"Ahhhhh!" Nero yelled as he cleaved a winged worm in half just in time to save a prone Noman, who had not recovered from being stung by a cursed hornet in the stomach. Fortunately, a defensive technique had managed to keep the cursed energy at bay, but that did not prevent him from suffering an immense amount of pain.
While Nero screamed, his glaive whistled a tune as it cut through the air coated in aether. With the added sharpness of its augmentation, backed by Nero’s immense strength and stellar technique, there wasn’t a single foe he hadn’t been able to cut down.
But as the storm neared, and the blue haze surrounded them, and the chill began to set in, it seemed Nero faced more enemies not less. This was not an illusion, despite the fact that they were being attacked less. It was just that his partners, even Vanessa, could not ignore the influence of the temperature, leaving Nero to pick up the slack.
It was funny, for only a short while ago, walking freely through the sugarcane, Nero felt invincible with his pale moonlight protecting him. It took barely a few hours for him to get humbled. There was no moonlight that would protect him from the weather, and since he was not showing it in public, he had to accept the onslaught of monsters.
Even then, the attack of the horned hares previously proved that not all monsters would unilaterally avoid him even if he did use the moonlight.
"Everyone okay?" Nero asked loudly, over the sound of Serene Wind surrounding his face. Even though Nero’s mask had not broken, he was forced to remove it, for the glass kept fogging up, obstructing his view. The others had to do the same, though they suffered even more than Nero because of it.
The biting chill of the wind surrounding their face was constant torture, eating away at their resolve.
When Nero didn’t get a response for his question he suddenly turned to look at the group, expecting the worst. Instead, he found them all staring towards the horizon, so he followed their gaze.
There, in the distance, a thick, deep blue cloud had appeared in the sky, alongside a landscape of white. Everything underneath the thick, rumbling cloud of blue smoke was frozen solid, taking on a white sheen for unknown reasons.
"We’re not going to make it," Dave muttered listlessly. "We’re all going to die."
No one echoed his words, but they all radiated a deep aura of desperation and despondency. Vanessa, at least, had her fists clenched and looked like she was ready for a fight. But the fear wafting off her body was practically visible.
Nero looked at them all, wasting precious seconds that they could be using to fight for their survival, and then looked back towards the horizon. Why was it that, in the face of such a tremendous disaster heading their way, he didn’t feel the same?
Instead of hopelessness or desperation, Nero could feel the electric twinge of excitement traveling down his spine.
"We are not dead yet," Nero spoke, his voice deep and steady. "Why are you already giving up?"
He could not describe his mood. This crazy, cursed world that seemed like it was specifically designed to kill just filled him with exhilaration because he wanted to face everything it threw at him, and he wanted to conquer it.
"We’re going to freeze to death long before that thing even touches us!" Dave screamed. "We’re going to die you stupid basta-"
Before Dave could finish his words, Nero clamped his mouth shut, moving faster than he could react.
"Don’t underestimate us humans," Nero said, his eyes still locked towards the approaching blue armageddon. "Before the Eldrim cards, humans had nothing to fight with except our innate abilities, and yet we survived. When the Emperor, who built an empire and changed the way humanity lived, died and left us without a leader, we survived. When the empire broke, we survived. When wars raged, we survived. We are survivors, and no matter how crazy this world gets, it hasn’t been able to wipe us out yet. I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to die just yet."
Nero turned to look at his team, each of whom looked tired and defeated. They weren’t in the best state even before he returned from the sugarcane field, and things hadn’t been easy ever since either.
"Move," he said, releasing Dave finally and began to run. Running was important, not only because it brought them closer to escape, but because it could keep their body temperatures up.
The group picked up their pace, moving with dangerous carelessness amidst the cursed lands of Perilith, but it could not be helped. Whether it was desperation, whether it was determination, whether it was reluctance to give in, or some other emotion, the group used it to push out every last bit of energy they could muster.
Nero was largely immune to the temperature drop, but the rest were suffering from ice burns on their face. Their eyelashes had either frozen solid on their face, or had frozen and fallen off, though fortunately Serene Wind kept any snow from falling onto their face.
For a very brief moment, some of them suffered the brief delusion that they were actually going to make it back before the storm hit! Then a massive worm suddenly erupted from the ground, right beneath Nero’s feet trying to devour him!
A mouth large enough to swallow him whole and rows of razor sharp teeth surrounded Nero, giving him only a split second to react. Without hesitation, he wedged his glaive in the mouth, keeping it from shutting while his body erupted with blue flames, immediately causing everything around him to freeze! The worm let out a brief scream before its throat also froze solid, and its body crashed onto the ground and shattered into large chunks of frozen meat.
The fight, in its entirety, lasted two seconds. It was barely anything, but it was the hair that broke the camel’s back.
Noman had tried to suddenly stop, but he had been running so fast, and his limbs were so numb from the cold that he couldn’t control his body and fell. Ursula tripped over him and inadvertently kicked Vanessa who also fell. Nothing hit Dave, but he seemed to drop on his own as all of his will power suddenly seemed to drain.
"Get up, let’s go," Nero urged the group, but they were slow to move. Dave just stared lifelessly towards the horizon, and while the others tried to get up, their movements were slow and disoriented.
A sense of urgency filled Nero’s excited body. He didn’t cherish the idea of dying, he just liked overcoming the odds and conquering the challenges in front of him. This particular challenge just kept getting more and more difficult though.
"Does anyone have a binding card? Something to create a rope? Anything like that?" Nero asked, his mind facing as he tried to come up with a solution.
The group was slow to respond so he just forcefully went through their card cases. Fortunately, Noman had just the thing he was looking for.
"What are you doing?" Vanessa asked with a hoarse voice as she tried to pick herself up. Unfortunately, Ursula’s kick had not been light.
"I’m making a sled," Nero said, as he activated Mud Fortress. The card was supposed to allow him to create a small, person sized cabin to protect himself. In this instance, however, he made a slightly larger cabin with flat walls and no roof, and knocked it over.
"Get in," he said gravely as he pushed Noman inside the cabin, before turning to grab the others.
"This is insane," Vanessa whispered. Or maybe she spoke normally, but she had no strength to speak loudly anymore.
"You guys can’t give up just yet," Nero spoke as he forced Dave in as well. "Keep your Serne Wind active to avoid inhaling poison. Wrap yourselves in Linen Wraps. It’ll help you stay warm and protect you from the corrosive gas. Stay huddled together as much as you can to share your warmth. If any of you have fire or heating cards, now is the time to use them."
Vanessa gave him a long, uncertain look before getting in, yet Nero didn’t have the time to notice. Instead, he used the card he took from Noman to summon chains and attached them to the base of the cabin, and then wrapped them around his waist.
Nero was strong, much stronger than the rest, yet the additional weight of four people and a mud cabin was not light either. When he tried to pull the chains stretched taut yet the cabin barely began to move.
Unwilling to give up, Nero dug the glaive into the ground and pulled on it, as if he was rowing. By now they had passed the large boulders and returned to the hill, so there were no major obstacles for him to avoid.
The storm was also close enough that there were no more monsters in his path - at least none that were visible.
He tried not to focus on the sound of the raging wind. Instead, he focused on pushing his legs as hard as he could. Slowly, the cabin began to move, dragged across the hillside. But then, it kept on gaining momentum as Nero pushed himself to his limits.
"Never rowed on land before," he thought to himself with an internal laugh as he tried to distract himself.
By the time Nero broke into a jog, the storm descended.