"..."
Rotsard was facing a rather awkward problem.
The thing was, it was the day of the life and death duel that was supposed to happen in the Royal Arena in the capital city of Nordenthele…
…and he was still back in the Royal Academy, quite the distance away despite sharing part of their name.
Until that point, Rotsard simply assumed someone would be sent to pick him up.
Actually, he was even ready since a couple of days prior… but no one ever showed up.
With only two hours before the duel, it was also safe to assume that no one would show up to use the teleportation spell to get him, as that would simply break too many rules of high society.
The bleached-blond-haired youth bit his lips and looked to the side.
Should he go ask the principal or Syon for help?
No, that was out of the question.
He wasn't supposed to receive that sort of preferential treatment, and there would definitely be plenty of people present at the site able to recognize the mana signature of a pair from the top ten most well-known individuals in Nordenthele from outside the royal family.
Considering that in a few short months Rotsard will have to die in disgrace, getting either involved with him publicly more than he already was was simply unforgivable, not to mention playing right into deofol's hands.
Which left Rotsard with his own transportation spell from the Essence of winter.
Yearning of the Bitter Memory.
There was a problem with that too…
Particularly in the way that the spell in question only allowed the user to travel to a place containing traces of their mana.
So he could travel to a place he had already visited and used magic before.
…but he never visited either the Royal Arena or even the capital city… not that latter would be that much helpful without him knowing his way around…
So he had to get creative.
He closed his eyes and pushed forward his mana, spreading it thin so that it covered the largest area possible, just like Evander Vallhall mentioned while teaching him the spell during the last summer break… His purpose? Finding a small group of strong magicians with strong attunement to ice.
There was a tiny problem with that method, though, as with the lack of experience in using it, Rotsard couldn't really tell the distance… and picked up on a couple mana signatures matching the description.
It seemed this way got more difficult than the last time he tried it because, for some reason, he could cover far more ground than ever before… Anyhow…
The groups representing the Vallhall family wouldn't be too big, nor a handful, so many were rejected, shrinking the list to a choice between two.
One with a relatively matching intensity of mana signatures that appeared to be a bit closer, and one with one of the signatures being the strongest, and a couple of runner-ups that didn't really match up to it.
"..."
Rotsard furrowed his brows.
What pushed him to make the final decision ended up being mana signatures surrounding either of the groups. The one with relatively matching strength was close by a single strong mana signature, while the group with varying strength had dozens of powerful ones encircling them.
The latter matched how the arena seats would be... in Rotsad's mind at least…
Not to mention that since the life and death duels between nobility required an audience, or rather witnesses, other aristocratic houses would send in representatives of their own.
It would be simply too rude and also far overconfident on Rotsard's side to just assume all of the other weak mana signatures were the right choice.
"Passage."
Rotsard didn't even need to enter the meditation state to use the spell while basing its destination point on the position of the signatures farther away.
That method had many flaws, including not being able to accurately predict the position of the exit portal… Thanks to that, even though the portal with a bluish white outline cleared up properly, it ended up showing only the sky, meaning it was literally pointing straight up.
The weather was nice at least…
Mourning how awkward he would end up looking, jumping out of the gateway sideways of all things, the youth thought and simply entered the spell.
…
Rotsard knew he had made a mistake just by the temperature alone. The area where he found himself in was a frozen, snow-covered wilderness that received no warmth even from the direct sunlight coming down from the clear sky.
Indeed, Rotsard did not require any more hints…
*WHAM*
"GAUGH…!"
…therefore, the boulder flying right at him and intercepting him before he could even touch the ground was completely unnecessary…!
The low-flying boulders weren't a common meteorological occurrence in those parts, though.
It was an aimed attack, although truth be told, it wasn't something that was specifically prepared for Rotsard. It was just that the bleached-blond-haired youth showed up right in the middle of a skirmish between Snow Orks and gedwyld-polluted monsters.
The Snow Orks were blueish-skinned, towering ten-foot-tall humanoids with white hair. Precisely because of the color of their hair and the preferred colors of pelts and furs they made their clothes with, which was also white, the few humans who ever came in brief contact with that primitive race often mistook the Snow Orks for merely hairy and burly bipedal beasts.
Snow Orks boasted strength several-times that of humans and had their own magic system with unique attunements they themselves would claim to be life, death, wood, stone, and cold.
The ones where Rotsard showed up at, were in the middle of fighting off monsters attacking their settlement and were already pushed back right up to the defensive wall.
In fact, the boulder that Rotsard was swatted from the sky with was originally a part of the very wall.
As for the gdwyld-polluted monsters…
They were mutated boars with their bodies twisted and often conjoined with others by bone and certain growths protruding from their deformed flesh. Instead of hair growing out of their skin, their pores were secreting black oily smoke. In fact, the same smoke was coming out of every orifice and wound on their bodies, just as if those frenzied creatures were burning up from the inside.
The heat those monsters were generating was slowly melting through the snow and ice, weakening the Snow Orks immensely…
…at least it was before, because for some reason most of the gedwyld-polluted boars stopped smoking as if the fire within them went out, and many started becoming frosted over, and their bare, furless skin did not provide any protection from the overwhelming cold.