Dark King

Three days later.

Boundary of area no 9 belonging to Mellon consortium.

A dirty body covered in mud drilled out of the tall grasses. He looked around. After being sure that there was no danger he carefully groped out. He was barefoot as he stepped on moss. Moreover, he was unable to walk normally as his left leg was injured.

"Finally! Returned to the area no 9." Dudian finally breathed out in relief. If he didn't rely on his sense of smell to detect undeads and monsters in advance while he came from area no 6, Dudian would have lost his life 100 times over. Actually once when he was sleeping at night a snake almost killed him. Fortunately he was able to react in time and stab it to death before snake entagled his body.

Dudian walked towards the location where he had stored cold crystals according to his memory from previous time. Along the way, he sense the smell of rats hiding in the ruins of collapsed buildings. In addition he could sense few monsters who would dive up the sewers once in a while.

Although hunters could fight head on with land beasts but were helpless against the underwater beasts. There have been attempts of using poison but the sewer systems spread in all directions. So tons of poison wouldn't be able to kill the monsters living in water. Moreover, if a monster wasn't killed by the poision then there was a chance that it would go another evolution and transform into much terrible and horrifying beast.

A moment later, Dudian found the place guarding his hidden object. He removed the boulder which was hiding the materials. He took out parcel of cold crystals and decayed weapons.

Dudian put aside the weapons and opened the bag containing crystals. He thought about their real name as he looked at perfectly round, crystal clear cold crystals. "Crystallized souls, is this really the soul of undead?"

Dudian shook his head as he removed the thoughts. He set off his left sleeve. There was a bit of hesitation as he held the dagger. If it was not totally necessary, he would not want to absorb the cold crystal to enhance his strength. But now he was forced into corner and was in despair. If he didn't enhance his strength he wouldn't be able to return back to the giant wall. The main reason was that because of staying outside for the long term in his injured situation, his body would rapidly corrode because of radiation.

He cut his wrist and twisted the cold crystal to block the blood to flow out.

The next moment he saw the cold crystal dissolve into the blood. It was like snow had met the boiling water. It gradually melted into a transparent silver liquid which penetrated into his arm along the blood veins.

In the blink of an eye, cold crystal that was as big as ping-pong ball melted and disappeared.

Dudian felt the power surge within his body. He clenched his teeth and used the second cold crystal.

After the second disappeared into his body, Dudian continued to absorb third, fourth... ...

He had absorbed ninety cold crystals and there were no signs of abnormality on his arm.

Dudian looked at the remaining ten cold crystals. He didn't think twice as he continued to absorb them.

However, the last cold crystal melted slowly. As he grabbed another cold crystal, Dudian felt a chill feeling coming off from his left arm. Moreover there was discomfort radiating off from his magic marks while his stomach felt nauseous. Trace of fatigue and drowsiness attacked his brain. He had learned from his last absorption of cold crystals that when he felt such way he should know the limit and stop. He released the cold crystal and stopped absorbing any more.

He helf his left arm as he leaned against the wall, quietly waiting for this uncomfortable reaction to fade away.

However, contrary to his expectations, this sense of dizziness and vomitting didn't weaken but got more intense.

Dudian felt like it was 'black snow season', he was nude and covered in endless snow. He was shivering because of coldness that hit his body.

Kaka!

Dudian heard ice-piercing sound. He looked down to find the source of sound. He saw his left hand began to freeze from his fingertips. Moreover, this frozen ice slowly spread up along his fingers it extended to his palm, then to his wrist. If it continued with this trend it seemed it was going to freeze all his body.

Dudian panicked. He tried to cover his left wrist with his right hand. However, he saw that biting cold began to cover his right hand and freeze it. In fear, he removed his right hand.

He thought of fire in this moment of utter panic.

"The best way to stop the cold is to use fire!", he came up with a plan.

He picked up dry wood and put them together on ground. Later on, he took out the fire sickle from his pockets using the right hand. While clutching it he began to desperately friction to ignite the fire. Soon, sparks combusted the wood and flared the fire.

He continued to throw withered vines and dry leaves and stack them up on top of the fire to grow it bigger.

Nonetheless, the ice was spreading upwards along his left hand. It had spread up to his elbow as he checked the condition of the right arm. Unfortunately, the fire was not enough to warm up his almost frozen arm.

He clenched his teeth as he shoved his left arm horizontally into the burning flame.

The ice met the fire and quickly melted. However an intense tingling feeling burst from his arm. It was not result of the burning flame but it felt like countless ice knives were piercing his arm from inside out.

Dudian took out his left arm from the flame as the pain got more intense.

The tingling got less tense. However, the freezing began to continue along his arm towards his shoulder. It made him panic. He didn't know what he was going to do if it went off the shoulder towards his throat. "Am I going to choke to death?"

He again raised his left arm and shoved it inside the fire.

Ice gradually melted into water and dripped into fire. It made 'hissing' sounds as water evaporated.

An intense pain came up from his left arm. It was so anxious that he wanted to tore of his scalp. But he still fought back and tried to restraint himself. He picked a thick dry wood from the ground and tightly bite onto it. The pain was so intense that a low howl similar to a beasts echoed from his throat. Tears began to flow down his eyes through his face and mix with the sweat that was flowing down his forehead. Drops of mixed sweat and tears as big as beans were falling down from his chin.

He did his best to conquer the pain so he wasn't aware of the passage of time. He didn't know how long it had been, maybe ten minutes maybe less than a minute. But gradually he felt that the pain coming off from his left arm reduced.

His eyelids were trembling. He slowly opened them and saw that his left arm was burning.

Hunter's armor is made of animal skins. He had shoved his arm to stop the freezing but totally had forgotten about the armor. His arm was like a stick in fire.

Dudian retracted his arm in fear and beat it on groun. Soon the flame was extinguished. Charred smoked rised from his left hand.

Dudian raised his left hand and checked it. The skin was slightly burned while the armor was tattered. He was relieved.

His face turned smug as he thought: "Why after such a serious injury... ... I don't feel pain?"