tiny thump from within the wooden box that held his enchanted items.

Feeling bewildered, he quickly overlaid himself with a discreet illusion before opening the box.

Inside, he found the World Dungeon Tome, the bell, and the necklace. All expected. But there was a fourth stowaway amongst his things.

A bat.

It looked up at him with a single scarlet eye glittering in the moonlight.