Chilly vanished in a flare of bright fire just as the dark ice to his side shattered to reveal a gaping dragon’s maw.

He materialized to embers and plasma erupting towards his aggressor. He landed gracefully on the shaking ground only for several shards of ice to slam against his back—

Spoiler :

—and cause him to stumble. He shot a hand out to stabilize himself against the wall, just as the second Wyrm erupted from below.

He threw himself forwards as he felt the Wyrm's teeth close around his legs.

Spoiler :

Chilly was ripped out of gravity's grasp as the Wyrm’s momentum carried it upwards. A ripple of magic pulsed out of the Frost Wyrm’s draconic snout and displaced with ice in its way with a terrible screech. The Wyrm’s head carried Chilly’s legs into the dark, but the hole created by the Wyrm’s magic was not wide enough to accommodate all of Chilly. With a torturous sound of breaking bones, Chilly’s pelvis was obliterated as he was forcefully separated from his legs still caught in the Wyrm’s jaws.

Spoiler :

Chilly mind went white and he flopped like a fish, as blood painted the azure walls red. Ice fell from the ceiling as the tunnel further weakened from the Wyrms' passing. Disoriented, but still vaguely aware that he was in danger, he rolled onto his back, but still got clipped by an enormous slab of ice—

Spoiler :

—that crushed him into the cold floor with an enormous weight. His breath exploded out of him as the heavy block pressed onto his chest.

The ice creaked mournfully around him as the sounds of Wyrm tunneling faded into the distance.

Chilly blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings as his legs, pants, and boots erupted into being and his life pool healed.

Spoiler :

It had happened so fast that he barely had enough time to process that he had just been ripped in half.

Ice screamed in the distance as the Wyrms approached for a second round.

Think! Or you die! Chilly berated himself, as he Flame Dashed out from under the offending slab of ice. What did he know? He could take a direct hit from the beasties. They had an ice spike attack and a bite that was slightly stronger. The most dangerous aspect, however, was getting grabbed and ripped apart by the colossal forces at play here. He couldn’t kill them as it currently stood. All his damage took time to play out, and the Wyrms were retreating out of his range to heal before his abilities could work their magic.

So how did he stop them from moving out of his range? Chilly quickly dismissed the hinder he could apply with Chains of Subjugation. It was only a 20% slow which wasn’t nearly enough to allow him to keep up with the beasts while they were tunneling through the ice. Even if he could hit a Wyrm with the Chain, he wouldn’t be able to follow it through its own tunnel since the Wyrms threw him around like a ragdoll every time they passed.

A grin bloomed on Chilly’s face as an idea struck him. He turned towards the closer source of cracking ice. He popped a Regret and reallocated Solar Prominence to Gravitational Center.

“Come on!” He roared, bending his knees as he prepared. With his lungs emptied of all air, he narrowed his eyes and refused to take another breath.

>

Chilly’s grin grew predatory as the solidity of 600 knockback resistance suffused his core. He Flame Dashed in place to create a wide patch of burning ground at his feet, then began channeling Incinerate towards where he thought the Wyrm would emerge.

The Wyrm erupted from the wall and slammed into Chilly—

Spoiler :

—and...stopped. All the massive momentum the beast carried with it was instantly and catastrophically absorbed by the measly 180-pound human. The Wyrms snout cracked and bent under the immense forces, shattering to the point of being unrecognizable. The impact pushed him back, caving in his chest, and crushing him against the cold wall. Embers caught, and Starfire Aegis flared. The multitudes of fire degens ripped at the Wyrm’s life as it lay stunned in his arms.

They stayed frozen like that for a second when the second Wyrm erupted from the ceiling. Chilly reached for Flame Dash but failed to activate it in time as the great force crumpled against him.

Spoiler :

Bones cracked as a weight settled on Chilly from above. Dazed, Chilly tried to move. But the pressure from all sides was too much.

His shoulders, chest, and back rapidly popped back into position, though the same could not be said for the two stunned Wyrms. Ice crashed from above, impaling and crushing the two massive beasts, as Star Fuel joined the party when Chilly’s health reached full.

>

Chilly vanished in a flare of bright fire and appeared on a pile of ice looking down at the carnage. Embers reflected dully off the smooth blue walls as both Wyrms lay motionless under a pile of fallen ice. There hadn’t been a kill notification since the Wyrms were lower level than him, but he was sure that they were both dead.

The ice creaked mournfully, as cracks spread through the ceiling. Chilly gulped—

—and scrambled down the pile of fallen ice, then Flame Dashed towards the source of the penguins' music, which had inexplicably morphed into boss music sometime during the fight.

Only when the ice around him had stopped creaking did Chilly stop to rest.

“That was...” he panted, his hands on his knees. Way too close. He had forgotten what it was like pushing the frontier on unknown enemies. The last couple of cycles challenging the same monsters, again and again, had made him grow complacent. Even the Leviathans, who were technically new monsters to him, had been beaten with the help of Chaeli. There was no doubt in his mind that if he had to challenge a Leviathan on his own then he wouldn’t stand a chance.

Even with all his new skills, and all his new gear, he was still getting batted around like a rag doll. Admittedly he had just beaten two similar-level enemies all on his own, but that wasn’t good enough. Not if he wanted to stay alive.

Frustrated, he turned on the penguins.

“You can change the music!” he accused angrily. “Why did I have to suffer through all that repetition if you could just make the soundtrack to whatever you want?”

“Cactus juice.” the penguin said.

Chilly rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation. “I’m this close to dying. Every damn battle! Please for the love of all that is holy, at least make the journey at least somewhat bearable. Try and make it fit the mood. Please.”

“Cactus juice!” Mr. Runaway smiled.

Chilly gave the penguin a long-suffering look. “Something less intense if you could.”

“Cactus juice.” Mr. Runaway nodded knowingly. The music subtly shifted to a calmer track, and Chilly’s raging heart settled.

“Thanks, I guess.” He let out a long sigh. “On we go.”

Chilly continued through the Wyrm tunnels warily. He encountered more Wyrms, three of which were level fourteen. They all died quickly as Chilly didn’t hesitate to stop their momentum with his body long enough for his damage over time to end them. With the fights lasting less time, the Wyrms didn’t have as long to carve deep furrows in the structure of the tunnel. As such, significantly less ice crashed down from the ceiling, and the battles became much safer as a result.

He failed every once in a while to stop a Wyrm’s charge. Either the Wyrm had aimed for his leg and only ricocheted off him, or several Wyrms charged at the same time, and Chilly Flame Dashed out of the way to prevent getting hit twice in rapid succession. Each time something like that happened, the fight devolved into a messy affair of sprinting down the tunnel away from the collapsed section while simultaneously preparing to catch the charge of the next Wyrm.

It was a subtle game not to run too far ahead and attract more Wyrms while staying far enough away from the collapsing sections to stay safe, but Chilly managed. It was especially helpful that Flame Dash was a teleport, and he used the skill innumerable times to get out from underneath a dead Wyrm or fallen mass of ice.

By the end, he looked at his notifications and concluded that there were better ways to get experience.

The Wyrm Tunnels were long. His path wound too and fro to such a degree that he began to worry that the dungeon would reset before he managed to make his way out. Eventually, however, the tunnel walls changed to stone, and he stepped out of the gloom to behold another grand open space.

A flat frozen tundra extended as far as the eye could see. Spires of red crystals erupted from the ground at periodic intervals. At their base, pools of steaming water released steady clouds of steam that shrouded dozens of crustaceans scrambling over and in the boiling water. Keeping a safe distance from the pillars, huge bipedal creatures covered in coarse brown hair and with deer-like heads lumbered in packs.

A freezing wind blew maliciously across the planes.

Chilly shivered then flinched as a blast of hot hair slapped him in the face.

He blinked as the wind alternated from freezing cold to uncomfortably hot in seemingly random patterns.

“Well, this is odd.” He remarked, continuing to scan the environment. Before his eyes, a spire of red crystal was assaulted by a pack of wandering, bipedal giants. The crustaceans rushed to the defense of their pillar and attacked the deer people, aggressively ripping out tufts of hair and chunks of gray meat while emitting plumes of fire and jets of steam from their claws. The giants responded in kind. They grabbed crabs and lobsters and hurled them high into the air, or impaled the invertebrates on their long and suspiciously sharp horns. When they got injured, the deer giants descended upon the smorgasbord of meat at their feet and gorged themselves. Actively recovering injuries as their suspiciously sharp teeth were stained red.

Chilly curiously watched as the battle wound down and the last of the crustaceans were eradicated. Only two deer giants remained standing. They approached the red pillar and began wailing on it with heavy-handed blows that echoed all the way over to where Chilly was standing. The pillar broke after a couple of solid hits. The red fragments fell into the boiling water and disappeared. Satisfied, the two deer giants left to join another pack.

Behind them, the once boiling pool slowly began to disappear as ice formed over its surface.

“Decidedly odd,” Chilly muttered. Now that he was explicitly looking for it, he saw that there were numerous cases of monster on monster fighting occurring throughout the tundra. There were times when the crabs won, but mostly it looked like the deer came out ahead. Both sides fought to the death to control the red crystals. As if their very lives depended on it.

Chilly tore his gaze away from the struggling monsters and turned his head towards the source of gentle music. It pointed towards a tall mountain shrouded by distance, though a faint bubble of green at the apex hinted that the mountain was indeed Teluria.

“Looks like we crossed the mountain range,” Chilly said. “How should we go about doing this?”

Chilly looked down at his feet. The ring of consecrated ground had spread before him in a large circle. It reached all the way down the side of the small outcropping he was standing on and was dangerously close to touching one of the roving packs of deer people.

Chilly carefully stepped back. Taking on six monsters was no joke. Even if some of them were only level eleven.

This posed a problem. He could try just running through the zone. Every step he took would leave behind a trail of consecrated ground which would deal damage to every creature that stepped over it. Based on how monsters behaved previously in the dungeon, the beasts would likely stop whatever they were doing and chase after him.

It would be trivial to collect every monster within sight and have them chase him. With Flame Dash, he would likely even be able to outrun the Wendigos, and since his consecrated ground lasted for over a minute it would likely be able to kill any enemies with low regeneration.

It was a risky plan, however. Smoldering Embers only dealt about 8% of his maximum life per second as fire damage to the enemies. That amounted to roughly 180 fire damage per second. That was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Assuming they had similar stats to him, that would mean that they were mitigating anywhere from 50% to 80% of fire damage dealt to them. That meant that instead of 180 fire damage, he would be dealing anywhere from 40 to 90 fire damage per second.

He had more regeneration than that when he was level five.

What he really needed was more information. If the low-level Wendigos could be killed by Smoldering Embers then that would drastically reduce the number of enemies he would have to face. That meant that the first step was lure the pack of Wendigos close and see how many would die with just Smoldering Embers. That would tell him how viable just running willy nilly through the tundra was, or if he would have to travel at a more reserved pace.

It wouldn't do to show up in Teluria with an army of hostile monsters at his heels, now would it.

Chilly looked over his augments and juggled the few Regrets that he had brought from the fire biome. There were a couple of augments he could shift around, but for now, he would simply reallocate Adaptable Embers for Fan the Flames. He didn’t need his consecrated ground to spread to the air right at the moment, and an additional 6% of his maximum life per second as fire damage might push the ability far enough that it could kill the low leveled Wendigos all on its own.

The Regret shimmered, and the embers about him intensified, while the consecrated air about him slowly faded.

Satisfied, Chilly double-checked his retreat then carefully descended down the outcropping.

The moment his consecrated ground spread underneath the Wendigos' feet, their gazes snapped to him. He froze halfway down the sharp incline and rapidly retreated when the pack of deer monsters charged him.

He scrambled up the slope while carefully keeping an eye on the Wendigos. They charged valiantly through the embers. Sharp horns thrashed in the air as they bucked. The low-leveled monsters flagged as their life rapidly dropped, while even the Exalted Wendigo sustained burns from the embers.

Chilly grinned and retreated deep into the Wyrm Tunnels.

The Wendigos followed, cresting the outcropping and coming to a stop at the entrance of the Wyrm Tunnels. Their tall frames and broad horns didn’t let them enter after Chilly and they roared in frustration. If they didn’t have horns, and they crouched down real low they might be able to fit, but as it stood, they were trapped outside.

They began to attack the entrance to the Wyrm Tunnel with their sharp horns. Stone and ice shattered off the mountainside and littered the entrance with debris as the Exalted Wendigo unleashed its devastating power. Chilly calmly waited within the tunnel’s safety.

This was not the first time that he had witnessed a monster’s mindless aggression.

The two level-eleven Wendigos were the first to fall to Smoldering Embers. They stumbled, and sort of sank to their knees as their coarse fur went up in a whoomph of flame. The moment this happened, their bodies were beset by the remaining Wendigos. Headless of the fire, the deer-headed giants tore into their kin with fervor.

Chilly recoiled at the disgusting display of gluttony before him.

Burns healed, and muscles tightened as cooked flesh disappeared down the beast's gullets. Suddenly the system notifications above the Wendigos changed.

After killing one, he was now able to see the Wendigos' life, and what he saw shook him.

Chilly gulped and took another step back. The embers floating among the beasts visibly struggled to burn the newly empowered creatures. The three lower leveled beasts were still taking some damage, but the now empowered Exalted Wendigo stood among the embers as if they didn’t exist.

They rose from their meal with frightening synchronicity and resumed battering the side of the mountain with powerful blows. The level fourteen, however, retreated and picked up one of the large shards of rock that had fallen from the wall and lifted it in its powerful grip. A gleam of sadistic intelligence gleamed in its beady little eyes.

Chilly frowned as the level fourteen shoved its kin to the side, and paused before the entrance. It pulled back its lips to reveal a set of crooked, needle-sharp teeth and let out a bone-chilling chuckle.

It hurled the rock at Chilly.

Chilly vanished in a flare of bright fire and reappeared in place as the stone whizzed by. He turned and quizzically watched the rock ricochet down the tunnel. If that had hit him it would have splattered him.

Or perhaps not. He had stopped a ten-ton Wyrm with his body with only the help of a little knockback resistance.

He turned back to the Wendigos only to duck as another rock whizzed above his head. The other Wendigos had learned from the level 14 and had begun throwing rocks.

They launched the rocks at blistering speeds, but their aim left something to be desired. The rocks often clipped the walls and lost much of their strength as they bounced between the walls. He was standing far enough away from them that, even if a stone reached him, he could step aside.

Chilly dodged another two rocks, but then let the next one hit—

Spoiler :

—and nodded as the rock only made him stumble back a bit. It was heavy and thrown with a lot of force, but it dealt only physical damage. Even with only Gravitational Center, the momentum wasn’t enough to throw him around. Unless he was hit with several rocks in quick succession he was in no danger of dying to the improvised projectiles.

Another Wendigo fell and the rock-throwing paused as the Wendigos feasted.

Chilly’s lip curled as the stone-throwing resumed. The newly empowered giants threw the stones harder than before, but whatever augment they received from eating their kin, didn’t strengthen them enough to allow them to out heal the damage Smoldering Embers inflicted. It did make the damage occur at a painfully slow rate, however.

The level 14 Wendigo was different, however. It sat in the back and watched Chilly with chilling calculation. Its beady little eyes studied Chilly’s every movement with sadistic fascination. Its tongue lolled out and licked at razor-sharp teeth every time a rock clipped him. It worried and disgusted Chilly in no small part, but he was unwilling to step closer to the three monsters. They were vastly empowered and had much more life than him.

For now, he would wait and watch from his safe haven.

The level twelve Exalted Wendigo fell and was eaten.

Worry began to creep in. Was there any limit to how much health the Wendigos could accrue?

The Wendigos rose from their crouch and turned to Chilly. Neither was getting visibly harmed from Smoldering Embers. The level thirteen turned back to Chilly but this time, instead of picking up a rock, it paused. Its eyes glimmered as it studied that narrow opening, turned its head to and fro, then with two decisive motions, snapped its horns off.

Chilly blinked.

The now hornless Wendigo hefted its two, pronged weapons, then hunched down and began to crawl towards him.

Before he could think of how to react, the level thirteen Wendigo let out an ungainly squawk and fell on its face. A second later, it jerked backward as if being pulled by its ankle. It cleared the entrance and Chilly blinked in surprise as he saw the level 14 Wendigo holding the ankle.

With no remorse, the Fourfold Empowered Exalted Wendigo began pummeling its lower-level kin with quick brutal strikes.

The lower leveled beast retaliated but simply wasn’t as strong as its higher leveled kin. It ducked, kicked, and bit its aggressor, but the numbers were not on its side. Each blow that it received seemed to land harder, and deal more damage. Each attack that it managed to land, seemed to glance off the larger and higher leveled monster.

Chilly made a split-second decision, and dashed forwards, intent on taking advantage of the situation, however, he was too far to get close enough to make a difference before the smaller Wendigo died.

Chilly leapt out of the safety of the cave and unleashed fire and plasma at the injured level fourteen. Almost contemptuously, it turned to face him. Its lips curled back in a gruesome facsimile of a smile, then it reached down with one long taloned arm and ripped out the dead Wendigo’s throat. With a languorous, mocking movement, it brought the bloody flesh to its mouth and took a bite.

The system notification floating above its head changed.

Chilly’s heart dropped as the Wendigo let out a low, threatening chuckle.

It turned and lumbered away.