Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 1210

The commotion over the rabbit dragged on until evening without any resolution. As dusk settled, the two Enchanters sent to the nearby town still showed no sign of returning. So, after dinner and setting the watch schedule, everyone in the camp retired to rest.

If there was still no word by noon the next day, the main party planned to set out along the railway tracks toward the town ahead. The journey would take at least a day and a half on foot, but the tracks guaranteed a clear path.

They were needed at the northern front, and the Enchanters from Ruen couldn't afford to waste too much time on the road. Rather than wait for command to realize they hadn't reached the rendezvous point on schedule, it was better to find a way forward on their own.

A light snow drifted from the sky, and the sun had vanished early behind a thick blanket of clouds. After dinner, Jenkins scooped up his cat and prepared for bed. He had originally planned to use a cedar seed to grow a large tree and build a treehouse for the night—it would have been both safe and warm.

But when he saw that everyone else—regardless of gender or rank—was settling into the tents, he decided against making himself an exception and dutifully retired to his own.

The space inside the tent was cramped, but thankfully it was filled with quilts. During the day, they had stripped the train cars of nearly every blanket and piece of bedding they could find.

He wouldn't even need a sleeping bag, and there was little risk of catching a cold. Once set down, Chocolate seemed thrilled, bouncing playfully from one pile of quilts to another.

Jenkins played with the cat for a little while until he felt drowsy and crawled under the covers. Seeing that their game was over, Chocolate nudged its head under the blankets as well.

In weather this cold, letting Chocolate sleep by his pillow would guarantee it caught a chill, so for once, Jenkins didn't push the cat away. Yet the fear of rolling over and crushing it in his sleep kept him on high alert all night. Because of this, he easily picked up on a faint, unusual sound that broke the midnight silence.

Yet amidst nature's roar, the sound of boots crunching on snow reached his ears. He was already sleeping lightly, and lying on his side, his ear was pressed against layers of bedding that transmitted vibrations directly from the ground. It was as if he had his ear pressed to the earth itself.

In this half-asleep state, with his body relaxed, Jenkins's spiritual perception was astonishingly amplified. He could feel almost any vibration through the ground, let alone the crunch of footsteps heading straight for his tent.

Jenkins stroked Chocolate, then held his breath and sat up. The air was so cold that he had only taken off his overcoat before lying down, so moving now was easy.

Even so, the moment he pushed himself out from under the quilts, the dreadful chill of the air hit him, and he couldn't suppress a shiver.

Something sliced through the frigid air, punching a small hole through the tent's sturdy canvas and hurtling inside at incredible speed. Jenkins caught it on instinct. In the darkness, the object felt heavy and cold, but it was completely still—not a living thing. More importantly, his intuition didn't warn him of any danger.

He summoned his monocle and glanced down, only to discover it was a steam bomb. It was the grenade type: pull the pin, shake it three times, and it would detonate after a five-to-seven-second delay.

He let out a rising, questioning hum, a sound laced with sheer terror. And yet, he still felt no sense of imminent threat, and the cold bomb in his hand showed no sign of detonating.

It wasn't out of the question. After all, if guns pointed at him could backfire, it stood to reason that a bomb thrown at him might be a dud.

Clutching the bomb and his question, he grabbed his overcoat and scrambled out of the tent, shivering violently as the freezing air assaulted him again.

He scanned his surroundings. Beyond the dim glow of the camp's bonfire, he spotted a dark figure vaulting the distant makeshift fence and disappearing into the vast, dark expanse of the snowy plains.

Jenkins bellowed, trying to rouse the others as he sprinted after the figure. He was so fast that before the men on watch could fully react, he too had disappeared into the distance.

One pursued, the other fled. They raced across the snowy plains under the dead of night for what felt like an eternity, until Jenkins finally cornered his quarry in a grove of withered trees.

Panting for breath, Jenkins raised a hand to signal for the figure to stop. Opposite him, the Ice Archer—a female figure with sharp, handsome features—glowed with a faint blue light in the darkness, its bowstring drawn taught and aimed at Jenkins's foe.

Jenkins gasped, completely out of breath. It had been a long time since he'd run so hard. The man before him, his eyes vacant, was none other than one of the members of the scouting party from that morning. Jenkins couldn't recall his name, only that he belonged to the Church of War and Victory.

"Tell me," Jenkins asked, "where did you get that steam bomb? If I remember correctly, we didn't have any of those in our cargo."

As he spoke, he tilted his head to the left. A beam of blue light shot past, grazing his cheek and slamming into a withered tree behind him.

With a sharp crackle, the beam left a white mark on the trunk where it struck, and a layer of frost rapidly spiderwebbed across the entire tree. Even without turning around, Jenkins could feel the profound chill radiating from the tree behind him as it was flash-frozen into a sculpture of ice. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novel·fire·net

It was supposed to be early spring, yet this unexpected snowstorm had dragged the nightly temperature right back to the depths of winter.

Jenkins and his Ice Archer had the man cornered, but their opponent paid the archer no mind, his right index finger still aimed squarely at Jenkins.

The beam of icy-blue light had shot from that very fingertip. Jenkins could now make out the faint outline of a snowflake-shaped, ice-blue rune etched onto the man's fingernail.

But this wasn't an ability or a ritual, nor was it a numbered item:

Jenkins stated with certainty.

The man replied calmly, stating a simple fact.

"I did. I noticed back during the day," Jenkins said. "So... can you tell me what happened to the real owner of this face?"

A black shadow materialized behind Jenkins, and a strange beeping sound—beep, beep, beep—cut through the howling wind. Black flames licked at the edges of the shadow. To any observer, it would have looked as if Jenkins himself were wreathed in dark fire.

"I killed that human," the man said flatly. "...Wait. What? You already knew?"