Chris

Round three wasn't the end of our bout, far from it, really. It was only with mild surprise that we continued to clash again and again, with neither one of us giving any ground.

There were times when I was sent flying back and times when I sent the bear skidding away, but we were right back at each other a second later.

I wasn't surprised that the fight was taking so long. I was surprised at how similarly we fought. Strength and Fortitude were the way we both won battles. Through overwhelming strength to crush things weaker, and through the ability to tank an asinine amount of damage to see ourselves through the fight.

Not only that, but we were both accustomed to grabbing hold of the surroundings and making them our own. It was supremely frustrating to have that contested constantly. Every moment the was contested. Every crystal of ice, every speck of frost. All of it. Neither of us could weaponize it.

It wasn't like fighting a fire mage over the temperature in the area; it was fighting over what had been yours in nearly every fight so far. The snow in the area would leap up and swirl in one direction only to be caught and sent fluttering in the opposite when the one in control shifted.

Ice bent, cracked, and shattered under the pressures of our wills, its very structure pulled apart from the inside. Even my Law wasn't that helpful, as the bear had one of its own. It was a different Law, constructed from different concepts, but it was slightly stronger.

I suspected that the bear had been in D-rank longer than I had, along with constantly being in an area suited to it, which meant its Law was slightly better than mine.

It wasn't Tier 3 yet, but it was closer to that rank than my freshly improved one. An extra concept or two saturated it that I couldn't make out.

During the fight, while we were both hitting each other for all we had, wounds began to build and frost over my body. Nothing serious, but enough to draw blood and complicate things. I gave as good as I got, but it was still surprising to find something that could push me like this.

[Shattering Hammer] made an appearance a few more times, but they all had the same effect as before, which was barely none at all. There might have been internal injuries riddled throughout the bear, but I couldn't see them or tell if they were there, so I assumed they weren't.

The tipping point came slowly.

We were both strong, we were both tanky, and we were both fighting over the cold, but the bear couldn't keep up with my growth. Where its strength was peaked at the start of the fight, mine wasn't.

[Weight of the Arctic] pushed my power further and further during the fight, which the bear couldn't keep up with. It was slow, but it was enough. Exchanges I had come out the poorer for previously, turned the other direction.

My hammer that used to slam down to minimal effect began to rocket down with resounding force. Blows that used to break skin and send me tumbling became blows that I could shrug off and counter after.

As the fight lengthened, the scales tipped further.

Which left me where I was now.

"Huff, huff, huff. Fucking hell," I wheezed. "What a spiteful bastard."

Blood pooled under me, and ice crystals glittered on my face from sweat. My hammer lay beside me in a similar state to my own body, bloodied, but victorious. The area for over a hundred yards was ravaged from the fight, but it had finally ended.

The massive animal lay still beside me, the light in its eyes had gone out, and its essence had rushed into me to the tune of a chime. A level from one fight alone.

Not that such a battle wasn't deserving of a level, but it was surprising that one beast had given me so much. It felt like I gained double what I should have, but I wasn't sure why or how.

It also didn't come without a cost.

Blood seeped from my chest and colored the snow under me. The wound wasn't fatal, but it was deep. My ribcage was the only thing that had stopped the blow from being worse.

My Bloodline had nearly faltered near the end, but it had done enough to blunt the worst of the blow.

The metal of my armor was punctured like it hadn't even been there at all. The same with [Jotun's Resistance], the mana fortifying my skin and muscles had been cut through like butter.

The last-ditch effort from the beast had nearly done me in. It had used some kind of bloodline, skill, mana combination to nearly maul me to death, and if I'd been just a little less sturdy, it would have succeeded.

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Empty potion bottles were scattered around me as my body knit itself back together. [Frozen Patchwork] kept everything from getting worse, but if I wanted to use it during battles like I had in the past, I needed to upgrade it.

The ice that patched over my wounds wasn't nearly strong enough to do much other than be a bother. My own body was too strong for it and tore them back open from moving along.

It wasn't the only skill I noticed that needed some love. [Shattering Hammer] wasn't the finisher it once was. [Meteor Blow] wasn't as hefty, [Pervading Cold] wasn't as debilitating, [Jotun's Resistance] wasn't as infallible.

I had known that D-rank was a leap up, and my skills had taken a step down, but this was the first time I'd seen that effect so blatantly. After feeling invincible for so long at the peak of E-rank, I had just seen that same invincibility torn to shreds in front of a superior foe.

If I wanted to continue being at the top, I needed to work my way back up once again. Instead of feeling down because of that, I felt excited. The higher the mountain, the more satisfying it was to stand at its peak.

That climb began with betting my Law, Body, Mana, and Spirit back into tip-top shape, along with an evolution of my Bloodline.

My journey continued, and the days... the days continued as well. It wasn't like they cycled by, as the sun hung in the air near constantly now. It got to the point that it was nearly impossible to tell one day from the next.

I could keep track, if I cared to, but I usually didn't. The sun still moved in the sky, but it never set. Tracking that cycle would tell me when a day had ended and the new one began, but that information didn't help all that much when I didn't pay close enough attention to it.

Other than the days staying the same, I also found myself hesitant to go much further. The bear I'd fought was only the start of what I began running into, and being at the outer edge, it was one of the weakest.

Sabertooths, Polar Bears, Herds of Mammoths, Reindeer, Giant Eagles, and Owls.

I was barely scratching the surface, and I knew if I went much deeper, I wouldn't be making it back out again. The Arctic was full of nasty and powerful things, just waiting to tear me apart for any mistake.

The good thing was I didn't have to go much deeper.

My goal was to find somewhere that would help me advance, and going deeper wasn't strictly necessary. It would help, yes, but that didn't mean there were other places that couldn't help, or be made into somewhere that would help.

I still had my Formations and Runes that could forge a place into what I needed it to be.

My Bloodline was probably the easiest of the five to find a place for. All I needed for an evolution was an area teaming with enough frost energy. My Body needed a similar area, but with a touch of Wind to make it Arctic, and my Mana needed Frost Essence.

I hadn't come across anything that felt like essence, but I'd run into a few places that might work for the other two. My Law was definitely the trickiest, besides my Spirit. That needed insight and enlightenment, which wasn't something I could force.

The longer I spent up here, the more it felt like I was getting somewhere, but I hadn't been able to replicate my feet with the Law storm. I'd seen a few more, some more powerful than the first, and some less powerful, but I failed to find a new concept to add.

Part of it was because I hadn't cemented the last concept yet, and another part of it was because I wasn't able to pick one out that I could see clearly. Heaviness made sense in a way that the others didn't.

I had an idea of how to fix that, but it would take time and an opportunity. I still hadn't forgotten to feel around [Frozen Rift], but that was something I could do back in Frostheim.

[Frozen Rift] had acted differently in Emberhold, and I thought I might be able to do something with that, but that had been temporary. The changes in the skill had melted away soon after the battle was over.

There were theories I came up with for why, but I wasn't sure which one of them was true. Victor had been a Demon Summoner, which meant such rifts had appeared before in that area. With that knowledge, maybe Rifts were easier to create?

My first thought, that of being above a dungeon, had been wrong. I'd tried the skill over a dungeon again, but the skill acted normally.

With the road for my Law hampered, the last of the five was my Spirit. That was just as, or more, frustrating as my Law. The insight on how I could advance was there, I could feel it, I just couldn't realize it.

It first happened when fighting the Orcs, and there had been flashes occasionally since then, but nothing I'd done was the trick. I was getting closer, I could feel it, but I wasn't able to push it over the edge.

Sadly, my time in the North wasn't infinite.

Part of me wished I could spend as much time up here as I wanted, slowly advancing everything I needed and getting stronger, but I couldn't. This trip had already lasted months, and it would last a few more, making my way back.

The plan when I had first set out was to return at the same time Rachel would be back from the South. It wasn't only for her arrival, but for a few other things as well. At this rate, by the time I would return, over half a year would have gone by, and there were things I needed to take care of that I couldn't put off forever.

Abigail was great, and so was the rest of my family in taking care of things, but it was best to be there personally for some.

I could feel a piece missing from my Class, and I figured it was the Leadership aspect. We were all told that to advance your Class, you had to do things in line with it, and I had been ignoring part of mine.

There was also the unfortunate reason, one that I was sure Rachel would be more knowledgeable about.

After the Assembly, our predictions of being dragged into something were nearly 100%. Whether someone wanted to attack us directly, draw us in by attacking Vanessa, or by Marcus calling on us for aid.

There was also the personal reason of wanting to see my family again. I wanted to see how far Anna had come with her new Class, I wanted to see how the city was doing, and I wanted to see how the orders were doing.

There was a lot I was missing out on while I was away.

I had known, back when I first started my trip, that I wouldn't be able to do everything I wanted. Advancing through D-rank was going to take a lengthy amount of time, and trying to rush through it was only going to go poorly.

That being said, there was one last thing I could do before I was forced to turn around. Running back wouldn't take as much time, since I could run straight there, so I still had a few weeks to get one last thing accomplished.

Advancing my Body would require setting up a Formation. I didn't have the resources for my Mana, and my Law and Spirit both had their own issues, but I could do one thing.

Evolve my Bloodline.

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