The morning brought no sunlight to the Dead Ridges, only a marginally lighter shade of oppressive grey.
The violent whiteout blizzard from the previous night had dialed back to a steady, freezing gale. Alden stepped out of the shallow cave, his boots crunching deeply into the fresh snowdrifts. He wore his heavy dark-grey cloak, leaving the matte-black metal mask securely tucked away in his storage ring.
There was no point in hiding his face anymore. Nova had seen it, and out here in the absolute middle of nowhere, there were no bounty hunters to spot him.
Nova emerged from the cave a moment later. The dwarven blanket was gone. With her curse broken, she no longer needed it. Her Peak S-Rank draconic aura naturally repelled the sub-zero temperature, creating a localized, invisible barrier of warmth around her delicate, black-clad frame.
She stepped out into the snow, her luminescent violet eyes immediately landing on Alden.
She paused. A faint, almost imperceptible falter in her otherwise flawless, aristocratic composure. Alden's messy black hair blew in the wind, framing his impossibly sharp, pale features and the singular silver scar running over his closed left eye.
Nova quickly averted her gaze, lifting her chin and crossing her arms with a haughty sniff, violently suppressing the sudden, annoying flutter in her chest.
Alden noticed the look but completely misinterpreted it.
'She's probably judging my coat,' Alden thought, rolling his single crimson eye. 'Spoiled royalty.'
He adjusted his travel pack and reached down to check the gear at his waist. His leather-gloved fingers brushed against the dark, porous metal of Vajra. The ancient, cursed hilt hummed faintly against his hip, a silent, deadly companion.
Suddenly, Alden's hand froze.
A cold sweat that had absolutely nothing to do with the weather broke out across his back.
'Wait a minute,' Alden's mind raced, his crimson eye widening slightly.
He was currently escorting a Peak S-Rank dragon princess back to her home. A home filled exclusively with dragons, heavily guarded by ancient drakes, and ruled by the Dragon Sovereign—an SS-Rank powerhouse.
And strapped to his waist was Vajra. A weapon literally known in myth as the 'Dragon Slayer'. A sword forged specifically to butcher Celestial Dragons, permanently cursed by the dying resentment of the primordial beasts.
If he walked into the Dragon Valley carrying a weapon that radiated the concentrated death of their ancestors, they wouldn't just kill him. They would atomize him. The Dragon Sovereign would personally erase his existence from the space-time continuum before he could even say hello.
Alden immediately tapped his dark iron ring.
VWOOM!
The hilt of Vajra vanished from his waist, safely sequestered deep within the isolated pocket dimension of his spatial storage.
'Mental note,' Alden thought, exhaling a long, steady breath. 'Never, under any circumstances, summon the sword while inside the Valley. I prefer my head attached to my neck.'
"Are we going to stand here freezing, peasant, or are we going to walk?" Nova's smooth, commanding voice cut through his thoughts.
Alden turned to look at her. She wasn't even standing in the snow. Her boots were hovering exactly two inches above the drifts, supported by a faint, effortless cushion of telekinetic mana. She was keeping her shoes clean.
Alden's eye twitched.
"Lead the way, Your Highness," Alden replied dryly.
"Since you're the only one who actually knows where this secret gate is."
Nova offered a smug, superior smile and glided forward, moving over the treacherous terrain with infuriating ease.
That was the beginning of the longest two days of Alden's second life.
The journey through the deepest, most jagged ravines of the Dead Ridges was a physical and psychological endurance trial. The physical part Alden could handle. His Nephalem bloodline effortlessly sustained him.
The psychological part, however, was testing the absolute limits of his sanity.
Nova was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most annoying travel companion in the history of the continent.
"Why do you walk so loudly?" she critiqued an hour into their trek, floating gracefully over a patch of black ice while Alden trudged through a waist-high snowbank.
"Your footfalls lack elegance. It is like listening to a falling boulder."
"I am currently wading through three feet of solid snow," Alden gritted his teeth, not looking back.
"Pardon me if I don't have the aerodynamic grace of a floating lizard."
"A dragon," Nova corrected sharply, the air around her dropping ten degrees.
"Do not confuse the absolute apex of the world with a swamp reptile."
By noon of the first day, the local wildlife decided to test them.
The ground beneath them violently trembled. From the jagged obsidian walls of the ravine, three massive, multi-limbed Obsidian Golems ripped themselves free. They were peak C-Rank elemental constructs, their bodies forged from razor-sharp volcanic glass.
Alden instantly dropped into a low combat stance. He glanced back at Nova, fully expecting the Peak S-Rank entity to flick her wrist and turn the golems into dust.
Nova didn't move. She floated backward, gracefully sitting down on a large, snow-covered boulder, crossing her legs.
"What are you doing?" Alden asked, dodging a massive, swinging obsidian fist that shattered the ground where he had just been standing.
"I am observing," Nova replied calmly, inspecting her immaculate fingernails.
"You are my escort. It is your job to clear the path. Do hurry up, I detest the sound of grinding rocks."
Alden barely resisted the urge to redirect his attack toward her.
Instead, he turned his focus to the golems. He didn't draw a weapon. He sank into the rhythmic breathing of the Manual of the Abyssal Weaver.
His D+ Rank core flared.
Alden channeled a dense, razor-thin thread of the Chaos element directly into his right fist. He didn't let the dark-gold energy explode. He kept it strictly contained, layering it perfectly over his knuckles like a spiked gauntlet.
He ducked under another sweeping strike, closed the distance, and drove his fist directly into the lead golem's chest cavity.
CRACK!
The A-Rank physical force shattered the outer layer of glass, but it was the Chaos element that did the real damage. The highly destructive energy flooded the golem's internal structure, actively devouring the elemental mana holding the rocks together.
The construct dissolved into a pile of lifeless, mundane gravel.
Alden flowed seamlessly into the next target, his movements clean, brutal, and utterly efficient. Within thirty seconds, all three golems were reduced to rubble.
He lowered his fists, letting the Chaos element dissipate safely back into his core. Thanks to the Weaver technique, there was absolutely zero internal blowback. No broken bones. No shattered ribs.
He turned around, shaking the dust off his coat.
Nova was staring at his hands, her violet eyes narrowed in intense, calculating scrutiny.
"That energy," Nova said, floating down from her boulder.
"It is entirely unregistered. It is not an elemental derivative. It does not burn like fire, and it does not corrode like acid. It simply… deletes. What is it?"
Alden kept his face an unreadable mask.
Only he knew the name of the element. Only he knew that it was the First Rebel's legacy—the Chaos element. And he fully intended to keep that a closely guarded secret. The moment the world realized he possessed an energy that defied the laws of the universe, the hundred-billion bounty would look like pocket change.
"It's a parlor trick," Alden lied smoothly, stepping over the gravel.
"A specialized physical emission technique."
Nova scoffed, clearly not believing a single word.
"A parlor trick that ignores elemental density. You humans are so incredibly fond of your little secrets. Keep it, then. But do try to be faster next time. Thirty seconds for three C-Rank constructs is embarrassingly slow."
Alden's crimson eye twitched violently.
The second day was no better.
They encountered an Ice-scaled Basilisk, a terrifying serpent that could freeze a man's blood with a single glance. Nova, once again, relegated herself to the role of royal spectator while Alden wrestled the beast in the snow, eventually using a concentrated burst of the Chaos element to snap its spine.
"You missed a spot on your coat," Nova pointed out helpfully as Alden stood over the dead Basilisk, wiping blue blood from his cheek.
"If we weren't heading to a place filled with your relatives, I would leave you in this ravine," Alden threatened darkly.
Nova just offered her smug, infuriatingly beautiful smile.
"But we are. And you need me to open the door."
As the sun finally began to set on the second day, painting the overcast sky in deep, bruised shades of purple and grey, the terrain abruptly shifted.
The narrow, jagged ravines opened up into a massive, hidden crater, entirely shielded from the outside world by towering walls of black stone.
In the exact center of the crater stood a structure that looked entirely out of place in the desolate wasteland.
It was a colossal, free-standing archway forged from a pale, pearlescent stone. Intricate, flowing runes—entirely different from the jagged human arrays or the blocky dwarven scripts—were carved deeply into the arch. They hummed with a dormant, ancient power.
Alden stopped, looking up at the towering gate. The sheer ambient mana radiating from the unlit stone was suffocating.
"We are here," Nova said, her voice finally losing its mocking edge, replaced by a tone of quiet reverence.
She floated past Alden, her boots finally touching the ground as she approached the ancient archway.
"Is this connected to the Human Empire?" Alden asked, his crimson eye scanning the perimeter for any lingering traps left by the syndicate that had ambushed her.
"No," Nova replied, raising her pale hand toward the stone.
"The Dragon Valley does not share its transit networks with lesser domains. This is a private, localized tether. It connects this specific peak directly to the outer sanctuary of our borders."
She didn't use a key. She didn't chant a spell.
Nova simply pressed her thumb against the sharp edge of her own crystalline horn. A single drop of rich, vibrant violet blood welled up.
She pressed her bleeding thumb directly onto the central rune of the archway.
WUMMMMM!
The response was instantaneous. The pale stone drank the draconic blood, and the entire structure violently flared to life. The dormant runes ignited with a blinding, luminescent violet light.
The empty space within the archway twisted. It warped and collapsed in on itself, forming a swirling, event-horizon-like vortex of deep purple space.
The wind around them immediately stopped, sucked into the sheer gravitational pull of the active gate.
Nova turned around, her violet eyes glowing in the light of the portal. Her black hair whipped wildly around her face.
"The gate is stable," Nova stated, her aristocratic composure entirely restored. She looked at Alden, the lone, masked fugitive who had pulled her from the jaws of death.
"Step through, Alden," she said, her voice echoing over the hum of the portal.
"Welcome to the apex of the world."
Alden stood a few feet away. He looked at the swirling purple vortex.
He didn't know what was waiting for him on the other side. He was walking into a domain where S-Rank power was considered average, ruled by an SS-Rank Sovereign who bowed to no one. He had a violently chaotic core, a dark-gold secret, and a map burned into his mind leading to the unknown.
Alden pulled the heavy fur-lined collar of his cloak up, hiding the lower half of his face.
A sharp, dangerous thrill of pure anticipation shot down his spine.
He didn't hesitate. Alden stepped forward, walking directly into the blinding violet light.