Chapter 1428: Chapter 1428
In what felt like the blink of an eye, the sky darkened once more. A moment ago, the storm-wracked heavens had still clung to a sliver of light, but now, all illumination had vanished completely.
The people living on the coastal streets looked up and beheld a sight they would never forget.
A colossal wave, towering like a curtain drawn across the heavens, surged into the sky, blotting out both rain and sun. It rose like a titan's wall, a cruel joke played by the gods upon humanity. All manner of fish were swept up to its crest, and beneath its immense shadow, the faces of the people were frozen in disbelief.
Even those who had never witnessed such a wave could instinctively grasp the cataclysmic consequences should it come crashing down.
Just as this impossible wave appeared, more people began to notice snowflakes drifting down from the sky.
It had been raining since morning, and a sudden drop in atmospheric temperature could certainly turn rain to snow. But it was now spring. The appearance of these snowflakes was as illogical as the colossal wave itself.
The sea had already swallowed the docks. The towering bridge stood as one of the few structures still breaking the surface of the water.
Jenkins stood at the highest point of the fractured bridge, gazing out at the ochre sea. Behind him, the city descended into panic amid the torrential downpour.
He drew a deep breath. In his right hand, the blue-black, heart-shaped gem began to emanate a soft light against the stormy sky. A key materialized in his left. Jenkins gripped its handle, envisioned a physical door before him, and slowly inserted the key into an unseen lock.
He felt a growing resistance—the spatial barrier of the material world.
But the Silver Spoon finally slid into the non-existent lock. As Jenkins slowly turned it...
An immense, indistinct door swung open. As its unseen hinges turned, a spatial gate formed, connecting to the snowy mountains of Ruen thousands of miles away. Before Jenkins's very eyes, an ice palace nestled among the peaks materialized.
The Heart of the Ocean in his right hand still tried to soothe the sea, but Femishue, having assimilated the swarm of tentacles, was now wielding an even more terrifying power, driving the ocean to invade the land.
The towering wave, poised to engulf the city, finally crested the horizon, its arrival heralded by Femishue's maniacal laughter. The combined force of the surging water was a display of nature's awesome might, a power that not even the demigods of the Church could hope to block.
A frigid chill spilled from the gate opened by the Silver Spoon. The image of the distant ice palace looked as if someone had painted a vibrant sketch directly onto the fabric of space.
Jenkins took a few steps forward along the bridge's crossbeam, positioning the gate to his side. He reached into the portal, his hand finding and grasping the small one that Dolores Stuart extended toward him.
The princess was dressed in a thick, unseasonable winter coat, and she lowered her head with a bashful expression.
Jenkins nodded to Alexia Miller standing behind her, then tilted his head back into the rain, his gaze fixed on the wave now closing in on the coast.
Jenkins held the Archer and Priest pieces from the White Ice Five Chess set, while Dolores clutched the Swordsman, Knight, and Astrologer. She stood upon the balcony of the ice palace, and as the ritual at her feet activated, the power of her bloodline channeled an extreme cold that flowed through their clasped hands and into Jenkins.
Frost was already crystallizing on the tips of Dolores's hair, while Jenkins, drenched to the bone by the rain, felt his entire body slowly begin to freeze.
Feeling the frigid Spirit flowing from Dolores's hand, he slowly exhaled. The very rain falling within dozens of feet before him instantly turned to pellets of ice.
He held the Heart of the Ocean, now transformed into a Cursed Item, aloft in one hand, facing the surging wave head-on. Before the awesome power of nature, Jenkins was but an ant. And yet, he had never felt such courage, even with all his preparations.
A layer of frost appeared on the rain-slicked steel plate beneath Jenkins's feet. It spread rapidly outward, encasing the entire crossbeam in ice within the space of a few breaths.
Jenkins had released Dolores's hand, and the spatial gate connecting Ruen and Nolan seemed to drift of its own accord until it hovered behind him.
He drew in deep, ragged breaths, struggling to maintain the balance of Spirit within him. But the frigid Spirit was imbalanced, spilling out of him uncontrollably. The rain slowed, and with an audible crackle, the frost spread ever outward.
The Heart of the Ocean he held aloft was now coated in a layer of rime. The power of the sea was accepting the power of ice. In response, the temperature plummeted, and snowflakes began to fall silently amidst the rain.
He took a step into the air. Fueled by the immense and unruly Spirit of absolute cold within him, Jenkins effortlessly solidified the first step out of thin air.
Chunks of ice began to form in the sea spray that lashed at him, only to quickly vanish against the backdrop of the ochre sky.
A second step materialized. Jenkins climbed higher. The figures of Dolores and Alexia were gone from the portal, and as the gate continued its strange drift, the entire ice palace now seemed to manifest directly behind him.
The entire bridge was now encased in ice. From this epicenter, a sheet of frost spread across the surface of the sea. The churning water shattered the thin layer, but it was instantly refrozen by a more intense cold.
Jenkins solidified a third step and ascended. The heart-shaped gem he held was now completely sheathed in the cold radiating from his hand, turning the color of pure white frost. The crystalline jewel reflected the sky's faint light as the chill drew upon the ocean, and the ocean, in turn, began to adapt to the deepening cold.
With a series of sharp cracks, an unstoppable sheet of ice spread out toward the deep sea. The demigods flying above had noticed. From their vantage point, it looked as if a frosty white dye was bleeding into the ocean from the coastline.
The sight was strangely beautiful. The ice reflected what little light there was, and its brilliance seemed to wash out some of the terrifying ochre from the sky.
The fourth step appeared. Jenkins continued his ascent. Save for the cat on his shoulder, he looked as if he himself had become an ice sculpture. Had it not been for his perilous winter adventure a month prior, he would have surely succumbed to the cold by now.
But now, having adapted to the frost, he could better control the Spirit of absolute cold. The terrifying power drawn from the ice palace, tempered by the docile Heart of the Ocean, radiated a focused chill into the world. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs novel⦿fire.net
At the boundary between the ochre and the black, faintly luminous clouds began to bleach the sky white. A snowflake landed on the cat's head. Chocolate reached out a tiny paw, curiously batting at the flakes, which carried Jenkins's scent.
A fifth step formed. From this new height, Jenkins looked down upon the sea. The flowing Spirit caused the spatial gate to swell, and it seemed the floating ice palace behind him was becoming visible to more and more people on the ground.
Femishue, one with the tentacled swarm, also noticed Jenkins's ascent. Tentacles shot toward the sky, but they slowed the closer they came. Once they entered a twenty-foot radius around Jenkins, they froze solid in mid-air.
The tentacles, frozen in a radial burst beneath the staircase of ice, were a spectacular sight. More terrifying, however, was the nature of the freeze itself—it was absolute and indiscriminate.
He struggled onto the sixth step. Jenkins could feel himself finally gaining a measure of control over the frigid Spirit channeled from the ice palace. Below, the sheet of white frost continued to spread across the sea, and the ice encasing his own body began to crack and flake away.
The colossal wave was now terrifyingly close, clearly visible to the naked eye. The success or failure of his endeavor hung on this final moment.
As he condensed the moisture in the air into a seventh step, he fully understood what he was doing—and what he had already achieved.
He cupped the frost-white gem in both hands, channeling the immense cold he could barely contain downward, toward his feet. The tentacle swarm sensed the danger, but under the madman's command, they continued their frenzied assault, even as more of them were frozen solid.
He stepped onto the eighth stair, now at a considerable height. At the boundary between the black and ochre sky, the first ray of sunlight finally broke through, shining down on Nolan.
The wave was almost upon him. The entire swarm of tentacles assimilated by Femishue had burrowed into its face, riding the immense force of nature as it hurtled toward Nolan.
Tentacles writhed within the wave's massive wall, and fish-headed monsters roared as one. The frost had already reached the base of the wave—a contest between the ocean and the ice.
He solidified the ninth and final step, ascending to a height nearly half that of the wave's crest. The world around him grew dark as the towering wall of water blotted out half the sky.
The frost-white gem seemed to levitate in his palm. As Spirit flowed through him, Jenkins breathed out one last time.
The sound of freezing reached his ears almost instantly. The wave's crest came to a dead halt. The roars of the monsters and the writhing of the tentacles fell silent. The solidified wave was like a perfect oil painting. Faint daylight pierced the clouds, illuminating the scene before Jenkins's eyes: a world of ice and frost on the shores of Nolan, a frozen tableau on the cusp between spring and summer.