Ice Troll

Aiden was staring out of the window. Although it's called a window, it was just a screen that showed everything that was going on outside of it.

"Oh! I've never seen so much ice before." Jian exclaimed beside him. "They trained us in the mountains. It was cold, but there was never so much snow. It's got to be too cold outside."

Aiden nodded and continued to look outside. Even if he had no intention of talking to him, he had already been informed that Jian was a trainee at Mountain Base 02 before being sent to Exo-04.

"So from which base are you coming?"

Jian's persistent pestering forced Aiden to open his mouth again. "Desert base 03," he said.

"Oh!" Jian took another look at Aiden, asking, "Are you one of those?" observing the confused look on Aiden's face, he explained, "those who are a fan of the Earth Exploration Team."

Aiden frowned, did not reply, and turned to look outside again. Yet it wasn't enough to dissuade Jain's enthusiasm.

"Come on, don't be so shy. Many of my friends have also applied for it. After all, they were the strongest, and it's not bad that you like them. It's not shameful if you idolized them. I like Levi, too."

'Yeah! Levi.' Aiden muttered in his heart. Thinking about all the things that had happened to him a few months ago, he felt it was a dream.

'No, it was more like a nightmare,' he corrected himself. Time passed as his mind continued to wander. Thinking about the past, his mood soured.

But looking at the never-ending sea of snow, his heart was calm. The red giant star covered half of the sky, making the sky blood red. Yet its high temperatures have failed to penetrate the icy atmosphere.

'It's better. At least the sky is bright.' Looking at the human chatterbox, Jian, who fell asleep, Aiden sighed in his heart. 'At least I'm not left alone to survive. And...'

*Boom*

The whole transporter shook and rolled across the ground. All this time Aiden was looking out of the window. However, he had failed to notice a snow dune was rushing towards the transporter.

He had noticed it when it was only ten meters away from the transporter, and it was already too late.

The transporter rolled over the ground as everything inside was turned upside down. When the rolling stopped, the transporter landed with its roof touching the snow.

Aiden was one of the few who had survived relatively unscathed. Jian wasn't the only one who was sleeping in the ride, and the effects of the attacks on these unsuspecting ones were devastating. And the next thing he noticed was the thick scent of blood and the cries of pain.

*Boom*

Before everyone could understand what had happened, another attack rocked the transporter. Although it didn't roll over, the quake was too much for those already injured men. One unfortunate soldier slammed his head on the side after he failed to control his weight due to a second hit.

'I need to get out of this before anything else.' Aiden was quick to move through the upside-down transporter, but he wasn't the only one.

"All those who can move, get out of here." The man who spoke was close to the gate. As soon as he opened the door and *Boom*. A giant shard of ice, that was as thick as Aiden's waist, pierced the thick armour of the transporter from the side.

It didn't hurt anyone, but the one-meter tall ice shard made them understand that whatever it is, it wasn't something to trifle with.

Aiden didn't dare to waste any more moments. A thin line of ice appeared as Aiden reappeared in front of the door. In the chaos, none of them realized that Aiden was using [Blink], but the person who opened the gate stopped Aiden.

"It's not good to get outside alone, wait for others to recover. This monster isn't something you can fight alone." Aiden gently shook off the hand of his shoulder as he looked at the man.

He wasn't young. He looked like a man in the mid-twenties. Aiden had no intention of explaining that he was going out to fight. He said, "I will distract it. You take care of them."

"Huh!" The man was too shocked to react but soon burst out, "are you kidding me? This is not something you can fight alone."

"If you holed up here, you will die either way." Aiden's words caught him out off-guard. He had realized that Aiden was telling the truth, but the monster…

"But I think…" he couldn't complete his sentence as the person he was talking to had vanished.

Aiden, on the other hand, stood on the snow, staring at the giant holding a sharp one-metre-long shard of ice.

Although it was a humanoid monster, the shape of its body was strange. With its overgrown shoulder, it had extra-long hands with a short pair of legs in comparison. The only thing similar to humans was the size of its head.

Even that looked odd as it hung from the overgrown shoulder, with a pair of overgrown lower canines and extra-long ears. With its hand and groin wrapped in hides, the three meters tall monster looked ferocious.

In front of it, Aiden looked tiny. But Aiden was accustomed to this feeling. More than anything, he was excited. He was itching to test his newfound strength and his new mana, but…

Aiden noticed from the side of his vision that the man who tried to stop him from coming out also followed him.

'It's not the right place' Aiden mumbled in his mind as he charged at the monster.

"Ghhhhhaaa" Being challenged by a puny creature didn't make it happy. It used its empty hand to strike Aiden, but it hit nothing but air.

Aiden vanished from its vision in a blink and reappeared at the side of the beast. Those blurry eyes of the monster followed him, but before it could understand what Aiden's fist slammed on the side of its rough stomach and…

"Gaaahhhhh" The beast cried its pain. By instinct, it swung its giant shard of ice.

'I just wanted to get it a little angry…' Aiden, too, was surprised when he realized that his all-out punch had penetrated the fat-covered stomach.

'Is it too weak, or I am too strong?' However, Aiden didn't get the chance to contemplate on the matter before he had to move out of the way of the giant shard.

As he retracted his hand from the wound of the beast, a thick layer of ice froze his wound. But Aiden was too indulged in his newfound strength to notice the change.

'It's too easy.' Aiden mumbled as he reappeared behind the monster and kicked the back of its knee. The result was inevitable, and it went down.

'It looks similar to the picture of the beast that the giant monster that carried the stone pillar…'

'Huh! Those might be third circle ice trolls, and those ice dwarves might have trained them.' Mraz explained in his mind, 'and it is just a single circle ice troll. On top of that, it hasn't even evolved.'

'Evolve? They can evolve too?' Aiden was not sure about what kind of evolution Mraz was talking about. That's what Mraz explained to him.

'Every time one fully comprehends the mana circle, the obelisk inside the mana space evolves. For some beast, it affects their body. Otherwise, how do you think this hideous thing has turned into something like that?'

'Evolve?' Aiden looked at the monster who was staring at him with a pair of blurry eyes while groaning in pain. Thinking about the image of the robust monster Luke had shown him, he could help but wonder, 'Will I evolve into a monster too?'

'What are you waiting for?' Mraz broke his brief session of daydreaming. 'Just kill it and absorb the essence.'

Aiden sighed. He wanted to lead the beast away before killing it. But who knew it would be so weak? Now that he had already brought it down with two attacks, he had no intention to drag it on. He moved to the front of the monster and kicked its face.

However, before his kick could connect, Aiden's sense was screaming inside his head. 'Something is not right.' Aiden mumbled and *Bang*.

Aiden didn't hesitate to initiate [Zone] and [Blink] at the same time. Even if now-useless ESS didn't notify him, but with the amount of mana that was coursing through his body, Aiden had no problem in understanding that it was successful.

But the problem was that his agility was already over 100, and with [Zone] it was over 200. And Aiden wasn't accustomed to this kind of speed. He lost his balance and rolled across the snowy floor.

*Bang* Bang* Bang*

Yet the gunshots didn't stop. The owners of the guns continued to shower bullets on the beast until the snow beneath the beast turned deep blue with the blood and the heavy body slumped on the ground.