Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 167: Mountaintops

Toren Daen

I emerged from the portal into the next zone, blinking in surprise as a wave of biting, cold air enveloped my face. I grunted in annoyance, surveying my surroundings and raising my hand against the harsh wind. I instinctively covered myself in a layer of fire mana, immediately feeling a hint of relief.

It looked like I was on a snowy mountainside, mirrored stone mountain peaks jutting out in every other direction. I turned in a slow circle, observing my surroundings.

"Damn," I said sourly. "Couldn't be an easy zone, could it?" I thought, looking at the distant peaks. Far, far away, there was an utterly massive mountain that thrust through the clouds. "And that's probably the exit, too," I muttered with irritation.

"These zones are a trial, Toren," Aurora thought to me. "You cannot escape that truth so easily."

I shook my head, dismissing those thoughts. This close to the entrance, I had a job to do. I withdrew a single item from my dimension ring.

A long, black carapace spike glowed with purple runes along its edge as it settled in my hand. According to Sevren, this was the tail of a small aether beast that was able to leave it as a trap while its body retreated into a sort of pocket dimension. By using the feedback between the tail and the body, the Denoir heir had managed to create tethers through dimensions.

I walked through the snow for a little bit, spotting a rock outcropping further up in the white expanse. Once I reached that bit, I slammed the spike into the rock, anchoring it there.

"That's part one done," I said, feeling my lips go dry from the cold. "Anchor set. Now I just need to–"

I was forced to swivel on my heel as I heard a rabid howling. Looking up, my eyes widened as they spotted a pack of large, white-furred wolves as they barrelled down the mountain slopes.

I drew Inversion as one of the creatures leapt at me, a maw filled with icy teeth flashing for my neck. The horn tore out its throat as it passed, its snarl becoming a whimper as blood coated the snow. The body–easily twice my size–tumbled down the mountainside, leaving splotches of red as it went.

The other wolves slowed as they saw me so easily dispatch one of their numbers. They circled me, their haunches raised as they snarled and snapped. I slowly turned, trying and failing to keep all these predators in my sight. One of the first lessons I'd learned in the Clarwood Forest so many months ago? Predators would always attack if your back was turned.

Sure enough, one of the wolves darted for me. Its skin was coated in a strange sort of ice as it leapt, trying to tackle me with its bulk.

I simply went low, creating a pushing current of telekinetic force over my head as I moved back slightly. Predictably, the wolf was sent tumbling toward its companions.

Need to move, I thought, building fire up along the soles of my boots. Can't let them reorganize.

So before any of the wolves could even move in surprise, I darted after the tumbling aether beast. Coating the edge of my weapon in a layer of vibrating sound, I brought it down like an ice pick over the aether beast's chest. Inversion pierced the thing's heart in a blur, blood splattering and steaming as it entered the cold air.

I was already moving before it was dead, throwing the body–which must have weighed at least five hundred pounds–toward a cluster of the lupine predators.

One of them dodged haphazardly to the side, the air stinking of sudden fear. The other was hit square-on, both sent into a tumble down the slopes in a rabble of barks and yowls.