The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

The unknown mountain cavern was unlike the usual caverns Oscar had seen. Unlike the normal craggily rock and stone walls, the cavern was made of smooth ice with a blueish-white hue. One look was enough to know that this ice wasn't ordinary.

Oscar stared at the ice with a pensive look and placed his hand on it, shivering from the chill that emanated from it, but the most surprising was the unbreakable feeling he had from it. He suspected this ice would not break under his strongest attack like the Crystal Guardian.

"It's not bad in here." Mary stared at the ice in wonder; the scenery was quite beautiful, with the icicles of ice hanging down. More importantly, she noticed her body was warming up in this place. "The blue frost isn't working here. This cavern can work as a base once we are finished."

"Assuming the cavern doesn't collapse if we take the Frost Orb." Oscar kept a skeptical look around the cavern, suspecting the Pavilion's tricky nature at play here. 'It's almost too perfect for them to draw us in and then have the cave collapse to force us to run before being crushed.'

Mary pursed her lips and had a small hint of irritation as she reprimanded Oscar for his curse words. "Don't jinx it. I'd rather we can safely retrieve the Frost Orb. If there is an obstacle, sure, but who is sadistic enough to design more trouble right afterward?"

Oscar responded with a helpless smile. "The same person who designed a surprise trial in a safe zone." Oscar stopped talking and looked intently out at the new scenery. It was as if someone had placed a crater within the cave.

The ground before Oscar's feet was caved in like the aftermath of a meteor strike, but large pillars of smooth ice, looking like stretched rubber, connected the declining icy floor with the ceiling full of icicles. This site was not welcoming to Oscar, who saw the pillars akin to a maze and the icicles above as deadly knives.

Oscar paused. His eyes narrowed as they peeked through a small opening between the mass of ice pillars and locked onto a blue glow. To Oscar's knowledge, this glow wasn't the typical hue of the ice, nor was it any light emanating from the caverns. "What is that?"

Mary also turned to Oscar's line of sight and beheld the azure light. Both of them could make out a faint outline of a spherical object. "That must be the Frost Orb!" Their words were in sync.

"Is there no other way around?" Mary glanced over the crater, but there was no way for them to move around. Her lips formed a form as she took her spear and stabbed into the smooth icy wall, but instead of piercing through, Mary felt a rebound shaking her arm. Her arm withdrew but was trembling slightly. "This wall is extremely hard to the point my arm hurt from trying to break it."

"This place won't allow us to try scaling the walls to go around." Oscar noticed the place was shaped like a sphere. He knew any attempts to climb over would result in them slipping into the crater. "There are stairs here."

Oscar pointed to a pathway of obsidian stairs, similar to the obsidian pillar, leading down to the base of the big crater. His foot moved and placed itself on the first step. Oscar darted his eyes over the area and strained his ear to hear, but no response came.

He nodded to Mary, who nodded in return. They slowly made their way down the black stairs, carefully pausing after each step. There was no knowing if any particular step would trigger a trap or induce retaliation from somewhere.

Then Oscar stopped, seeing the end of the obsidian stairs in front of him. With one more step, he would be on the crater's base. His companion, Mary, stood next to him with the same wary face.

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"Watch each other's backs and never separate. I had a bad experience with one such occasion in the past." Oscar took the lead and stepped off the stairs, crunching snow and ice under his feet.

"The air…." Oscar felt the chill act as a million needles pricking into every pore with an icy tip. Every part of his body felt slightly numb, and he felt his movements becoming more sluggish and unresponsive. "Don't stop yet!"

He held his hand out to stop Mary and used his Ein to combat the numbness like the blue frost, but it did nothing to break the shackles of cold permeating through his body. However, he also noticed that the numbness stayed at a certain level, not worsening, behaving as stagnant as the ice walls. "Mary, this crater has a new kind of cold poison. We can't combat it with our Eins, but it doesn't continue to get worse. It's almost like moving around with shackles."

Mary stepped onto the icy floor, and her face winced, showing signs of struggle from the numbness covering her body. She gripped the spear tightly but felt slightly powerless while holding it, like she lacked fingers. Her mouth opened to say something, but the obsidian stairs behind them moved.

Oscar stared back to see the stairs retracting into the icy wall, not leaving a single step out. Then white smoke rose from the ground, engulfing everything in the crater.

"To me!" Oscar grabbed Mary and pulled her close. They put their backs to each other, but the white fog obscured their sight. "This is troublesome. We have to navigate this place full of icy pillars and who-knows-what while this fog covers everything."

Mary calmed her breathing and gripped her spear, flowing her Ein into its sharp tip to create the crackling lightning. She swung her spear around to blast away the white fog, but as the lightning zapped and parted some of the fog, it immediately repaired itself. Sensing it was a fruitless endeavor, Mary canceled her spell to save her Ein.

'Eliren Breaker'

Oscar activated the purple ring in his Prinstyct but could not see through the fog. 'It's not an illusion. Although the possibility lies in it being a greater illusion than what I can see through, my gut is telling me it's real.'

"Oscar, we should move." Mary could see Oscar because of their close distance. "The Frost Orb was directly on the other end, so if we walk straight from this spot, we'll reach it."

With no other option and no route to escape, Oscar and Mary huddled side by side, treading carefully with soft steps. Unlike normal smoke, the fog around them stayed unmoving, only slightly parting as they moved through.

Oscar realized the severe disadvantage he was in. The fog obscured his sight, the numbness affected his sense of touch, and the old injury on his ear didn't help with his hearing. It was like he was stripped of all his sense and sent to walk down a road, not knowing or even perceiving its end.

"Oof!" Mary accidentally bumped her head against one of the icy pillars they saw from above. Her forehead became red from slamming against the hard ice and ached with stinging pain. Suddenly she was pulled away by Oscar.

A large icicle dropped right where she last stood, but it didn't shatter but pierced into the ground. Mary felt her heart stop, seeing how easily the icicle embedded itself into the ground, and she was stunned by fear of what could have been. The Pavilion wouldn't allow any deaths as elders were on the watch, but it was still a close brush with potential death.

'If we weren't in a trial with safeguards and Oscar didn't pull me away, I would have died. But how did he see the icicle incoming?' Mary stared at Oscar with amazement, seeing his eyes were closed with his deer anima by his side.

"If we can't see, we must rely on our other senses. However, my ears have their issues. However, my deer anima is a beast-type. It has some qualities, such as survival instinct. It's not perfect, or else I would have been able to avoid lots of danger. But if I supplement that with my honed instincts and heightened senses from closing my eyes, I can barely perceive incoming obstacles." Oscar explained.

"Should I also do that?" Mary summoned her bear anima.

"No, leave your eyes open. But your bear can certainly stay out to help fight." Oscar shivered from the numbness. "There's something else. I don't know what, but I feel something bad incoming."

Mary's ears perked up as she heard noises like arrows being loosed. "Incoming!"

Oscar lifted his buckler and used 'Steel Scales'

Mary twirled her spear around while her bear swiped against the incoming projectiles.

Many jagged pieces of ice needles were shattered or blocked.

"These needles aren't made of ice at all." Mary picked one up, observing the hard porcelain-like material inside. "It's more akin to a bone that looks like ice."

""KYUUUUUU!""

The sounds of beasts echoed over the crater.

However, Oscar made a funny face with his eyes closed. He recognized this kind of feral cry from the past. "Porcupines?"

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