61st of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

After finishing the paperwork at the association and after Dandelion picked up his belongings from his much humbler Stellar Night inn, Newt and Dandelion reached the gate just in time to see the disciples of Everfrost Palace exit a cramped side street and reach the main boulevard.

“What is it with these women and dark alleys?” Dandelion muttered before speaking in a louder voice.

“Greetings, honorable ladies.” He gave a perfect half bow. “We have not introduced ourselves properly yesterday. I am Dandelion, and my young friend is Newstar Blazing Salamander.”

“Everlast.”

“Puresnow.”

The girls introduced themselves with icy voices and neutral expressions.

“Nice to meet you, Everlast, Puresnow,” Dandelion pretended he did not notice the women’s disinterest. “Before we head out, we should say something about our skills. I will start. My area of expertise is unarmed melee combat and the staff. I dabble in alchemy and have some basic understanding of the healing arts.”

Dandelion looked at Newt, who cleared his throat.

“Hello.” The two Everfrost Palace disciples were making him uncomfortable, and he stuttered and spoke with more er-s than he liked. “I fight unarmed and with a spear and Dandelion told me I should pick up a sword too. I am very agile, and I can take more blows than most; I think. I can also shoot bolts of fire at close range, cauterize my own wounds, and purify foreign spiritual energy invading my body—”

“Thank you, Newstar,” Dandelion took the chance to stop Newt from blathering, then the two women introduced themselves with almost identical lines. Two sentences each. They both fought with longswords and could handle themselves. Newt got a clear impression these women wanted men around as much as he craved women.

“I guess we will figure out tactics as we go along.” Dandelion offered a diplomatic smile, and they headed out the gate, due north.

Dandelion sprinted, relying on nothing but his body, and the Everfrost Palace disciples followed, with Newt resorting to Fire Burst every now and then to catch up. He observed the rest of his party and noted that Dandelion hardly used any spiritual energy, relying mostly on his body. Meanwhile, the two women did the same as Newt, flaring spiritual energy from time to time, but he could not see any outward manifestation of whatever power they were using.

Newt expected they would stop at a tavern shortly before sunset, but he was wrong. By the time the sun rose, they had covered well over two thousand miles.

“We will rest here,” Dandelion proclaimed, gradually slowing before he finally stopped.

Newt’s back was wet, and his legs throbbed, his spiritual energy drained to around half capacity. The Everfrost Palace disciples also seemed winded, but Dandelion just smiled, not a drop of sweat on his forehead.

“Sit, rest, meditate to replenish yourself.” He took his own advice and sat on the grass, then pointed towards a nearby mountain entirely covered in snow. “We are heading for that mountain, aptly, if unoriginally, named Frostworm’s Grave.”

Dandelion paused. Newt was certain the man had expected a laugh or a chuckle, but other than the leaves and blossoms rustling in the wind, there was no sound.

“The entrance to the tunnel complex is some thirty miles away, and we will reach it with a light two-hour jog to warm up before fighting.”

The women did not get the joke of warming up before fighting in frigid caves, and Newt did not find it funny either.

You’re better off when not trying to break the ice with jokes. Wait! Should I say that aloud? At least Dandelion will laugh. By the time Newt reached the decision, it was already too late to make a witty remark, and he would feel stupid if he broke the already long silence.

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So, they sat in silence for two hours, eyes closed, focused on meditation. Newt did not need to enter his realm and focus on drawing spiritual energy from the environment, so instead he contemplated his cultivation and the possible improvements.

One of those was to split the rivers of lava into three smaller flows to increase the number of fire-related runes, since the empty space between lava flows was getting bigger, favoring the earth element too much. But simply splitting the flow would prove insufficient, as the middle one would get the most lava.

The obvious solution was to make a large pool to slow the flow and split the energy more evenly. There has to be a better way.

“Two hours are up,” Dandelion shouted, “Ladies and gentleman, are you ready to continue?”

Newt wanted to say, ‘Sure,’ but then the Everfrost Palace’s disciples stood and nodded without uttering a word, so he mirrored them and remained silent.

Dandelion also nodded, his expression grave to the extreme, but he winked at Newt and flashed him a half-face grin, positioned so that the women could not see the gesture and break the serious mask he showed the other two.

How do you even—?

Newt guessed the man had practiced that exact face, but did not want to know how idle Dandelion must have been to have time to waste on such frivolous tasks.

The team of four ran through blooming forests and flowery meadows for an hour and a half before the land turned frosty, and the spring’s warm air vanished, giving way to an unending winter.

The mountain’s jagged peaks loomed over them, but Dandelion pointed towards the base instead.

“There is the entrance.”

Newt looked down and saw the closing jaw of a giant monster. The maw was a black hole in the white mountainside, with giant spiky teeth rising from the ground and stabbing down from the above. Given the distance, it must have been at least fifty feet from top to bottom.

“Is that the dead frostworm’s mouth?” Newt asked, shuddering as he imagined the monster’s size. Then he recalled Magmin, and for the first time truly realized that the mountain his clan was living on might very well be the tiny serpent’s eons-old corpse.

If Magmin grew by a factor of ten each time he evolved he would have been thousands of miles long. Newt shuddered at the thought, but Dandelion mistook it as his fear of the frostworm.

“No need to be alarmed.” The experienced man reassured the youth. “That is a hole the ancient frostworm dug ages ago. The teeth are icicles, and the most powerful spirit beast residing inside the cave system should be at the fifth realm. Are you ready for this?”

The women gave Newt a cold look, but he had accepted that stare as the norm. Instead of minding them, he gave Dandelion a confident nod.

“Let’s go,” he said, and took the lead to prove that he was not a coward.

Seventy yards from the entrance, the unnaturally cold air bit through Newt’s robes, the pain almost tangible, his skin turning red. Newt activated Magmin Scales without hesitation, instantly banishing the ice invading his body, and just in case examined himself, but found no traces of foreign spiritual energy.

He turned around, and found the ladies from the Everfrost Palace unaffected, they even seemed more comfortable than he had ever seen them. And Dandelion, Newt squinted, a useless gesture made out of habit as he forced his third eye to scrutinize the former sect master, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.

Dandelion was not a void, like Elder Frostgrave, but he was not actively using his spiritual energy to resist the chill or to enhance his speed.

Looking back, Newt tripped on a chunk of ice harder than a rock. As he fell he sent a gust of warm air in front of his chest, melting snow and propelling himself upwards. He somersaulted and perfectly landed on his feet.

“Showoff,” Dandelion poked fun at Newt with a smile as he ran past him.

Newt took a moment to gather his bearings and started running again, this time last in the group.

The Everfrost Palace’s disciples stopped in front of the fifty-foot-tall stalagmites of ice. They drew their swords and stared into the darkness. Dandelion was a step slower, a thick black staff wrought of metal held in two hands.

Unlike the frowning women, he was relaxed, but constantly pumping faint pulses of orange-red spiritual energy into his weapon.

Newt arrived last, his face showing similar worries as the two women, or so he thought.

This is way over our head. He stared into the black hole and the torrent of bluish-white spiritual energy gushing from it.

“Ladies, remember your master’s instruction,” Dandelion said. “Ice jade marrow certainly is important for your cultivation and the pills you need, but your lives are more important.”

Ice jade marrow?

The women glared at Dandelion, who just kept talking.

“In all matters relating to combat, exploration, and taking risks, you are to consult me and obey me as you would your master. Those are your master’s orders, are they not?”

What? Newt stared at the three of them, Everfrost Palace’s disciple’s silence and foul mood suddenly a lot more logical.