Three months.
Ninety days.
Two thousand one hundred and sixty hours.
Relying on tenacious willpower and her ‘Undying’ skill, Aqina had forcefully lived her way into becoming a legend within the Snezhnaya recruit corps.
The training remained brutal.
The Instructor’s whip lashed mercilessly across the backs of those who fell behind; the number of people who had died was so high that Aqina couldn’t even keep track.
She only vaguely remembered…
the times the veterans dragged away corpses—it happened dozens of times.
Frostbite grew on her hands and feet, healed, and then grew again.
Aqina had made a discovery.
As long as she didn’t actually stop breathing, even if she had a fever of forty degrees, broke her arm, or was buried in heavy snow for half an hour, she simply couldn’t die.
She could always stagger back up a day or two later and continue following the squad.
The way the new recruits looked at her changed from initial mockery to astonishment, and finally, to a kind of numbness tinged with awe.
Everyone attributed this to her having a special constitution.
After all, among the recruits, there was no shortage of people with a Vision.
“Look, it’s that Aqina, she didn’t die again.” “Wasn’t she whipped unconscious in the snow pit by the Instructor yesterday?” “She really is an Undying Cockroach; that nickname was well-earned.” Listening to those discussions, Aqina remained indifferent.
She looked at the system’s light screen.
The popularity points displayed on it showed that, thanks to the Cockroach skill card, she had recently become famous and was almost close to saving up for her next draw.
Aqina lowered her head, sharpening the slightly rusty and dull standard-issue military knife she had been assigned.
She had never looked down on this knife; after all, the others just didn’t understand.
Aqina liked to call it: “tetanus blade”.
The handle of the tetanus blade was wrapped in cloth strips, which Aqina had wrapped herself to prevent it from slipping out of her hand.
The cloth strips were hard and rough, soaked in blood and frozen stiff.
Over these past few days, Aqina had also made significant progress in her psychological state.
She had learned not to be afraid of the dead.
Nor did she care about others anymore.
Soft-heartedness would only get her killed; Aqina curled her lips in resignation.
She had seen with her own eyes the fate of a pushover.
In this godforsaken place, one had to be cold-hearted to survive; soft-heartedness was for the dead.
At the same time, she appeared easy to talk to.
If anyone needed help moving things, or standing night watch, or covering for half an hour, she would always grin and agree.
But when it came to her own interests, she was merciless.
There were several private fights among the recruits.
One-sided lessons.
There were always people who relied on their size to assert authority.
Picking on the easy targets.
Aqina looked thin and small, making her look easy to bully.
A few people tried to steal Aqina’s rations, and the end result was them being carried out.
Aqina never went for the kill; she targeted painful spots and used her body to tank a few hits.
Getting close to find an opening.
Elbow strikes, breaking fingers, biting, pulling hair…
Even kicking the crotch, using the ‘Monkey Steals the Peach’ move.
Her strikes were vicious and her movements crisp and clean; she wouldn’t show mercy for the sake of some so-called camaraderie.
Every move carried a desperate, ruthless energy.
“I just want to eat my fill and live well,” Aqina would say to those groaning on the ground after every fight.
Her tone carried a helpless apology, but there was no warmth in her eyes.
The Instructor watched from afar and never intervened; seeing the scene where bullying failed and turned into being beaten, he only snorted coldly: “Finally, a bit of a soldier’s look.” The recruit period reached its end in the blink of an eye.
The final trial was set.
The location was a valley in the northern territory of Snezhnaya called ‘Frost Burial’.
The terrain in Frost Burial Valley was rugged, and visibility was very low, with some areas less than ten meters.
New recruits hunted each other, along with other dangers.
Hilichurls, Whopperflowers, Treasure Hoarders, and the natural dangers brought by nature.
Avalanches, unfrozen ice holes…
Five hundred recruits were divided into batches and thrown into this hunting ground of death in a randomized manner.
The rules were simple and brutal.
Survive for seven days and seize others’ nameplates.
Everyone started with their own nameplate; the requirement for graduating from the recruit corps was to possess two.
Only then could they graduate, be entered into the records, and become official Fatui soldiers.
The more nameplates obtained, the higher the score, and the better the potential future assignment.
Those with fewer than two were eliminated.
Those who survived would be repatriated to their home regions; as for those who died, well, they were just dead.
Most of these people in the recruit corps were orphans, or they chose to join the army because they committed crimes and couldn’t survive otherwise.
Of course, for those who didn’t want to be repatriated, there was another option: voluntarily choosing to be assigned to the Northland Mine.
The Northland Mine always welcomed the living.
Being a discarded pawn repatriated to one’s home region meant freezing to death in the wilderness sooner or later.
Dying without a complete corpse.
This time, there were no prohibited items in the trial.
That is—life or death did not matter.
Aqina once again witnessed the cruelty of Snezhnaya.
The harsh winter.
She thought of Arlecchino’s plot.
The previous Knave made all the children kill each other to select a new king for the House of the Hearth.
She didn’t even spare her own daughter.
The one who survived was the winner.
Everyone else was killed.
Like raising Gu.
This time, in addition to the recruits of the same batch, one hundred official veterans who had made mistakes or came to enjoy the hunt were also thrown in.
They were the hunters.
The nameplates on them were also more ‘valuable’ than those of other recruits.
Aqina lay in ambush in a deep snow pit, hiding herself.
Her breath melted the snow around her mouth and nose.
She had been motionless for three hours.
Her limbs had lost sensation, relying entirely on the skill’s continuous recovery to keep her going.
She chose to play the camper here, waiting for the right moment.
Aqina observed that this place was a path many people had to pass through.
Soon, footsteps approached, sounding exceptionally clear in her ears.
A veteran was wearing thick standard-issue winter gear, with at least four nameplates clinking at his waist.
He held a hand crossbow, observing his surroundings vigilantly.
Aqina looked; he didn’t have a Vision.
This round was secure.
Aqina waited patiently for him to walk to the edge of the snow pit.
Suddenly she sprang up!
The snow suddenly exploded, Aqina leaped out, and her short blade stabbed straight at the opponent.
She didn’t expect a one-hit kill.
She was well aware of her own combat power; this time, the goal was to incapacitate him.
The veteran reacted extremely quickly, dodging sideways in shock and anger; the crossbow bolt grazed Aqina’s shoulder.
A wound appeared on her body, and blood began to seep out.
The veteran backhanded his military knife and slashed down; Aqina didn’t dodge or evade, taking the blow directly with her left shoulder.
The sound of bone shattering was clearly audible.
The excruciating pain caused Aqina’s Vision to go black.
Her momentum didn’t slow; she crashed into the veteran’s chest, the ‘tetanus blade’ in her right hand stabbing fiercely into his abdomen, twisting with force.
“Ah!” the veteran roared in pain, elbowing her head.
Aqina felt dizzy, nosebleed streaming, and her Vision began to darken.
She knew she didn’t have time.
She hugged him tightly, using her own weight to drag him, and they both fell backward toward the cliff behind them.
“You’re crazy!
Let me go!” The veteran sensed her intention and struggled in shock and anger.
Aqina grinned.
With a mouth full of blood and an exceptionally calm gaze, she looked like the Grim Reaper to the veteran.
“Let’s go down together!” The wind whistled in her ears, and the sensation of weightlessness struck.
Falling.
Aqina adjusted her posture, using the veteran below—who was still unwillingly waving his hand, trying to grab a branch on the cliff edge—as a cushion.
Bang!
The thick snow layer cushioned some of the impact, but the collision was still heavy.
Aqina heard the sound of her own ribs breaking.
At least two, her internal organs churning.
Her throat tasted sweet, and a large mouthful of blood sprayed onto the ground, dyeing a patch of snow red.
The veteran beside her was even worse off, having been the cushion.
His neck was broken, and his body was twisted unnaturally.
He only had breath going out, no breath coming in.
His eyes were wide open, looking quite like he died with deep regret.
Aqina lay in the snow, watching the falling snowflakes, motionless.
In her mind, a song inexplicably played: “Snowflakes drifting, the north wind whistling~” The pain of breaking spread throughout her body.
The tenacious recovery granted by the skill had already begun to function, slowly repairing those wounds.
Aqina, coming to her senses, felt a bit belated.
She had killed someone.
With clear intent, actively, she had killed one of her own kind.
Her stomach convulsed violently.
Not from pain, but from nausea.
She turned her head; before her eyes were the veteran’s wide-open, unclosed eyes and twisted body.
Her hands were shaking.
Aqina reached out and tremblingly closed the veteran’s eyes.
She retched, “Ugh…” Only spitting out some acidic water mixed with blood.
She looked at the falling snowflakes and said to the veteran: “I want to live.” It was as if she were saying it to herself, “I still want to go home, and even if I can’t go back, I must live.
I want to live better than anyone else.” Her hand, reaching for his bag, trembled slightly.
Aqina fumbled at the veteran’s waist and unhooked all the nameplates, including his own, five in total.
She pulled a few packs of compressed rations and a fire starter from his chest.
Aqina crawled to a sheltered spot under the cliff, using her still-functioning right hand to snap her broken left arm back into place and barely securing it with cloth strips.
Covered in cold sweat from the pain, her Vision blackening in waves, she didn’t make a sound.
After resting for about half a day, under the system’s prompt, her body gradually improved.
Gritting her teeth, she dragged her half-crippled body and began looking for the next suitable hunting ground.
Over the next few days, a horror story about the ‘Snow Ghost’ began to spread in the valley.
A desperate recruit who specifically targeted lone veterans.
The fighting style was crazy, trading injury for injury.
Finally dragging the opponent to jump off cliffs, roll down snow slopes, or smash into ice holes.
Not long after, that recruit would crawl out of some snow pile and continue hunting.
<Host, what a devious move.> “Wow, you system, I thought you were just a bot.” Aqina patted the snow off her body indifferently.
She grinned, looking quite like a problem child.
“What do you know, you artificial idiot?
This is called the ‘Mutual Destruction’ technique.” After all, she really couldn’t die.