Chapter 97: Night vs. Ice Hoppers
Night stood perfectly still, hiding behind a thick tree trunk alongside Blade and Sara.
As he peeked at the monsters ahead, he thought, So many of them.
There were at least hundreds of similar insects crawling about. Looking a little further, he could see endless rows of them coming out of and going into a massive opening in the side of the snowy mountain.
All of them looked like the terrifying Ice Hopper that had died to him just sometime before.
Standing behind another tree beside him, Sara spoke telepathically. "We don’t know exactly how many of them there are inside the mountain. For all we know, there might be thousands, or perhaps even millions of them."
Blade, hiding behind a third tree, narrowed her eyes. "The weird thing is they are all exactly the same. Usually, insect-type monsters like these have distinct soldier castes with a wide range of levels."
Sara confirmed this bizarre anomaly. "Yes, all of them appear to be at Level 84, like the scouting insect."
Night gulped and asked, "Are we really attacking them?" Looking at the sheer number of monsters, he felt his heart shake.
Each one of them looked like they could easily eat him in a single bite.
Sure, he was the one who had righteously insisted on helping, but the level gap still made him have second thoughts at the final moment.
Sara assured him quickly, "Not attacking. Probing."
Blade agreed. "We still don’t know exactly what we are up against. For all we know, they are expanding from the Death Zone."
The three of them paused, heavily taking in this terrifying fact.
Yes, the snowy region they were currently in was awfully close to the world’s second most dangerous Death Zone.
Blade had tracked these insects here in hopes of finding something suitable to level up on in between Night’s breaks, but she didn’t expect to encounter a massive insect colony. Plus, it heavily looked like they had something to do with the Death Zone.
The thing about these regions was that the System had explicitly classified them as ’Death Zones’ and restricted the terrifying monsters living within them from leaving the designated area.
This was enforced in order to protect the weaker beasts, monsters and humans in the outer regions. Of course, if a beast or a foolish human willingly entered these regions themselves, that was a different story.
Monsters born in the Death Zone were normally incapable of physically leaving the boundary, but there had been certain, rare incidents where monsters had miraculously managed to escape.
Those escaped monsters had usually caused devastating damage to the outside world.
Humanity had yet to figure out exactly how these Death Zones mechanically worked, but one thing was entirely certain: whatever was trapped inside them was better kept inside.
The realms of ’Heaven’ and ’Hell’ also naturally had similar restrictions, but theirs were pretty loose, which allowed certain divine or demonic beings to temporarily pass through to Earth under heavy restrictions.
Then, Sara gently encouraged Night. "You go in and kill as many as possible. We will immediately support you if needed."
Along the way, they had prepared sufficiently for this. Night had even invested SC to purchase some one-time emergency teleportation talismans from the System Shop.
Taking a deep breath, Night left his cover and moved completely out into the open.
He did it in such a casual way that it looked like he had walked here straight up the mountain path, and not from hiding behind the nearby trees.
This subtle misdirection would ensure the insects didn’t probe the immediate surroundings too much, lest Sara and Blade got accidentally exposed.
Before coming here, Sara and Blade had briefly shared the truth about their levels and combat strength.
Sara was Level 67.
As expected, Sara’s System level was not actually that impressive, considering she had been in charge of the Human Vanguard Academy for all these years.
But levels were not her true strength.
She was also a genuine Cultivator who had been diligently cultivating long before the System even officially arrived on Earth.
She was a terrifying powerhouse at the Soul Transformation Realm (6th Rank in the Immortal Path) (Please Check the Power System Chapter in the Auxiliary for Ranks).
Which meant her raw strength was higher than even a normal Demigod.
But her power came with a catch: she was entirely not good at direct, head-on fighting. Instead, she possessed Mastery over Arrays.
Along with her profound mastery over magic circles as a true Witch, she was functionally invincible, if she was given enough time to meticulously set up her arrays and magic circles beforehand.
Her high Cultivation realm was the reason she was not too worried about grinding System levels.
Or rather, that was the case only until recently, when she had permanently lost one of her Soul Projections. She had bitterly admitted that she barely retained the combat strength of a newly ascended Demigod currently, and that was only if she was not forced into a long, drawn-out battle of attrition.
This compromised situation was the main reason she was now motivated to level up via the System.
As for Blade, she was surprisingly Level 90. And being a terrifying Unique Being, she natively possessed the baseline strength of a Demigod. She calmly stated that if she pushed herself to her limits, even killing normal Level 120 monsters would be possible for her.
When he first heard their true strength, he was completely surprised. He genuinely didn’t think their combat prowess rested so firmly at the peak of the current human world.
Despite there being a gap of six years where they didn’t actively hunt to level up much, they still held more than enough strength for any powerhouse to be extremely wary of them.
As for exactly why Sara was so terrified when she had first met Blade back in the tutorial, it was simply because in that special dungeon, her Cultivation realm had been suppressed by the System laws, reducing her back to being a weak mortal leading to their embarassing first encounter.
All the IceHoppers completely stopped moving as soon as they spotted him.
Buzzz! Buzzz! Buzzz!
The very next instant, all of them aggressively swarmed Night.
Night, instead of standing still in terror, activated [Wind Overdrive] and [Wind Dash].
He jumped ahead, making most of the diving IceHoppers miss his trajectory. Meanwhile, the few ones who managed to reach him and attack were instantly burned to a crisp the millisecond they came into contact with the blackish-purple Nightmare Fire that completely covered his entire body.
[Ding!]
[You have slain a Lvl 84 IceHopper | +840 EXP]
...
...
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
[You have slain...]
He received a rapid row of notifications.
Level 22: (EXP: 8520/23,000)
[Ding!]
[You have received a skill.]
[Ice Spike (Common) (Lvl. 1)]
[Allows the user to create Ice Spikes. Its power scales with the user’s level.]
[Ding!]
[Skill has been upgraded.]
[Ice Armor (Rare) (Lvl. 1 -> 3)]
[Ice Spike (Common) (Lvl. 1 -> 2)]
He also felt a burst of raw energy enter him.
[Energy Value (EV): 47,982 EV]
Wow... He was completely amazed. He really didn’t expect to Systematically progress so incredibly quickly.
But witnessing this terrifying, fiery display, the rest of the IceHoppers stopped their advance and didn’t rush him blindly like before.
Realising his blunder Night smack his forehead.
And hearing the loud commotion, many more of the IceHoppers rapidly rushed out from the massive opening in the mountain. Soon, he was heavily surrounded by a swarm of almost 500 Level 84 IceHoppers.
Buzzz! Buzzz! Buzzz!
They seemed to be rapidly communicating amongst themselves.
Suddenly, all of them launched a massive barrage of ranged attacks! Deadly ice lances, ice spears, ice balls, and a terrifying variety of freezing projectiles attacked Night from all sides.
As the attacks clashed with hi?, the entire region surrounding Night’s purple-black flames was instantly covered in dense, hissing ice vapors.
Seeing that none of their combined ranged attacks did a single thing to the intruder...
Buzzz! Buzz! Buzz!
After some time, a single IceHopper stepped forward. It completely covered its exoskeleton in thick [Ice Armor], and its razor-sharp mandibles were thickly coated in glowing ice.
Buzzz!
Buzzing loudly one last time, it dashed directly into him. It acted exactly like a fearless sacrificial pawn, sent to analyze the intruder’s absolute defense.
The result was obvious.
[Ding!]
[You have slain a Lvl 84 IceHopper | +840 EXP]
Level 22: (EXP: 9360/23,000)
[Ding!]
[Skill has been upgraded.]
[Ice Armor (Rare) (Lvl. 3 -> 4)]
Upon seeing their scout instantly vaporized upon contact, the surrounding IceHoppers grew restless.
Night looked closely at the swarm and realized these intelligent monsters just stood their ground, refusing to engage in melee. He didn’t know how to break the tense stalemate.
Just then, the goofy Nightmare Fire happily said something in his mind.
"Ghost~ Ghost~"
～～( ꒪ ⌓ ꒪)～～
Night’s pupilless eyes suddenly brightened, as if a whole new world of combat possibilities had opened up for him.
The wary IceHoppers visibly saw the flames around the intruder suddenly thin out.
Slowly raising his hand, Night deliberately pointed a single finger at one of them. A small compressed blackish-purple bullet seamlessly formed right at his fingertips, and...
Bamm!
The small bullet flawlessly the specific IceHopper, which was caught by surprise. It cleanly pierced straight through its armored head region and exploded on impact.
Screeee!
It immediately started thrashing wildly in pain as it fell from the sky.
As it rapidly plummeted, its body started visibly disappearing, completely devoured by the flames. As its mass disappeared, the eerie fire burning on its body only grew larger.
As it fell, first its armored head completely disappeared, then its torso and then its legs. In mere seconds, its entire body disappeared. Nothing reached the snowy ground.
[Ding!]
[You have slain a Lvl 84 IceHopper | +840 EXP]
Level 22: (EXP: 10200/23,000)
Only a floating blob of blackish-purple fire was left hovering in the air. It quickly shifted to look like a small cartoon ghost, which then slowly and happily flew right back to the intruder.
"Ghost~ Ghost~"
～～( ꒪ ⌓ ꒪)～～
As the small fire ghost flew back at an incredibly slow pace, none of the IceHoppers even dared to try and stop it.
The entire swarm of IceHoppers grew extremely restless, and then they immediately turned and frantically started flying back into the massive cave opening.
Before Night could even reach them, all of them had cowardly escaped into the dark depths of the mountain.
Looking cautiously at the massive, dark tunnel, Night simply didn’t know exactly what to think.
He was unsure if it was wise to blindly pursue them deep into the tunnel.