Year 13

"It's snowing quite hard today, isn't it?" Martha commented while carrying the food to the table.

"Yeah, it is. I wonder if it's some kind of omen." While looking out of the window, my father speculated.

"Don't say such things when today is your son's birthday." Lectured my mother.

"Haha, I was only joking. Don't take it seriously, Rena." My father said while looking apologetic due to his slip of the tongue.

"It's alright father, what you said is true. It really is snowing too much. I don't think this is natural." I said while knitting my eyebrows as I looked out the window.

The snow really is falling too much. I have a bad feeling about this. I was contemplating such thoughts when suddenly the sound of a broken window was heard.

"What was that?" My father started gathering his mana into the table knife he was holding.

"I don't know my Lord. Should I check the place where the sound came from?" Offered Raul, who had already taken out his weapon, a black tonfa.

"No, I think it's just the strong wind that brought something heavy with it, and crashed into the window. However, just to be safe, Yuki can you please check what happened over there?" Said my father.

"Alright. It should be the perfect time to try that magic." I said. I was already gathering the mana in my body.

The magic that I mentioned is my own creation, a movement type magic. It is called 【Shadow Walk】 It is an improvement of the dark type magic 【Shadow Step】. 【Shadow Step】 works by allowing one to move instantaneously from one shadow to a different shadow nearby. My 【Shadow Walk】 enhances that effect, and also causes one's presence to completely disappear from all normal senses while within the shadow. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on someone who has a search type magic, like 【Wind Scout】, which searches the surrounding area with air, as the skill only erases your presence, not your existence.

I stepped on a shadow inside the dining room and my presence completely disappeared from all of their senses, even though I'm still at the same spot. I can still see my father admiring the magic. The first time I used it, my father was in shock as he couldn't detect my presence at all. He only recovered when I stepped out of the shadow and explained the magic to him, telling him that I can only erase my presence. He can still figure out where I am if he use a search type magic or erase all shadows in the vicinity by applying or removing light sources.

As I walked through the shadows, slowly heading towards the place from where the sound came. I took out my whip and three throwing daggers from my Storage Ring. I arrived at the place, and what I found was a dead body that is lying face down. The body was full of wounds like those that come from a wind type cutting magic. The whole body is also covered in frostbite that I doubt was caused just by the snow and cold outside. As I decided to investigate the body, I noticed something moving underneath the body, near the stomach area. I stopped moving closer to the corpse and readied the three daggers in my left hand; imbuing mana into them before throwing them towards the place where there were signs of movement. I waited for a minute or so, to check if there was any movement, and only when I was sure there were no signs of movement did I move closer.

After I flipped the body, I saw that there were several small, dead insects in the open stomach of the body. They looked like scarabs, except they were smaller and their color was red with black stripes. If what I had read in the [Library] about monsters in Isaiah is correct, then these insects should be called 'Desert Man-eating Scarab Workers'. The weird thing is, as the name suggests, they only live in the Desert and not anywhere near here, where it is snowing.

This is really weird, I thought. Suddenly, the body that I had assumed was dead suddenly used magic. It was the Lightning-type magic 【Lightning Explosion】. While I was thinking about what magic it was, the magic had already activated and exploded upon the spot.

*Booooom!*

End of Chapter 7

A common misconception and some trivia: It can snow in a desert.Being a desert has no bearing on how hot or cold it is. The definition of a desert is based on how little precipitation the area gets. The largest desert in the world is Antarctica.

Authors Note: Sorry about the misleading lengths of the chapters. I just can't seem to do it evenly. I'm searching for a good artist for this novel, so send me a message if you want to volunteer~