Chapter 314:

Chapter 314:

“There’s no way. That cliff has been fully explored a long time ago. How could there be a path there?”

“But I’m sure there is one.”

Yu-hyun couldn’t see it clearly from afar, but he had seen a golden light shining from the cliff.

It wasn’t a hallucination caused by the blizzard. Rather, because everything in the world was dyed white, the golden light was more vivid.

Lean still didn’t believe Yu-hyun’s words that there was a path there.

It was more plausible that Yu-hyun had seen something that wasn’t there.

“Let’s go and see.”

“No. It’s a waste of time.”

“We have nothing to lose by trying.”

“We have to get to our destination as soon as possibLeand scout the area. We should stick to the route we were on.”

Yu-hyun sighed at Lean’s stubbornness.

“Look, I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t lie about things like this.”

“...”

“Then let me ask you this. You said this place has been explored a long time ago, but did you do it yourself?”

Lean hesitated for a moment and shook his head.

“No. But even if I didn’t, many explorers have come here before. And above all, the emperor Fritchen often wandered around this area. If there was a path, they would have known.”

“So you’ve never seen it yourself? Then why don’t we take this opportunity to check it out?”

Lean wondered how to persuade Yu-hyun, but Yu-hyun didn’t care about Lean and moved first.

‘What makes him so sure?’

Lean was rather doubtful because of Yu-hyun’s bold movement. Could it be that the guide that Kaira left behind had shone at this moment?

Yu-hyun was the first to come this far, and he was also the first to reach here. Kaira before Yu-hyun had only lived inside the Guardian.

Considering that, it was possible, but it wasn’t easy to change the perception that had been hardened for the past 32 years.

But still.

If she was right, maybe.

Lean decided to follow Yu-hyun after all. He could tell by his stubborn attitude that he wouldn’t give up unless he used force. And using force in a place like this was suicidal.

Yu-hyun soon stood in front of the huge ice cliff.

He looked up and saw how high it was. It looked like it was over 500m high by estimation.

‘The width is... endless.’

The ice cliff that stretched out to both sides of his sight had no end in sight. At this point, it wasn’t just a mountain range that had frozen due to the curse of frost, but a fault line that had occurred due to tectonic movements.

It would be hard to see the end even if he walked along the cliff. In fact, on the map, this part had a very long boundary line.

“Look. There’s no way there’s an entrance here.”

Lean said that and scanned the area with a sharp eye, wondering if he had missed an entrance.

He examined the smooth ice wall carefully, but there was no gap to be seen.

Just as Lean was about to tell Yu-hyun that he had seen something wrong and that they should speed up their march, he saw Yu-hyun’s strange behavior. He stood in front of the ice wall alone and touched it with his hand.

Lean snapped at him.

“Touching it like that won’t make an entrance appear.”

“No.”

Yu-hyun drew his sword. Before Lean could ask him what he was doing, Yu-hyun stabbed the wall in front of him with his sword.

Thud.

The sword went into the inside easily as if it wasn’t filled with solid ice.

Right after he stabbed it, the ice around the sword cracked thinly and shattered like glass.

“There is an entrance.”

“What...!”

Lean looked at the newly created entrance with disbelief.

When? No, how? How could there be an entrance here? But he had never found it before.

Yu-hyun left Lean behind with his confused mind and entered without hesitation.

Lean followed Yu-hyun hastily.

“Wait! How did you find this entrance?”

“Is that important right now?”

“Answer me!”

“I saw it.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes. I saw it with my eyes. And when I got closer, I felt something out of place.”

“Is that... Kaira’s guide?”

He mentioned Kaira’s guide now, after denying it so much before.

Yu-hyun was too tired to affirm his words and replied vaguely.

“It might be.”

“...”

Lean looked around the entrance with a sunken gaze.

What Yu-hyun broke was a thin layer of ice that could be called a door. Behind it, there was a very narrow canyon path that could barely fit one person.

How did they not know about this path? How many people had come and gone here, without noticing it?

Lean’s eyes swept over the entrance with his hand.

This was not something that was naturally formed.

“Since we found it, are you just going to stand there?”

Yu-hyun realized that he was walking on a frozen lake.

Lean’s voice also rose a bit, as if he knew that.

“This is... Andolim Lake.”

“Andolim Lake?”

“Yeah. It’s known as the largest lake in the northern continent, at the very end of it. It’s also close to the capital of the Franzgart Empire.”

“Close to the capital, you mean.”

Yu-hyun looked around. Somewhere nearby, there was the empire’s capital where Frechen lived.

But that wasn’t what he had to check right now. Yu-hyun had been feeling a fragment of light getting closer since a while ago.

The direction was north.

He didn’t know if that was exactly north, but he had that feeling.

The two walked across the frozen lake.

It felt like the world was split in half and spread out above and below, and there seemed to be another world down there.

If this was the cursed world, then maybe the world under the frozen lake was the world of salvation.

The paths were clearly connected, but they never met.

Maybe from now on, the paths would only draw parallel lines.

The reality of the curse and the dream of salvation.

What would be at the end of this road?

“The snow, it stopped?”

The moment they crossed Andolim Lake, the snow that had been pouring down without stopping stopped. Even the wind didn’t blow.

A cold and clear space with no dust in the air.

What filled it was a misty fog.

‘It’s cold.’

The moment he put his hand in the fog, he felt a chill that made his skin crawl.

This was not a simple fog.

It was nothing but tiny particles of cold air compressed to the extreme, floating in the air and looking like fog.

‘I can’t stay here for long, but I can’t go in completely either.’

When Yu-hyun sent his gaze to Lean, he nodded his head with a determined face.

The two stuck close together and went inside the ice fog. If they were even a little apart, it would be hard to find each other.

The fog felt hazy even from outside, but when they entered it, it dulled their sense of direction as well.

If they loosened their tension even a little, they felt like they would freeze to death on the spot.

But they were able to keep going without stopping, thanks to one landmark that Yu-hyun saw in his eyes.

The golden light that shone through the gaps in the fog.

Yu-hyun walked without wavering and stopped his steps. Lean didn’t ask why he stopped.

The two looked up.

‘What is this...’

Kuuuuuuuuuuu.

Their ears hurt from the loud breathing that shook the space.

There was a giant giant there that they had to look up at from afar. The giant was sitting on one knee in his seat, bowing his head and falling asleep.

He was a frost giant, but much bigger than any of them they had seen before.

He couldn’t tell how big he was. If his sitting height was this much, his height must have been over 200m.

More than anything, the energy that flowed from the giant was extraordinary.

Fyuuuuuuuuuuu.

When the giant exhaled, a misty fog spewed out of his mouth.

‘Could it be... all this fog around here is his breath?’

Yu-hyun was appalled by this situation where he could freeze Gardin’s body with a simple breath.

Lean also couldn’t help but be shocked as he looked up at the giant.

He couldn’t see his face properly because of the giant’s breath and ice fog, but Lean was sure he saw his face.

Yu-hyun soon saw a large jewel shining red on the giant’s chest and the golden light that came out of it and quietly backed away.

‘Let’s back off for now.’

‘Yeah.’

Lean agreed with Yu-hyun’s words. They couldn’t do anything more here.

The two quickly cut through the fog and moved on. Their sense of direction was momentarily distorted, but thanks to Yu-hyun moving with the golden light behind him, they were able to get out in the shortest distance.

As they crossed Andolim Lake again, Yu-hyun finally let go of his tension.

“What was that... just now?”

“Why...”

“Lean. You recognized who that giant was.”

When he saw the giant, Lean’s expression was more than just finding a huge frost giant. It was mixed with other complex emotions.

Even in that confusion, Yu-hyun caught Lean’s change.

“...There’s no point in hiding it. I’ve seen that giant before.”

“You’ve seen him before? That huge frost giant?”

“Yeah.”

Lean turned his head to the direction where the giant frost giant was, beyond the fog at the end of the lake.

“He is, the god of this world. The Divine Spirit who should have disappeared after passing on his power to the successor.”