"The Seal of Al... How could you...?" The breath of the lead wolf began to become disordered.
Its huge claws scraped on the ice surface. Melville took a half step back, but then let out a fierce roar: "No! This is impossible!" Its furious roar, mixed with shattered ice fragments, lashed at Daphne like a wind carrying knives. "I can't sense any power from you. How could you possibly defeat the avatar of Alsuga?"
The cold air disappeared the moment it touched the cloak. An invisible warm barrier was protecting the girl.
"It seems you're not even a qualified beast." Daphne still didn't turn around. "The avatar of Alsuga hasn't even been released yet. How can you talk about defeating it? I came here following a greater will."
"A... greater?" Melville's deep and hoarse voice wavered.
Each of Alsuga's slumbers lasted for a thousand years. He never opened his eyes before a whole millennium had passed.
Now, there are less than ten years until the next millennium. By then, his final avatar will condense again, and after that, Alsuga will descend into the mortal world in person.
He said that it would be the destruction prophesied by the Great Mother.
It was fated.
Since everything was beyond salvation, he would come to destroy everything shaped by the Great Mother's own hands.
This girl of unknown origin had obtained the Death Seal before Alsuga's avatar had condensed, and she claimed to be following a "greater will". Could it be...
"Mel." A solemn and heavy call rang out.
It sounded like a huge bell ringing over this ice plain of True Ice.
It was only then that Daphne remembered that she was underground. The powerful and resonant voice echoed repeatedly between the ice surfaces, almost splitting her eardrums.
"Al!? You... woke up early!?" Melville was extremely astonished. It curled up and took a few steps back, and its sharp, icy bone claws screeched on the ice surface.
"Let the girl come over." The solemn and heavy voice said again.
"I... understand..." Melville restrainedly agreed. It lowered its proud head.
The lead wolf no longer seemed to hate the master who had given it its undead body. This was a bit different from what Daphne had expected.
She had thought that Melville was only forced to submit to Alsuga, but now they were calling each other by nicknames. Their relationship must not be too bad.
Although the production team of "COG" had cut out the whole audience with the emperor egg completely, it didn't mean they hadn't envisioned it. She had seen the leaked scrapped content from insiders on the forum before she transmigrated.
Alsuga's slumber was out of necessity. The fierce battle with the Chaos Demons had exhausted his mind and reason. After this millennium, he would no longer be a guardian. The destruction would be brought by his own hands.
This also meant that the prematurely awakened Alsuga only had his soul. His magnificent body was still frozen in the ice tomb.
The reason Daphne dared to come to see Alsuga with the Seal Ring was that she clearly knew that Alsuga couldn't harm her. Moreover, according to the setting, Alsuga was obliged to give the Seal holder a chance to have a conversation.
As for the "greater will", from the moment she was forcibly pinned with the Orb, Daphne realized that all the gods on the chessboard had a common origin.
Named the same as the prefix of the Orb, Oseriel, she was the true "Mother Goddess".
Daphne had been mistaken at first. She had wrongly thought that the Vampire Queen Lamia was the "Mother Goddess". Compared with the Mother of Magic and the Mother of All Things, there was more than one order of magnitude difference.
[Before the dead set foot on the land of the living, encounter something that turns the impossible into possible at the foot of the snow-capped mountains. The Mother Goddess will bless the pious. Each of them will fall asleep with a sweet smile.]
Every part of this description had come true, including the last sentence - "Each of them will fall asleep with a sweet smile."
The character named "Bertram" had been laid to rest in the coffin and fallen asleep, and each iron coffin under the black mist held an unknown character.
Since everything was true, Daphne could boldly guess that Oseriel was also related to Alsuga.
The Ice Tomb King was once a god inclined towards order. He had guarded the barren frozen soil against the invasion of chaos for tens of thousands of years. Why did he then swing his frost blade at the land he had once guarded when he woke up for the last time?
Figuring this out was secondary. The first priority was to trick Alsuga into giving her some good stuff. The hoard of the God of the Dead must be quite substantial.
When it came to fleecing, one had to be bold.
Daphne was still pondering when she suddenly felt her cloak collar being grabbed and lifted by something. She was then swayingly lifted into the air, getting farther and farther from the ground.
But this was way too high!?
Only then did the half-blood girl get a chance to catch a glimpse of the lead wolf's figure.
It was a light blue frost-bone beast. Its skin and flesh had already decayed and disappeared. The sharp fangs in its mouth were all hard ice. The smallest tooth was as tall as one and a half people. Translucent ice needles all over its body replaced the originally thick white fur. Aancient district spanning Liaonang and Hebei provinces blue glow flickered in its empty eye sockets.
The shock of seeing it with her own eyes was far greater than that of seeing it through a screen in the game.
Melville was truly huge. The legend didn't lie. It was indeed as magnificent as a mountain range.
"I can walk by myself." Daphne was still being stubborn.
"That would be too slow." The lead wolf's voice rang directly from the depths of her mind. This was a kind of sound transmission magic. After all, it was holding Daphne in its mouth and couldn't speak.
With its icy claws, Melville moved swiftly. It only took a few strides with its four legs to cover over a thousand meters. The smooth ice surface didn't hinder the lead wolf's agility and nimbleness at all.
Before Daphne could even feel dizzy or nauseous, this journey of being carried in its mouth had already reached the end.
"Al, I brought her here." Melville carefully and slowly lowered its head to put Daphne down.
There was no reply from that voice.
A long silence was more heart-pounding than a momentary deafening noise.
Melville only brought Daphne here. Its huge body dissolved in the cold wind and then scattered into flying snow crystals that disappeared into the air.
Daphne looked around in all directions but didn't find anything special. There was only an ice wall in front of her.
But just at that moment, a terrifying thought suddenly exploded in her mind - since Melville was so huge, wouldn't Alsuga, who could use it as a mount, be...
Thinking like this, Daphne subconsciously looked up.
In the deep, dark recesses, she saw the towering skeletal throne behind the ice wall. The throne was almost as high as the altitude of the Donau Mountains above a thousand meters, and the being on the throne was even harder to glimpse the top of.
The light blue dots that had been floating for a long time gathered and took shape at this moment, expanding and growing bit by bit in the air, also matching the being behind the ice.
The huge frost blade capable of splitting mountains and rivers finally showed its original form.
The towering sword tip crashed down on the True Ice, shattering the ground in front of Daphne into pieces. At this moment, it seemed that the entire earth's crust was trembling.
"Ah—" From behind the deep, cold ice, came a long sigh. "Seal holder, what do you wish to see me about?"