In a desert of endless white, two figures pushed forward, their legs sinking deep into the snow with every step. It wasn't just walking, it was a fight with the ground itself. Each movement demanded effort, each step stole a bit more strength than it should.
"Heck… hurry up! At this pace, how are we supposed to reach the others?!" Clifford barked, glancing back with clear irritation. His voice carried sharp and cold, just like the wind cutting across the snow.
Behind him, Gavalich struggled. His legs dragged slightly, his movements slower, heavier, like the snow was gripping him and refusing to let go.
"Really? You think it's easy to move this fast in this kind of snow without using my qi?" Gavalich shot back, breathing harder than he liked. He forced another step forward, but it sank deeper than the last.
"This place… this Ztheu… everything here feels off," he continued, his tone more serious now. "Heavier. Rougher. Like the world itself is resisting us."
Clifford didn't slow down.
"You're just making excuses," he said flatly, not even turning fully this time.
"You have a stronger body than most, and you still can't deal with this?" he added before pushing forward again, his pace picking up without hesitation.
To Clifford, the snow was nothing more than an inconvenience. It still resisted him, still tried to hold him back, but he crushed through it with sheer force. Every step was firm, every movement decisive. He didn't hesitate, didn't slow, didn't feel.
Gavalich noticed that.
Of course he did.
His eyes narrowed slightly as he forced himself to keep moving.
'That ring…' he thought.
He had heard about it before. Not rumors. Not guesses. Real accounts from someone who had actually used one.
'The green gem ring… it dulls pain. Not reduces. Not weakens. It removes it.'
He took another step, his legs protesting.
'No pain means no cold biting into the body… no strain from running this long… no warning from muscles when they start to tear…'
His gaze fixed on Clifford's back.
'That's why he's moving like this… like nothing is wrong… like this place doesn't matter at all.'
Clifford didn't look tired.
Didn't slow down.
Didn't even breathe like someone who had been running across a frozen wasteland.
To him, this was normal.
To Gavalich, it was a problem.
A big one.
Still, he pushed forward, forcing his body to keep up, even if just barely. The gap between them stretched, then shrank slightly as he gathered what little strength he could spare.
'If he keeps this pace… I'll fall behind completely,' Gavalich thought, his jaw tightening.
But slowing down wasn't an option.
Not here.
Not in a place like this.
And definitely not when they had people to find.
Clifford and Gavalich were the only two in the sub-Wyndham group who had been given the special rings. That alone should have balanced things out across the team, but luck had its own plans. Instead of being split as intended, the two of them ended up together after the random deployment, dropped into a snow desert that stretched farther than the eye could properly judge.
Cold air cut across their faces. The ground resisted every step. The place didn't welcome movement. It punished it.
'I just hope he really knows the way to the others like he claimed,' Gavalich thought as he pushed forward again, forcing his legs through the snow.
Clifford stayed ahead, his pace steady, almost unnatural for the terrain. He didn't slow. He didn't hesitate.
Then, without warning, he stopped.
His boots dug into the snow as he came to a halt at the edge of a high slope. His body went still, his eyes fixed forward.
Gavalich took a few more heavy steps before finally catching up, his breathing rough as he reached Clifford's side. He bent slightly, one hand resting on his knee as he tried to steady his breathing.
"Finally… some greenery," Gavalich said between breaths, his eyes catching a faint patch of green far in the distance beyond the endless white. It was small, but it was there. A break in the snow.
A way out, maybe.
But Clifford didn't respond.
That alone made Gavalich look up properly.
Clifford was frowning.
Not lightly. Not casually. His expression had tightened, his focus locked on something ahead.
Gavalich straightened a bit.
"What?" he asked, his tone shifting. "Don't tell me you lost whatever track you had on the others."
Clifford shook his head once.
"That's not it," he said.
His voice was calm, but there was weight behind it.
"I can still feel them. Their energy… it's marked. I know the direction."
He paused.
Then his eyes narrowed slightly.
"But something else is in front of us."
That was enough.
Gavalich's body tensed immediately as he turned his gaze forward, squinting slightly against the glare of the snow as he tried to see what Clifford had already noticed.
At first, there was nothing.
Just white.
Endless white.
"I can't see a thing," Gavalich said, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the endless stretch of white ahead. No movement. No shape. Just snow piled over snow like the world had been buried and forgotten.
Clifford didn't reply immediately.
He closed his eyes instead.
For a brief moment, he stood completely still, like even the wind had nothing on him. His breathing slowed. His focus shifted inward.
"I can feel it…" he said after a second, his voice low but clear. "There are several of them. Right in front of us."
Gavalich's expression tightened.
"They're large… and their energy is unstable. Wild… like beasts that don't think, just react," Clifford continued.
That was enough.
Gavalich didn't fully understand how Clifford's ability worked, and if he was being honest, he didn't trust it completely either. Feeling energy like that sounded too convenient. Too clean. But facts were facts. Clifford had been the one leading them so far, and they had made it this far without getting lost in this frozen mess.
So Gavalich didn't argue.
He watched.
Clifford moved next.
He bent down slowly, his fingers digging into the snow before gathering it into his palm. He pressed it together, shaping it into a compact ball.
Simple.
At least, it looked simple.
Then the change came.
A faint green glow flickered over the snowball, wrapping around it like a thin layer of light. It wasn't bright, but it was there, steady and controlled.
Clifford didn't hesitate.
He threw it.
The snowball cut through the air, carrying that green glow with it as it travelled forward. It didn't scatter or break mid-air. It held together, moving straight until it struck something in the distance.
At first, it looked like it had just hit another mound of snow.
A small hill.
Nothing special.
But the moment it made contact, the green glow spread.
It didn't stop at the surface. It sank in, spreading through the mound like veins lighting up beneath skin.
Clifford's eyes snapped open.
Wide.
He didn't wait.
His hand shot forward, fingers stretching out as if grabbing onto something invisible.
A second later—
A thin thread of green light burst out from the mound and shot back toward him, connecting directly to his palm.
The link formed instantly.
Clifford's posture stiffened slightly as information rushed back through that connection.
At the same time—
The "snow hill" moved.
Not slightly.
Not subtly.
The top layer of snow began to slide off in chunks, falling away piece by piece. What had looked like harmless terrain started breaking apart, revealing something underneath.
Something alive.
Something big.
The white covering dropped, exposing patches of rough, dark surface beneath. The shape shifted, rising slowly, its size becoming clearer with each second.
What they had been looking at…
Was never a hill.
Roar!!
A loud, angry roar tore through the air, sharp and heavy, like it carried weight behind it.
Gavalich froze on the spot.
His eyes locked forward as the creature stood fully revealed before them.
It was massive.
A white-furred beast, towering over them with a body built like it was carved out of muscle and ice. It stood on two legs, shaped like a human's stance, but that was where the resemblance ended.
Everything else was wrong.
Its fur was thick and wild, spreading across its entire body and down its arms. Its fingers stretched out into long claws, curved and sharp, each one looking like it could tear through flesh without effort.
Then its head—
A bear's head.
Wide. Heavy. Violent.
Its mouth opened, stretching unnaturally wide, revealing rows of thick teeth as it let out another roar that shook the air around them.
Roar!
Gavalich's heart skipped.
'is that even real…?'
Before he could settle his thoughts, another roar answered from the side.
He turned quickly.
Another one.
The snow beside them broke apart as a second creature pushed itself out, shaking off the white covering its body.
Then another.
And another.
The ground shifted in multiple spots as more figures emerged, rising from beneath the snow like they had been buried there, waiting.
They didn't stop.
More shapes moved.
More bodies rose.
The same white fur. The same massive frames. The same killing presence.
Gavalich took a slow step back, his boots sinking into the snow.
"Shit… what the heck did you lead us into?!" he shouted, his voice breaking between anger and panic.
Clifford said nothing.
But his silence wasn't empty.
His eyes were fixed forward, sharper now, more focused.
He could feel them.
All of them.
Their energy was unstable, violent, pressing down like a storm that had already decided to break.
They weren't facing one beast.
They had walked straight into a pack.
A large one.
Gavalich swallowed hard, his breathing turning uneven.
'this is bad… this is really bad…'
Clifford's fingers twitched slightly at his side, his body lowering just a little, ready.
They both understood it now without needing to say it.
They were surrounded.
No clear path.
No easy escape.
Just snow… and beasts closing in.
If they didn't find a way out—
This wouldn't just be their first fight in the Paragon tournament.
It would be their last.