Chapter 105 :

Episode 23 : Noel Absolute (3)

Somewhere in the cold clouds of the sky, there was an angel carrying another angel by her side.

"Another problem.. What were you trying to do, Ruby?" Sapphire carrying Ruby on her shoulder, asked her with her concerned yet furious voice.

Ruby, who was grasping her chest, groaned a little from the pain of having fireworks fire from her chest a few hours ago.

Sapphire resumed her talk after a sigh left her icy lips. "Lucky for you, I freezed time so that those players wouldn't find out about this."

"..Uh."

"Talk."

Eventually, Ruby bit her lower lip for a second before speaking. "The time.. You froze it at the exact moment when fireworks started to shoot from me. How do you always know what to do?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Eek..!" Ruby flinched and sweated when she felt the cold sensation from Sapphire's shoulder.

Don't know how she was sweating when she was experiencing a cold atmosphere around her, but oh well.

Afterwards, Sapphire let another sigh out before she spoke. "Do you not know me? I learned it from having to watch over you. Don't you know how many times you cause problems where I have to solve it?"

"A..ahem. It's not my fault. Anger got the best of me."

"That's still your fault. You must control your temper."

"No way!"

"Don't remove your eyes from me, Ruby."

Needless to say, Sapphire noticed Ruby's head tilting to the other side before halting on flying much further. She stopped and floated in mid air with Ruby.

"I'm certain that Emerald won't like what you have done, Ruby." Sapphire said a fact as she caressed her forehead.

"I only wasted some of my life. It's not like I'm going to die or something."

At that moment, Sapphire glared her cold eyes at Ruby, scolding her. "That's the problem. It's your life. It is not something to give away so easily."

Ruby, not having any words to respond back to Sapphire, averted her eyes elsewhere as if she didn't want to stare at Sapphire's eyes for too long.

"What's about the players?" Somewhat changing the subject, Ruby asked a question to Sapphire.

"They won't know. Those players will only think that we suddenly disappeared after the stage began."

"Is that all? Not that I'm doubtful of you, Sapphire."

"What is it?"

"Like I don't know. I have a feeling that someone was weirdly staring at us while we were leaving."

"...Me as well."

"Huh..?! I thought you would deny that!"

With a daunting smile, Sapphire gazed coldly at Ruby. "What did you say?"

"Uh..! Nothing! Nothing at all!"

"I can't deny it when I, too, felt that someone glanced at us. It was somewhat of a menace gaze."

"More like a cold gaze just like yours." Ruby mumbled quietly so that Sapphire wouldn't hear.

Sapphire said, not knowing that Ruby was talking about her. "Either way, let's get you back to headquarters. We need to treat you quickly."

By then, Sapphire flapped her wings, ascending upward toward the clouds in a matter of seconds which surprised Ruby a bit.

———

Entering the cave of the ‘Winter’ bear, ‘The Rebels’ guild searched all over the inside of the cave to find their leader.

"What is this?" Alaine gasped after setting her foot close up to a shocking sight.

At that moment, they encountered a giant hole within their line of sight, expressing their astonishment when they first saw this incredibility.

Not only that, they examined the pit to only find that there was no ground below. Because of this, they couldn't figure out how deep this hole was nor what was at the bottom of this hole.

‘This is dangerous..’ HwanGi thought.

If one of them made a mistake right here, then that would be the last that they could ever see each other again. Which was why HwanGi informed everyone to go around the hole and to keep a distance from it.

"Let's be careful not to fall while you're moving a couple of steps away from the pit!"

And so, they listened to HwanGi's words. Though, even if HwanGi didn't tell anyone, all the ‘The Rebels’ Guild's members could clearly tell that they must avoid the hole with no bottom as much as possible for their lives's sakes.

‘What if JoonChul-ssi..’

‘No way. As far as I know JoonChul-ssi, he wouldn't make such a mistake like this.’ HwanGi pondering for a short period, shook his head.

During that moment in time, everyone was going around the hole and was walking in a hurried manner as they remained searching for JoonChul.

Calling out his name in a low volume because the cave could do the rest of the job by echoing his name throughout the cave's tunnels, and mostly to avoid the cave collapsing on them or giving away their position to any monsters that reside here, they kept walking without stopping for a break.

Not being far away from the hole, after a few hours of locating where JoonChul was, the result was..

..Unexpected.

"..JoonChul-ssi?" HwanGi spoke with his startled eyes when he had to witness a frozen JoonChul in front of him.

Icicles acting as his wings to keep him floating above the pit, JoonChul who was frozen, didn't reply back to HwanGi's calling.

No, the reason he couldn't speak underneath the ice, was because he seemed as if he was..

"Dead.." The horrified HwanGi muttered.

"Sensei!"

"Captain!"

"Master!"

"My Liege!"

Out of the blue, JoonChul's comrades, shouting at the same time, laid their eyes at the somewhat dead JoonChul.

But as a consequence of showing their terrified expressions to JoonChul, JoonChul summoned icicles in front of him, doing a swinging motion with his hand to launch the icicles at his comrades.

Despite icicles targeting them, JoonChul's comrades with their agape and jolted expressions just stood there in their spots without moving.

Instead of defending themselves, it was as though they weren't at all stunned by the icicles coming their ways.

As fortunate as they were, HwanGi, Alaine, Louis and Mya protected them by shooting down the icicles with their skills.

"Hey! Don't just stand there, Sensei!" Alaine called out to the dumbfounded Raiden as she waved her hands in front of him.

Louis, who was beside Mirai, placed his hand on her shoulder before nudging her to snap her out of it. "Miss, this is no time to be daydreaming."

As for Mya, she was patting Behemoth who was on her head to help him regain his composure back. "Blackie.."

"Frostina, pull yourself together." HwanGi grabbed onto an icicle and poked it onto Frostina's hand, thinking that the coldness of the icicle could awake Frostina.

Without enough time for them to prepare, JoonChul dispensed another batch of icicles toward them while bringing forth a large number of snowballs behind him.

"Damn! Everyone, protect yourself as much as you can!" HwanGi instructed everyone, unsheathing his sword to get ready.

The icicle that HwanGi was holding earlier, was overwhelmed with ‘Divine Flame’. As he didn't wait for the icicle to melt, he shot it at the incoming icicles in front of him.

After that, the fire blazed through the countless icicles in the air, not once that it hit onto another object. Seeing that the projectile HwanGi shot was a complete miss, he thought he failed to shoot down some of the icicles.

..But that was what he thought and not what he witnessed.

Rather than aiming for the icicles, HwanGi penetrated JoonChul's left shoulder which wasn't his actual intention.

At that point, HwanGi was flabbergasted by what he just did, feeling quite petrified when he gazed at his hand that tossed the icicle.

Without glancing at the icicles advancing toward him, HwanGi was standing there like how JoonChul's comrades did as well.

Appearing before HwanGi, Alaine struck down the icicles in HwanGi's stance with her skill, ‘Flurry Strike’. She then bumped her dagger's hilt onto HwanGi's stomach to snap him out of it.

"HwanGi! Why are you copying what JoonChul's friends did?!" Alaine exclaimed before turning her head to look at HwanGi.

Getting himself back together, HwanGi was somewhat awake now until he found JoonChul's hand raising up.

As he knew this was not a good thing, HwanGi uttered loudly. "Shield! We need a shield right now!!"

When JoonChul's hand was at its highest point, he dropped his hand down, indicating to the snowballs behind him to hail toward HwanGi and the others.

Piercing the air in a split second, those snowballs at such an outrageous speed cut the distance quickly as they were an inch away from slamming into everyone's faces and bodies.

[Player ‘16’ has activated the Hidden Skill, ‘Silk Cocoon’ Lv. ???.]

[Player ‘500’ has activated the Skill, ‘Snowflake Barricade’ Lv. ???.]

[Combinations of ‘Silk Cocoon’ Lv. ??? and ‘Snowflake Barricade’ Lv. ??? had turned into ‘Ice-Bound Cocoon’ Lv. ???!]

Thanks to Frostina and Mirai running up front to create a shield to protect everyone, it was quite a close call since the snowballs could have damaged everyone greatly.

The reason why it was dangerous, was appearing before them.. Snowballs crashing onto the shield began to boil even though it was in a freezing atmosphere.

Not even Frostina's and Mirai's shields combined together could keep the snowballs from melting into the shield.

Opening up a ton of holes onto the cocoon as it wasn't enough to prevent the acid like snowballs from dissolving into the shield, HwanGi was about to set fire to the cocoon to help it a little, but that was when he noticed a figure on the other side of the hole.

Seemingly, looking as if it was moving the same exact moves as JoonChul, HwanGi felt that he should pay attention to that figure's and JoonChul's movements to find out what's going on.

When HwanGi discovered JoonChul's hand moving, he shifted his eyes over to the figure, finding out that they were both moving the same way as each other.

"What the—" Until he could finish his sentence, a black sword came through one of the holes in the cocoon which caused him to shut his mouth.

Realizing that this sword was JoonChul's, HwanGi swiftly ran toward it to clasp it. Upon doing so, he suddenly felt a slight electrocution from just holding the hilt.

Without a doubt, HwanGi groaned as he tried to suppress the pain, clenching the hilt as tight as ever.

"Did JoonChul-ssi have to deal with this all the time? How did he.." He grunted.

"Rai! Help us!" Mirai spoke with a slightly shaking voice.

Naturally, Raiden, who was still stupefied, only nodded before generating a staff in his hands, aiming the tip of the staff at the cocoon before shooting thunder at it ferociously.

[Player ‘215’ has activated the Skill, ‘Thunder Force’ Lv. ???.]

[Player ‘215’ has activated the Hidden Skill, ‘Invisible Lightning’ Lv. ???.]

Striking thunder toward the snowballs as well as enforcing lightning onto the cocoon to empower its defenses, Raiden kept on supplying power to the cocoon while removing half of the acid snowballs by himself.

At the same time, HwanGi was still not able to hold the black sword perfectly which made him preoccupied for a while.

"Why is it so difficult to pick it up?!"

HwanGi uttered as his hands were continuously experiencing tons and tons of electricity directing into his hands.

And so with nothing to do, Louis and Mya started to aid Raiden by dealing with the snowballs while Alaine and Behemoth watched out for any snowballs that got through one of the holes on the cocoon.

..As obvious as it was, everyone knew at the back of their heads that they were trapped in this spot without having a chance to leave or attack much..