Chapter 274: We Have Monsters Of Our Own

As Cecilia drifted closer to the glowing, storm-like portal, her heartbeat thundered in her chest.

She glanced sideways at Mika, her face pale, her voice trembling.

"M-Mika." She said, barely above a whisper. "I’ll...I’ll be alright in there, right?"

He tilted his head with a smile that was far too calm for the situation.

"You’ll be fine, Cecilia." He said.

But then his expression shifted—his brow furrowed slightly, his eyes rolling upward as if reconsidering.

"Well...it should be fine."

"Should?!" She yelped, gripping his sleeve. "What do you mean should be fine?! That’s not reassuring at all!"

"Well..." He gave her a teasing gaze. "I mean, there’s a tiny chance you might experience a little...mana poisoning."

"Huh?" Cecilia shuddered.

"Or..." He continued thoughtfully. "...the gravitational pressure on the other side might crush you a little. Just a bit."

Her face went white.

"Crush—?! W-Wait—what do you mean ’a bit’?! You can’t be serious!"

"Oh, and don’t forget spatial tearing." He added cheerfully, raising a finger. "That happens sometimes if you enter at the wrong angle. You’ll just...uh...split apart a little. Temporarily."

Cecilia’s entire body stiffened as he listed the potential ways she could die: vaporized, disintegrated, frozen, or worse. Her lips quivered, color draining from her face.

"Mika!" She finally shouted, panic rising. "That’s not funny! I’m a human! I’ll die in there!"

But he only smiled wider and said with mock brightness.

"Don’t worry, Cecilia! Even if anything happens, Fauna will stitch you right up again! Even if you end up in pieces, she can put you back together."

"WHAT?!" Her jaw dropped.

She looked like she’d seen a ghost—an extremely sarcastic, terrifying ghost.

And seeing Mika bully her precious student, Fauna immediately started bonking him on the head with her fist.

"Mika! Don’t scare her like that!" She scolded, puffing her cheeks. "She’s already terrified of going through a portal, and now you’re making her think she’ll die five different ways?!"

"Ow, ow, alright, alright, I’ll stop."

He said, chuckling, while Fauna rolled her eyes and turned toward Nadia, who was suspiciously blinking rapidly—her version of laughing.

"And you, Nadia! Stop laughing!" Fauna said accusingly, pointing a finger at her. "You can’t bully my junior like that!"

"I’m not laughing." Nadia replied in her usual calm, cold voice. "My mouth isn’t moving."

"Oh, don’t you dare pull that excuse with me anymore!" Fauna huffed, marching toward her. "I’ve learned from Mika how to tell when you’re laughing. You blink your eyes like that whenever you find something funny. So, don’t try to deny it!"

Nadia blinked once more, slowly lowering her gaze.

"...I see. So you’ve found out." She murmured.

"Now apologize!" Fauna demanded, placing her hands on her hips.

And not daring to go against Fauna who looked like she was going to blow up, Nadia turned gracefully toward Cecilia and gave a small, polite bow.

"I apologize for laughing at you, Cecilia...It won’t happen again."

Cecilia, however, didn’t hear a word of it.

Her eyes were locked on the swirling mass of blue energy in front of her. The portal’s light now close enough that it painted her face in ghostly shades of turquoise.

She could feel the unstable vibrations in the air, the prickling cold on her skin, the static dancing across her fingertips.

Her breathing quickened.

Her pulse raced.

’This is it.’ She thought, terror gripping her chest. ’I’m actually going to die.’

She squeezed her eyes shut as the shimmering energy engulfed her face—expecting pain, expecting her body to burn, break apart, vanish.

But instead...

She felt a soft, cool breeze brush against her cheeks.

Her body drifted weightlessly, like she was being carried through a gentle stream.

The roaring noise of the portal faded into a deep hum, like distant thunder.

And then came the voices.

"Oh wow." Fauna’s voice rang out cheerfully. "It seems like a lot of them really have gathered for us this time. Look at that! We’ve got ourselves quite the party."

"Mmm." Nadia’s low voice followed, calm and deadpan. "I can’t even see the end...no matter which direction I look. The snowstorms aren’t helping either."

Her eyes narrowed slightly before she said,

"There’s more hiding in the haze. It seems like a good number of them are biding their time within the fog. It’s crawling with activity."

Cecilia’s brows furrowed at their casual observations.

’What were they even seeing?’

"They’ve definitely noticed us." Fauna chimed in with amused anticipation. "Some of them are already chanting. I can see several of the larger ones issuing orders. Looks like their commanders aren’t too happy about us dropping in uninvited."

Cecilia was still too dazed to understand any of it—until Mika’s voice suddenly came in gently.

"Cecilia." He said, his voice warm and amused. "You can stop closing your eyes now. We’re already on the other side."

"And trust me, you don’t want to miss this."

She flinched at the sudden direction.

Wait—they’d already crossed? She hadn’t even realized...And though fear gripped her chest, she still nodded and slowly peeled her eyes open.

And what she saw made her entire body feel freeze.

Her pupils dilated.

Her breath caught in her throat.

And for a moment, she forgot how to breathe entirely as she realised that they were floating.

Floating high in the sky, over a realm she couldn’t have imagined even in her wildest dreams or nightmares.

Below them stretched an endless glacier—a vast continent of cracked blue ice and snowy terrain that reached far past the horizon.

A kingdom of frost and oblivion, locked beneath a sky of churning blizzards and swirling auroras that glimmered like curtains of green fire overhead.

And on that glacier...were monsters.

Thousands.

No—tens of thousands.

No—hundreds of thousands. Possibly millions.

"Oh my god..." She whispered.

It was like looking down upon a frozen hellscape.

Creatures as far as the eye could see—each more terrifying than the last.

Massive beasts, like walking glaciers themselves, their footsteps cracking the ice.

Others with long, spindly limbs and glowing blue sigils etched into their skin, shifting like living runes.

Some creatures slithered like serpents made of glass and snow, while others floated unnaturally in the air, eyes glowing with a cruel intelligence.

She even recognised a few of the races.

Frost ogres, standing over fifteen feet tall, their muscular bodies clad in armor made of bone and jagged ice.

Wraith banshees drifted above the surface, their mouths open in silent screams, black mist trailing behind them.

Blizzard-wolves, dozens of them, prowled through the cracks in the glacier in organized packs, growling and howling to each other.

Towering ice giants, draped in frozen cloaks and wielding clubs the size of trees, marched behind walls of lesser monsters like generals of an army.

And worst of all, massive, monstrous krakens writhed beneath the surface of the glacier—visible only through the cracks—enormous shadows with gleaming teeth, moving just below the ice like predators waiting to strike from beneath.

All of them armed. All of them prepared.

And all of them staring up. At them.

Cecilia’s mind couldn’t keep up at the sight and her head began to spin.

Each of those monsters could’ve needed an entire elite raid team to handle back home. Some of them were stronger than anything she’d ever seen in her life.

And yet, there they were—millions of them.

’We’re surrounded...’

’We’re completely surrounded...’

She gasped and stumbled, her knees buckling from sheer vertigo and disbelief.

"Woah there." Mika said quickly, stepping forward and catching her just before she fell. He steadied her with ease, one hand around her waist. "Easy now. Breathe."

"She okay?" Fauna asked.

"She’ll live." Mika said with a small smile. "It’s just...a lot to take in the first time."

Cecilia blinked rapidly. Her vision shook. Her legs trembled. And then—

"We’re going to die..." She muttered.

Mika turned to her with a calm glance, but she didn’t stop.

"We’re going to die! We’re ALL going to die!" She cried out, her voice cracking. "That’s a Gelathox Wyrm down there—do you know how many elite parties it takes just to stall ONE of those?!"

"A-And that’s a Tundralith Stalker—its hide’s immune to artillery!"

"And over there—that’s a Crested Abyss Gorefiend! That thing wiped out half the Arctic Division last year!"

"And—oh god—those are Riftbound Chimeras! They don’t even have a fixed number of limbs!"

She pointed in every direction, a trembling finger identifying one terrifying monster after another, each worse than the last.

Then she lunged forward and grabbed Mika by the collar, shaking him with sheer panic in her eyes.

"What are we going to do?! What the hell are we going to do, Mika?! We’ve already entered! We’re INSIDE this rift! We need to go back—we HAVE to go back!!"

She turned toward the swirling blue portal behind them and staggered toward it.

"If we run now, maybe—maybe we can still—"

"Cecilia." Mika’s voice, though still gentle, cut through her hysteria.

She turned back, still panting, still shaking and he looked at her steadily, then stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Yes, they’ve got millions." His voice was low. Calm. Unshakable. "Yes, each one of those monsters could destroy a city on its own."

He turned his eyes toward the horizon.

"But we have two monsters too."

Cecilia blinked. Slowly, her gaze followed his—toward the two quiet figures now floating several meters ahead.

Mika spoke again.

"Fauna. Nadia." His voice gained weight. "I think it’s time we show her what you’re truly capable of."

For a moment, there was silence.

Then Fauna looked to Nadia, a grin blooming on her face.

"I’ll take the right side."

Nadia gave the faintest nod, her voice like still, frozen air.

"Then I’ll take the left."

And then...they began to descend.

And the moment they did, Fauna’s golden aura—the warm radiance that had gently shielded Cecilia until now—dimmed.

And then it began to twist.

The light curdled, mutated, turning thick and black. It writhed like ink in water, stretching behind her like tendrils of living shadow.

It no longer radiated warmth.

It oozed something else entirely.

Death. Decay. Rot.

Nadia, on the other hand, seemed to exhale—but the air around her shivered.

The snow around her started shaking.

The sky itself began to hum—a low, steady vibration that made Cecilia’s bones tremble.

Reality felt...unstable around her. As if the laws of nature had just been made optional.

And down below, the horde noticed.

A murmur ran through the millions.

And then came laughter.

It started in patches.

Snorts. Chuckles. Barking howls of amusement.

Some of the more intelligent monsters pointed upward and shouted:

"Only two?!"

"They send only two women against us?!"

"Is this a joke?!"

The laughter swelled into a chorus. Monstrous guffaws echoed across the battlefield. Thousands of them roared in mockery, slapping their weapons against the ground, baring their fangs.

But then—

The laughter stopped.

Why?...Because out of nowhere, the left side of the battlefield shook.

No, it trembled.

The thick glacier below began to crack.

Then split.

Then roared.

Rumble! Crack! Rumble!

A shockwave erupted as the entire battlefield tilted—ice splitting in titanic ruptures as enormous fissures tore through the ground.

And under Cecilia’s horrified, dilated eyes, the monsters were swallowed.

Ten of thousands of them—entire legions—fell screaming into the abyss as the earth tore open like a hungry mouth.

"KKRRRRRRR!!!!"

"SHRRAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

"GRGRGRGGHHHGAAA!!!!"

The towering Ice Giants, their bodies slow and heavy, were caught mid-stride. Their legs disappeared first, the sheer walls of ice closing in, shearing them in half with a deafening, wet crunch.

The packs of organized wolves tried to flee, but the ground beneath them didn’t just break; it became a violent, churning slurry of snow and tectonic plates. They were tossed high into the air, only to fall into bottomless, grinding fissures.

A colossal Elephant-like behemoth attempted to brace itself, but the laws of physics were working against it.

The glacier beneath its immense bulk simply vanished, and the beast, weighing tens of thousands of tons, plunged into the newly created abyss, the sound of its impact muffled by the tonnes of ice collapsing on top of it.

The glacier itself, once a stable battlefield, was now a violent, vertical terrain of jagged spears and collapsing cliffs, all engineered by the simple, controlled earthquake of one woman.

And just like that every monster on the left side was being swallowed, crushed, or impaled by the very ground they stood on, their screams lost to the roar of the crumbling ice.

If that wasn’t enough, a massive shout of terror could be heard from the right side—Fauna’s side.

And when Cecilia turned her gaze, she was shocked to see at the bottom of the place where Fauna was floating from—a black fog had started to spread.

It oozed out from her in long, tendril-like waves—black, pulsing, unnatural.

It spread across the battlefield like a living disease, slow but unstoppable.

One of the frost ogres tried to slash it with a battle-axe.

The fog split apart...then swallowed his arm.

"GROOOHHHHH!!!!" He screamed as boils formed instantly across his flesh.

His veins bulged and turned black, splitting open.

Pus exploded from his eyes, and he fell to his knees, howling.

And then—

SPLATTER!

His entire torso burst open with a sickening crack, and his ribs were left pointing upward like shattered branches.

Another demon screeched and tried to fly out of the mist. Mid-flight, its wings rotted off, and it fell—splashing into a puddle of its own blood.

And just like that, everywhere the fog touched, monsters began to decay in real-time.

A massive bird hissed, but its jaws cracked open, teeth falling out as its skull melted from within.

A pack of Cryo Leopards were mid-charge when their legs snapped backward, bones stabbing through skin.

A banshee tried to phase out. But froze mid-scream, her form cracking apart like shattering porcelain.

A hulking frost-beast howled and tried to leap free—but exploded in midair, raining chunks of gore on its allies.

One by one they died screaming, rotting, exploding, melting, collapsing into themselves.

Some burst like overripe fruit. Others simply folded in half as their bones turned to jelly.

The plague did not discriminate; it only consumed.

And in a matter of minutes, the right half of the battlefield became a sea of liquefied flesh and rotting bodies and on the left there was nothing left, since the landmass itself had disappeared and crumbled in itself.

It was almost as if the half the glaciers had been stolen away and along with the creatures that were on top.

And soon after silence fell. Absolute silence

Even the wind stopped almost as if it feel the pressure of the battle or rather the massacre that had just occurred.

The few monsters still alive in the center, those lucky or unlucky enough to be outside the initial kill zones, stared up at the two women now hovering calmly above the carnage.

Fauna looked down coldly, plague mist still dripping from her fingertips.

Nadia lowered her hand, the crater below her already filling with drifting snow, as if the planet itself were trying to hide the evidence.

Meanwhile, Cecilia’s mouth hung open.

Even though she had just witnessed the sight, her mind couldn’t make sense of what happened.

And seeing the flabbergasted look on her face, Mika leaned down beside her ear and whispered,

"See?...I told you we had two monsters on our side."