Chapter 109 :

Episode 24 : Crystal (2)

The cave collapsing was predictable, but covering the hole wasn't.

With tons and tons of rocks and remains of the cave masking away the giant hole on the ground, it was no doubt uneasy to figure out where the hole was.

"What should we do now?" Alaine asked as she was holding onto Mya.

Mirai, who was with Mya and Alaine, was about to treat Mya until she stopped to give an answer to Alaine's question.

"For now, it would be best to relax.."

"But JoonChul and Frostina are inside the hole.. including that enemy.. Will they be alright?"

"Of course, they will."

In the middle of treating, Mya groaned a bit as her arms were being covered by Mirai's threads.

Her wound would have been solved if Mya were to drink a HP potion, but the HP potions are meant for emergency which was why Mya and everyone were told not to drink it.

"Is uncle JoonChul okay..? He doesn't look.. a-alive." Mya asked, showing signs of remorse.

When Mirai heard that, she halted on Mya's treatment and expressed a solemn expression, mumbling. "He will be fine. Captain won't be dead over something like this.."

While the ladies were doing their things, the boys were discussing their next plans of action.

"Should we just dig and hope we find the hole?" Louis asked.

HwanGi, rubbing his chin, shook his head before telling Louis.

"No, although the hole is big enough that we can surely find it, we might accidentally fall in. Or worse, drop some of the debris to the bottom of the pit."

"Right, we don't even know how far down the hole is."

Meanwhile, Raiden was holding onto Behemoth, patting his head until he responded to the discussion. "As long as we wait, Frostina and JoonChul will come back."

"Even if that's so, JoonChul doesn't look like he was alive." HwanGi said, recalling the scene where JoonChul looked extremely dead.

Louis also agreed. "Yeah, I definitely saw a stab wound to the heart and he was frozen."

"Judging from the stab wound and blood, he was stabbed before getting frozen." HwanGi added.

"Then if he is truly dead, then what will we do?"

"..." HwanGi, hesitant about replying, looked terrible as he replied. "I don't know."

Raiden, who told them innumerous times that Frostina and JoonChul will be fine, continued on informing them the same thing. "Please, like I said, he and Frostina will be 100% okay."

"How?" Louis asked, staring at Raiden as he said again. "You seemed unsure."

"...I'm just trying to reassure you all. If one of us is down, the rest may also do the same."

"Yeah, that's right but still, with the guild leader gone, what should we do?" Louis caressed his forehead, grumbling a little.

Eventually, HwanGi, coming into a decision, spoke. "We'll do as Raiden had said. We will just need to wait until JoonChul and Frostina come back."

"Again, what if JoonChul is dead? Won't that be a horrible sight to see for the others? And what if they're not alive, do we have to wait for eternity?" Louis questioned on and on, almost sounding like the talkative Alaine.

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As Louis kept on asking questions that made one think of the following future, Behemoth hopped off Raiden's arms and landed on Louis's face to stop him from talking nonsense. "Meow."

"Oi! Hmfff!! Get off!" Louis uttered.

"Pfft." Seeing as this was hilarious, Raiden laughed at this moment, causing HwanGi to chuckle a bit as well.

———

In the meantime..

What were laying down on the floor of the pit, were soon waking up from their long nap.

"...Ouch.." Noel, finally regaining his consciousness, had sustained a serious injury from the fall.

When he was rubbing his head where the pain originated, he felt a liquid sensation on his hand. Thus, as he was about to see his hand, he couldn't believe that there was so much blueish blood oozing out from his head.

Not even having the chance to see his bloody hand, the blood had poured down on his eyes, completely dying his eye with his own blood.

"Ow..!" He groaned before covering his head injury.

Most importantly, he was curious of where he was and what happened earlier. Which was why Noel was observing his surroundings, suddenly finding a woman with a corpse behind him.

Noel muttered. "Isn't that lady, Frostina..? And the corpse is.."

At that moment, his eyes shifted everywhere, shaking from having to view his deceased father. Along with his hands trembling, Noel began to lift himself up, staggering toward Frostina and JoonChul in a haste.

"Don't touch him!" Noel shouted.

But seeing as Frostina didn't care about his loud voice, Noel thought she was ignoring him. "Listen to me! Get away from my father!"

Eventually, arriving behind her, Noel placed his bloody hand on Frostina's shoulder and squeezed it as he demanded from her.

"I said get away from him—!"

Slap!

Out of the blue, Noel with his red cheek that got slapped by Frostina's hand, stood there dumbfounded. As it wasn't enough, even the sound of his cheek getting slapped, was echoing throughout the hole.

"W..wut?" Noel spoke in a horrified and stupified state.

"My Liege being a father to a brat? How ridiculous." Frostina, glaring coldly toward Noel, was expressing a daunting and an angered face while talking to him.

"..." Still mystified and speechless by the unexpected slap, Noel stood there with a bewildered expression.

"A son killing his own father? Why would my Liege take care of someone dangerous and stupid like you?"

Frostina resumed on. "Do you even deserve calling him father when you murdered him? Do you have an ounce of sanity?"

"As if being a brat is not enough, you also became a coward by using your own father as a shield."

While Frostina was being unusual by being talkative, she pointed her finger at Noel, chillingly bawled at him. "Your punishment is an ice-cold death."

Without a warning, Noel stopped lowering his head and looked toward him, finding snow gathering around Frostina's index finger and sensing the decreasing atmosphere around him.

‘This.. is—!’ Noel gasped.

..But it was already too late for him to react, since Frostina had just shot a tiny beam of ice toward Noel's forehead.

"Ah..?" Noel's last word before getting his brain pierced by a cold beam.

A beam that left behind a diamond shape hole into Noel's skull, could have erased the existence of Noel easily.

As Frostina watched the body of Noel flopping down to the ground, knowing that she didn't actually kill the boy since she figured her liege might not want that, she turned to look at her liege.

"What must I do..?" Frostina asked herself when she laid her eyes on the corpse of her liege.

"He's dead again and again."

Those words coming out of her lips were said a great number of times, and yet it felt worse and worse every time she had to let those words leave her lips.

"I couldn't protect him again." Frostina's hands that were holding onto JoonChul's hand, were grasping it very firmly to the point of quivering.

"..If only I have the power to resurrect you with my ice power, I wouldn't have to worry about your death being permanent.."

"..My Liege.."

With her usual cold expression, it was changed to a sorrowful one, entirely making her look like a different person when her tears were forming on her eyes.

"Satan.. Do I have to wait for decades or centuries to see you again...?"

Putting JoonChul's hand on her head, she emotionally cried without letting out a sound. Crying as if her world had fallen apart a lot of times, she couldn't control her sadness.

Frostina, the one who could hide her emotions and wear a disinterested expression, was now crying her heart out for her one and only liege.

Out of the sudden, she remembered the words of what JoonChul had said in the past.

At that time, her liege was also slowly but surely dying in front of her, and yet, his last words were just..

「 "Never shred your tears for me, Frostina Iclyn. You understand that we will encounter each other again, right? So don't cry over my deaths because I don't want your beautiful face to be ruined by your tears. 」

"How odd.. I should be following your orders. So why am I secretly crying after each and every death of yours?" Frostina spoke with tears dripping off her cheeks.

Without knowing, the atmosphere had frozen her tears into ice teardrops, as the teardrops hit the ground, making a ton of noises, Frostina was silently sniffling by herself even when time was ticking further away.

By then, she had managed to hear a different and out of the place sound coming from behind her, prompting her to raise her guard.

In an instance, she changed the tears on her face to tiny ice lances before she turned around to look at what was behind her.

Going to uninterested mode with her facial expressions, Frostina stared at the animal in front of her.

"A snow bunny." She identified her supposed enemy.

In a second, her brain began to comprehend the situation as she surveyed the snow bunny on top of Noel's bloody body.

‘There doesn't seem to be any entrance to this pit except the top.’

‘In this deep pit, there is no escape. And for a bunny to enter a cave and fall into a hole? Surviving such a fall for a snow bunny is unthinkable.’

‘Furthermore, Don't bunnies hate the scent of blood?’

Ending with a conclusion that it would be wise to kill it, Frostina released her ice lances at the snow bunny.

When the ice lances were targeting the snow bunny, immediately before impact, they all got crushed by a forcefield like shield.

Although it was a bit shocking to Frostina, she didn't bugle an eye and carried on surrounding the bunny with her ice pellets.

"Stop, please." The bunny spoke.

Despite hearing a talking bunny, Frostina didn't put a halt to her attack and proceeded to fire the ice pellets at the bunny swiftly.

It was at that moment that Frostina's ice pellets were again repelled by that forcefield shield.

The snow bunny was obviously fazed by the attacks aiming at it, and was shaking like a bunny would do.

"Stop p-please..! If you do, I'll show you where ‘that garden’ is!"

The last words exiting out of that bunny's mouth caused Frostina to halt on her continuous attacks, gazing at the bunny for a moment.

"Where is it?" Frostina spoke.

"F-Finally! She stopped..! Phew.." The bunny being relieved as it mumbled, got down from Noel's body.

As Frostina was being cautious of the animal, she witnessed as the bunny ignored her answer and was now nudging Noel's head for a short period of time.

But at least, Frostina was patient while she had the time to think a bit. ‘If what the bunny said is true, then I'll show gratitude to it.’

‘However, if it lied to get my hopes up, I'll show it an experience worse than death.’

While she was thinking, she didn't notice how the ambience around her was causing the bunny to wail as if its life will cease to exist.

The bunny thought as it was trying to wake Noel up. ‘Spare my pitiful life please..! I'm just a bunny! Wahh!’