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The Inheritance Temple was a place of extraordinary significance.
It would seek out qualified inheritors in the vicinity and bestow divine power upon them in advance.
This bestowed divine power often manifested in the form of special physical attributes in the qualified individuals.
In the Far North, only these barbarians could gain recognition from the Inheritance Temple as qualified inheritors.
Only the qualified could awaken the temple.
Viktor had anticipated needing to search through several tribes to find such a qualified individual, but fortune smiled upon him.
The sole survivor was a barbarian youth who appeared to be barely in his teens.
The red fur on his body had only just begun to grow, and his limbs were exceptionally muscular from years of enduring extreme environments. He wore a large white spotted animal skin.
The animal skin garment had been scorched black under the terrifying flames.
Yet, despite being engulfed by such intense fire, his body remained unscathed.
This was the manifestation of his divine power - immunity to high temperatures.
In gaming terms, it would translate to immunity against fire-based damage.
The barbarian youth gazed at the indifferent Viktor, shouting incomprehensibly while gesticulating wildly, appearing extremely agitated.
Seeing that Viktor remained unmoved, the youth fell to his knees before him, kowtowing repeatedly, and finally prostrating himself motionless.
It was as if he perceived Viktor as a deity embodying fire itself.
Viktor, however, only observed his actions with cold detachment:
"Uncivilized savages, wreaking havoc on the borders of a vast empire with just a modicum of power obtained from external sources."
He turned his gaze towards the nearby poles, where various pieces of flesh were hanging. Through the haze, Viktor seemed to discern some indescribable flesh.
Above, there appeared to be some garments that had already been frozen stiff.
The sight filled Viktor with utter revulsion.
He wished he could resurrect these dead barbarians and grind their bones to dust a thousand times over.
"You know, Vega," he said.
"This is precisely why, with the exception of Gwen, I despise all the knights of the North."
Including Angus.
Self-proclaimed righteous, his mind was consumed solely by thoughts of inheriting the legacy of the Goddess of Justice.
Until this inheritance finally fell to Gwen, even the Goddess of Justice herself deemed Angus's actions to have become so obsessive as to be evil.
So, Gwen eliminated him.
Not merely because Angus intended to unite the North in rebellion against Aurelianne's rule.
More significantly, because Angus was already steeped in sin.
Even if he had taken no direct action.
But this was the North, where those barbarians, dubbed 'evil beasts', lurked on the borders.
His inaction was, in itself, a grievous sin.
Viktor didn't care whether Vega would respond to him or not. He just looked at the prostrating barbarian at his feet with disgust, and suddenly a giant hand forged of lava materialized behind him.
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In an instant, the barbarian youth before him was seized and lifted, held within that colossal lava hand.
The giant hand contracted violently, as if intent on kneading his body into pulp.
In the endless howling of wind and snow, even from a hundred meters beyond the tribe, one could clearly hear the agonized screams and the sickening crunch of bones being crushed.
Just before he might have squeezed the life out of the barbarian youth, he halted the contraction of the giant hand, no longer paying heed to the poor wretch barely clinging to life in his grasp.
As long as he still drew breath, Viktor would not spare him another glance.
The journey to the Inheritance Temple remained long.
He carried the now mangled barbarian, continuing his solitary trek through the wind and snow, leaving behind the tribe that had been reduced to smoldering ruins, engulfed in fierce flames.
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On a snow-covered plain, light snow drifted through the air like delicate, fragmented petals.
An old man with snow-white hair stood amidst the flurries, his white hair and eyebrows allowing him to blend seamlessly into the wintry landscape.
Clad in a white furry coat, as snowflakes settled upon it, it exuded an air of frigid indifference.
Surrounding him were dozens of exceptionally muscular barbarians.
Each barbarian brandished a weapon, the sharp ends of which blazed with bright red flames.
They bellowed from their throats, waving their weapons as they charged towards the old man.
Watching several barbarians attack, the old man showed not a hint of panic.
Instead, he slowly raised his arm, his fingers tracing intricate patterns in the air, drawing white and blue designs in space.
Frost slowly began to crystallize on his gloves.
Suddenly, an immense ice battle axe materialized in the old man's right hand. He swung the colossal axe with a speed that left afterimages, felling the charging barbarians with a single, devastating strike.
Observing the scattered limbs of the barbarians, the old man merely shook the remaining blood from his ice battle axe. Seeing the remaining barbarians trembling and retreating, he burst into laughter.
"Come now, don't stop there," he taunted, beckoning to the remaining barbarians.
The barbarians exchanged uncertain glances, caught between advancing and retreating.
They hadn't come here to challenge this old man.
On the contrary, they found themselves surrounded by him.
Many barbarians had seen his visage before and knew exactly who he was.
Vladimir Lebedev.
The North's most formidable fourth-tier magic master, known as the "Supreme Penitent of Extreme Ice."
These barbarians had originally come to forage, hoping to find something to plunder or creatures to serve as future sustenance.
But unexpectedly, they encountered this nightmare of the barbarian tribes.
However, retreating without a fight was not the barbarian way. Although one of their own had fallen, they still believed they could vanquish the demon that had long plagued their kind.
The barbarians let out a thunderous roar to the heavens, as if beseeching for strength, and began to shout in their incomprehensible tongue.
As if having completed their preliminary invocation, the barbarians began to wave their flame-wreathed weapons, circling Vladimir and steadily closing in.
"What gibberish are you spouting? Not a word makes sense!" he scoffed.
He laughed heartily, then furrowed his brow, unleashing a frosty aura that began to permeate the air.
As a magic master, Vladimir was more accustomed to augmenting his physical combat with magic.
A barbarian, wielding a flaming spear, thrust fiercely at the back of Vladimir's head.
Vladimir deftly sidestepped, his palm encased in an ice gauntlet formed from frost, firmly grasping the fragile spear.
The frost gradually crept along the spear tip towards the burning shaft.
The barbarian suddenly jerked back, only to find that the spear seemed to be stuck fast. He abandoned the weapon and charged at Vladimir with his muscular frame.
In a flash, the old man swung the icy spear, hurling it violently behind him. The high-velocity icy projectile pierced through the skull of a dual-wielding barbarian who was preparing to attack from afar.
Glancing back, Vladimir saw the charging barbarian had already closed to within ten meters.
His right leg lashed out with terrifying force, his icy foot shattering the barbarian's head into fragments.
The blue glove on Vladimir's right hand emitted a soft glow, and an ice dagger materialized in his palm. He plunged it into the body of the headless barbarian, then hurled the corpse towards a red-haired barbarian brandishing a battle axe not far away.
The corpse collided with the living body, and the tremendous impact instantly reverberated through the entire snow-covered plain, violently tearing open a deep, gaping chasm.
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To Be Continued..