Eli stood in the empty ice clearing, perplexed.
"Light huh..." she muttered.
It was already morning. She couldn't believe she had stayed up all night talking to a stranger.
But at least she got some valuable information out of it.
The government was watching... no, the entire business cooperation was watching.
The government alone wouldn't have the right to surveil this entire fissure and would have to get a couple companies' official signatures to proceed.
It was most likely that the government had signed some sort of peace deal which would allow the other corporations to view the cadets too.
In short, this entire expedition would determine their future opportunities as seekers.
She walked out of the clearing and onto the cave.
It was a bit surprising that Zach hadn't followed her, but she shrugged it off.
As she walked towards the cave she saw a body lying on the ground in the distance.
"What the..." she muttered under her breath, walking closer.
A huge armored figure, twice her size, more like a headless knight, lay dead on the snow, black blood spewed all around it.
Eli looked at this sight in horror.
If a battle had broken loose in these parts, surely she would have sensed it.
She looked in the distance to see another figure, lying lifeless.
A person.
Snow-drenched gray hair and skin almost as pale as the snow.
Her eyes widened as she ran at him.
"Zach?!"
She knelt by his side.
'w-what is this..?'
'I was gone for only a second...'
How could this happen?
How could she let this happen?
She touched his cold palm.
His right arm was...
'Gone...'
Eli's face twisted in horror.
'It's all my fault...'
'If I was just more aware of my teammates...' she whimpered.
Zach didn't deserve this.
She was the one that invited him to team up, and now...
He was at the brink of death because of her.
'His heart is still beating...?'
A look of worry was plastered on her face as she waved her hand.
"Summon grade 5 healing potion," she spoke, and a blue liquid vial materialized in the air.
She could tell by the situation that Zach actually came to look for her, but was ambushed by a strong foe, possibly a high fiend.
And he somehow survived with his life.
Barely.
The red liquid flowed into Zach's lips and disappeared.
'What the...'
Zach groaned a bit.
His wounds sizzled and started healing at a rapid rate.
Flesh stitched itself as red smoke evaporated from the wounds.
But his arm was still missing, though the wound had closed.
This was proof of how dangerous the place was.
Eli knelt on the snow, Zach resting on her thighs, his eyes shut.
"I knew how dangerous this was, yet I still left him alone..."
Zach was going to be unconscious for a while.
Eli sat there until snow began drizzling and the sky turned ash.
They couldn't stay here.
They had to keep moving, somehow.
Eli hadn't done this before.
She placed Zach on her back, like a piggyback.
They had to reach the main sea before the day ended. In the worst-case scenario, the snow would drown them in the canyon if they were too late.
Eli made her way towards the canyon.
The snow began whipping hard against the canyon walls, sending bits of shards of ice at high speed that grazed her fair skin, making blood trickle down.
It turned into a full-on blizzard quickly.
Eli thought the snow covering them was the worst-case scenario, but this was even worse.
She dragged on through the snow, which reached her knees, limiting her movement with Zach on her back.
Zach was a bit taller than her, but she could easily carry his weight because she was used to carrying heavy loads.
But it wasn't easy.
The biting cold dug into her joints, her teeth clattered as the merciless wind sent shard-like ice at her, grazing her cheek.
She persevered.
The wind didn't reduce, in fact it increased.
Soon enough, the snow wasn't the only one of her worries.
The wind further added to the obstacles, pushing her back.
Her muscles screamed to give up, her joints almost gave in to the cold.
Hours passed.
Thankfully, there were no monsters in the area to slow her down even further.
Slowly, she got closer to her goal.
Pace by pace.
Step by step.
Until she saw a clearing ahead.
It was the frozen sea.
Bouncing Zach on her back, she continued through the snow.
She reached the sea.
A rigid expanse filled with uneven ice, like a frozen storm, littered with shipwrecks.
Eli had to reach a considerable distance before she could rest.
The monsters of the sea had gone into hiding because of the devastating weather conditions, making it a perfect opportunity for Eli to reach her goal even faster.
The crabs around had all retreated into their shells, scattered all around her.
The fact she was in the midst of thousands of bloodthirsty thyxars was very unsettling.
But the monsters seemed to fear the cold more than they enjoyed ripping prey apart.
This went on for hours.
Until she finally found somewhere.
Her joints were frozen, her blood was cold, her mind was hazy.
One word came to her.
'Shelter...'
A half-buried huge ship.
No, a skyscraper that threatened to reach the heavens.
It was half-submerged, its jagged hull rose to the sky, adorned with jagged steel and frozen cracks.
Its twisted crane and shattered masts towered over her, casting a shadow over the sea.
Eli stepped into one of the huge claw marks.
The interior was nothing but a hollow mess.
It was what you would typically see in a ship that had been abandoned for more than a thousand years.
Absolutely nothing.
No sound, no belongings, just steel and wood.
Black, cold steel.
The ship creaked, and a serpentine monster emerged from above the corridor that shot up vertically, riddled with doors to different rooms.
Eli caught this from the corner of her eye, and the monster jumped down at her, opening its gaping maw riddled with dagger-like teeth.
She swung her hand, and a gleaming blade appeared in her palm mid-motion, slicing the monster in half.
A message flashed past her retina.
She dropped Zach on the wooden corridor deck, looking up.
It was better to extinguish all the monsters in this ship's interior to make it safe, but she couldn't just leave Zach here again.
In the end, she summoned the Red Sun Orb to warm the place up, and sat opposite the sleeping Zach.
Now that she thought about it, Zach had never shown such exceptional skill with the blade, yet he could defeat a high fiend?
'Just who are you...'
She glanced at his sleeping figure.
Zach.