[THANK YOU Sedeho & Husky FOR JOINING OUR PATREON]
Five years ago.
Nothing but winter could be seen outside her window.
The mountains were covered in white snow, and the city was plunged into silence.
It was impossible for a safe haven such as this city to become a place where people were stranded, but Luisa, the rank 7 boss, made it possible.
Her existence itself was a calamity.
She had transformed Volterra, a city built on top of a mountain summit, into an icy wasteland. Monsters soon began populating it.
The winter that Luisa had created was violent and persistent. The chill made one's hands and feet freeze over and their breath come out in condensation gas, but none of it was real; it was an illusion.
No one ever got hypothermia or frostbite. All the cold did was make them suffer and rob them of their mana. Every minute, every second in which the survivors were trapped on Volterra was hell.
Luisa used the suffering of humans to grow stronger and stronger.
Unable to stand by and let more casualties pile up, Adela's parents had planned a raid. Their goal was Luisa's castle. Their opponent was a rank 7 boss monster, but they themselves were both rank 6 hunters—the highest in the Association. There was a possibility for their success.
[Adela, we'll be back soon. Alright?]
Adela's father smiled while patting her head.
[You just have to wait by yourself for three days. Three days, okay?]
And her mother tightly embraced her before she left. Her hug was warm enough to make the girl forget the cold.
Adela shook her head.
She didn't like the fact that she had to stay separated from her parents, no matter what the reason was. No, she was scared of it.
[I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry… but there's nothing we can do.]
However, her mother erected a barrier and left, her father in tow.
All that was left with Adela was the freezing cold and a single teddy bear.
A day passed.
The soup that her mother had made for her was cold but delicious.
Two days passed.
The time she spent alone waiting for her parents was lonely and boring.
Finally, the third day that her parents had promised…
But they did not come back home.
Four days passed.
The canned beans that had been saved as emergency food tasted awful.
A week passed.
The barrier disappeared, and the chill that Luisa had created grew even harsher.
Adela really hated this cold.
At least if she froze over she wouldn't have to feel pain anymore.
But what hurt her, a girl of barely five years of age, more than anything else was the loneliness.
By the time one month had passed, she coudldn't even remember the sound of her own voice.
'I want to see them'
Her mother, her father.
No, it could be anyone. A human being.
This is why Adela left the house and began to walk around, no destination in mind.
But the city, struck by disaster, was silent. All of its residents were already at their limit.
An aura of death permeated the roads, the houses, and the buildings. There was no one who could afford to show care or concern for a young child in that calamitous city when they could barely afford to do so for themselves.
So she wandered around the city for some time, then returned back home.
She couldn't leave—Luisa didn't permit her food to escape her grasp.
***
More time passed. It had been a month since her parents had left.
Adela had to kill some part of herself in order to survive. No one could endure the loneliness and cold that had struck Volterra without breaking in some way.
***
Three months.
She no longer wanted to see her father anymore. She no longer wanted to eat her mother's soup. She no longer felt the cold.
Her birthday had arrived.
Coincidentally, Adela's Trait had also manifested at that time. It was expected, seeing as she was five years old, turning six.
Her Trait was S-rank and of an ice element. It was rather ironic, considering that no one hated the cold as much as she did.
***
How much time had passed by that point.
[Mr. Arden! Over here! There's a child!]
[Adela!!]
The scenery outside of her window had returned back to normal. People were picking their lives back up again, rediscovering their place in the world.
Except for Adela. She couldn't.
She had already changed. She had already lost too much.
Her frozen heart had stopped beating.
* * *
* * *
But that day was different.
Badump! Badump!
Adela's heart was beating out of her chest. She could feel her nervousness, numbing her all the way to the tips of her fingers. She felt energized.
'I want to win.'
More specifically, she wanted to bare everything within her out into the open. She wanted to draw out every bit of emotion she was currently feeling so that she could etch them permanently into her body.
That moment…
That was when Adela finally felt something she had been longing for that entire time: 'the feeling of being alive'.
"Fiori d'inverno (Winter's Blossom)!" she yelled at the top of her voice.
Adela had thought she had lost all of her emotions, but that wasn't the case. True, genuine emotions were stirring up her heart. She was so excited it felt like she was losing her mind.
Boom!
She used every last bit of mana she had.
Craaaaack!!
Numerous pieces of ice formed around Adela and gathered in front of her.
Klink klink klink!
All of the gathered ice merged and reformed into a beautiful flower.
The flurry of mana surrounding Adela was blowing her hair backwards in a frenzy.
"I'm going all out."
The flower in front of her had seven petals and acted as a sort of barrier. Without destroying them all, one could not approach her.
Wshh!!
Once the petals finished forming, blue mana began gathering in the center of the flower. If [Snow Opera] was a Skill that dominated the battlefield, [Winter's Blossom] was one that acted as both an attack and defense.
Vmmm!!
The mana particles had been gathered to maximum capacity. The petals began to glow.
Even in that dire situation, YuSung calmly regulated the aura in his body.
'There's plenty of time.'
He was currently using Black Dragon's Body Armor. At that point, what he needed wasn't time but the composure needed to control the technique.
'Slowly but surely.'
A concentration that opened up his senses.
YuSung moved the aura in his body, bit by bit.
Legs to hips…
Hips to heart…
Heart to arms…
Arms to fist…
YuSung pulled in the freely-flowing energy of the Black Dragon in his body to one, singular point.
'…Power is like a flame,' he thought, remembering something his master had told him at some point.
[Kuhaha, it's a good thing we found some dry firewood! It's burning well!]
[See this, YuSung? Look at the bonfire! Power is just like this, the flame!]
[What does that mean, you ask? Hmm, well, you'll learn the meaning naturally as you grow older!]
YuSung finally understood Yu WonHak's teachings.
Fire was something that simply burned. It was perilous enough that even a small breeze could threaten to extinguish it, but it could also raze everything in its vicinity without care for what it was.
No matter how great a certain power or technique was, it was meaningless if the person using it couldn't reign it in.
YuSung had managed to display the strong technique known as the Black Dragon's Body Armor. Now, he had to prove himself worthy of it.
Tup!
YuSung shot ahead like a comet.
Black-colored aura trailed behind him like a trail.
Flash!
He reached speeds he couldn't before.
The energy emanating from the Body Armor was raging within YuSung, trying to escape from him, but he gripped the churning mana as tightly as he could, using the smallest of tension in his control to do so.
It was too early. He couldn't let the power loose yet.
'Just a little bit… a little bit more!'
The barrier that Adela had erected was right in front of his eyes. Time slowed to a crawl for him, even more than it had previously.
"Fioritura (Blossom)!"
Adela opened her hands. As she did so, the flower began to glow in front of YuSung's eyes.
[※Danger!]
[The portal's mana capacity is reaching 87%!]
A hologram appeared before both contestants' eyes, but neither of them took notice.
All each one wanted from the other was their full strength.
Zzzt!!
Adela gave the order to shoot.
One of the petals on the ice flower disappeared.
"Now!"
YuSung didn't miss the chance. He stretched his hand out towards the dissipating light.
Battle God Style – Savage Dragon's Boulder Crushing Palm
Boom!!
In an instant, the black aura was freed from his body and clashed with the blue light. However, the former was slowly eating into the latter.
Bam!!
The blue light that Adela had shot dissipated; next in line were the petals of the ice flower.
Bam! Crack!
A crack appeared in one of the petals and it too disappeared.
Only five petals were left.
Ssst!!
Four petals…
Three…
Two…
One…
Adela squeezed out every last ounce of mana she had left in her body in order to maintain the last petal.
[System error]
[System error]
[System error]
[The portal's mana capacity has been surpassed!]
Their Pockets were blasting alarms now as if the holograms weren't enough anymore.
The power of the Black Dragon's Body Armor, threatening to consume Adela…
And the single flower petal made of ice in its way…
Booom!!
The two powers collided and created an explosion. The floor of the arena shattered, creating dust in the air. A massive gust of wind swept over the stadium.
[Simuation Failed]
[The portal will be forcibly terminated.]
Even the hosts of the event, the Hunter Association, had not expected that much power. Adela and YuSung had managed to handily surpass the record and limit set by them. Thanks to that, the fake world inside the portal had crumbled around them.
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