“You’re saying she’s in this castle?”
“Yes,” Isabella nodded in affirmation. “This place was once a glittering mausoleum, later remodeled into a prison for the most dangerous inmates.”
Xuefei scanned their surroundings, but she couldn’t sense the prison’s “entrance” anywhere. Only by probing with her magic could she detect faint clues woven into the very air—but unraveling them would be like searching for a single blue thread in a ball of pink fluff. It would take her at least the entire afternoon.
Isabella snapped her fingers. The arched breach in the wall behind them, which Xuefei had shattered earlier, gradually mended itself.
She hadn’t wanted to reveal her magical abilities just yet, but circumstances had left her no choice.
“Sister Xuefei, just wait a moment. I’ll have the door open in no time.”
She closed her eyes and spread her arms wide, attuning herself to the magic in the air. Suddenly, a blue-green glow enveloped her body, and her slightly wavy long hair billowed in an unfelt wind.
Her gray overcoat vanished without a trace, leaving her in a light, thin dress that accentuated her slender, youthful figure.
Boom!
The entire space shuddered violently. A thunderous rumble like an earthquake filled the air as the steel-hard ice floor cracked and shattered, peeling away in chunks. Vast floral patterns bloomed across the walls.
Isabella clapped her hands, admiring her handiwork with satisfaction.
“This is it! But opening this door is pretty tricky, you know~”
She pointed to the five petals of the enormous flower.
“You have to channel your magic into each of the five petals separately—no fluctuations allowed. Then, use your magic to guide the little balls beneath each petal through their ‘mazes.’ The mazes shift constantly, so it’s pretty challenging. Do that, and the door will open!”
Xuefei’s face was a mask of confusion, full of question marks.
This was the first time she’d seen such an absurd design. One might even call it… uniquely bizarre?
The lock wasn’t a key at all, but this convoluted nonsense?
Unlike the baffled Xuefei, Isabella explained the ingenuity of it all with sparkling enthusiasm.
“Sister Xuefei, even the most perfect lock can be picked. But what if a door has no lock at all? That’s the ultimate, flawless ‘lock’!”
“…”
Xuefei had to admit that if Isabella hadn’t looked so eager, she would have kicked the door down on the spot. Out of respect for the girl’s sincerity, she simply nodded and waited in silence.
How was Isabella going to manage it?
Simultaneously wielding five streams of magic to navigate the internal mechanisms’ balls through their mazes tested both skill and raw magical prowess. If the mazes were as labyrinthine as they seemed, it was a feat few could accomplish.
“Isabella, you’re at the sixth layer of the Soul Tier, right?”
The Elf Queen smiled.
“Sister Xuefei, that doesn’t mean everything.”
With that, the magic activated.
The floral patterns on the stone wall lit up with golden light. Intricate, ant-hill-like three-dimensional mazes—twisting and ruleless—projected onto the petals, every detail visible: the ever-shifting pits, the balls teetering on the edge of wrong turns.
Xuefei stared in astonishment.
If this were a game world, this “puzzle” would be the kind to frustrate her for months, maybe even drive her to punch her computer in rage.
Yet there those glowing little balls swam through the mazes like fish in water, every movement precise, heading straight for the exits. Even more astonishing, Isabella had her eyes wide open, gazing at Xuefei with a smug, triumphant look.
She made it seem effortless.
“Genius… or freak?”
In mere moments, Isabella dismantled a puzzle that would have stumped Xuefei for hours, juggling it like a child’s toy blocks. Finally, all five balls emerged from their mazes, rolling out of the petals and settling into the flower’s central hub.
The petals, along with the stone slabs bearing them, slid aside. In the spot where the flower’s core had been, a narrow passage appeared.
That was obviously their way in.
“Sister Xuefei, if you don’t praise me, I’m going to cry right here on the spot, you know?”
“That was truly impressive. Your intellect might just be at the pinnacle of the continent.”
Xuefei gave the delighted little elf a gentle smile, then spread her wings and took to the air. Noticing no movement behind her, she glanced back.
“Aren’t you coming, Isabella?”
“I’ll pass~”
The elf replied. She removed her hat and gave Xuefei a slight bow.
“That place completely isolates all magic power. I’ll stand watch outside.”
“Is that so? Then I’ll have to trouble you. Thank you…”
“No trouble at all~”
A sinister chill emanated from the cave mouth, its depths vanishing into shadow at a glance. But Xuefei could already sense faint traces of magic power—identical to the energy carried in the letter from War God Dolores.
Had Isabella truly not deceived her?
Xuefei gave the little elf a deep look, stunned by her sacrifice, stunned by the fact that she had made it without any apparent reason.
“Don’t worry, Sister Xue. Trust me. The ones who truly have nothing—who truly need help—are us…”
She gave a bitter smile, even as her expression began to crumble:
“Please save us. The elves have no path left to take. Our fates are all equally tragic.”
Watching Xuefei’s figure gradually recede into the distance, Isabella let out a natural sigh of relief and collapsed onto the ground, sliding across the ice.
She reached up and covered her emerald eyes with one hand, then parted her fingers and peered through the gaps at the brilliant azure snowflakes glittering on the ceiling.
There was not a trace of a smile on Isabella’s face.
“It looks like I’m nearing the end too, huh?”
“Nina… you have to keep living, no matter what…”
~~~
Xuefei stepped through the narrow door, no wider than a keyhole, her heart a tumult of emotions.
It was the first time she had ever found a castle inside a cave—and then discovered an even smaller cave within that castle.
The passage was barely wide enough for two carriages to pass side by side. It was nothing like the grand Ice Palace they had left behind.
Starlike flecks of fluorescent light dotted the walls, guiding her forward.
The rhythmic echo of her footsteps mingled with the occasional scrape of her dragon tail against the frigid stone, until she reached the end.
A prison cell, just as Isabella had described…
She halted and reached out to touch the iron bars, her heart growing as cold as the metal beneath her fingers.
“Is that you?”
A soft voice rose from the darkness.
Xuefei heard the sound of a petite figure rising to her feet.
She wore a threadbare apron, little more than a pauper’s rag, tied symbolically at the waist with a limp bow. Her bare feet pressed against the icy floor, and from the side, her legs were visible in full—slender and gracefully long, with just a hint of soft flesh. Her chest rose like towering mountains, her figure the very ideal that every woman dreamed of attaining. Even clad in such shabby attire, she was perfection undiminished.
Several obvious scars marred her body. The exhaustion etched into her face was indelible, branded like scars into her weary eyes—deep pools that held no spark of light. Simply looking into them was enough to twist the heart like a knife.
These were the eyes of one who had endured despair countless times.
“Dolores… was it you who wrote that letter? No—I should be asking who the letter was really meant for.”
Perhaps it was the weight of endless exhaustion, but as she watched Xuefei’s pale hand trail over the cold bars, a flicker of light sparked in the girl’s eyes:
“Demon God… King… my lord?”
“?”
