The howling blizzard of the Dead Ridges did not merely persist as the evening deepened; it escalated into an absolute, blinding whiteout.
The wind tore across the jagged obsidian peaks with the force of a physical hammer. Stepping out into the gale meant losing all sense of direction within seconds. It wasn't that the environment was inherently lethal to them—not anymore, at least.
Alden sat near the back of the secluded, shallow cave they had claimed for the night. His newly forged Nephalem body, possessing the sheer, unbreakable density of an A-Rank physical vessel, regulated his core temperature effortlessly. The sub-zero frost biting at the entrance felt like nothing more than a brisk autumn breeze against his skin.
Across the small fireless space, Nova looked equally unbothered. As a Peak S-Rank mythical entity, the ambient temperature was completely irrelevant to her. The sheer, suffocating density of her draconic aura naturally repelled the cold, creating a localized pocket of comfortable warmth around her delicate, black-clad frame.
They weren't stopping because they couldn't survive the cold. They were stopping because finding a hidden, ancient teleportation gate in zero visibility was a fool's errand.
Alden leaned the back of his head against the solid stone wall, pulling his dark-grey cloak a bit tighter around his shoulders. He closed his single crimson eye behind the matte-black mask, intending to finally catch a few hours of uninterrupted rest.
He severely underestimated his travel companion.
For the first few hours after her curse was broken, Nova had maintained a regal, aristocratic silence. But now that her life was no longer in immediate peril, the dam holding back her suppressed curiosity completely and violently shattered.
"So, the Chaos energy," Nova's smooth, melodic voice pierced the quiet of the cave.
"It completely bypasses natural elemental laws. It's not fire, and it's certainly not spatial. What is it?"
Alden kept his eye closed. "A secret."
"Are you truly human?" she pressed, entirely ignoring his dismissal. She shifted her weight, the faint violet light from her crystalline horns casting dancing shadows against the cave walls.
"Your aura is an abysmal D-Rank, yet your physical density rivals an elder drake. That is a biological contradiction."
"I eat a lot of vegetables," Alden deadpanned.
Nova let out a sharp, highly unamused huff.
"Do not mock me, peasant. I watched you casually erase four Sovereign-tier golems without lifting a finger. I felt you reach into my core and burn away a Soul-Sealing Shackle—a feat that should have instantly vaporized a mortal mind. You are an anomaly."
"And you are giving me a headache," Alden sighed, cracking his crimson eye open to glare at her.
"Can we sleep? We have ten thousand kilometers to skip tomorrow."
Nova didn't back down. Her luminescent violet eyes narrowed, locking onto the sleek, matte-black metal concealing his face.
"Take off the mask," she demanded.
Alden stiffened slightly. "No."
"Why not?" she challenged, tilting her head, her long, night-black hair cascading over her shoulder.
"We are sitting in an isolated cave in the middle of a wasteland. There is no one here to see you. Unless you are hiding some hideous, rotting disfigurement under there, there is no logical reason to keep it on."
'I'm hiding a face worth a hundred billion gold coins, you arrogant lizard,' Alden thought, suppressing a groan.
"My face stays covered. It's a matter of personal preference," Alden replied smoothly, closing his eye again and crossing his arms over his chest.
"End of discussion. Goodnight, Nova."
For a minute, there was absolute silence.
Alden felt his tense muscles begin to relax. He thought he had finally won the battle of wills. He thought the stubborn dragon princess had actually decided to let it go.
He was incredibly, catastrophically wrong.
Suddenly, without a single spike in the ambient mana, without a single chanted spell or warning fluctuation, Alden's entire body froze.
It wasn't ice. It wasn't physical paralysis.
An invisible, absolute force clamped down on every single atom in his body. His arms locked to his chest. His legs turned to stone. He couldn't twitch a finger. He couldn't even force his eyelids open.
Worse, the terrifying suppression bypassed his flesh and slammed directly into his spiritual architecture. The dark-gold, highly volatile energy spinning near his dantian—an element that usually lashed out and destroyed any foreign interference—was violently, instantaneously halted.
'What?!' Alden's mind roared in sudden panic. 'My core is completely frozen!'
He immediately recognized the terrifying nature of the binding. It wasn't magic. It was an Authority.
The Authority of Telekinesis.
It was an S-Rank conceptual power. It didn't just hold his physical mass; it locked the very space and reality around him, suspending his existence in a flawless, inescapable grip.
Step-Step.
Soft boots crunched lightly against the stone floor.
Alden couldn't move his head, but he could feel her presence stopping directly in front of him.
"I don't like being told 'no'," Nova whispered. Her voice wasn't haughty; it was dripping with a sickeningly sweet, incredibly dangerous amusement.
Alden strained with every ounce of his A-Rank physical might, trying to shatter the invisible hold. He tried to mentally force the weaving technique to ignite his core, but the Telekinetic Authority was a Peak S-Rank suppression. A D+ Rank core, no matter how chaotic or dense, simply didn't have the volume to break a conceptual lock of that magnitude.
He was completely at her mercy.
Slender, cool fingers brushed against the sides of his head.
Click—
She unfastened the latch at the back of the dwarven artifact. The matte-black metal mask slid smoothly off his face, exposing his skin to the freezing cave air.
Nova took a step back, holding the mask in her hand.
Alden waited for her reaction. He waited for the gasp of recognition. He waited for her to summon a blade and demand the bounty on the Traitor of Humanity.
But the cave remained dead silent.
Nova's expression completely froze.
Her violet eyes widened, locking onto his exposed face. She didn't see a rotting disfigurement. She didn't see a mundane, forgettable peasant.
She saw a masterpiece.
What Alden hadn't realized was the sheer, terrifying extent of his own physical evolution. Since acquiring the Nephalem bloodline, his body had been subjected to a torturous cycle of continuous breaking and healing. In the subterranean tomb alone, his bones and flesh had shattered and regenerated over a thousand times.
Every single time the Chaos energy rebuilt his cells, it didn't just mend the damage. It actively purged impurities. It refined his bone structure. It smoothed his skin to an impossible, flawless pale perfection.
His previously handsome human features had been aggressively evolved into something transcending mortal limits. His jawline was sharp enough to cut glass. His messy black hair framed a face of eerie, predatory beauty. Even the single silver scar running vertically down his closed left eye didn't detract from his looks; it only added a striking, lethal edge that contrasted breathtakingly with his glowing, luminescent crimson right eye.
He was, quite literally, a thousand times more handsome than any normal human had the right to be.
If Alden had possessed a mirror over the last few days, his inherent, deeply buried narcissism would have completely skyrocketed into the stratosphere. But the innocent, oblivious Alden had absolutely no idea he was currently carrying the face of a dark, mythical god.
Nova stared at him. Her lips parted slightly.
A sudden, intense rush of heat flooded her cheeks. A vivid, undeniable pink blush blossomed across her porcelain, aristocratic skin.
For a girl who considered herself the absolute apex of existence, looking at a 'peasant' and feeling her heartbeat stutter was a complete, horrifying system failure.
Panicking, Nova violently dropped her Telekinetic Authority.
She spun around so fast her black hair whipped through the air, practically throwing the metal mask onto the cave floor. She scurried back to her side of the enclosure, aggressively pulling the dwarven blanket over her head to hide her flaming face.
Gasp!
Alden's body violently slumped forward as the invisible hold vanished. He caught himself on his hands, his chest heaving as his chaotic core instantly spun back to life with a furious, roaring vengeance.
He coughed, rubbing his throat, his crimson eye glaring daggers at the lump of blankets across the cave.
'She just used a Peak S-Rank Authority on me to play peek-a-boo,' Alden thought, entirely oblivious to the blush he had caused, attributing her sudden retreat to standard, erratic noble behavior.
'She's a complete psychopath.'
He picked up his mask from the floor, running a hand through his dark hair.
He waited for the inevitable interrogation. He waited for her to call him the 'S-Rank Threat'.
...Nothing.
She just sat there, huddled under the blanket, entirely quiet.
Alden frowned.
'She didn't recognize me,' Alden deduced, his sharp mind rapidly analyzing the interaction.
'My face is plastered on every single bounty board in the Human and Dwarven Empires. Why doesn't she know who I am?'
He ran through a list of possibilities. Was she a shut-in? A 'home-dead' noble who simply refused to look at the outside world? Did she just not care about the news?
And then, the geopolitical reality of the continent clicked into place.
'The Dragon Valley,' Alden realized.
The Dragon Valley had absolutely zero connection with the outside world. Nova had said it herself: no human was permitted to cross their borders without a royal decree. They didn't trade with humans. They didn't care about the High Council's squabbles.
To the dragons, the Human Empire's "S-Rank Existential Threat" was the equivalent of two ant colonies fighting over a breadcrumb. Why would an apex species care about the bounties of lesser beings?
A basic, unrefined dragon possessed an innate talent that floored at A-Rank. Almost every single dragon in existence was absolutely guaranteed to reach the S-Rank threshold purely by aging. They might take decades or centuries to refine it, but the power was their birthright.
And ruling over them all was the undisputed pinnacle of the species.
Alden remembered a specific, terrifying lecture from his Academy days regarding the global superpowers. The Dragon Valley was ruled by an entity known as the 'Dragon Sovereign'.
Azyrus Silverwyn.
The strongest SS-Ranker on the continent. While the humans and dwarves had a handful of SS-Rank Demi-Gods who balanced the political scales, the Dragon Sovereign was widely regarded as a force of nature that simply could not be contested. They were entirely independent, sitting at the absolute, untouchable top of the species hierarchy.
'She really doesn't know who I am,' Alden thought, a massive wave of relief washing over him.
'To her, I'm just a weird, chaotic anomaly she found in the snow.'
Alden looked down at the matte-black mask in his hands.
There was no point in putting it back on. The secret was out, and ironically, it didn't even matter to the one person sitting in the room with him.
He tossed the mask into his storage ring.
"Don't ever do that again," Alden said, his voice cold and sharp, echoing in the quiet cave.
"If you freeze my core again, I won't bother trying to break your hold. I'll just detonate the mana from the inside out and take the entire mountain down with us."
Nova didn't poke her head out from the blanket.
"Your face was simply a mystery I wished to resolve," her muffled, haughty voice replied from under the fabric, though it lacked its usual sharp bite.
"You are adequately symmetrical for a human. Now be quiet. I am attempting to sleep."
Adequately symmetrical.
Alden rolled his single crimson eye, leaning his back against the stone wall. He didn't put the mask back on. He just let the cool air brush against his unblemished skin, the faint silver scar catching the dim light of the crystal sphere.
"Adequately symmetrical," Alden muttered under his breath, shaking his head.
"Dragons. Unbelievable."
He closed his eye, finally letting the exhaustion pull him under, completely unaware of the violet eyes that peeked out from the blanket a few minutes later, staring at his resting face long into the freezing night.