After the brutal confrontation with Selena, Nancy's mood had plummeted into something beyond foul. Her head hurting and the frustration boiling inside her refused to settle. She couldn't stay in the empire anymore at least not for the next few hours. She needed to go somewhere cold, somewhere quiet, somewhere she could make sure of something she had been meaning to confirm for a long time.

Something that still lingered in her mind like a shadow she couldn't shake.

Which was why she now stood in front of a swirling dimensional vortex, its icy winds lashing against her skin with sharp, biting ferocity.

The entire portal was coated in thick layers of frost jagged, ancient ice that glowed faintly in the pale blue light. Snow whirled violently inside the swirling gate, and every breath Nancy took came out as a cold mist.

Her long, ice-blue hair danced behind her in the raging wind, strands floating like silk ribbons. Frost clung to her eyelashes. The snowstorm around her made her look like she belonged to this world more than anyone ever could.

[A-Ranked Portal – The Land of Ice]

The same portal.

The same land.

The place that had flipped her life upside down.

The place that had turned her from a carefree noble girl into someone constantly entangled in problems she never asked for, never anticipated, and still didn't fully understand. Even now, after everything that had happened, she couldn't identify where and when the real danger gonna started or ended. She only knew she was in it. Deeply.

Nancy's boots crunched against ice as she stepped forward. She looked small inside the towering storm, but her eyes were firm unyielding.

She hesitated.

A rare moment for her.

The wind howled, whipping her cloak to the side as she stood inside portal. She almost looked like a child unsure whether she should enter a dark room.

Should she go there?

Or should she not?

Was she really prepared to see what she came here for?

Because the thing she needed to confirm today is thing she had tried to ignore the thing Razeal had taken care of in front of her own eyes

Still she needed to confirm it herself.

She needed to see whether Togi was truly dead.

The man who had helped Ranguard tried to ruin her life..

Nancy shut her eyes tightly, jaw clenching as she forced the memories back.

She had already taken care of Ranguard.

His body still lay half-dead in the deepest basement of her castle, chained, bleeding, a rotting disgrace. She didn't kill him. She wanted him alive so she could remind herself she was no longer helpless, no longer weak. Whenever fear returned, whenever nightmares clawed at her, whenever disgust rippled through her veins… she went down there.

And the screams helped they soothed her and they reminded her that she survived.

But there was another man involved that night.

One she saw die, but still… couldn't sleep without confirming it herself.

Because Togi the man Razeal destroyed is also a face she could never forget.

Even if she wanted to.

She breathed in.

Then out.

Her body trembled slightly not from the cold but from everything inside her.. Then

After several tense seconds, Nancy finally forced herself to walk forward. Some time passed before she realized she was now standing at the very edge of a hill well, not exactly a hill. Because directly in front of her yawned a massive crater, so deep and so wide it looked as if the land itself had been scooped out by some angry god. The ground dropped away into an abyss, earth torn apart and scattered like broken pottery. It truly felt as though a meteoroid had slammed into this place with all its fury.

She swallowed, her breath catching as she stared into the vast emptiness. Now that she had a moment to think, she couldn't help feeling overwhelmed awed, even. Just how powerful does someone have to be to create something like this… with nothing but physical force?

Nancy shuddered as the memory of Razeal resurfaced. All he had done at least all she saw was grab that Togi guy by the head and slam it into the ground. Hard. Hard enough to shake the air itself. He had whispered something, too… some ridiculous name like Flow~ Headslam of Doom or whatever. She couldn't recall it perfectly; everything had happened too fast, too violently.

And then just like that he killed him.

She even remembered Razeal lifting that massive hammer afterwards, bringing it down again and again on Togi's already ruined body. Each strike echoed like thunder, reducing everything into splinters. It was as if having crushed the man's head wasn't enough for him like he needed to erase the body entirely, to end it beyond any doubt.

It was brutal cruel and definitely very scary

Still… she needed to see it for herself.

Nancy's eyes swept over the vast crater one last time before she finally moved. She inhaled sharply, the cold slicing down her throat, then stepped forward until she was standing right at the precipice. The wind blasted her hair behind her like a banner of icy fire.

Then

shuuuu

Two magnificent wings of ice burst open behind her back, forming from swirling frost and white-blue mana. The crystalline feathers shimmered sharply under the pale frozen light.

With one powerful flap

FWOOOSH

She lifted from the ridge and descended into the enormous crater, slowly, carefully, watching the ground approach. Snow blew away under the force of her wings, revealing the deep cracks and shattered earth.

She landed softly in the very center.

The place where Togi's body was supposed to have remained.

Or whatever was left of it.

But all she saw now… was snow.

Layers and layers of thick, heavy, undisturbed snow.

She narrowed her eyes slightly.

Of course the entire crater would be covered again. Snowfall here was endless.

Nancy exhaled through her lips, and mana leaked out with her breath white, misty, freezing.

Her magic pulsed outward.

Then

frrrrrrrrr

A deep, powerful sound rushed across the crater as mana surged from her body. The snow around her trembled, shivered violently, then lifted in huge waves like a storm bending to her will.

Snow spiraled upward in thick clouds, rotating around her before exploding outward in every direction ten meters clean, the entire center cleared with her as the anchor.

And finally…

She saw it.

She looked down at the exposed ground.

There

Scattered all across the cracked icy surface

Fragments. Pieces of something wooden and strips of clothing buried beneath frost.

Recognition hit her instantly.

Togi's body.

Or rather, what remained after Razeal smashed him into something unrecognizable.

Nancy remembered it clearly the moment his body hardened into that strange wooden material during the fight. A transformation she didn't understand or didn't care to understand. All she remembered was the disgusting cracking sound of wood breaking with each hammer strike.

The pieces here were splintered, mangled, totally unidentifiable unless you knew what you were looking at.

And she knew.

Her eyes stayed cold, unreadable, but there was a dark heaviness in the air around her.

Nancy stepped forward, raising one booted foot And pressed it down on one of the wooden fragments.

Slowly, grinding it into the ground.

Her lip curled slightly, pure disgust flooding her face.

"You're lucky you died fast," she whispered, voice turning sharp as broken glass. "Because if you hadn't… if you were still alive…"

She pressed harder, twisting her foot.

"You would've begged for death long before I was done with you."

She spat.. onto the fragments. No respect for deads at all..

Not out of rage or impulse.

But out of pure, icy disgust.

She turned around, ready to leave. Ready to put this behind her. A faint, bitter sigh escaped her lips almost disappointed she hadn't gotten to kill him herself.

But then

Just as she took the first step away

She froze.

A strange vibration echoed behind her.

vvvmmmm… vvvmmmm…

Subtle at first, almost too faint to notice But unmistakably there.

A sound and movement.

Nancy turned her head slightly, brows lifting.

"…What?"

She pivoted fully.

Her eyes widened.

Because the fragments

Those broken wooden splinters she just stomped on

Were vibrating.

Not shaking lightly.

Vibrating violently, almost frantically, as if something inside them was trying to tear its way out.

Then

FWAAAAM

A blinding light erupted from the pieces. A bright, sharp radiance bursting from within each fragment.

Nancy instinctively lifted a hand to shield her eyes, the sudden brilliance stabbing into them. The mana in the air thickened instantly, swirling around her with an unnatural heaviness.

"What the hell…?"

Radiation.

Not heat

Not mana

But something much more dangerous.

A suffocating, almost poisonous energy rose from deep within the fragments.

"Wnats this?…" she muttered

A rising, pulsing radiance poured upward, glowing from deep inside the broken pieces as if they were finally reacting to something no, to someone. Togi had consumed a literal piece of uranium, his whole being saturated with unstable radiation… and now that instability was responding. Maybe it was triggered by Nancys movement or maybe it was something else entirely.

Either way, the fragments first one, then another, then all of them lifted off the ground in a trembling swarm, floating into the air, shaking so violently the sound buzzed through the air like a swarm of metal insects.

Nancy heard the vibration before she dared to look.

Her eyes narrowed, confusion tightening across her face. Shock followed a heartbeat later.

"What… what is happening? Should she stop it?" The question barely formed when

Flickkk

A sudden shift rippled across the floating fragments.

Every single piece turned pitch black, an unnatural, consuming darkness coating them like a living material. It wasn't just black it had depth, texture, a hard, almost stone-like sheen.

The exact same color as Razeal's bones the Obsidian Agony only slightly lighter, but unmistakably similar. And the moment the transformation settled, something changed.

The fragments pulled toward each other

as if caught in an invisible vacuum.

Fluckk!

They slammed together with a sharp, dense metallic sound heavy and hollow all at once, like two impossibly dense materials colliding… yet somehow weightless.

The contradiction made the air feel wrong.

More pieces snapped together.

Again. And again.

They were magnetized, irresistibly drawn to one another.

Grinding, scraping, vibrating so violently it seemed they might shatter or merge at any second.

Is this raminat mana?.. No… this feels like something else entirely. Some other energy.

Nancy narrowed her gaze, the frost along her eyelashes trembling as she watched the strange reaction begin deep in the crater. The air around the fragments shimmered with an energy she didn't recognise sharp, prickling, almost toxic. It felt wrong. Dangerous. A kind of biting pressure that instinctively warned any human body to stay away.

But Nancy wasn't "any" human.

A cold scoff slipped from her lips as she stood unmoving, her ice-blue hair blowing in slow arcs behind her.

Radiation… she didn't know the word, but she could feel the threat. Still, her expression didn't shift.

This kind of harmful energy… wouldn't affect her. Not with her bloodline. She was draconic born from a royal lineage of dragons. Her body was far too resilient to be threatened by something like this.

So she simply stood there, calm and still, staring at the fragments with a cold, curious gaze.

Then, in the next second, everything changed.

The scattered wooden fragments started pulling toward each other, twisting, stretching, morphing melting into one another like dark wax. A perfect sphere began to form, a black metallic ball smooth, reflective, unnaturally flawless.

Nancy's eyes narrowed.

And then

BRRRRAAAMMMM

A violent sound tore through the crater. A shockwave slammed outward, kicking up snow and shattered ice. Nancy's hair snapped back from her face, the ice-wings behind her stabilising her mid-air as she stared forward unblinking.

Her gaze grew sharper, colder.

Because right before her eyes…

That metallic sphere rippled and reshaped like liquid metal being forced into a mold until it formed a body. A humanoid shape. Shoulders. Chest. Arms. Legs. Facial structure.

Nancy froze.

Her expression twisted with a mix of shock and disgust.

The face… she recognised instantly.

Togi.

That disgusting bastard's build, that revolting face she could never forget it.Only now he wasn't flesh and blood. His entire body.. Well he became black like.. well his body become pitch black, metallic, smooth and reflective like forged darkness. A walking statue of some unknown metal dense, polished, and somehow alive.

And naked well, technically. There was nothing on his groin, just blank smooth metal. It made sense, since this wasn't really a human body anymore, just a reconstructed… thing.

The instant the transformation completed, Nancy's aura shifted.

Her killing intent spiked.

Her lips curled into a slow, ice-cold smile.

She didn't care how he revived. She didn't care what he turned into.

There was only one thought ringing through her head:

Kill him.

For real this time.

She didn't waste even a second.

"Die."

WHIP.. CLUTCH

Her ice wings snapped open, hurling a massive razor-sharp ice feather straight toward Togi's skull at terrifying speed. The feather sliced the air with enough force to bisect a boulder the size of a house.

But

Togi didn't even try to dodge.

He didn't even look up.

He was busy staring at his hands.

Flexing his fingers. Turning them over. Opening and closing his palm testing the movement like a newborn creature discovering its own limbs.

Nancy's attack struck him dead center on the forehead

PING SHATTER!!

The ice feather exploded into a spray of glittering shards the instant it made contact, breaking like fragile glass against a diamond.

Nancy's eyes immediately tightened, her body instinctively pulling back several meters as she flapped her wings and created distance.

Her guard shot up even higher.

Meanwhile, Togi still didn't react.

Not even a flinch.

Not even acknowledgement.

He simply kept looking down at his own hands with an almost hypnotized intensity.

"What… happened to me?" he murmured, his voice echoing faintly, metallic. "What is this body…? I… I feel so… light. As if I don't even have weight…"

He tapped his forearm with his other hand.

A sharp metallic clang rang out.

"And… so hard?" Confusion filled his eyes. "What is this metal…? This isn't anything I know…"

His new body was unbelievably smooth so smooth that even at the microscopic level, nothing seemed uneven. No pores. No roughness. Just pure, flawless dark metal. Almost like obsidian yet lighter, stranger.

His expression slowly changed as memories trickled in.

He remembered it.

Right before his death.

Right before that white-haired brat.. destroyed him.

Someone… touched him behind his head.

Some material.

Some unknown substance that he instinctively tried to absorb.

His entire being had screamed for it.

And then

His head was obliterated before he could finish the absorption.

"Oh…" A hollow breath escaped him. "I'm… alive?"

He raised a hand to the back of his neck where his head should've been destroyed and felt only smooth, unbroken metal.

"I… I am fucking alive," Togi whispered at first then the whisper split into a sharp, deranged laugh that echoed through the hollow crater.

"Hahahaha I'm alive, motherfucker! I came back from death!"

He threw his head back, metallic throat vibrating with warped amusement, hands clutching both sides of his waist as if he couldn't contain the hysteria bubbling up inside him. His pitch-black body gleamed under the pale light smooth, hard, impossibly dense.

"And guess what?" His grin widened grotesquely. "I even absorbed this fucking good material… whatever this metal is… hahahaha! Joke's on you, bastard! I've never felt this good in my entire life!"

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