The trees thied as I moved forward, their twisted limbs arg over the path like skeletal fingers, blotting out the sun in uneven patches. Light dwindled, swallowed by the damp, ging fog that pooled between the gnarled roots and sank into the muck beh my heels.

  The further I walked, the more unnatural it felt.

  There was no wind. No rustling of leaves. Only the distant croak of unseeures and the occasional drip of moisture sliding from moss-covered branches.

  The air was thick, humid with the st of rot and stagnant water, ging to my skin like spilled whiskey.

  I slowed my pace, pg each step deliberately, testing the ground before itting. The skill felt amazing, and I found surety even in pces I hadn’t expected.

  But the bog was deceptive, shifting uably underfoot. More than once, my heel pressed into what seemed like solid ground, only for it to sink an inch deeper than expected, the mud swallowing greedily before relutly releasing me.

  So far, I’d tested my heels—and yeah, they were amazing. Not sinking into the mud like some tragic damsel in distress? Life-ging.

  up, my cape.

  I inhaled, reag for the thrumming pulse of mana that always sat just beh my skin. The moment I called to it, the magiswered eagerly, rushing into my veins, flooding my fiips. A fliy wrist, and an icicle formed—a sharp, deadly shard, baneatly in my palm.

  But it wasn’t just my magic.

  I could feel it—just a fra of the mana being siphoned away, drawn into the fabric draped over my shoulders. The cape drank it in, and then, like a tide returning to shore, it surged bato me, refined and amplified.

  .

  I filed that away for ter.

  [Diamond Reflex]? o test it more. It had already saved my ass once, and I wasn’t about to tempt fate.

  That left [Unyielding Poise]—a skill desigo resist interruption, a tool fhts against humanoids who actually had the brains to disrupt me mid-cast. Uhat… thing. That would be a problem for future Charlie.

  So that left…

  [Frost Weaving]

  The skill was strange—like the cold itself bent to my will. Less a spell, more of a… anything I wanted made from frozen water. Words didn’t quite do it justice. So I didn’t bother.

  Instead, I froze the water.

  The moment the surface crystallized, spreading outward in a delicate fractal bloom of jagged frost, the trees… moved.

  “Oh… That may have been a mistake…” I muttered.

  It was not a breeze, nor a shift in the envirohey moved. Branches creaked, the sound thid viscous, like something drenched in mosses being pried apart. Roots slithered beh the bog water, rippling the surface where my ice hadn’t yet reached.

  Then, with a siing glorp, something heaved itself upright.

  A treant, but wrong.

  Its gnarled wooden limbs weren’t just wood—they were saturated with the s, bog-wet bark dripping with gealed sludge. Pockets of murky liquid g to its form, trapped like blisters beh its surface, bursting and oozing thick, bck filth down its twisted frame with every shuddering step.

  Ugh, why e here?

  Its legs—if they could even be called that—were nothing but tangled roots, dragging through the mud, sloshing with eanatural movement. Where its eyes should have been, there was only hollow darkness, seeping with the same sickly muck that dribbled down its jagged, splintering jaw.

  And as it lurched toward me, it let out a sound. A wet, gurgling groan, like the s itself was breathing.

  [Quy Lay Lv.10]Type: 1-on | HP: 173/173

  I ched my fists, ice already f at my fiips.

  Alright the’s see what this [Frost Weaving] really do. System, let me know if somethin’ iing happens, otherwise no notices in front of my face.

  The creature lurched, its bog-drenched limbs dragging through the s with an agonizing slosh, but… wow. It was so slow. Not even reflex activated.

  Like, really slow.

  I arched a brow, sidestepping with medium effort, watg as it swung a dripping, root-clumped arm through the space where I had been standing seds ago. The attack whiffed so hard I almost felt bad for it. Almost.

  “Well,” I mused, rolling my shoulders, “this feels a little unfair.”

  Time to test the skill.

  With a fliy wrist, I shaped the mana, let it twist and coil, then solidify into a sharp, glistening icicle. I leveled it at my pathetically sluggish oppo, aimed for what looked like the ter mass, and fired.

  The shard shot forward with a crisp, biting whistle—a perfect textbook projectile, if I may say so—and the moment it smmed into the creature’s chest, it jerked.

  Not dramatically. Not with some epic, ear-splitting screech. Just… stumbled, as if I’d smacked it with a particurly aggressive snowball.

  I stared.

  It staggered back, sludge sloughing from its frame in slow, thick globs.

  I blinked.

  Was that it?

  I had braced for a fight—some grotesque, nightmarish struggle against a mire-drenched horror, but this athetic. This thing was worse than the wolves—in every stupid muddy way.

  A slow, mischievous grin curled at my lips. I might have just found the perfect training dummy. I reached for my mana again, this time with ation, and instead of a , moderate-sized icicle, I doubled the mass.

  No, tripled it.

  The air chilled in response, frost creeping up my fiips as the massive shard of ice took shape—sharp, uneven, and absolutely unfair.

  “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

  I u. The projectile smmed into the creature, embedding deep into its chest, and for a breathless sed, it was still.

  Then—

  The mud, the water, the pulpy, sludge-den roots that held its ed body together—they just… froze. The moisture in its form solidified instantly, log it into pce, trapping it in an unfiving embrace of ice.

  And then—

  CRACK.

  A splintering rupture ran up its twisted frame, fracturing its body from the i. Its hollow sockets seemed to widen in shock, as if the poor, oozing creature realized too te what had just happened.

  Then, it just… shattered.

  ks of frozen mud, bark, and whatever the hell else it was made of rained down, hitting the s floor with hollow, brittle thuds.

  I stood there, stunned for a moment, and then—

  I giggled. Then I ughed. A full-bodied, eted giggle, eg through the bog as I clutched my stoma sheer delight. “Oh, this is amazing.”

  I perfectly tered these things. Perfectly.

  This wasn’t just a fight, no, it was target practice. This dungeon would not be hard at all. It was going to be fun. NightSwallow was right.

  The s ed. What had once been a quiet, eerie bog now roared to life, trees groaning and twisting as tless figures peeled themselves from the murk.

  Not just one. Not ten. A whole damn forest. “Oh, oopsie,” I murmured, but the grin stretg my lips was anything but apologetic.

  The Quy Lays were crawling from the depths, their moss-coated limbs sloshing, gurgling, and oozing with thick, tar-like mud, their branch-like fiwisting and snapping as they lumbered closer. Their mold-ridden bodies shuddered, as if shaking off the cold bite of their fallen rade.

  Then—

  WHOOSH.

  A thick branapped through the air like a ballista bolt, hurtling straight at my face.

  Instinct took over. I pushed mana into my shield; it flickered ience, angling it just right, defleg the attack at the st moment. The branch veered off, spinning wildly into the trees, smming into one of the slower Quy Lays with a siing crack.

  “Oh, so that’s your rick?” I huffed, shaking my arm as the force of the hit buzzed through my bones. “Great. Love that for me.”

  The ground shuddered, thick mud bubbling and shifting, trying to suck me in with each step. I had no time to pin, no time to overthink—only time to act. I reached for my magic, ice coiling around my fiips in response, an icicle spear f as I aimed at the closest moving mass of sludge and roots.

  “Quy Lays,” I called, stepping back as they closed in from all dires, my mana thrumming, my breathing steady. “I may not be a mighty warrior anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have skills.”

  With a twist of my wrist, I sent the icicle hurtling forward, spearing straight into the creature’s chest.

  The result was instant—

  Its twisted, knotted body froze on impact, ice spreading like a disease, log it in pd then, just like before, CRACK.

  It shattered. One down. WHOOSH.

  Another branch shot toward me, and I barely had time to shift—

  Damn, these things were getting faster.

  “Pretender!” The prince’s mog voice rang in my head. “Do you talk to yourself often?”

  I gritted my teeth, dug as another branch smmed into the mud where I had just stood. “Shut up, Prince! I liked you better when you were asleep.”

  “Too bad your mother woke me up!” His voice dripped with amusement, unbothered by the fact that I was currently being assaulted by an army of tree monsters. “Get ‘em, they stink.”

  I had no breath tue, no moment to throw back a snarky retort. Because they were everywhere. “Spirits ’t smell!”

  The ground shifted, spiring against me, mud gripping at my arying to root me down—but my heels wouldn’t let it. Instead of sinking, I glided, mana pushing just enough to keep me mobile, light, untouched.

  Another Quy Lay lunged, its mud-coated hands g toward me—I spun, mana twisting around me, and this time, I didn’t just throw an icicle.

  I crafted.

  The air crackled as I formed an arc of ice, a curved bde, razor-thin, a it whipping forward like a scythe of wiself. It sliced through three creatures at once, freezing their grotesque, sludgy forms, severing them in , snapping fractures. “Pretender. I see they stink,” said the annoying prince again as they…

  SHATTER.

  SHATTER.

  SHATTER.

  The pieces of ice-bound bodies colpsed into the s, swallowed instantly by the mud water. But there were still more. They didn’t stop. More branches unched, more mud ed, the very s itself trying to pull me under—

  But I wasn’t some helpless traveler, I wasn’t prey. I had my legendary skill, and it wasn’t just for show. With a sharp breath, I smmed my hands together, mana coiliween my palms, ahe power surge outward. The grouh my feet froze solid, ice rag across the bog, log everything in pce, roots, mud, water—everything.

  The Quy Lays that had been lurking, waiting, creeping closer—they froze too.

  I didn’t eveate. I raised a foot, then smmed my heel down. And the ice fractured outward, sending a shockwave through the frozen s, rupturing every enemy within range.

  They cracked. Then splintered and then fell apart, nothing more than fragments of id sludge, lifeless and broken.

  And finally—

  Silence.

  Just the whisper of wind through the trees, the distant drip of melting ice, the distant croak of a frog. I exhaled, almost out of mana.

  Then I griossing my hair over my shoulder as I surveyed the absolute age. The s still hissed with melting ice, the remnants of my magic slowly dissipating into the humid air. The st of earthy decay, frozen mud, and raw mana lingered around me, mixing with the fading echoes of my battle.

  I let out a breathless ugh, adrenaliill pulsing through my veins.

  “Did you see that, you annoying royal archmage?” I threw my arms wide, grinning like a fool as I perched on a half-submerged boulder, its surface slick with algae and frost. “I’m also a legend now!”

  The prince scoffed, his voice curling in my mind with a mixture of disdain and grudging amusement. “That was nothing. Just borrowed power.”

  I rolled my eyes, resting an elbow on my knee as I surveyed the icy devastation I had left behind. “Oh, shut up. Let me enjoy the moment, will you?”

  But then his tone shifted. Cold. Serious. A weight I wasn’t prepared for. “But I have news for you, princess.”

  A shiver crawled down my spine. My breath hitched, and an odd, unfamiliar weight settled in my chest. He never called me that. Never. Dread curled like a slow-moving shadow, creeping up the edges of my mind.

  “What… what is it?” My voice was steadier than I felt. The s around me felt quieter, as if the world itself held its breath. The prince’s response was slow, deliberate, ominous.

  “As I told you, Irwen is making her move.” The temperature—already warm from the bog’s natural humidity—felt stifling. The air, thid heavy, g to my skin. “She’s enag a ritual,” he tinued, his voice heavy with something I couldn’t quite pce. Urgency? Frustration? “It will damage the spell matrices.”

  I stiffened, gripping the edge of the boulder, my nails digging into the slick stohat wasn’t just bad. As everyone was tellihat was very bad, kind of bad.

  My stomach dropped.

  “So,” the prince pressed, his tone sharpening, “use me now, or never.”