Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 490: Snow And Ruin [III]

A shadowy blur fell, and in the very next second, Terry was gone long before the curved blade could cleave him in half.

Only an obsidian crown that had been perched on the dumpy boy’s head was left behind. It fell, clattering onto the ground before Casey.

But before she could even think about reaching for it, Casey saw Alexia dashing toward her. In her right hand was a menacing warhammer that she swung toward Casey’s ribs.

Breathing hard, Casey parried the incoming hammerhead with her blade. A shockwave was discharged when her sword hit the heavy iron face, throwing it aside.

With a sharp twist of her wrist, Casey then pivoted off her back foot, turning the parry into a smooth, circular sweeping slash aimed straight at Alexia’s exposed waist.

…But what she saw next made her gasp. “What—!?”

Alexia had used the recoil from the deflection to flick the hammer upward… then brought the heavy iron face down on Casey’s head.

At that point, Casey could only react on pure instinct, changing the trajectory of her swing to cross her blade above her skull in hopes of blocking the overhead strike.

CLANG—!!

Her sword held, but the heavy weight behind the impact felt like a mountain had fallen onto Casey’s shoulders.

Her knees buckled under the crushing blow, her legs shaking and her jaw trembling.

Pain shot through her already fractured ribs, making her vision flash white.

Pushed to her absolute limit, Casey activated her innate ability once again, absorbing as much of the hammer’s kinetic energy as her current condition allowed, before releasing it all at once in another outward shockwave.

The sudden burst of kinetic energy blasted the heavy hammerhead off her blade, throwing Alexia’s guard wide open.

Gritting her teeth, Casey began to push herself back up. There was an opening. If she could just drive her shashka forward right now, she could end this—

Swoosh—!

Before Casey could even fully straighten her back, the blind ginger rotated her entire torso.

Once again using the recoil from the hammerhead being thrown back, she smoothly swung the weapon around her body, channeling the momentum into a seamless side-sweep aimed directly at the side of Casey’s exposed waist.

‘Oh…’ was all Casey could think at that moment, her purple-tinted eyes widening in slowly dawning horror. ‘She’s… copying me?’

She was, indeed, copying her.

Right now, Alexia was utilizing the same fluid, momentum-based fighting style Casey had been using with her shashka— taking the non-stop, circular flow of a light cavalry sabre and adapting it on the fly to a massive warhammer.

The blind girl was learning and evolving mid-combat with a dead left arm.

‘What kind of monster—’

BOOM—!!

That was all Casey had time to realize before the hammerhead slammed square into her flank.

Casey desperately triggered her innate ability one more time, trying to cushion the impact, but this time it wasn’t as easy.

As soon as the warhammer made contact with her waist, the hammerhead detonated a high-pressure blast right against her ribs at point-blank range.

The sudden blast overwhelmed her kinetic dampening.

THWACK—!!

Casey was launched across the chamber like a broken ragdoll, her body cutting through the billows of lingering smoke before crashing hard into the far obsidian wall of the throne room.

THWAAAM—!

A web of deep cracks spider-webbed across the black stone behind her. A few sharp fragments of masonry bit into her arms and legs, drawing trickles of warm blood.

Then, gravity took over, and Casey slid down the wall, falling to the ground in a heaving, bloody heap.

I’ll be strong… I’ll be strong…

“You’re so annoying,” Alexia’s voice came floating from somewhere ahead. “You and your ratty little tricks.”

Her voice sounded so… high-pitched and cute, completely at odds with the terrifying violence she was capable of. It was a whiplash to hear her speak.

Though Casey couldn’t see her through the haze of drifting smoke and fresh blood dripping into her eyes, she could hear the thud of the blind girl’s boots drawing closer.

Alexia wasn’t unscathed either.

She breathed heavily, her face pale from severe blood loss from her busted shoulder, her ruined left arm hanging limp like a corpse’s appendage.

Yet, the warhammer resting on her good shoulder made her look as menacing as ever.

“What’s your name?” Alexia asked, approaching the blue-haired girl struggling on the ground.

Casey gulped, forcing her legs to move.

The first thing she did was activate her innate ability again, even though she knew her body wouldn’t allow another burst in its current state. The air started vibrating around her, the loose pebbles on the ground and the surrounding dust particles started vibrating too.

A metallic thrum resounded, coming from her. It made Alexia cautiously stop in her tracks a few meters away.

The next thing Casey did was choke out an answer. “Snowrite… I’m Casey Torr Snowrite.”

“Oh, northern nobility? I didn’t know you guys left those frozen plains you call home,” Alexia muttered, clearly very irritated. “I heard about you. You’re the girl who took down Reiner Tovak, didn’t you?”

Casey spat dark blood onto the floor next to her and finally dragged herself up. Her vision, fixed on the ground, still swam a little. Everything was in pain and everything was cold. She couldn’t even feel half of her left side.

Yet… a clear voice kept echoing in her ears:

I’ll be strong… I’ll be strong…

Alexia sighed. “Just stay down, Snowrite. I would’ve appreciated your reliance on any other day. But today I’m in a bad mood myself,” she shrugged with one shoulder. “I mean, what even was your plan coming here? Did you think just because I’m injured and can’t operate at my full capacity that you’ll win? You’re strong, I’ll give you that. But not strong enough to beat me, even when I’m at a disadvantage.”

Casey suddenly wheezed, half laughing in amusement and half groaning from the pain. “You’re… not the only one at a disadvantage here.”

Alexia frowned, tilting her doll-like head. Then she flinched a little, her face blanching even more as if she saw something horrifying. “Oh, boy. You’re poisoned by some really nasty stuff. You should get that checked out. Fast.”

…Wow.

What a solid piece of advice that was. Casey wanted to laugh, but if she breathed in any deeper, her lungs felt like they were going to collapse under the pressure of her fractured ribs.

So instead, she breathed shakily. “Can I… ask you a question, Lady Zynx? Where… do you think one’s strength comes from?”

Alexia’s frown deepened. She wanted to rush Casey and end it before giving her a chance to pull something, but the air around the blue-haired girl had started vibrating even harder.

The shrill metallic thrum was getting sharper.

It didn’t feel safe yet.

So, Alexia decided to wait for the other girl to make the first move. And also… the question she had posed was far too interesting to not entertain.

“The widely acceptable answer is hard work. Strength comes from hard work,” Alexia arched an eyebrow, then pouted. “But that’s wrong. The masses tell themselves that to feel better about their mediocrity. Real strength comes from what you’re born with. It comes from talent. As simple as that.”

The metallic thrum around Casey intensified into glass-shattering screech. Every stray pebble and obsidian fragment within ten meters began to float inches off the ground.

“That’s fair. I used to think that too. But… maybe not anymore,” Casey uttered, sheathing her shashka once again. “I don’t think strength comes from either talent or hard work. I think… I think it comes from pain.”

“…Uh huh?” Alexia scoffed lightly. “Is this the part where you tell me how your pain is greater than mine or something like that?”

To be honest, Casey wanted to tell her exactly that. But she knew how false that would be. “How could I? If everything I hear about you is correct then you’ve lived through your own hell.”

Alexia Von Zynx, born into a family that prided itself on being a house of warriors, was deemed a failure from the day she drew her first breath.

Blind and physically frail before her awakening, her parents tried hiding her away. Ashamed, they tried to cage her inside their mansion, keeping her concealed from the eyes of the media and society alike.

For a girl who had lived only in darkness, who had known nothing but the walls of the prison she called home for most of her life… leaving everything behind and taking that leap of faith required a resolve very few could ever fathom.

She had clawed her way to Apex, learned everything on her own, and traversed a literal Death Zone infested with nightmarish monsters and abominations. She had been poisoned and beaten and bled a river’s worth of life to stand where she was today.

So no, Casey knew better than to claim her own pain was greater than Alexia Von Zynx’s.

…But it wasn’t incomparable, either.

Alexia gripped her warhammer tighter, readying herself for an attack she knew was coming. Because she could reinforce her body with both her Aura and Essence, her strength and speed was double what any standard B-ranker could manage.

She was stronger here. She was faster. On top of it, the vambrace on her left arm was part of a whole set of armor. It possessed an enchantment that instructed that the more armor she shed, the more indestructible the remaining pieces would become.

And since she was only wearing a single vambrace right now, Alexia was sure she could take anything Casey wanted to throw.

She looked down at the blue-haired girl and warned for the last time, “Stay. Down.”

But why should she?

Casey bent her knees slightly, closed her eyes, and assumed a quick draw stance.

Why should she stay down?

She had been poisoned and beaten and bled too. She had crossed a literal Death Zone infested with nightmarish monsters and abomination too.

She had the right to stand where she was today too!

And even if she didn’t… she still had to.

Her mind drifted back to the unforgiving frost of the Northern Plains.

To the smell of burning pine. To how cold the wind was the night her uncle murdered her father to usurp the High Seat of Siocgard.

She remembered running. Running until her lungs burned, flanked by her Shadow, Bran, and a handful of loyal knights who had sworn their lives to her lineage.

The mountain line encircling Siocgard was a treacherous landscape of crags and blizzards— a natural defense line against foreign invasions. Because of the Spirit Beasts residing there, the entire area was recognized as a low-level Death Zone.

But that night, those mountains became a cage. The cold gnawed at their bones as assassins, dispatched by her own uncle, stalked them through the gloom.

One by one, her knights fell. Blood on the snow, bright and hot, before turning to dark scabs.

They tried their best to protect her but a poisoned blade still nicked her shoulder during an ambush. It had seeped a creeping frost that burned worse than fire, slowing her steps and dimming her vision.

She remembered the night she thought she would finally die.

Buried beneath a bank of freezing snow, pressed tight against Bran’s shivering chest, she remembered watching the faint glow of the assassins’ torches cutting through the blizzard just meters away.

Her body had been wracked with fever. She couldn’t fight anymore. She couldn’t run anymore.

All she could feel was her Shadow’s warm breath fanning across her cheek as he whispered into her hair, over and over, “I’ll be strong… I’ll be strong… Promise me you’ll be strong too, Young Lady.”

And then he had pushed her deeper into the snow drift, brandished his cracked longsword, and rushed out into the storm, drawing the assassins pursuing them away with a war cry that was cut short by a dagger stabbing into his throat.

She had laid in that freezing dark for hours, surrounded by the silence of the dead, clutching her chest, choking on her own tears.

…She had promised.

Casey opened her eyes and lifted her head. The gradient purple-and-blue of her pupils burned with desperation.

The high-frequency vibration around her snapped.

THRUMMM—!!

The levitating pebbles exploded into powder. The air pressure in the shattered throne room plummeted so suddenly that Alexia’s ears popped for a second.

Casey knew Alexia could tank any of her attacks in a head-on confrontation… but there was no other choice than to engage in a head-on confrontation.

So she was taking every bit of kinetic force she had stored in her battered body, and using it to make her sword vibrate. But she didn’t stop there.

Drops of her own blood were trickling down her arms and flowing onto the curved blade of her sheathed shashka. She sapped their kinetic energy until those droplets froze solid… and then she started making them vibrate too at an ultrasonic speed, turning the thin coating of red ice into a molecular-level chainsaw.

This fine, microscopic control over her power wasn’t something Casey could achieve at will after being infected by the Frostbite poison.

Even now, she wasn’t sure she could hold it for long.

But, at least for the time being… she had done it.

She had achieved the foundation of the Snowrite family’s secret swordart.

First form.

[The Glacier Splitter]