-Radiant-

As soon as I was transported to the second level, I had to close my eyes against a blinding white light. Slowly I opened my eyes as they adjusted to the bright white landscape around me. At the same time I felt a biting chill numb my skin and threaten to make my throat and lungs freeze as I breathed in freezing air. There was also a soft sound at my feet like sugar falling to the ground.

My eyes quickly adjusted to the light and I subsequently got to take in a breathtaking view. I was in the middle of a large forest where snow seemed to cover every surface it could stick to like a thick, and heavy, white blanket covering both the trees and the ground. I was on top of a small hill that allowed me to get a good view of the forest through the gaps in the trees. The dense forest went up and down with valleys and rolling hills, and I could make out great spires of ice jutting up out of the treetops at random and at odd angles.

Looking down, I tried to determine what the sound I was hearing was, and I realized that my breath was turning to ice and falling to the ground after I breathed out. My fingers were already starting to go numb and turn red, and my sorry excuse for clothing was doing nothing to shield me from the harsh environment.

I almost started to shiver, but I ran a heating spell throughout my body and felt a relieving warmth quickly spread to the tips of my fingers making the numbness go away. It seems that even with my [Magical Physique] blocking most of the cold, I’m not completely safe from the freezing temperatures.

Looking up at the sky there were clusters of clouds that all radiated the light of the sun, but there was no sun in sight which was strange. Before I could speculate though, a System notification came to me.

[Time Requirement: Survive for 130 hours]

[Forced Task: Steal from the Champion’s hoard]

“Ten more hours than the first level, and steal from the Champion huh? I can do that.” I wouldn’t say that I was an expert thief, but wasn’t the most important thing for a thief just not getting caught? I had a lot of experience in that area, so I must be a decent thief right? In any case, right now I had no idea what this Champion was or anything really. I needed to first gather information before acting, so I opened up my status and focused on my Skills.

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-

(Power: Accelerated Cloud Mental Operator; Evolution:0 Level: 91)

(Skill: Physical Recovery II; Level: 44)

(Skill: Mana Conversion; Level: 64)-

[Inactive Skills/Powers 12]-

(Skill: Mana Maintenance II; Level: 70)

(Skill: Foreign Analysis; Level: 83)

(Skill: Deceive; Level: 66)

(Skill: Sense Mana II; Level: 61)

(Skill: Pain Tolerance; Level: 52)

(Skill: Physical Augmentation; Level: 70)

(Skill: Space-Time Sense; Level: 66)

(Skill: Tireless Mana II; Level: 56)

(Skill: Selective Transformation II; Level: 14)

(Skill: Basic Space Control; Level: 82)

(Skill: Mana Crystallization II; Level: 26)

(Skill: Efficient Crystallization; Level: 61)-

I switched out (Physical Recovery II) for (Foreign Analysis) and started to analyze my surroundings.

I didn’t obtain much I didn’t already know, but when I analyzed the spires of ice I got an interesting response (Clear ice spire: This ice spire was formed by a vein of clear ice over a period of many many years.) A vein of clear ice? Those are really rare, if I could harvest them I would have a source of infinite ice. Am I being too greedy here…? Nah, this is only the second level, how hard could it be compared to the first one?

Analyzing the clouds I got this response (Luminescent cloud: These aren’t normal clouds. These clouds absorb sunlight during the day, but they slowly radiate gathered sunlight during the night.) So it's actually nighttime, and these clouds are what’s making it so bright right now? So I don’t have long until it gets dark, good to know.

I didn’t have anything to do at the moment besides locating the Champion’s hoard. So I decided that I would go around collecting the clear ice veins while searching for said hoard. It sounded like a great plan to me, and I set off towards the closest ice spire, always happy to collect more valuable things.

-Break-

The walk through the deep show was not easy. I got to the ice spire and took off my shoes to shake out the snow, and while I was doing this I started to wish that I had a pair of snowshoes instead.

The base of the ice spire had a diameter of about 20 meters, and a height of at least 3 times that. The base of the spire was jagged and uneven, but as it went further up it started to taper off into a single point by the time it reached the top. I couldn’t really see into the ice spire because of the snow covering the surface, but because of my analysis I knew there had to be a clear ice vein in the center of the base of this ice spire. So without further ado I started to excavate the ice spire to get to the ice vein in the center.

80% of the way into my excavation of the ice vein I started to notice that the light was starting to dim a little. I had no idea how long it would take for the clouds to run out of light, but if it got too much darker I would have to start producing my own light, and I wasn’t so sure about how that would turn out. Then I got a warning from one of my virtual minds that was focused on sensing danger. It had picked up faint noises of crunching snow coming closer to my location, and alerted me by breaking my thoughts.

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I went to the opening in the ice spire and saw a pack of 5 large wolves, with fur that looked like razor sharp ice, and eyes that seemed to lock onto me like I was a beacon in the dark. They were approaching me from all sides and leaving me trapped with nowhere to run. I didn’t want to mess with such sharp looking fur up close, so I would have to defeat these using offensive spells.

I had been trying to be conservative with my mana while I was digging into the ice spire, so I still had about 70 percent left to fight with. I weaved an ice spell with about 10% of my mana to try and test the toughness of the wolves. After a few seconds of constructing the spell, with the wolves slowly but steadily coming closer, I fired off an ice spear made out of the ice spire at the wolf on my left.

The wolf was startled, having probably never faced anything like this before, and failed to dodge the ice spear aimed at its chest. The spear penetrated the beast easily and sent it tumbling to the ground, dead. I was surprised by the strength of the ice spear, but as soon as the wolf died the rest of the pack growled and rushed towards me.

I panicked and hastily used the same ice spear spell, but I overloaded the spell and threw almost all of my remaining mana into it. With more than 5 times the original mana, the spell probably would’ve shattered had it been anybody else wielding it, but with my impressive mental capabilities I was able to control the overloaded spell and fire it off with the wolves only a meter away from me.

Multiple ice spears flew out to intercept the approaching wolves and at such a close distance there was no way for them to dodge the fast moving projectiles. I heard multiple whimpers as the wolves were impaled before they crashed into the snow and lay unmoving.

I breathed out the breath I had been holding and endured the feeling of low mana. Crazy. These wolves are a lot stronger than the things on the first level. Maybe I just got unlucky with the Wider Difficulty Range challenge, or maybe there are only a few groups of stronger entities.

Calming down quickly thanks to my Skill, I took a closer look at the corpses. Their warm blood had started to leak out of their wounds, but it was freezing extremely quickly, much quicker than the temperature of the air suggested, implying that there was some type of magical effect in the environment making them freeze faster. I didn’t have the mana I would need to store all of these corpses in my Internal World and leave the area, so I tried to use my (Foreign Analysis) to try and determine how these wolves had found me and if I was safe to stay here.

Analyzing the bodies, I found what had probably led these wolves to my location. (Heat seeking eyes: Eyes that can see even the smallest differences in heat.) These wolves probably followed a heat trail to my location. It would probably be a bad idea to leave this location and leave even fresher heat trails… Thinking this, I went into the hole in the ice spire and covered the entrance with snow to stop my heat from leaking out, and waited for my mana to recover.

I wasn’t worried about the corpses sitting out, this freezing landscape was better than any freezer and I thought it would be fine to leave the corpses out for quite a while. Unfortunately that turned out to be a bad idea.

After about half an hour I had recovered to about 30%, and was just about to get up and store the corpses when I felt the ground slightly shake. I paused and felt the shaking increase and heard something making its way towards my location breaking branches and causing snow to fall to the ground.

Whatever was coming in my direction was not something I wanted to face with such low mana reserves. So as quickly as I could I used up as much mana as I could to make all of my presence disappear, including my scent, heat, sound, and everything else I could think of. The shaking of the ground continued to grow, and before 30 seconds had passed a large gray figure entered the clearing around the ice spire.

I couldn’t clearly make out what it looked like through the warping of the ice, and the snow blocking my view, but I could tell that it was large and powerful. It steadily walked closer to the ice spire before stopping and lowering its head towards the ground. Then I heard a low rumbling, and a blast of fire washed over the ground outside the entrance and quickly melted all of the surrounding snow, including what I had used to cover the entrance to where I was hiding.

The air shimmered with heat and the fire stopped almost as soon as it started, but that short burst was enough to leave the wolf corpses without their icy fur, and the smell of cooked meat flowed down the small tunnel and into my nose. With all of the snow melted I could clearly see the large gray scaled creature outside.

Then I heard the crunching of bones as the gray figure started to consume the wolves in just a few bites. While it was doing this I got a better view of it, and what I saw was frightening beyond comparison, a Dragon. My heart nearly stopped as I realized what was standing only about 10 meters from me.

The gray Dragon quickly finished off the 4 wolf corpses outside the ice spire and moved its head over to the entrance to where I was hiding. Its lizard-like face with large teeth and dark lazy eyes stared into the tunnel but failed to see anything due to my spell. Its head went out of sight and I saw its powerful clawed feet move past the entrance as the Dragon moved over to the last wolf corpse and gave it the same treatment as the rest.

Having finished its meal the dragon casually walked off into the forest dragging its long fat tail behind it. I dared not make a sound until the shaking of the ground faded away 30 seconds later. I was shaking from adrenaline and my heart was beating fast as thoughts ran through my head.

I knew I might face some danger, but a Dragon, really? Holly Jilly that scared me. It looks like I really did get unlucky with the Wider Difficulty Range for a Dragon to be the Champion on this level. I mean if that’s not the Champion then I’ll eat my hat. I don't actually have a hat, but my point stands! Well at least I’ll be able to follow its tracks and find out where its hoard is, then all I have to do is find a way to steal from it.

My mind started to fantasize about all of the treasure I might find in a Dragon's hoard, and a smile came to my face as I thought about stealing from it. I might not be able to fight a dragon, but stealing from its hoard should be doable.

Others might start shaking in fear if they were told they had to steal from a Dragon’s hoard, after all a Dragon was at the apex in terms of metaphysical strength; with their many different metaphysical organs, they had almost nothing to fear. Stealing from a Dragon is basically a death sentence if the Dragon catches you. But that just means that I shouldn’t get caught right? Right.