The ice wisp continued bobbing in front of me, staying one meter away as I made my way the rest of the way up the hill, the frozen grass crackling under my feet. It was probably trying to communicate with me, but it's mental manipulation with mana was just as ineffective as when the last ice wisp had tried it.

I cleared the top of the hill and was able to look down into the next valley. Four giant ice blue serpents with barbed frills around their necks were the first thing that leapt into my attention and must be the lesser dragons. They were placed on the four edges of the square formation of the army of humanoids.

I did a count of the army, they were in neat sections of ten by ten, and there were ten sections, for one thousand troops. And there was an eleventh section fading into view at the back.

The snow men themselves were uniform in appearance, two meters tall and glowing a blue colour with white eyes that glowed even brighter. The dragons were slightly over twice the height of the snow men that stood next to them, making them four meters tall... Or thick?

The closest section of one hundred snow men started to move up the hill towards me as I was assessing their army, and the nearest dragon hovered itself up off of the ground to move next to them. It uncoiled from where it was resting, and uncoiled, and continued uncoiling. When it finally finished uncoiling it must have been fifty meters long of floating reptile.

I did consider running immediately, the sheer size of the dragon meant that I would have to double the length of my sword to be assured a critical strike without aiming for the eyes or inside its throat. But I wanted to see what made the snow men more dangerous than the other winter creatures I had faced.

I held my ground and began running simulations as to how to fight the dragon. Turning back to look in the direction I had come from, checking my escape route, there are three ice wisps spread out attempting to block the way. I took my sword out through my pocket portal and pushed heat into it, then made shooing motions at them. They split up and flew over to opposite sides where there were other ice wisps gathering.

When the snow men were twenty meters away they shifted their formation into an open box, looking to surround me. The dragon's head stopped moving forward at the same twenty meter distance, but it continued moving the rest of its body forward, slowly forming coils under itself.

I kept still with my sword in front of me as snow men moved past me, closing the box formation with me in the middle. That was what I was waiting for, I wanted to isolate a single snow man to determine what its combat strength was. I turned slowly to face down the hill the way I had come, out of the frost zone, when a heat source appeared behind the snow men to my right. With everything so cold it stood out like a flare, and it hadn't been there a few seconds ago.

"Are you just scouting, or are you trying to solve the problem without involving an army?" the Instructor asked.

"Just scouting right now," I said. "I wanted to see how dangerous these 'more dangerous winter creatures' were in combat."

"That's fine then," the Instructor said. "But if you do try to solve this without facing my army with one of your own then I will use my other speciality."

The Instructor teleported away, his heat signature quickly disappearing. The snow men began closing in, forming a second rank of bodies as the box got smaller. I turned to face south, down the hill away from the dragon and army, and dashed at the center snow man in that line of the formation, my sword extended before me. My sword went through his chest without any resistance and I spread out my left hand to push against him. We both went flying down the hill, staying in the air long enough for him to swipe his sharp claws across my chest slicing through my reinforced skin and muscles easily and scraping along the bones of my ribs.

It only didn't go deeper because I had half blocked it with my left arm. While he was doing that I turned my sword in his chest and pushed it up through his neck and out the top of his head. Leaving him completely unharmed. Either he was moving his body around my blade or he healed extremely quickly. I sliced through his body in different places three times, and blocked two of his attacks fully, before we landed on the ground. I was on top of him, my knees driving into his stomach before I rolled off and away.

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I took a moment to limit the bleeding that my chest was doing as the ice man got to his feet and faced me. The nearest ice men were just turning and I estimated it would take them five seconds to reach the fight. Now that we were both on the ground and had leverage the single snow man didn't pose much threat to me, so I plotted out a series of strikes that would pass through the majority of his body. If there wasn't a weak point then I would run, but I wanted to check thoroughly first.

I started from the head and worked my way down. I had to adjust a few lines of my strikes to work around his attacks, but he never came close to hitting me again. Finally a slash that went through his left leg just below the knee came across some resistance and the snow man collapsed into a pile of snow, the glow leaving it entirely.

I would have liked to find whatever I had hit if it still remained, but the first wave of snow men were arriving. They had fallen into a formation five across, and it looked as though the center one was going to attack me while the others flanked.

I slashed through each of the first five's legs in the exact location that had killed the first one. And not a single snow man died. The location of the weak point moved from snow man to snow man, or maybe they could move it at will. And with five of them surrounding me with reinforcements immediately behind them they could actually be a threat to me.

My weapon of choice, the sword, was the least practical weapon to fight them with. I might be able to kill the dragon with my current sword if I had to, but a rework of my weapons was in order. If they attacked my fortress I was confident that I could deal with them.

I turned and ran from the snow men before they could finish surrounding me, heading south at nearly my top speed. I paused and looked back from the top of the next hill, the snow men were returning back over their hill, they weren't chasing me.

I stopped to heal my chest more thoroughly, sitting down before blacking out. After that I ran east. Half an hour later the grass turned into a grain bearing type that might have been wheat. And I ran out into late afternoon sunlight, the clouds receding.

Half an hour after that and the last hill flattened out into a plain as far as I could see. The grain was above my waist, and I was leaving a trail behind me, gaps where the grass had been pushed down or trampled. I took the claim ward out of my pocket portal and began signalling for a Keeper as I ran.

After an hour of not seeing anything other than the grass I was running through I came to a stop. I had been toggling the claim off and on constantly, so the Plains Keepers should be well aware that I was here. I cleared a five meter wide circle in the grass and then stood in the middle, continuing to toggle the ward.

The wind could be seen as it travelled over the plains in waves and I relaxed following the patterns it made, enjoying the lack of pain I was feeling. A few minutes later I noticed rustling coming from behind me, still a hundred meters off but getting closer. I turned to face that direction and was able to see the slight twitching of the heads of grain against the patterns of the wind at where my sound sense was pinpointing the sound.

It took it twenty seconds to reach the edge of my circle and it showed itself to be a giant meerkat. It stopped just within my cleared area and stood on its back legs which brought it to the same height as me. It looked at me for a few moments and then started making 'hoohoo' noises while shaking its finger at me.

"Ah, I don't speak your language," I said.

Though it was apparent that I was being told off. Considering that the Plains Keeper had come from behind me, I could even guess the topic of the scolding. The Plains Keeper gestured for me to follow it and headed south. It disappeared quickly into the tall grass but I was able to follow it by the sound it was making.

We were travelling slowly, at the Plains Keeper's pace, but it only took us five minutes before my guide stood up above the grass. The sound of someone else was making its way toward us until a second Plains Keeper popped up in front of the first one. They exchanged greetings, and then the second one came over to stand in front of me.

"You were asking for a meeting?" It asked. "While running too fast for one of us to catch you."

"I did," I said. "I apologise for running while asking for a meeting, it didn't occur to me that I would be running from the Plains Keepers. I need to speak with your leader urgently, there is an army coming to attempt to exterminate the Plains Keepers. I want to offer a safe haven for some of your people in my fortress."

The Plains Keeper was about to speak when I got an urgent ping from Chantelle, followed immediately by the detection ward for the fortress going off.