My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 1091: Chapter 1092: Monstrous Faldren Family

It was cold here.

It always had been.

The wind carved through the world like invisible blades, sharp enough to flay exposed skin raw, while snow descended endlessly from the heavens like drifting arrows loosed by some indifferent god.

The air was thin.

The world itself had vanished beneath an endless blanket of white.

To remain here too long beneath the howling winds meant death for most.

But most was not everyone.

There were those the winter chill could never touch.

Children born from this merciless mother who called the cold her embrace and demanded suffering as tribute for survival.

Winter was cold.

But snow was warm.

At least, that was how she remembered it.

Buried beneath layers of frost, she felt something dangerously close to comfort.

It was the only place where her battered and injured body had once stopped hurting.

This snow was home.

Perhaps this place was very much like her father.

She was used to it.

Because she was one of its children.

A lone figure moved through the endless expanse of deep snow without sinking even an inch into the frozen earth.

Dark armor encased her body completely.

It looked less forged and more grown.

Full plate armor made entirely of dark ice, fractured in strange smooth cracks patterns across its surface.

As if someone had taken a glacier and shattered it before reconstructing the pieces together.

Perhaps that was why it bore that name.

The Armor of Shattered Ice.

These mountains led home.

Her footsteps made no sound against the frost.

And even if they had, the screaming winds swallowed all noise before it could exist.

Her movements remained calm.

Steady.

Unshaken by the unstable terrain beneath her.

The snow here ran impossibly deep.

Perhaps that was why fairies had wings.

Feet were simply too inconvenient on lands like these.

She paused for a moment.

Why had she thought that?

It was an odd thought.

Perhaps returning home had stirred old memories.

Or perhaps because this was not truly a homecoming.

She was here on a mission.

This place merely happened to lie along her path.

Why else would she ever willingly return here?

She was here anyway, no better time than the present to settle things.

Here on these lands.

This continent that had never known summer.

The Frost Continent.

Norrath.

Why had the goddess created such a place?

Why had Matia been born here only to suffer beneath it?

Abused.

Hated.

Despised for no choice of her own.

If choice was real then the unknown God was either a liar or a cruel God.

Matia didn’t ask to be born a girl.

Though now, she was glad she had been.

Perhaps he was in fact right.

She remembered.

One among countless daughters born to a father incapable of loving any of them.

"Matlock... I have returned home."

Her quiet whisper disappeared into the raging wind as she stood atop a towering mountain overlooking the distant frozen city below.

She whispered her return to her brother.

Because in this entire frozen land, only one person had ever cared for her.

And he had been the first person she lost.

Standing there now, memories clawed their way back to the surface.

She had resented him once.

Resented how weak he was.

And sickly, her weak twin.

Resented the simple fact that he had been born male.

And yet...

Matia had loved him most.

A sharp cracking sound echoed through the storm.

Ice splintered behind her.

Then wings emerged from her back, crystalline and vast, forged entirely from frost and her brother’s love for her.

She raised one hand.

And let herself fall.

The mountain vanished beneath her as gravity seized her body and hurled her downward.

The wind screamed against her face.

She twisted through the winding mountain paths like a descending comet, her body cutting through the storm fast enough to trigger sonic booms that ruptured the silence.

DUM.

She crashed into the earth below.

Ice exploded outward in a violent crater.

Then she inhaled deeply.

The air here was thicker.

Warmer.

She had not needed to take the mountain path.

In truth there had never been a path.

Matia had simply indulged an old childish wish.

When she was younger she had always wanted to stand atop that mountain.

Because from below...

It had looked like freedom.

The mountain had no fears.

No burdens.

No suffering.

That had once been her definition of freedom.

She had been wrong.

Freedom was not given.

Freedom had to be seized through strength.

One had to face their shadows if they wished to control them.

When she began walking again, a narrow road of frost-covered grass stretched before her.

A carriage pulled by massive sled beasts passed by first.

Then another.

A small convoy making its way toward the city.

Matia did not step onto the road.

She walked alongside it instead.

Her dark hair drifted freely outside her helmet while the visor covering her face glowed faintly with the cold blue light of her eyes.

Eventually she reached the city gates.

Passing through was effortless.

No one stopped her.

She took her time wandering through the city streets, silently taking in the familiar architecture and culture of the homeland she had once hated.

Matia had never cared much for food.

Yet today she stopped several times.

Street vendors.

Small shops.

Local delicacies she had never been allowed to try growing up.

One by one she checked invisible boxes in her mind.

As though fulfilling a bucket list she had never realized she possessed.

The wind rose suddenly.

Snow drifted across the street.

And when it passed...

She was gone.

Just like that.

Vanished.

Far away, inside a throne room carved entirely from ancient ice, a man sat motionless upon a frozen throne.

His elbow rested against the armrest.

His chin leaned lazily against his knuckles.

The chamber remained silent.

Cold and still.

Everything here was ice.

Walls.

Pillars.

Floor.

Even the air itself felt frozen.

The man blinked once.

Then slowly inhaled.

And when he opened his eyes...

A female knight now stood before him.

Dark plated armor.

Cold blue visor.

Unmoving.

"I have come home, father."

Her voice remained calm.

Flat and Emotionless

The man’s gaze hardened.

"This is no longer your home."

His voice was colder than the ice surrounding them.

"And I am no longer your father."

"Ah..."

She tilted her head slightly.

"Did you have a new son?"

A brief pause later she chuckled

"I doubt that."

Mockery did not come naturally to Matia.

Speaking itself had once been difficult for her.

Yet her father had always been the exception.

A wound too deep to ignore.

If she could not speak...

She would learn words simply to belittle him.

If she was crippled...

She would walk simply so she could kick him.

If she was blind...

She would see only so she could look down on him.

And if she were dead...

She would crawl from the grave itself simply to spite him.

Her sword slid free from its sheath.

Cold steel sang through the throne room.

She raised the blade and pointed it directly at the man sitting before her.

Though did that word truly mean anything?

Father.

This man may have been the reason she was born.

But he had never been her father.

Only her tormentor.

"I believe there are some debts to be settled."

Her voice sharpened.

The man rose slowly from his throne.

The oppressive aura pouring from his body immediately grew so heavy the frozen floor beneath him cracked.

"I could not agree more."

The wind itself began drifting toward him unnaturally, gathering around his body in spiraling currents of freezing mana.

His eyes stared at her with pure contempt.

"You have reached the middle of the Sixth Class Advancement."

He took a step forward.

"And somehow that has given you the confidence to face me."

His lips curled.

"Laughable."

Matia understood the difference better than anyone.

Middle Sixth Class.

Then Late Sixth Class.

And beyond that...

The peak of the world.

The Seventh Class Advancement.

The gap between Sixth and Seventh was not a wall.

It was an abyss.

If she failed to break through into the Late Stage...

She would lose.

And she would die here.

But there was something worse than death.

She could not move forward while her past chained her down.

If she left here without facing him...

She would never break through.

She would never reach the Seventh Class.

And she would remain weak forever.

Useless.

She lowered her stance slightly.

Then the corner of her lips curved upward.

"Good."

Her sword angled forward.

"It means you get a handicap."

She tilted her head, blue eyes burning behind the visor.

"Would be a shame for such a big strong man to lose to a mere woman."

A brief pause after she added.

"One rank beneath him too."

It was strange.

For someone who disliked speaking...

Her father always made her talk far too much.

Silence followed.

Then suddenly...

Winter itself became colder.