Chương 342: Chapter 328

The battle raged through the arena, destroying further and further as the ice started consuming the very edges of the visible area of the fractal. Ice swirled through the air, their bodies cutting large swaths of emptiness through them that were filled almost immediately with snow or ice. Sam was utilizing the maximum available power of his skills and abilities to stay fast enough to keep the rest of his team alive.

The empress just jumped around, twirling and swirling in the air, using her two scimitars to strike at them, making Sam use every ounce of talent with his mana sense to find where she would strike the next time. Every time she launched herself into the air – ice and snow swirled with greater intensity, obscuring her beautiful form before she used more magic to fully vanish from sight.

While Sam was gaining gray hair, keeping track of the flighty undead, the rest of the team were fighting for their life to stay alive and do enough damage to the boss to finish the fracture. Isabella, instead of keeping track of the constantly vanishing enemy, simply orbited around Sam, keeping an eye on his movement, making it easy to take a few strikes when the empress reappeared.

Most strikes did little more than annoy the boss, but a few of them – bolstered by buffs from both herself and Clarissa – left shallow cuts that caused sapphire-blue blood to seep out in tiny rivulets. When the battle began, Katie froze, trying to see how the boss was going to battle, then with visible frustration on her face – not able to face tank the monster – she closed her eyes, an almost serene look overcoming her (completely antithetical to her usual silly, goofy, or berserk faces) before they snapped open.

And the roar tore through the area. The sound coming from the petite young woman dressed in spiky armor was enough to shatter a few remaining strands, shoving the swirling snow around her away with a violent motion that was strong enough to create its own small blizzards at the edge.

But what it also did was to summon a great burst of mana, radiating with eldritch malice to Sam's senses, totally filling her body, then slowly leaking out from her glowing black eyes, hair transformed into strands of night sky, and the armor reinforced with shadowy tendrils. In other words, her ultimate skill. If Sam remembered correctly, it was called – very humbly in his opinion – the Black Armor.

He had seen her use it a few times during training, but this was the first time she chose to use it during a battle since she acquired it. Instantly, her battle power skyrocketed, snow and anything touching her vaporizing before it could even come into contact with her. Granted, she would be completely exhausted once it ran its course, but Sam knew that it would last long enough to take out the undead empress.

With the ultimate in effect, Katie ignored everything – the creeping cold, the occasional icicle trying to skewer her – including every time she was damaged and just fell on the monster with berserker rage. However, thanks to her new state, she didn't need anybody pointing at the monster.

The moment the undead empress appeared, Katie was there, savagely tearing into the monster, her greatsword occasionally stopped by snow-white barriers or blue blasts of mana, but more often than not her strikes hit, leaving gashes of midnight skies over her body, stacking some debuffs. The gashes weren't really wounds; they looked more like if, instead of a wicked-looking greatsword, Katie was using a giant paintbrush to paint the color of moonless sky on the undead woman.

A debuff that decreased armor, speed, and stamina regenerations – the Black Wound. Its effect became visible after a minute of fighting, where Sam had to fight less and less against her speed to be on time, saving the others, crossing his own sword with hers. Based on the eyes that he saw every time they clashed, she also knew that she was on borrowed time. Strangely, this caused more excitement to appear on her face.

"Yes! Show us your powers! Show us your worth! Show us your strength!" she exclaimed, then began to cackle with joy that reminded Sam of Katie when she found something adorable to kill in the game. Clarissa was sweating, standing in Dan's shadow, raining heals and buffs on them, eyes barely seeing the surroundings, only moving rapidly from screen to screen, occasionally looking up to check if reality was the same before returning her attention to rapidly casting life-saving magic.

Poor Dan was simply keeping up an aura of fire, fighting with furrowed brow and glistening muscles against the encroaching icy death, sometimes firing off a spear of plasma or other spell if he could spare the attention. Sam watched with keen eyes as the monster's speed dipped below a certain point during the fight – low enough that he could stop focusing on surviving and start to actually fight.

Disengaging for the umpteenth time, he stopped for a moment, admiring as the undead empress gracefully twirled in the air, landing on a frozen wooden board sticking out of the ground, standing on the very tip, crossing her scimitars in front of her. She was breathing hard, every breath coming out as thick white fog, while her body was covered with gashes of midnight black wounds, and several cuts were bleeding her sapphire blood.

Sam saw her take a deep breath, open her mouth to possibly speak, but before she could, Katie was on her. The berserker young woman jumped toward their enemy with an incoherent, angry yell, swinging her greatsword enveloped in a yellow-black energy with enough force to create wind. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Sam smiled and stopped moving.

With the speed decrease and wounds on the boss monster – and Katie, with the help of Isabella, doing her best to savage the monster and cut her into pieces, he finally had the presence to use more of his magic.

"Lockdown!" he yelled, knowing his friends would get the message. Visibly, nothing changed, but based on the mana movement in the air, he knew they were all prepared. Lowering his sword, he raised a hand and began to focus on his mana. The enemy was tricky. Fast and nimble enough to dodge most attacks. Due to the area, with the place being enclosed, area attacks would be detrimental. But he had enough control to switch it up a little. A lot of nimble attacks in a large area.

Void began to bubble forth from nothingness, first just gathering around him in small bubbles. Then after a few seconds, they took shape. Simple spears, pointed but bendy. The very basics of spears. Nothing fancy. Just the weapon, shaped out of the void from between realities. All of them were floating in the air, pointed at the undead monster as she was fending off Katie. Then, as Sam judged there were enough of them, he yelled out.

"Now!" Instantly, Isabella began to whistle, air condensing into chains winding toward the boss monster. Dan let his control over the area go, allowing frigid winds to instantly assault them, while a similar chain, made out of condensed plasma – looking like lava – burst from the ground, grabbing toward the monster's ankles. Katie just kept attacking while incoherently yelling. She looked happy.

The boss monster dodged the first attacks, but the spells started moving faster after Clarissa used some kind of wide area buff on them, Sam feeling the weighty mana expenditure in the air, suspecting it was another ultimate spell. Then the chain made out of wind caught an arm. The plasma chain wound itself around an ankle, and the boss monster could only wield her weapons to keep Katie at bay as the frigid wind began to intensify, Dan's magic no longer keeping back the aura of ice.

Yet, during all this, the undead empress just kept grinning, visibly enjoying the fight. Sam nodded. As expected from someone like that… Then the spears began to fall… One by one. Each spear, with surgical precision, flew toward the monster, each of them leaving a streak in the falling snow.

BAMM BAMM BAMM The first few crashed into an invisible barrier, snowflakes of magic appearing around the undead woman, but as Katie kept wailing at her and Sam kept up the barrage, there could only be one outcome of the situation. CRACK The barrier cracked. First, a small crack, but then under the assault of void mana, it began to grow and grow into a fault line over the shield, before a quiet tinkle signaled the breaking of the shield.

Funnily enough, it was Isabella who was the first to capitalize on the event, flying forward with her own sword pointed directly at the heart of the monster. Katie took a step back just to pivot into another brutal strike, just as Sam raised his own sword to advance. SLICK The beautiful longsword, a bit chipped after the lengthy battle, went through the destroyed gorgeous dress the empress wore, her eyes wide with surprise as she slowly looked down, the smile never leaving her face.

Sam watched sapphire-like blood bubble forth from her mouth before she looked up, directly at Katie and Isabella, who were standing almost next to each other.

"Hah… what a wonderful end…" Then, with a sparkle of magic, it disintegrated into flakes of mana, leaving the arena silent, aside from the deep breathing of the team. The wind vanished, leaving them merely cold instead of freezing, and the fog also cleared up quickly, revealing an annihilated arena – if it could be called that anymore – leaving only one thing intact. A bit of a stone platform, on it a throne made out of ice shards, and an eldritch cat.

Who was sleeping on top of a magnificent chest, inlaid with all manner of blue gems, decorated with metals that seemed to be made from ice. Sam jumped up on the stump of the arena and looked down at the cat.

"You could've helped, you know…" The cat opened one eye, then closed it with a quiet huff. Sam didn't know what he expected. A few minutes later, they were all in the middle of the arena, sitting on a few hastily created earth chairs courtesy of Sam, and staring at the chest of rewards. [Congratulations! You have finished Wave #50 of the Ice Rumble, defeating the Empress of Snow Vaults! Your reward is yours to take!]"So, who wants to do the honors?" Sam asked with a small smile while cleaning his sword.

Katie and Isabella were leaning on each other, the first forcibly in an exhausted state after her ultimate ran out seconds after the boss died. Dan was looking through his screens, then Clarissa let out a quiet scoff, leaving one hand petting the exhausted Melody in her lap and using the other to carelessly flip the lid on the chest. Instantly, they were showered with streaks of light as the treasure was revealed.

There were sapphire gems, money, and several bags' worth of crafting ingredients in the box on one side. The other contained several scrolls, books, and items. Most of the scrolls were recipes for items and alchemical creations made by ingredients found in the north, but Sam found one that contained something that looked pretty much like a primitive version of the city heaters they used in the city they were in.

'Probably something Liz would be happy about…' he thought while he put them away, with Clarissa taking a few for the Healer Guild. They were always looking for new elixirs. The books were mostly for ice magic, which went to Dan, who happily learned them, instantly diving into them. But one book looked special… On the cover, there were two figures in the motion of dance, and when he pulled it out of the chest, he saw that it was actually two thin books put together.

[Dance of Death: Dance with your chosen partner, a dance of death. Show the world your devotion and the edge of your weapons. Let the blood flourish your twirl, and the cries of the dead paint your backdrop.] Sam stared at it deadpan and threw it at the lovebirds. There were also several accessories. Thin silver chains with a sapphire shaped like a drop of blood, or a tear, depending on whom you ask. [Tear of the Empress: A necklace of beautiful craftmanship. Severely increases resistance toward ice and cold while giving immunity against Frostbite.] Five of them were in the chest, so naturally, Sam gave everybody one. One of these in the north was worth more than some legendary equipment. Finally, in the bottom of the chest, under every treasure was a pulsating heart. It was colored blue and silver-gray, a few droplets of sapphire-blue blood spurting from it every few seconds, only to vanish into nothingness a few more seconds later.

[Heart of an Empire: Those who own this, own the empire. The land will obey your will, cold won't bother you, and the very wind will serve you through your journey.] Vague but powerful promises. Sam just grinned. He reached into the chest, picked up the beating heart, his hand almost instantly covered in hoarfrost before it began to really freeze over. Only the fact that he had the new necklace prevented his hand from completely freezing.

Quickly, he walked over to the throne – with the others watching curiously – raised the heart and slammed it down on the throne, letting the sharp ice shards pierce the organ. There was a brief stillness in the air, then a sharp scream. A scream that sounded like it echoed from several mountains and was carried by the wind to them, as the heart and the throne melted in front of him. As he rejoined the others, they all looked at him with questioning looks, waiting for an explanation. Sam just shrugged.

"It sounded too sketchy, so I got rid of it…" And, as expected, nobody believed him.