BXBX NOVEL Chapter 42: The Kratos First Trail
But as he quickly scanned the area, noticing no one around him, he stood upright, taking in the environment with a clear look.
It was a vast, snowy battlefield that stretched endlessly, the remnants of war scattered across its landscape.
The ground was an uneven terrain, marked by craters filled with ice and shattered weapons and armor sticking out from the earth.
Once-vibrant banners, each with different symbols, lay tattered and faded on the ground.
Nolan watched as they flapped weakly in the biting wind, their colors barely discernible under the thick layer of frost.
The place was eerily silent, save for the occasional moan of the wind as it swept across the desolate expanse, sometimes slamming hard against Nolan\'s face, and turning it red.
A thick fog, one of strange crimson and white, hung low over the distant ground, obscuring the horizon and making the battlefield seem endless.
Around his feet were the bodies of fallen warriors, their bones littering the ground, half-submerged, their faces frozen in expressions of pain and despair.
It was a grim reminder to Nolan, who could only imagine the brutal conflict that once raged in this desolation.
The cold was biting, seemingly sapping the life from everything it touched.
Turning his gaze above him, even the sky above him was a dull, oppressive gray, offering no respite from the bleakness below.
"An ancient battlefield..." Nolan\'s voice echoed through the desolate vastness as he bent to the ground, scooping a bit of snow, which poured onto the ground like sand.
"The snow is just like beach sand. Not very helpful with movement speed..." Nolan mused to himself once more.
His eyes immediately flashed as he rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on the distance.
Just now, he could see various red lights slowly brightening up in the fog that lay in the distance, accompanied by the faint sound of bones cracking.
"Welcome To The First Kratos Crown Trial. The Mission is Simple. Survive The Endless Bettering of Undying Nightmare Creatures!!"
"Endless battering?" Nolan called out in surprise as he readied his dagger, noticing the red lights getting closer to him.
\'How is someone supposed to endure an endless battering!?\'
He was given no time to arrange his thoughts when the creatures finally exited the fog and appeared in his line of vision.
Immediately, slight fear gripped all of Nolan\'s existence as his hand holding the dagger shook repeatedly, completely beyond his control.
They ranged from malevolent creatures, shadowy and semi-transparent, with frost-covered skeletal hands that extended from their billowing tattered cloaks.
Their hollow blue eyes burned with an eerie light that held onto Nolan\'s figure, gliding steadily across his body, with an unparalleled desire to suck the life force from his body.
According to what he learned of them during his small journey to the academy library, they were commonly referred to as Frost Wraiths.
Then there were towering behemoths of ice and stone, their bodies a grotesque amalgamation of jagged ice and congealed snow with massive, gnarled limbs ready to crush anything in their path.
In their hands were incredible axes adorned with soft white runes, and their eyes glowed with a malevolent white light.
Every single step sent forth an incredibly powerful reverberation that shook Nolan\'s heart, showing him their immense weight and power.
Surrounding these figures were another strange set of beings that were humanoid in shape but unnervingly emaciated, with elongated limbs and spindly fingers tipped with razor-sharp claws.
Their skin was pale and darkened, covered in patches of ice that constantly flaked away. They had no faces, only a dark void where their features should be.
They moved with unnatural speed and silence, yet they moved not toward Nolan but around him instead, their featureless void of a face stalking him like a beast to its prey.
He noticed the ground beneath their feet growing colder and darker, oozing an unnatural amount of fear. These were the Hollow Stalkers.
But what was really disturbing the most to Nolan were the last set of creatures.
They created bulges on the snowy ground, slithering around like snakes, and he could perceive from them a faint rumbling hiss.
Occasionally, parts of their bodies exited the snowy ground, revealing to Nolan serpentine creatures with scales that shimmered like frost in the moonlight, their bodies covered in spikes of pure ice.
Their icy blue eyes faintly locked together with Nolan\'s, whose eyes flashed with a deadly light.
They were the Shiver Serpents.
\'The Ice Behemoths, I understand their power. It lies in their physical strength and their large axes that would most likely cleave through anything. But they are slow.\'
\'These serpents possess the power to effortlessly glide through snow, and even deep into the snow, and attacking me from underneath the ground won\'t be an impossibility for them.
Even the ground itself is no longer safe, and I am open to attack from below.\'
\'The Hollow Stalkers\' power has something to do with those ghostly razor-sharp claws. They would be able to rip out chunks of flesh with those things...\'
\'But these Wraiths, I have no idea of their power at all...\'
Nolan analyzed in his head, his confused eyes lingering on the semi-transparent figures who had no visible attacking features, but Nolan dared not relax.
When he counted the number of creatures, they were exactly thirty in number, and he knew well this would be one of the worst fights he ever had in his life.
But even now, where he thought he had the situation under his control, he had not even the smallest idea of just what terror of a trial he was thrust into...