Another World Reincarnation Chronicle

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Cold chill freezes everything around it. Those who step into this place, the frigid realm, have had their time stolen. The appearance of humans buried in snow and the frozen corpses of horses retain the moment of their deaths.

The corpses remain intact. The fact that even monsters wouldn’t touch them is evidence that something absolute resided nearby.

Whooo-!

The fierce wind carries a pure white snowstorm, crashing against the giant ice wall. As the cold chill claws at the ice wall, it creates a strange shudder.

I’ve arrived at a massive ice cave that seems unlikely to have formed naturally. It was wide open on all sides, every surface smooth.

The faint chill wandering through the cave hints at the presence of a giant creature. I reached out to touch the massive ice, pondering that it must have been here.

Everywhere on the ice wall were sharp claw marks. These must have been left behind as the colossal body moved.

The faint chill paints the afterimage of the giant creature. Long wings and sturdy legs. A head that must have looked down upon the world from great heights.

Where could that massive body have gone? I came to seek Kashpa’s treasure, but witnessing these traces firsthand inevitably sparked my curiosity about Kashpa’s whereabouts.

I moved deeper into the ice cave. The frozen passage continued endlessly.

Downward, further down.

As the sound of wind from above began to fade and there was no longer any light to illuminate my surroundings, I arrived at a vast cavern.

In the transformed body, even in the darkness with no light, I could comprehend the layout of this expansive chamber. The corners of the round cavern were deeply concave, evidence that a heavy body had rested there for ages.

The sound of the nightmare’s hooves and my faint breathing echoed like a reverberation. Just as the sound of it hitting the blue wall quieted, I caught sight of countless soldiers rushing towards me from beyond the ice.

I wasn’t surprised to face thousands of soldiers because I felt no vitality from them.

It was as if time had frozen; the countless soldiers existed just as they had been, in a posture of charging and drawing their swords against an enemy.

They likely did not even realize their own death. I approached the giant ice wall, leading the nightmare.

As I moved and turned my gaze, another group of humans filled my view. They too bore shining armor and held their swords high.

It felt like the intensity of the moment was being transmitted directly. Each expression of the many people carried the time of those moments. The fluttering flags soared high, but in the blue frozen ice, they could not reveal their majesty.

The soldiers I first encountered had different armor designs. The flags raised here and there also bore different patterns.

I realized that they were people who lived in different timelines. And it wasn’t just them. All around the icy walls of this cavern, countless people were frozen as if they were mere decorations.

“This is…”

It was a phenomenon that could never occur naturally. To see those who had lived in different eras running side by side in the frozen ice.

It felt as if I were peering into an abyss that should not be seen. The sudden wave of nausea overtook me just as I covered my mouth.

“What do you think?”

A sudden voice flew in. It sounded like a friend asking for an opinion on their outfit, seeking feedback.

The boy seemed to exist as if he had been there all along. Sitting on a large piece of ice, he looked like a painting.

His long hair swayed despite the absence of wind, and the blue robe he wore did the same.

The boy’s light movements caused the surrounding mana to respond naturally. He likely had no intention of doing so; everything around him moved in accordance with him, as if it were meant to be.

“Isn’t it cool?”

The boy spread his arms and asked me. The cold chill met the wind, spreading throughout the entire cavern.

Ploosh-

The nightmare curled its tail and stepped back. It realized that the figure before me was no ordinary boy.

There was no presence. The warmth one should feel from a person was absent from that boy. A profound emptiness was conveyed through our locked eyes.

My instincts told me there was an existence before me that transcended understanding.

“That’s amazing…”

I barely managed to open my mouth and produce the answer he was waiting for. The boy then smiled brightly, like a pure child who had received praise for the first time.

“Thank you. This is my first time showing it to someone.”

The boy stood up and began to rummage through old tables and chairs in the corner of the cavern. These items bore frost in various places.

“Want to come sit?”

Refusal was not an option. I obediently moved to take my seat at his invitation. The nightmare that followed me seemed to blow out a puff of air, but the boy paid it no mind.

“By the way, I thought you might be of my kind, but you’re too weak. You feel both close and far away.”

The boy spoke, his empty eyes shining. His frosty gaze seemed ready to pierce through all of me.

“Could you be carrying dragon mana in a human body?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. The boy smiled as if disappointed and continued speaking.

“I wish you had come a bit sooner. Why did a child like you arrive when the main body went below?”

He was not speaking to me but rather muttering to himself. I cautiously opened my mouth, sensing the boy’s mood.

“Um… excuse me, are you Kashpa?”

The boy shook his head and replied to my question.

“Did I look like him? Unfortunately, I am not him.”

“Then…?”

“A fragment of his lingering thoughts in the mana. Just a small piece that has separated from him.”

“Then where did the real Kashpa go?”

The boy pointed at the ground beneath him. It wasn’t just the blue ice he was indicating. As I looked at him, hoping for a more detailed explanation, he began to speak slowly.

“Below the world.”

“Below the world…? You mean below those clouds…?”

“Yes.”

I stood there dumbfounded, my mouth agape. The story that had been lingering beyond this world flowed from the boy’s mouth. Perhaps I would learn another secret of this world that I did not yet know.

I wiggled in my seat and said to the boy.

“What, um, what is there beyond that? And why did Kashpa go down there?”

I wanted to know what lay at the end of the earth, beyond the cut-off edge. I wanted to capture another world spread below the white clouds with my own eyes. If that were impossible, a vague description would suffice.

For now, I simply wanted to know about a new world.

“Ah, calm down. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any stories.”

“Yes…?”

“I told you. I’m just a thought of Kashpa. The memories I hold are just very small fragments.”

“Ah…”

The boy’s answer drained the slight expectation I had held.

As I felt regret, the boy waved his hand in the air. With that light motion, the surrounding mana stirred as if agitated, and something flat, frozen in blue from the corner, began to slowly float over.

The chilly thing that scattered icy coldness was a shining scale.

“This is…”

“The scale left behind by the main body.”

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“Weren’t you searching for treasures? It seems most of the other adventurers who found this snowy mountain came for that purpose.”

I took the large scale and asked the boy.

“Is it really okay to just hand it over like this?”

“I just felt like it; looking at you reminds me of the children of my kind.”

“Ah, um…”

“What about a thank you?”

“Th-thank you…”

The boy smiled brightly at me as I held the large scale. A few more short exchanges followed, but the boy didn’t have many answers to give.

“I think I should be going soon.”

“Going?”

“I’m off to do what I need to do.”

The boy continued speaking as he looked around.

“Kashpa always wanted new decorations. So I decided to make some.”

“New decorations…?”

“You’ll probably guess what I mean.”

The moment the boy’s answer finished, a pure white wind began to blow. As the icy wind carrying snow swept through the cavern, the boy sitting before me vanished without a trace.

“Wow…”

A light sigh escaped me. My body relaxed as cold sweat trickled down my back.

The nightmare, which had been standing guard beside me, also slumped down, exhausted.

That figure wasn’t the main body?

Just a lingering thought left in the mana?

I swallowed hard and hugged the blue scale.

*

Leonis began to climb the mountain, pushing through the rough snow. The cold chill assaulted him, yet he resisted it fiercely with the mana surrounding his body.

Crunch-

“Haah…”

The white breath that flowed out dispersed quickly. Mixed in with the stream of adventurers around him, he couldn’t observe his surroundings closely.

Thus, Leonis deviated from the adventurers’ line and began to move independently. A few adventurers who witnessed his movement followed him like leeches, but only Leonis could navigate freely through the cold snowstorm.

Just as those trailing adventurers began to bury themselves in the snow.

Leonis suddenly looked up at the sky and frowned. The light disappeared. Everyone knew that the sun quickly set in the mountains, but this phenomenon could not have occurred naturally.

Someone was blocking the sky.

“Hah…!”

Leonis let out a laugh at the absurd conclusion he himself had drawn. Who on earth could block such a vast sky?

It was at that moment he was moving forward with that thought.

Leonis discovered two shining eyes gleaming in the blackened sky. That blue light held an arrogance that looked down upon all life on the ground.

And at that moment, a soundless death began to approach. The blue mana, visualized in the air, came undulating on the winds.

Szzzt-!

The chilling air froze even the momentum. It felt as if time itself stopped in that space touched by the blue mana.

“This is…!”

Leonis ran. Through the senses of a wizard, he read the flow of mana and sprinted with all his might to a place where the blue mana would not reach.

He could feel his breath rising to his throat, as if his heart would burst, but Leonis could not afford to stop. The soundless blue death was right behind him.

Szzzt-!

The air froze. The moment his fluttering cloak touched the blue mana, both the cloak and that piece of space came to a halt.

Leonis desperately tore at his cloak and threw himself forward. He rolled in the white snow, dropping his belongings in a frenzy, yet he had no time to think of retrieving them.

“Hah… Hah…”

All he could think about was survival. He kept running to escape the blue death that had swept through this snowy mountain.

How long had he been running?

Suddenly, Leonis realized that the movement of the cold chill creeping up behind him had ceased.

“Haah…”

Gasping heavily, he leaned against a frozen tree and looked down at the world, now frozen blue.

Beyond the snow-covered mountains, he caught sight of the movement of a giant shadow.

The massive wings spreading left and right covered the sky, and the long neck pierced through the clouds.

Leonis instinctively understood. What had vaguely emerged beyond the snowstorm was indeed a dragon, a creature spoken of only in legends.