Return of the Frozen Player

Seo Jun-Ho prohibited the Players from leaving the ice castle. He bit his lips lightly while staring at the corpses.

‘The Heavenly Demon… just what are you up to?’

Seo Jun-Ho couldn’t understand why the Heavenly Demon decided to create a fiend.

‘I guess there is only one way to find out.’

Seo Jun-Ho walked over to one of the corpses and placed his hand on their forehead.

“Confession of the Dead.”

A memory projection appeared in mid-air, and everyone’s eyes were focused on it.

***

“Hey, Jane… are you sure this is the right way?” asked Abraham, the leader of the party. It was only natural for him to be suspicious because the party had been going deeper into the forest where not even a single living creature could be seen.

“Goodness, you’re such a coward. You’ve been asking me the same question every five minutes, you know that?” Jane grumbled, seemingly annoyed.

She shook the thread connected to her own stomach and said, “You can see this thread, can’t you? So why don’t you just shut up and follow me?”

Jane’s Thread of Guidance(A) allowed her to create a thread that would connect her to a living being that fulfilled her conditions. There weren’t many creatures that could escape her pursuit as long as they were within ten kilometers of her.

“Perhaps you set the wrong condition… It feels like a monster will pop out to attack us any time soon.”

“Are you actually a fucking moron all this while? That’s probably the reason you were abandoned. The thread will only connect me to a Player from Earth; that’s the only condition I set,” said Jane.

She sighed at length and stared at Abraham as if he was pathetic.

Abraham flinched and turned away slightly from her harsh gaze, but he still complained while avoiding Jane’s gaze. “Well, hm, if the condition is a Player from Earth, won’t a fiend be included in that list?”

“Godness…! Guys, did you hear what he just said? Fiend, he said. God, he’s really driving me nuts.”

“Can you guys just please stop fighting? Do you guys don’t get tired of fighting over the same thing all the time?” said Hudson. A quarrel between Abraham and Jane wasn’t new, and he had been looking at the same time for fifteen years now.

Hudson clicked his tongue and turned toward Jane.

“How far are we from the survivor?” he asked.

“We’re about two thousand yards away from them.”

“Can you get any more English? Speak metric.”

“Um, I think that’s about 1.8 kilometers—”

Jane’s words were cut short when the red thread connected to her started trembling like crazy. Everyone closed their mouths and stared at the thread. It was their first time seeing it tremble like crazy.

Fwoosh!

“Ah!” Jane screamed. The thread tightened and dragged her somewhere.

Hudson was confused, but he still shouted, “Abraham!”

Abraham unsheathed his sword and responded, “Formation C-2! I’ll go after Jane. You should go hide and attack the enemy from behind.”

Abraham chased after Jane while Hudson hurriedly climbed up a tree.

“Jane!” Abraham picked up his pace and severed the red thread connected to Jane.

“Ah!” Jane exclaimed as she crashed to the ground and rolled. She coughed a few times and dusted herself after stopping, but she was still covered in dust. “Ugh, damn it. What’s wrong with them? Did they my thread?”

Jane was wounded all over, and her eyes were filled with tears. She had come here to save the survivor out of goodwill, so she didn’t expect that they would treat her like this.

Abraham handed over a healing potion and said, “Drink up. There’s something wrong with that survivor.”

They had been consistently sending out waves of magic to let the nearby Players detect their presence, and they had been using the international signal to inform isolated people to stay put and wait for rescue.

‘I’m sure they saw our signals…’

Abraham’s expression stiffened. Abraham knew that there were only two possibilities here—the survivor had already been brainwashed by the Overminds, or they were a fiend.

“...I really hope we’re wrong.”

Abraham mustered his magic and stared at the nearby clearing.

“Jane. Try to hop into Community and contact the nearby Players.”

Jane obliged, but she soon clicked her tongue and said, “Bloody hell, that prince is really annoying. Community is still dead.”

“All right, then we have to retreat,” said Abraham. Hudson was behind them, so if the survivor showed up without any warning, Hudson’s bullets would surely pierce their heart.

‘I wish we could retreat safely like this…’

Unfortunately, Abraham’s wish didn’t come true.

“A-Abraham. Look…!” Jane was pointing at something with wide eyes.

A figure was standing on one side of the foggy clearing.

“...”

Abraham gulped nervously. He didn’t manage to detect the other party’s presence at all.

In addition, the other party’s aura seemed haphazard and abnormal.

‘Are they even a living human being…?’

The sword held in the other party’s hand was being helplessly dragged across the ground. The other party was also wearing a blue robe which made it difficult to ascertain his body shape, age, and even gender.

The strangest thing was the mask that the other party was wearing.

“Specter’s mask…?” Abraham’s eyes narrowed.

He had no idea what the other party was trying to do.

‘Is he planning on hiding his identity until the end? I think he’s a man based on the height.’

The hilt of Abraham’s sword was slick with sweat, but he still pointed his sword at the other party and said, “My name is Abraham Kettlebel, and I’m an international mercenary. Identify yourself.”

“...” The other party remained silent, and Abraham couldn’t feel anything from the other party other than his killing intent.

‘Of course, there’s no way someone who has decided to ensure that they would never be identified would expose their voice.’

It was meaningless to try and speak with the other party, but Abraham had one purpose for doing it.

‘I have to make sure that his eyes are on me.’

Abraham anxiously waited for Hudson—the sniper of the party—to line up his shot at the opponent’s heart.

***

Click!

There was a clicking noise as Hudson closed the breechblock of his gun.

‘All right.’

Hudson was sitting on a relatively wide tree branch with his scope aimed at his target.

‘Stay right where you are...’

The wind was steady, and the target was barely moving.

Abraham was also distracting the target.

‘I have no idea what you’re trying to do here, but we tried to talk to you.’

They had already done everything that they were supposed to do. Abraham adjusted the scope and zoomed in, which made the target’s defenseless back appear even larger than before.

‘Good night…’

Hudson was about to pull the trigger, but the other party disappeared like a ghost.

He frowned upon losing his target. ‘This is bad.’

He had no idea how the other party disappeared, but he knew what a sniper should do after failing to take their shot.

‘I need to move away.”’

Hudson’s figure turned transparent thanks to his Transparency (B).

It was one of the useful skills that had kept him alive until now.

‘I just have to find him again.’

Hudson figured that Abraham and Jane could buy him some time since they were still in the clearing. Hudson quickly found a safer position and took a moment to line up his shot once again.

‘I’ll finish him for good this time—wait, what?!’

He saw the corpses of his colleagues upon zooming in with his scope. Hudson was stupefied. He was sure that it had only taken him eleven seconds to move away. ‘No way. Abraham and Jane couldn’t even last eleven seconds?’

The other party was a monster—there was no better word to describe him.

As soon as the word came to his mind, Hudson immediately cast Transparency (B)

Rustle!

The other party’s robe rustled as he walked toward where Hudson was located.

Hudson broke out into a cold sweat.

The other party looked around, and Hudson saw that the former’s sword was drenched in blood. The blood definitely belonged to his colleagues.

‘Please turn around and show me your back…’ muttered Hudson while looking at his colleagues’ corpses. Fortunately, his earnest prayer came true.

Rustle!

The other party sheathed his sword and walked away.

‘Perfect. Time to die….’

Hudson hurriedly but carefully aimed his rifle at the other party’s head.

However, the memory projection ended right there and then.

***

There was a moment of silence in the infirmary. Everyone seemed to be in deep thought, trying to deduce the identity of the Sword Demon.

Shin Sung-Hyun spoke carefully, “...Hudson probably died without realizing it..”

“Hm. It certainly is a better death compared to the other two, but I can’t say that it’s a good thing.”

Seo Jun-Ho stared deeply at the bodies before turning to look at the others.

“Ms. Son Chae-Won. Are you familiar with these three?”

“As far as I know, they’re a party of mercenaries with decent reputations and skills. They have been in the mercenary industry for over fifteen years now.”

In other words, they were veterans.

However, they were killed as if they were helpless children.

“...” Seo Jun-Ho wordlessly examined Abraham and Jane’s memories.

“Mr. Shin Sung-Hyun, what do you think?”

“It’s my first time seeing that swordsmanship,” replied Shin Sung-Hyun. Seo Jun-Ho decided to ask him because he was familiar with many famous Players as the Guild Master of the Goblin Guild.

“The swordsmanship he used against Abraham looked quite different from that of humans.”

“Is that so?” Seo Jun-Ho presumed that the Sword Demon was exclusively trained by the demons, so he nodded and turned to look at someone else.

“Rahmadat, what do you think?” he asked.

“Hm. It's hard to say,” Rahmadat scratched his cheek with a complicated expression, which was a rare sight. “I don’t think I’ll lose against him, but I can’t really say for sure. Where the heck did that guy even come from?”

Rahmadat had always been confident of himself, but to think that he would choose to say such words after witnessing the Sword Demon’s movements from the memory projection alone. In other words, the Sword Demon was indeed strong.

“What do you think, Jun-Ho? Can you beat him?” asked Rahmadat.

“...” Seo Jun-Ho thought about it for a while before saying, “I’m confident of my chances if he went all-out in the video we saw just now.”

However, Seo Jun-Ho was actually confident of his chances, even if the Sword Demon had hidden tricks up his sleeves.

With that, Seo Jun-Ho made a decision. “Rahmadat, I think you should go and participate in the reconnaissance mission of the Chronos Laboratory rather than me.”

“Are you going to hunt him down?”

“I should hunt him down,” said Seo Jun-Ho. The operation to gather the scattered Players wouldn’t be able to continue under the threat of the Sword Demon. “If Mio and Gilberto stumble upon that guy…”

Everyone’s faces stiffened. If Rahmadat wasn’t even sure if he could defeat the Sword Demon, then Mio and Gilberto would be in danger.

“Indeed. The most pressing problem is that guy. Anyway, I’ll have to reshuffle the roster of people who are going to investigate the Chronos Laboratory. After all, Rahmadat will be going there rather than you,”

“Let’s talk about the details in the conference room.”

With that, they left the infirmary and revised their plans in the conference room.

“...” Son Chae-Won stared at the wound on the corpses for a long time before leaving the conference room.

***

The meeting lasted deep into the night, but they managed to create the most compatible roster of Players for each mission.

Seo Jun-Ho, the Frost Queen, Baek Geon-Woo, and Skaya were the ones who would contact Operation Sword Demon Hunt. The four decided to leave the ice castle upon daybreak.

“I’m going as well,” said Son Chae-Won. Her request came as a surprise.

Seo Jun-Ho looked at her and said, “I’m sorry to say this, but the operation will be too dangerous at your skill level.”

“I know, but I won’t hold you back. I’m definitely going to be helpful,” said Son Chae-Won.

“...” Seo Jun-Ho didn’t know what to say. However, he knew that Son Chae-Won’s bread and butter—Strengthening—would certainly boost the team’s strength.

‘If the Sword Demon is the Heavenly Demon’s bait…’

It was highly likely that just the four of them wouldn’t be enough against the Heavenly Demon, Valencia, Isaac, and the Sword Demon. If Seo Jun-Ho’s assumption ended up being the truth, then Son Chae-Won’s bread and butter could save their lives.

‘I guess I can take a bit of a risk in exchange for insurance,’ thought Seo Jun-Ho.

Seo Jun-Ho nodded and said, “Okay, but you must listen to my orders under any circumstances.”

“Of course, I promise I’ll listen.”

“All right. Pack up and meet us at the gate.”

When daybreak finally arrived, the five-member team left the ice castle.