章 32: Trial of Ice
After Ragna told Caspian his mind, he turned around and walked towards the staircase, pulling Layla and Celeste with him.
Before they went up, he turned around again, watching Caspian who was still on the ground.
"You can either shut your mouth and follow us, or leave us alone and rot in this hell. But I won't keep up with whatever you are trying to proof here."
With that, he and the others left, leaving Caspian in the dust.
***
"Hey Ragn-"
"I don't want to hear it. Let's just move on a get onto higher floors."
Layla and Celeste exchanged glances. They knew that Ragna was angered and that his emotions were flaring, but to be honest, they didn't really care.
While walking a few meters behind Ragna and Cera, Celeste and Layla just talked, whispering quietly.
"I think we should leave him be for a while. He doesn't seem like he wants to talk right now anyways.", said Layla.
"Yeah, I think so too. Seems like Caspian really crossed a line with him. But he was annoying, to be honest, trying to act like he was worth anything. We'll probably do better without him anyways."
"I guess so. I just hope he doesn't try anything stupid like trying to take revenge. He seemed pretty angry at Ragna and, for some reason, many people from Clans are always arrogant, thinking they are better than others."
***
As they fully ascended the stairs, they found themselves in a dimly lighted corridor. The air was thick and heavy, making it hard to breathe.
Ragna paused, scanning the area, before turning back to the small cohort.
"We should stay close. We don't know whatever is waiting for us in this floor.", he muttered.
Layla nodded, her eyes scanning the shadows.
"We'll be fine. We've handled the last floor and will do the same with every comming one."
Celeste remained silent, her thoughts on the way ahead. Despite hero nonchalant attitude before, there was a certain amount of tension in her posture, showing that she wasn't as calm as she appeared.
As they walked through the corridor, it suddenly splitted into two, one way leading left, one way leading right.
They stopped right before the way split into two.
"Uhm .. sooo, what do we do ?"
"... We should definitely not split up. But I'm not sure which way we should go."
Suddenly, Blue strings appeared for Ragna, wanting to lead him left, but at the same time, the guiding star of Celeste, told her to go right.
"We should go left."
"We should go right."
Tension hung thick in the air as their statements clashed. Layla shifted uncomfortably, her eyes darting between her two friends.
"Please let's not do this. Another Argument can't break out."
Ragna sighed before walking to the right way.
"Maybe it isn't about which way is right or wrong. That would also answer why we were told different paths. So let's just go your way, but if something feels off, we go back."
Celeste gave a slow nod and Layla exhaled in relief.
They proceeded cautiously, moving down the right path. The further they walked, the narrower the corridors became. After a few minutes, they noticed faint markings on the stone walls.
"This doesn't feel right..", muttered Ragna while slowly reaching for his Sword.
But before anyone could respond, the corridor opened into a vast chamber. The air got even colder, even affecting their superhuman bodies.
And then, shards of ice were thrown at all of them. Layla dodged while Ragna parried all of them. Celeste had it the easiest since she could just push them down with gravity when they approached her.
This had continued for a while, just more and more shard of Ice being thrown at them, and slowly, they grew larger and larger.
It wasn't possible to dodge them anymore and Celeste gravity also didn't work much on them, and because of that, all of them needed to use their weapons to slice them in half.
Ragna gritted his teeth, as another huge chunk of ice came flying down on him. His sword flashed through the cold air, slicing the ice in half, and making it fly to his sides.
The ice did not disappear after they sliced it, meaning that the room was slowly filling up. That meant that their small cohort was slowly getting pushed to the middle, having less room to move.
And then worst part was, that he didn't know where Cera was, nor could he reach her with their bond.
"These things aren't stopping !", shouted Celeste.
"There's probably a way for us to disable them."
'God, why can't my attribute help me in situations like this.'
Suddenly, for a reason Ragna couldn't think about, he saw how Layla was pushed, making her fall down while a shard of ICE was flying down at her.
'Shit, this is bad.', thought Ragna while the coldness made him shudder. This was even worse than how cold the deserts were at Night.
Layla thankfully rolled away just in time to not die. Her arm seemed to have been crushed tho. She quickly sliced a big chunk of ice away and pulled her arm back.
Ragna hastily looked around, trying to find the source of whatever was throwing the ice at them.
For some reason, he just decided to look directly over him, where he then saw a perfect ball made out of ice. It shone with dim blue light every time Ice appeared and was thrown at them.
"Celeste it's over us !", he yelled.
Celeste looked up and saw the same round ice ball. It was like a dozen meters above them, meaning that only Celeste could reach it.
She lowered the gravity around her to a drastic level and jumped up, slowly floating towards the ball.
But another chunk of Ice had approached her, and since she was in the air, she couldn't really build momentum to destroy it.
Thankfully, Ragna had already anticipated that, and threw his sword into the air with all his power, crushing the big chunk of Ice.
But now, he didn't have a weapon to protect himself, so he augmented his fists and just crushed them with punches, which did hurt a bit.
But after a few seconds, every chunk of Ice melted inside of the room, as Celeste had crushed the origin of the where the Ice came from.
Ragna and Layla dropped to the ground, their breath heavy, as Celeste slowly floated down.
And then, he had heard the voice of Cera again, as she came out of a pool of blood from the ground.
(Sorry that I went back into your sea of soul. I just couldn't be bothered with the ice, haha.)
(You could've helped, you know ! Now my fists hurt.)
As the coldness slowly disappeared, their lungs also felt a little bit better now.
Ragna let out a sigh of exhaustion and frustration. His fists hurt, while Layla's arm seemed to be broken. Caspian's annoying face was also still on his mind. And they were only on the second Floor right now. Ragna had guessed that there were maybe like two hundred from how big the Tower was, so they still had a huge way to go.
"That was close.", Layla muttered, while wincing at the pain in her arm.
"Does it hurt much ?"
"Yeah, but I've been through worse. It's not that bad."
As Celeste finally landed on the ground she giggled slightly.
"Maybe we shouldn't have chosen the right way."
"I doubt it. The Left way would've probably been something similar. Maybe the Ice would've been fire or something."
Since they had beat and conquered this Floor, the Staircase to the next Floor had appeared.
The small cohort rested for a while, before standing up and moving up the stairs.
And on the Floor, that just consisted of one big Room, they saw a Creature even worse than the one on Floor one.
——-Author's Notes——-
Words: 1329
Sorry for slightly shorter Chapter but I genuinely struggled writing this Chapter since I was way to distracted.
I still hope y'all enjoyed it tho.
✌️
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット