Popping out the partially melted door, Sol fell to the ground which was covered with snow. There was no way. He made a hole just big enough to crawl through and didn’t have the time to make it any bigger.

Picking himself up from the ground, he dusted away the snow off his body. He looked at his surroundings.

Beautiful. This was the first word to pop into his mind. The room was made entirely out of ice. But it wasn’t the dull white ice that one was accustomed to seeing in the winter. It was a cold and calm blue. The ceiling was covered with icicles long and thick enough to penetrate even elephants while the floor had various sculptures.

Sol approached one of the sculptures. They were a bit frosted as he couldn’t see through them. Almost all of them had a humanoid shape. Sol didn’t touch it directly but instead blasted it from afar and melted the frost over the sculpture. He sighed.

It didn’t just have a humanoid shape, it was a human. Frozen in ice. It had welts all over its body which had long since turned blue. He checked the nearby sculptures. Almost all of them had the same emotion on their face- despair. Their bodies had been sealed in this icy hell for eternity. Their misery was forever etched on their faces, untouched by decay.

“Close to Absolute Zero,” he looked at another sculpture. Two figures were conjoined. One standing still while the other had his outreached touching the former. All the sculptures were humans encased in Cursed Ice. He heaved a sigh of relief as he affirmed his suspicions. Touching the sculptures directly would lead to getting frozen as well.

Sol soon frowned having noticed a discrepancy, “But was Cursed Ice really that strong?”

Cursed Ice certainly had the ability to spread and freeze upon contact but he didn’t remember reading that it was cold enough to stop decay as well. It was infinitely close to being Absolute Zero.

Why was it not Absolute Zero? Because he would simply not be able to move. Time, Space, and everything would halt in place. He would not be able to come inside, much rather move. Absolute Zero was something unattainable by mortal means or even with high-grade magic.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Divine-tier magic can do just that. But it can also shatter worlds. So, that’s why it’s called Divine-tier magic.

“Fuck, I’m getting distracted!” Sol shook his head. The momentary warmth from blasting fire at the sculptures was gone and he had opted to aim his wand at the ceiling and blast fire to warm up the entire room.

Soon, the chill became bearable and he was no longer shivering. He made his way towards the door he saw at the end of the room. But unlike the door he came in through, it was made out of some sort of black stone.

While he was halfway through the room, a mechanical clicking rang throughout the room. A large block of ice that Sol mistook for a pillar was shattering at a rapid pace. An ominous red light shone through it.

Sol took a step back but didn’t stop blasting fire. The ice pillar became more and more riddled with cracks before shattering completely. Like broken shards of glass, the ice fell to the ground and the figure inside looked at Sol.

It was a suit of medieval armor that was almost 2 and a half feet tall. Its armor was made entirely out of thick ice. Surprisingly, the inside of the helmet was pitch black. The ominous red light he saw before was coming from what he discerned was the eye socket inside its helmet. It shattered the remaining ice it was encased in and started moving.

With heavy steps, it made it to the door Sol was moving toward. It slung its sword over its shoulder and looked intimidating. Well, the sword that was a mix of a greatsword and a broadsword certainly added to the shock factor.

The Ice Knight looked at the orange flames bursting from Sol’s wand and shook mechanically.

Woong~

With a metallic cry, it raised its sword overhead and smashed the floor. A gash was left on the floor as ice spikes started shooting from below toward Sol.

“What the fuck!?” in a flurry Sol dodge to the side. The ice spikes shot up where he was standing as well and continued doing so to the other side of the room. Sol looked at the large ice spikes. They would’ve brutally skewered him had he not dodged. The ice spikes suddenly retracted into the ground and leaving it smooth like before.

“How does this difficulty level make sense?” suddenly Sol began admiring that Jacob kid who supposedly had gone through three vaults like this just by relying on this world’s magic.

Sparing him no time to rest, the Ice Knight smashed down its sword once again. Ice spikes shot up in his direction like before. Sol dodged back to where he was standing the first time.

He took his wand and pointed it towards the Ice Knight, “Confringo!” An invisible current rippled through the air before reaching the Ice Knight and creating a fiery explosion. Sol had purposefully delayed the timer for the explosion as the spell was a close-range one. Of course, it cost more magic power to do so.

The Ice Knight looked unfazed by the spell and raised its sword once again. He smashed it down and ice spikes once again shot towards Sol. Dodging the monotonous attacks, he pointed his wand at it and cast another spell, “Incendio!”

Flames gushed out and engulfed the Ice Knight. The sword which was about to swing once again had stopped slightly before smashing down once again.

“Fuck, the same damn attack over and over again!” Sol complained as he dodged. “Don’t you know any other attacks, you stubborn bastard!?”

Wooong~

As though it had heard Sol, the Ice Knight let out another metallic cry. It raised the sword once again but this time, swiped horizontally at the air.

“Huh?” Sol looked at the unassuming attack with confusion before alarms started blaring in his mind. He bent his back forcefully as a swift gale passed him by. The gale traveled throughout the entire room and made contact with the wall. But instead of dissipating, he heard a sound akin to sand being poured on a glass pane.

He looked behind and saw the wall riddled with holes. “What the fuck…?” Amidst his confusion, the Ice Knight had swiped once again. This time it had aimed lower. Sol jumped high to avoid the wind once again and this time, imbued some magic power to see what was actually happening.

As the blade went underneath him, Sol looked at him. There were thousands if not tens of thousands of tiny ice shards inside the blade of wind; all imbued with magic power. If he had not managed to dodge the first time around, he’d have been turned into a sieve by now.

“Incendio Duo!” the same spell but even more intense. The orange flames raised the temperature of the room by a few notches as they covered the Ice Knight. The Ice Knight staggered backward and swiped at the torrent of flames with his free hand.

Sol looked at the distressed Ice Knight and his eyes lit up. Water droplets were rolling down its body. It was melting!

After a while, it stopped swatting at the flames and raised its sword.

Seeing its power through, Sol had a bad premonition. Under his gaze, the Ice Knight stabbed his sword into the ground. The entire room started shaking wildly.

“W-What now?” Sol stuttered as the earthquake made his teeth clatter. In the next moment, a harmonious sound of glass clinking against each other echoed throughout the room.

Sol looked around before his eyes shifted towards the ceiling. The icicles were shaking like they were about to fall at any moment. And fall they did. Tens of icicles fell to the ground like a missile barrage.

“How the fuck is a common guy supposed to survive this!?” Sol put some magic power in his eyes and stared at the falling icicles. The icicles seemed to have slowed down in his perception. As the icicles fell to the floor, he moved quickly in a weird pattern. It looked like an interpretive dance. He looked like a squid trying to dance.

The icicles finally stopped falling and he heaved a sigh of relief. But as if to rain on his parade, the Ice Knight let out another metallic cry.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he turned around and he had been backed up against a wall. The human sculptured had already been broken into pieces from the icicle hail and now, he was in the middle of a lance formed by the icicles. The Ice Knight was also in this and in full view of him.

“Ah, shit!” he hastily raised his wand and cast another spell. “Incendia Tria!” The flames that gushed out finally turned blue. The icicles beside him started melting from the intense heat and the Ice Knight who was the sole target of the flames was faring no better.

He had to stop the Ice Knight from swinging his sword, no matter the cost.