Chapter 666: Arctic Fire-Prowler

Moon and the rest of the team left the region behind, the black spire and its horde shrinking into the ash-gray distance until the falling snow swallowed it entirely.

They made their way back toward their initial starting point.

Along the way they ran into a few roaming Frost Stalkers, small groups broken off from whatever packs wandered this frozen waste. The team dealt with them without difficulty, venting out all the anger they felt on the poor pack. Vela anchored, the melee fighters cleaved, Elsa and Moon supported from range, and the Stalkers dropped in the snow one after another.

Moon didn’t bother pulling any of these beasts into his own horde.

They weren’t what he was looking for. A handful of loose Frost Stalkers wouldn’t move the needle against a hundred beasts under the elf’s command. When he built his answer to that horde, he needed something that could actually threaten it, not scattered stragglers picked up along a retreat. So he let the kills go to the team, and the Life gains along with them.

Moon could also feel his twelfth acupoint slowly rise, which once filled would add at least 3 acupoints worth of power into his body.

They pressed on through the unbroken white canvas.

Eventually they found the cut-up tree they had assembled into a standing pillar, their anchor point rising out of the snow exactly where they had left it. A small marker of order in a wasteland built to erase everything, and after the spire and its horde.

They regrouped at the pillar, planning out their next route.

The north had shown them the objective and the horde they couldn’t yet beat. That direction was answered.

What remained was everything else, the unexplored stretches of the wasteland in every other direction, and somewhere out there was whatever Moon needed to build a horde of his own, one strong enough to break the elf’s.

Before heading south, their new heading, the team stopped to eat.

They gathered around a campfire near the anchor pillar, and the hot food came out of their storage rings still steaming, sealed in insulated containers they had packed. They ate in silence, each of them drowned in their own thoughts, the frozen wasteland and the horde and the spire sitting heavy on every mind.

The fire gave very little heat against the cold.

The wasteland pulled warmth out of everything, and an ordinary flame would have stood no chance in the endless snow. What kept this one alive was the First Order A-Rank fire-affinity crystal set at its heart, feeding the flames a constant supply of elemental heat. Without it, the falling snow would have smothered the campfire within minutes, the way it smothered everything else here.

Even with the crystal, the warmth barely reached past the ring of logs they sat on.

Moon ate slowly, his eyes on the flames, his mind already several moves ahead. The plan was taking shape, piece by piece.

Nina sat beside him, picking at her food, occasionally glancing his way as if she wanted to ask something more about the plan but decided to let him think.

The others kept to themselves, each drowning in their own thoughts and plans.

The cold pressed in from every side, held back only by the crystal’s small circle of heat, and beyond it the snow kept falling over a wasteland that stretched empty in every direction.

Once they were done, the group made their way towards the south.

They set off south from the anchor pillar, and the wasteland swallowed them again.

Time passed slowly.

"We’ve been walking nearly twenty minutes," Kayn said eventually, his eyes scanning the empty snow. "And we’ve barely seen a single Frost Stalker. North was crawling with them, this direction’s dead, wouldn’t it be better if we looked somewhere else?"

"Not dead," Vela answered, adjusting her grip on her hammer. "It’s just different, which is what we need. Something else likely claims this territory, stalkers won’t den where a bigger predator hunts."

Moon said nothing, but he agreed with her read. The absence of Frost Stalkers didn’t mean the area was empty. It was merely a warning sign, which meant they were walking into the range of something the Stalkers avoided. Which was exactly what he was looking for.

They pressed on, and a few minutes later, they found a beast appearing through the falling snow, and it was one none of them recognized.

It moved on four powerful limbs, closer to the ground and heavy-built. Its hide a deep charcoal gray rather than the frost-white of everything else in this waste. Steam rose off its body in puffs, Its eyes glowed a dull orange, and where its paws pressed into the snow, the white melted and hissed.

Moon cast Eye of Truth.

[Arctic Fire-Prowler]

[Details: A rare fire-affinity predator that adapted to survive in frozen environments by turning its own heat into a weapon. Hunts cold-element beasts, whose bodies are vulnerable to its flame. Territorial and solitary. Its internal heat lets it move freely through terrain that would slow or kill other predators.]

Moon read through the details, and a smile spread across his face.

A fire-affinity predator that hunted cold-element beasts was the perfect counter to the frost stalkers, snow creepers and to the entire frozen horde guarding the spire.

Everything in this wasteland was built around ice, the elf’s whole army was resistant to the cold and vulnerable to heat, and here was a beast whose entire existence was tuned to tear those creatures apart.

This was exactly the kind of thing he had come south to find.

The absence of Frost Stalkers made sense now. This was why they avoided the territory. The Arctic Fire-Prowler ate them.

Moon’s eyes settled on the charcoal beast as it turned its glowing gaze toward the team, steam hissing off its hide.

There you are.

"I will handle this one." Moon immediately stepped forward, lightning crackling in his palm.