So it was real that I had eliminated an intruder... It was difficult to put together all the information I had heard from the gnome. It seemed that he had stolen something from the royal treasure of an unknown race, but then he was discovered, and he fled to the sanctuary... Could the music box be the stolen item?
I rested in the ruined room and healed my wounds. I didn't trust the wolves to keep their word peacefully... It's not that I didn't believe in good faith... but deep down, they were still monsters to me, monsters from a video game. What was the point of mixing Little Red Riding Hood with a magic sanctuary and a music box that would get them out of confinement? The scriptwriters' habits with psychotropic substances must have been worrying...
I left the grotto. I could see the eyes of the wolves looking at me from a distance; however, I did not see rage or traces of murderous intent in the eyes of the pack; I saw hope...
"grrhhh human I see that you have returned alive... you took a while... grhhh we were afraid that you were already a corpse..." the alpha wolf spoke...
"It wasn't easy, and there was not only an ogre in the cave; there was a wizard... and here is the box." I said as I showed it to him... "but before opening it, I want to know more about your story."
The wolves told me the following story:
"The pack of wolves lived and hunted in a forest in an arctic area; it was a much larger pack than it is now. One day, horses and caravans of bipedal beings began to appear in the forest, similar to me but different. Beyond some sneak attack, they stayed away from these beings, but finally they sent hunters to kill the wolves and get their skins. The wolves, in retaliation, began to besiege the caravans and the bipeds...
This continued for several seasons until the number of caravans decreased, and the pack regained control of the forest. One day, a more powerful hunter, who wore a red cape, began to hunt them down. The entire pack faced the huntress. The battle was bloody, and the pack suffered many casualties due to the incredible magic of the biped, but still, the combat was decided in their favor. Finally, when they thought they were winning, the biped used magic that took them all to a deep sleep. When they woke up, they were already locked in this frozen valley... they spent many wolf lives without being able to hunt, die, or really live alone, facing from time to time with beings that came to the valley and that tended to attack them without knowing very well why.
Some months ago, an ogre began to appear very occasionally from a cave on the other side of the forest. They tried to hunt it down and kill it, but it was stronger than them, and even if they died, they would wake up again. In this frozen prison...
Five moons ago, they had a vision, their deity told them that in the ogre's cave there was a box that would free them but that they would need the help of one of the bipeds that would appear...
They had tried to communicate with everyone who had arrived but it was in vain; some massacred the herd, others died in their jaws, but no one helped them until my arrival..."
As a video game plot for the story of some NPCs, it was a bit confusing, but I was not here to analyze the plot but the gameplay and get the most out of the game...
But more surprising than the convoluted plot, I was surprised by the ability of the NPCs to transmit feelings. It was normal that even in the best games, in those with the best AI, the NPCs had a flat personality, they could tell better or worse stories, but never he had encountered NPCs capable of conveying feelings.
Even if he no longer thought about the wolves and thought about the "merchant of dreams," he had a complex personality, character, humor, he could become detestable... he was a very accomplished character without a doubt...
The alpha leader directly gave me the snowflake pendant without the slightest animosity in his gaze, and I did the same by giving them the box.
"And now that?" I asked the alpha leader.
"Grhhhh we don't know; I just know that once our stay here opens, it will finally be over…"
"Will the box affect me...?" I know it might sound cowardly, but I had gotten too far in the tutorial to risk all my progress for a secondary quest... Also, if the key was to open the box, how long would it be active...? If I let them open it, how safe could I be that when I picked it up again, the box wouldn't continue ringing...?
"I'll leave the box here and leave the valley... good luck..." I told the wolves...
"Grrhhhh if we meet again in Athair we will show you our gratitude..." answered the alpha leader.
I didn't look back...
I left the frozen valley and was about to return to the main hallway when Data's voice echoed in my head.
"Congratulations to the player for being the first to achieve the unusual feat of freeing 23 souls that inhabit the sanctuary."
I didn't know what it would mean to have achieved an unusual feat, but there was less and less left to finish the tutorial so I would know shortly.
The potion I had taken had long since stopped having its effect, so the cold in the hallway was difficult to manage. Thanks to some air and fire mana, I managed to stabilize the surrounding temperature a little. I was already beginning to enter the final part of the sanctuary, and that kept causing me some anxiety. What would await me next?
Further down the hallway, there was a door to my right. Let's go; there's less left... I adjusted my equipment and opened the door...
The room was wide; it could have been more than 30 meters wide, and I couldn't see the end of it... I didn't detect life... just rows and rows of statues of warriors made of ice. It was like being in front of terracotta warriors, but sculpted in ice. They wore complete armor of an unknown style; it was neither the style of Western medieval armor, nor the armor that was more common among Eastern cultures... it had many volutes, protruding ridges on the pectoral part and on the shoulder pads. They all carried a large tower-type shield and, on the other hand, a strange sword that ended in three leaves as if it were a fleur-de-lis.
Between each of the statues, there was no more than a meter of separation... So there were hundreds, if not thousands, of ice statues... They were not alive, although with my mana senses, I could notice how inside they had a small core of energy that pulsed with coldness.
It was not difficult to imagine that the object of this test was to reach the back of the room and pick up the medallion. Surely, surely, when he tried to move forward, the statues would come to life and attack him. The options were obvious too: either fight a fierce battle against thousands, or try to dodge their attacks with dimensional rifts or other tricks, or wield overwhelming power and destroy them all in a single move...
The latter was what he most wanted to try; it would be complicated. I already knew the resistance of ice to wind blades; furthermore, despite all my improvements, I could not launch more than 400 blades... I would have the same capacity problems. With space magic, I couldn't open enough rifts at once to cut them all... A laser attack could be reflected by the ice, since much of it was like a polishing mirror that was...
Darkness, will, life or death were not very useful in a fight against beings that were not alive. Even if I used bullet time, he couldn't destroy them all before spending all my mana... my psychic wave didn't have that range to hit multiple enemies, plus I didn't know if they even had a psyche to stun.
Water magic was believed to be even more counterproductive against frozen bodies... not only would it not harm them, but it would make them gain mass...
The room was very long; from what my senses told me, it would be more than 1 kilometer long... With all my reserve of fire mana it would not be able to melt them all; at most, it would raise the freezing temperature of the entire room a little and only for a few minutes... and my lightning strikes didn't have such a long range...
Temperature and lightning... there was still one possibility...
My fire mana spread throughout the room, and the temperature increased little by little in the room... -15 degrees, -10, -5, 0 degrees... 10 degrees... 20 degrees... I left the temperature stabilized there and I let the seconds pass...
At first, it seemed that nothing would happen and that all the effort had been useless, but after two minutes, a small puddle began to form at the feet of the statues. Its surface began to become slippery. When my fire mana was close to running out, the entire floor of the room was covered with a small layer of water...
I began to levitate to avoid touching the water with my feet.
"The show begins, you bastards..." I yelled at them as I began to concentrate my lightning magic in my hands... it would be a single discharge... but it would be big... it would be glorious...