SB: Chapter 258 – Persistence Across The Great White Waste (Patreon)

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Ozy had gone through four Mana potions and was at his limit for Alchemical toxicity after half an hour. The flame and force runic circle had consumed 30 Mana cores. My pants were ruined and the back of my legs were consuming health points to heal the heat damage being done to them.

But, we really couldn’t stop.

If we did stop without getting far enough away from the demon we would be killed for sure. That was why I didn’t even bother to slow down or take a look.

The sled hit a small drift and rose up into the air. It hit the ground and for one moment I thought one of the wooden rails would break. But everything held, praise the System. My Driving skill was coming in clutch, helping me manage the impacts and stresses.

The slope downwards from where I had set up the weather runic circles made sense. Since it was colder in that area, all the snowfall had occurred there, creating a massive snowpile or snow plateau.

We were almost at the bottom as I put in another Mana core to keep up our speed. I pulled out a health potion and downed it. My Alchemical toxicity was also going up, but a bit of pain now was better than dying horribly.

Another snowdrift that we slammed through. I shook my head as the snow flew off my face. The runic circle Boris had been holding was failing and we had reached the bottom of the massive snow pile. I directed the sled onto a patch of snow next to a rock. As the sled slowed down the ice broke and the sled sank a bit due to its weight.

“Still alive?” I asked Boris. It was tempting to put on more pants and a new cloak, but they would be ruined quickly. Already I felt the cold cutting into my flesh on the back of my legs.

“Cold,” he said quietly. Yeah, it was cold. I looked back the way we had come and saw a figure with a lot of Mana at the top of the snow pile at least 30 kilometers behind us. That was the demon and I felt a strong sense of danger.

The runic plate I had been using to push the sled forward had partially melted, another reason I had stopped. The real limitation was Ozy. Without him holding the sled together it had a high chance of flying apart.

The longer we waited the more the demon would be tempted to come after us. I quickly swapped out the runic plates that Boris held and the one at the back of the sled. Boris’ healing points had only dropped by a couple of points, which was fine. He was bundled up and wouldn’t freeze to death.

All of that had taken about two minutes, working as quickly as possible as my body was impacted by the cold more and more.

“Here we go!” I activated the runic circle at the back of the sled and we quickly began to build up speed. I couldn’t let the demon think it could catch us.

Since we weren’t going downhill, we didn’t get up to the same speed as before, which was helpful in avoiding the very rare rock or more common chunk of ice. My Danger Sense was slowly fading away, but we weren’t heading in the direction of the Seraphim Quest. At best it could be called perpendicular.

There were a couple of close calls, but the sled didn’t break apart thankfully. The Alchemical reinforcement Ozy had already done kept the entire thing together. After another stop to switch out the stone plates a fifth time, I had to call it. We had covered around 100 kilometers in three hours.

“Make a tunnel, under the ice and snow, quickly,” I told Ozy and mentally communicated what I wanted. He quickly got to work as I had Boris get the sword case off the sled.

The tunnel was quickly made, but there was no stone, only thick ice. I had Ozy go 100 meters deep before making a cave while I replaced my pants and cloak. My legs were incredibly sore at the moment, but I had to get the demon off our trail no matter what.

Without any weight the sled was light enough to use a flight runic circle to make it hover slightly. It would burn through the Mana core in about an hour, but would also ensure it wouldn’t crash while also going a much further distance. I also piled up a bunch of Mana cores onto the sled and under the tarp.

I had no idea if the demon would sense the difference, but that was my hope. The sled went careening away off into the dark Great White Wastes. I had noted the clouds had come back this far out and the cold had decreased by a noticeable amount. It was still brutally cold, but it wasn’t like before at least.

I slid down the ice tunnel to the small cave Ozy had formed. Ice was a lot easier to work than stone. Ozy flew back up and began to cover up the tracks leading to the cave and the surface area. Since he was working with natural materials, the Mana he was using would dissipate quickly enough.

And we had stopped before to switch out runic plates. Also, we had gained enough distance to be out of sight easily. My hope was that the demon would chase after the sled for another 100 kilometers losing us completely.

I got to work on carving the runes into the ice around us while Boris sat on the sword case huddled up in his clothing trying not to freeze. Both Ozy and myself finished up at the same time as Ozy filled the tunnel back in with ice and I put in the last of the runes over the tunnel hole he had filled back in.

It was completely dark and I didn’t dare use a single spell skill. I finished carving the runes and put in eight Mana cores. If this runic array for our ice cave wasn’t disturbed it would last for two years.

The only purpose of the runic array was to disperse Mana into background Mana. The runic arrays took all nearby Mana in and converted it into background Mana. At a close range this would be obvious, but at a distance, it would just appear to be background noise. It would also recycle the air at the edge of the chamber. Even that was a risk, but we needed to breathe.

I began pulling out multiple blankets and laying them on the ground along with a couple of pillows. “Lay down,” I told Boris. He gave me a look and then got off the sword case and lay down. I lay down next to him and got out more blankets to put on top of us.

“What are we doing?” he asked as Ozy slithered under the blankets next to me and went to sleep.

“Waiting, for a week, doing nothing. Hopefully the demon doesn’t find us and chases after the sled. If it does, we are dead,” I replied.

“I am hungry,” he said and I could just smile at that. A man of few words. I got out the jerky and bread and took some for myself.

Now this was true boredom.

Just lying there in the darkness with nothing to do except Empowered Meditation. If either of us needed to use the bathroom, I had a small crate we could use and then have Ozy transmute the waste into the ice beneath us. The runic carvings weren’t that dense, so there was space between them for Ozy to do something like this.

It was a good thing Boris didn’t like to speak, since I would have told him to be silent in case the demon could track by sound. Before, the demon was moving quickly and wasn’t sure where we were. A bit of sound would be muffled. But now the demon would be on our precise trail.

Anything that was off in the slightest could lead to our deaths. So, all we could do was wait in silence.

With Temporal Sense, I was able to keep track of time. It was about a day after we had hidden down here, that I felt a very faint presence pass above us. If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have missed it.

The demon knew stealth skills. It slowed down slightly but then kept going.

I let out a very small breath of relief since it had continued to chase after the sled. While tempting to head out after a day, I waited. The demon was far faster than either of us. Once we emerged, I had no way to escape it.

I also didn’t know how far the sled had gone. My skill Compass Of Desire only gave me direction not distance. The demon would find the destroyed sled and likely check that area first. Or it might backtrack.

But in that time our trail would be erased by the cold and the wind. It wouldn’t be able to easily recall the exact spot we had stopped the fourth time. There were no markers. The demon was likely tracking by scent and our scent had lingered here, which was why it had slowed down for a moment, but we had come to a stop previously.

I was taking advantage of a habit the demon thought it knew to trick it.

It was a gamble, but it appeared to have worked. If the demon knew we were here, it wouldn’t try and wait us out, it would have dug down to get us. It probably had skills to tell how weak we were and also the fact we chose to run and hide instead of fighting it, made it clear that we weren’t its match.

The plan was to lay down in a dark cave for a week. Our trail should be gone after 3 days and another 4 days to make the demon completely give up and leave. At least that was how long a skilled beastkin could follow a trail. The demon might have stronger skills, another reason to wait for a longer period of time.

Boris chose to eat and sleep, or he was working on his Meditation skill. Thankfully the man didn’t complain, since I needed him to carry the sword case and the sword inside of it.

As for the quest itself, I already knew it would be a massive nightmare. One doesn’t get an amazing skill like Compass Of Desire for a simple courier mission.

I was just glad I had gotten back in time. I probably had a leeway of a month or two, based on how deep I had seen the demon’s excavation site at. But it was better not to tempt fate with my life on the line.

But right now, lying in the dark and cold, next to the large Boris, I was beginning to doubt if the skill was truly worth it. All this work just to recover the Tier 7 sword. I still had to take it to be destroyed at a forge. I had no doubt there would be more complications at this forge.

While it was tempting to think my problems were over, it was just going to get worse. It was still the dark season and Boris only had a low level of Cold Resistance.

I was being an idiot.

I put Ozy to work. He slowly used Alchemic Bounded Field to change chunks of ice into bits of metal. The metal wasn’t magical and had no Mana, but he would be able to construct a sled over a period of time.

While it wouldn’t be as light, it would allow us to quickly escape if necessary. I had multiple large blank stone plates and began slowly carving them while lying half under the blankets, belly down. It was an aggravating way to carve runes, but going out of the blankets was a bad idea with how cold it was.

While the cave we were in had warmed up slightly due to our body heat, it was still incredibly cold and we were surrounded by ice.

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