The frost giants had not yet given up. Beyond his own divine power, Nur had left behind one final contingency—a move designed to perish together with their enemies: Thrym's Winter Avatar.
A flicker of grim determination emerged in the despairing frost giants' eyes.
"The enemy may slay our flesh, but they cannot kill the Bitter Winter..."
"Our Father Thrym shall bring eternal rest to our foes upon this glacier drenched in the blue blood of frost giants."
Over thirty frost giant warriors etched with Everfrost runes snapped off icicles that jutted everywhere across the glacier. Without a moment's hesitation, they drove the frozen spikes into their own chests, chanting an ancient, drawn-out dirge—or rather, a curse—embodying their deepest enmity toward the foe who had brought ruin to their clan.
As deep blue blood seeped through fissures into the frozen depths below, the ravaged glacier groaned once more, trembling violently.
"Enemy of the Everfrost—!"
A furious roar shook the heavens.
A colossus over thirty meters tall, formed of blade-sharp ice crystals, rose rumbling from the glacier to stand upon the boundless white expanse. Its features bore a slight resemblance to Kasa, who had perished under the red dragon's claws, but across every polished facet of crystal flickered the varied expressions of the frost giant warriors. The giant gripped a crystalline double-bitted greataxe, its face burning with the wrath of winter—the manifestation of the Everfrost Tribe's final will.
Facing this menacing crystal giant, Cassius merely beat his wings in midair, continuing his casting.
"Faith... what a terrifying thing."
"To think it could turn a wretched, lingering pack of frost giants into a monstrosity like this."
"Still... I wonder if you can withstand my magic?"
The instant Cassius uttered those words, thunder suddenly detonated across the cloudless sky, shaking the entire Vahara Glacier.
As the Eye of the Storm Sovereign upon his chest blazed with blinding brilliance, an unfathomable surge of magical power erupted. The Weave churned like a tempestuous ocean whipped into raging waves. Countless intricate arcane constructs locked together, nesting, intertwining, and coalescing until they formed this complex, magnificent ninth-level spell—Storm of Vengeance.
Yet Cassius's ambition did not stop there.
He wanted not only to destroy the crystalline giant before him, but to obliterate every trace of the frost giants across this frozen waste, expunging their civilization entirely.
And so, the red dragon sorcerer channeled even more chaotic, wild sorcerous power. The tempest of raw magic surged without restraint, bursting forth like floodwaters breaching a dam, simultaneously doubling both the range and the devastation of the spell.
Metamagic: Distant Spell.
Metamagic: Empower Spell.
Once initiated, it was like unsealing Pandora's box—impossible to close. Cassius could no longer even halt the magic; he could only let it unleash its fury while barely keeping himself safe amidst the deluge. After all, this was a ninth-level spell!
The empowered Storm of Vengeance was now potent enough to lay waste to an entire nation—a genuine realm-destroying catastrophe!
Cassius stared down at the distant crystal giant, his expression twisting into a savage grin.
"To force me to unleash such power... you have earned an end worthy of your station."
"Frost giants, show me whether your final strength can withstand the natural calamity in my hands!"
High above, a swirling storm of thunderclouds gathered around the red dragon, rapidly expanding outward for miles.
Dark clouds billowed, writhing with jagged lightning and screaming gales. Only Cassius at the center stood unyielding, like a solitary island adrift in a hurricane, barely maintaining his composure amidst the wild magical currents.
The dreadful black clouds spread and multiplied with frantic speed, resembling a monstrous beast preparing to swallow everything on the glacier whole.
They blotted out the sun, plunging this land of polar midnight sun into pitch-black night.
"Enemy of the Everfrost, I will kill you!"
"I will rip off your hide and grind your flesh and bones to dust!"
The giant threw back its head and roared. It possessed little intellect, driven solely by the instinct for vengeance—a creature born of the frost giants' dying hatred fused with a sliver of Thrym's divinity. Had this occurred during the ancient giant gods' golden age, with hundreds or thousands of devout frost giants offering themselves up in sacrifice beneath Thrym's gaze, it might have been deemed an abomination.
Now, however, it amounted to nothing more than a monster.
In this mana-starved region of Anzeta, fueled by the sacrifice of mere dozens of frost giants and an almost imperceptible wisp of divine essence, this "Thrym's Winter Avatar" reached only the threshold of legendary might.
Brandishing its massive axe, the thirty-meter-tall crystal giant charged straight toward the red dragon, its heavy strides shaking the earth like tremors.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Beneath the canopy of storm clouds, booming thunderclaps rolled across the sky like war drums.
Powerful concussive shockwaves of thunder—potent enough to shatter a mortal instantly—battered the crystal giant's body again and again. Countless fractures spiderwebbed through its hardened form, and fine shards of ice drifted from its surface like falling snow.
"Futile struggles!" the giant bellowed again, though its voice had lost a fraction of its vigor.
Immediately after, torrential acid rain poured from the thunderclouds. Sickly green droplets of magical acid splashed onto the giant's crystalline body, burrowing deep pits into its smooth surface like a swarm of flesh-eating insects. Its exterior grew rough and pockmarked as steam hissed into billowing white vapor.
"Despair! You are nothing before the Bitter Winter!"
The giant's conviction waned further, yet it showed no sign of yielding. Raising its double-bitted axe high—its tip nearly piercing the dark clouds—it swung downward in fury.
*Crack—!*
A deafening thunderclap struck first.
An instant later, six violent bolts of lightning, each as thick as a bowl, converged like divine retribution directly upon the tip of the giant's axe.
The blinding glare lit up a hundred yards around the giant, every facet of its crystalline form reflecting the electric glow.
The crystal greataxe vaporized entirely under the blast. The force severed its right arm as well, and the massive limb—over ten meters long—crashed onto the ice below, shattering into a field of rubble with a tremendous roar.
"No—you cannot kill me!"
"I am the Avatar of the Bitter Winter!"
The giant roared once more, though its voice sounded weaker still.
Yet it remained unbroken. Even having lost its right arm and half its shoulder, it scooped up a massive icicle from the ground with its left hand, using it as a weapon to charge the red dragon once again.
Hailstones battered down relentlessly from the thunderclouds, pelting the giant. Because the assault shared the same icy essence, it inflicted little true damage, merely gouging more pits into its surface. But what had once been a near-flawless crystal colossus now resembled little more than a grotesque, mangled aberration.
Chapter 186