Chapter 162: Morning Training [II]
She executed a smooth, fluid pivot across the slick ice, using her spirit’s momentum to slide around his parry, bringing her blade around in a fast low horizontal sweep aimed at his waist.
WHOOSH!
It was her best and most fluid attack of the morning.
Klaus’s silver eyes flashed with genuine subtle approval.
He didn’t parry this time as he simply took a single precise step backward with the tip of her steel whistling through the empty air an inch from his trousers.
Tasha landed cleanly on her feet, her breathing heavy with her blade held in a perfect stable guard.
’I did it!’ Tasha thought with her heart soaring with excitement. ’I fixed the footwork! The movement was smooth!
She raised her blade, ready to launch into her next combination, feeling like she was finally getting the hang of his training—
"Breakfast is ready!"
Mirela’s sweet cheerful voice called out from the carriage door, instantly cutting through the intense combat atmosphere.
Tasha froze mid-stance with her momentum abruptly stalling.
Klaus casually lowered his forged longsword, unceremoniously tossing it aside into the snowbank, where the forged metal instantly dissolved back into raw mana particles.
"Training’s over for the morning," Klaus drawled, wiping a faint sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Let me go eat before the food gets cold."
Tasha let out a long heavy breath with her shoulders slumping as the adrenaline faded.
She looked down at her own forged longsword, which also dissolved into sparkling white particles in her hand.
She was sweating heavily, her muscles aching, but a bright radiant smile was plastered across her face.
...She had actually improved in just twenty minutes.
"Yes, Master Klaus!" Tasha replied enthusiastically, jogging after him as they climbed back into the warm cabin.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was warm, cozy, and thick with the mouthwatering scent of fried pork, warm flatbread, and hot berry tea.
They sat around the small wooden table... Klaus, Mirela, Anya, and Tasha.
Tasha, thoroughly starved from her intense morning spar, was eating with rapid enthusiastic appetite, taking large bites of the crispy pork and flatbread.
Beside her, her infant lightning spirit hovered happily, sipping tiny droplets of warm water from a small saucer Mirela had set out for it.
"Mmm~!" Tasha hummed happily, her cheeks stuffed with food. "This is so good, Mirela!"
"Eat up," Mirela smiled warmly, pouring more berry tea into her cup. "You worked hard out there."
Klaus sat at the head of the table, shirtless, eating his third plate of meat casually.
Anya sat beside him, using her fork to methodically cut her flatbread into perfect geometric squares before eating them.
They were halfway through their peaceful morning meal when—
THUD! THUD! THUD!
A violent desperate pounding suddenly shattered the quiet room, echoing loudly against the heavy oak doors of the carriage.
Mirela jumped slightly with her hand instantly reaching for her staff resting against her chair.
Tasha froze, her flatbread halfway to her mouth and her eyes wide with sudden alarm.
Beside Klaus’s shoulder, Sparky and Valeria materialized with their expressions turning sharp.
Inside Klaus’s mind, a quick calculation ran.
’Should I engage the spinning Soul Mana dome?’ Klaus thought coldly.
If he activated the spiked dome right now, the high-speed kinetic energy would instantly puree whoever was standing outside the door into a wet cloud of red mist.
He expanded his divine radar for a microsecond.
The spiritual signature standing outside the door wasn’t a high-tier monster, nor was it a Death Cult person.
It was a single, frantically beating, mortal human soul... terrified, exhausted, and running for its life.
’Not worth wasting mana on a dome strike,’ Klaus decided.
"Stay here," Klaus ordered the girls smoothly.
He stood up from the table, his massive shirtless frame towering in the cramped cabin.
He walked over to the side exit, unlatched the heavy wooden lock, and pulled the door open.
The freezing howling blizzard instantly whipped into the doorway.
Standing on the exterior iron runner was a man. He had messy black hair, shredded, bloody leather armor, and eyes wide with terror.
He was hyperventilating, his skin pale and blue from the severe cold.
The black-haired man didn’t try to attack and he didn’t demand entry.
The exact microsecond the door opened, the man frantically reached out, shoving a massive heavy object directly into Klaus’s open arms.
"TAKE IT! IT’S YOURS NOW!" the black-haired man screamed hysterically with his voice cracking wildly over the howling wind.
Before Klaus could even ask what the fuck was happening, the man turned on his heel, leaped off the iron runner, and began sprinting frantically through the knee-deep snow, trying desperately to flee into the storm.
He didn’t get far.
He took exactly four steps.
KRA-THOOOOOM!
A colossal apocalyptic beam of absolute zero blue-white ice energy suddenly blasted down from the sky like a divine strike from the heavens.
The ice beam struck the running black-haired man point-blank.
SHRRRRK!
There was no blood and there was no scream.
The exact second the blue-white beam touched his body, the man’s physical flesh, blood, and bones were instantly flash-frozen on a molecular level.
His body was transformed into a solid brittle statue of dark blue ice mid-stride.
The force of the beam didn’t stop there... it slammed into the frozen statue, shattering the man into millions of microscopic sparkling ice shards that blew away into the blizzard, completely eradicating his existence from reality.
Klaus’s glowing silver eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
He looked up toward the gray storm-filled sky above the carriage.
Descending slowly through the thick clouds, blocking out the sun, was a nightmare.
It was a colossal mythical beast... a giant bird resembling an Ice Phoenix. Its massive wings, spanning easily sixty feet across, were forged entirely from jagged, luminescent blue ice crystals.
Its long elegant tail feathers trailed freezing mists of absolute zero energy, and its eyes burned with an ancient rage.
The giant Ice Phoenix opened its massive razor-sharp beak.
"SCREEEEEE!"
A deafening squawk echoed across the entire valley, vibrating so violently it cracked the surrounding mountain cliffs.
Along with the screech, a massive radial shockwave of absolute zero freezing energy erupted from the beast, washing over the entire area.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The impact was instantaneous. The entire oak carriage, the iron wheels, the floorboards, and the massive bone-plated mountain bear hitched up front were instantly encased in a three-foot-thick layer of solid, dark blue ice.
Inside the frozen carriage, the temperature plummeted toward absolute zero.
Klaus didn’t panic.
"Not on my watch," Klaus growled coldly.
VWOOM!
Klaus opened the floodgates of his divine core.
He didn’t just cast a fire spell... he expanded a massive wave of pure white Soul Mana outward from his body, enveloping the entire carriage and the mountain bear in a brilliant, blinding aura.
KRA-SHATTER!
The three-foot-thick ice casing encasing the carriage violently exploded into dust.
The dark blue ice holding the mountain bear completely shattered, restoring the warm protected environment instantly.
Klaus pushed his mana further, locking the spiked, rotating Soul Mana dome tight around the entire vehicle, fortifying the barrier to its maximum density.
With the carriage secured, Klaus slowly lowered his gaze, looking down at the object the black-haired man had shoved into his arms before dying.
It was a colossal oval-shaped egg.
The egg was nearly two feet tall with its thick rock-hard shell covered in glowing, intricate, dark-blue ice patterns that pulsed with an intense vitality.
Klaus stared at the massive Ice Phoenix egg resting squarely against his bare muscled chest.
A long, heavy, deeply exasperated silence fell over him.
’Why the fuck is this beast here...?’ Klaus thought, his silver eyes staring at the pulsing blue egg in sheer, unadulterated cynicism.
He looked at the stolen egg in his arms, then looked up at the colossal, enraged Ice Phoenix hovering in the sky above them, its beak opening to charge a second attack.
All Klaus could think to himself was.
’Fuck...’
Before he could even move, the giant Ice Phoenix thrust its wings forward.
KRA-THOOOOM!
A second, even larger beam of absolute zero blue-white ice energy blasted down from the heavens, slamming directly into the rotating, spiked Soul Mana dome protecting the carriage.
CLICK!
Klaus closed the door behind him.
KRA-THOOOOOM!
The impact was loud enough to split a mountain in two.
The sub-zero temperature of the beam clashed violently with the dense, hyper-compressed divine energy of the barrier, sending thousands of blinding white shockwaves rippling across the freezing air.
The shockwaves tore through the atmosphere, flattening the surrounding snowdrifts into sheets of sheer ice but the raw elemental output of the mythical beast descending from the sky was terrifyingly immense, carrying centuries of primordial frost magic.
In less than three seconds, the rotating mana spikes shattered like brittle glass, and the outer dome dispelled with a violent sound that vanished into the howling blizzard.
Inside the carriage, Klaus let out a long exasperated sigh.
He clicked his tongue with his glowing silver eyes looking up.
’I can’t believe I ran into this fucker here...’
It was an Ice Phoenix.
Back in his past life on Earth, when he was grinding endlessly through the lore and raids of Artemis Online, the Ice Phoenix was a creature of myth.
It wasn’t some generic mob sitting in a low-level dungeon waiting to be farmed.
It was a calamity-class raid boss... a legendary elemental bird that required a coordinated army of high-tier grand mages, elite holy paladins, and heavy vanguard knights just to delay, let alone defeat.
In game rumors and ancient item descriptions, it was whispered that a single feather plucked from an Ice Phoenix possessed enough divine reverse-entropy to bring a dead man back to life.
Klaus clearly remembered seeing the official renders of the beast in the game’s art books, but seeing it in person... with its massive, sixty-foot wings forged from luminescent blue ice crystals, trailing freezing mists of absolute zero that actively withered the air and crystallized the very oxygen was a completely different story.
"Fucking hell," Klaus muttered under his breath, glaring in the direction the black-haired coward had fled before getting vaporized. "Dragging a calamity-class raid boss directly to my doorstep..."
He looked down at the massive two-foot-tall egg in his arms.
The thick shell was covered in dark blue ice patterns that pulsed with a frozen heartbeat, radiating a heavy elemental weight against his bare ribs.
Klaus took a deep breath, forcing the mounting irritation down into his chest.
He was a god now, the Soul King.
He was going to be the bigger person... He didn’t need to pick an unnecessary fight with a grieving parent, even if that parent was a sixty-foot ice bird.
"Fine," Klaus grunted.
He unlatched the heavy wooden side door of the carriage, stepping out onto the iron runner in the freezing blizzard.
Wearing nothing on his upper body, his broad muscled torso completely exposed to the sub-zero air, Klaus stepped down onto the deep snowpack.
His heavy combat boots sank into the powder with his divine core instantly radiating enough thermal energy to turn the snow around his feet into steam.
He held the massive heavy egg high in his right arm, extending it out toward the sky in full view of the majestic predator.
"Hey! Big bird!" Klaus yelled, his deep voice cutting cleanly through the shrieking wind like a war horn. "I don’t give a shit about your egg! Some black-haired jackass shoved it into my hands right before you turned him into ice-cubes! Take your kid and get the fuck out of here!"
The Ice Phoenix paused in mid-air with its massive crystal wings beating against the storm.
Its giant razor-sharp beak opened slightly, emitting a low hum of magic, its glowing light-blue eyes locking onto the pulsing egg held in his palm.
Slowly and gracefully, the giant beast glided downward through the storm, its massive crystal wings beating against the air, kicking up blinding clouds of white powder that swirled into mini-cyclones.
It neared his position on the snowpack, hovering just thirty feet away, descending as if it were reaching out to gently reclaim its stolen offspring. Its long, elegant tail feathers brushed against the snow, freezing the ground instantly.
Klaus stood his ground, keeping his silver eyes locked on the beast, keeping his posture relaxed.
"There you go. Good bird. Just take it and—"