Tori trudged up the mountain path alongside his exhausted guards, looking utterly bedraggled.
His helmet was gone, and the broken shaft of an arrow still protruded from his shoulder; he felt as though he were moments away from meeting the Lord of Shadows.
The previous night, a band of ruthless outlaws had raided the town.
Fortunately, Tori had been drinking at the tavern at the time, and the guards stationed at the town gates had failed to sound the alarm.
When the bandits struck, most of them swarmed straight toward the manor, leaving only a small detachment to pillage the streets.
Thanks to the holiday celebrations, the manor had six guards on duty—two patrolling the streets and two watching the outer perimeter.
Tori, who commanded a twenty-man garrison split into rotating shifts, immediately rallied the ten remaining men under his command and carved a bloody path out of the settlement with the young mistress.
Knowing the main exits were heavily guarded, their only viable escape route was the steep horse ranch on the rear mountain, where mounts and potential shelter awaited them.
However, Tori hadn’t counted on the heavy snow betraying their movements.
The moment they fled, the outlaws gave chase.
What started as a desperate breakout had gradually whittled their numbers down to just four survivors: Tori, the young mistress, a steadfast guard, and the tavern proprietress, whom the mistress had stubbornly insisted on bringing along.
Hampered by treacherous, snow-choked mountain trails, the relentless pursuit of the bandits had reduced their ranks until only Tori and the guard remained standing.
The guard was carrying the unconscious mistress on his back, while the proprietress struggled desperately to keep pace.
Whether due to the slick ice or sheer exhaustion, the bandits had eventually broken off pursuit after a few hours, yet the survivors dared not pause for breath.
Pushing forward through the bitter cold, what should have been a half-day trek dragged on from seven o’clock last night all the way until dawn—covering barely a third of the distance.
Still, everyone knew the truth: keep moving and cling to a thread of hope, or stop and face certain death at the hands of the outlaws.
“Halt!
Stop right there, you bastards!” Tori glanced back.
The pursuers, having picked up their trail again, were swarming up the narrow path behind them, brandishing their weapons and howling with sadistic glee.
Tori quickly counted roughly twenty figures—a terrifying nightmare for a group already at the absolute end of their rope.
“Chuck, keep going!
No matter what, you have to get the mistress safely to the ranch.
Once you reach the top, smash the wooden barrier and roll the logs down behind you.
I’ll hold the line here,” Tori rasped, staring at the few hundred meters of steep trail remaining.
Since the previous night, none of them had touched a single drop of water, and after hours of brutal trekking, they were completely spent.
Even Tori, a veteran of the battlefield, felt an overwhelming urge to simply collapse into the snow and sleep forever.
“Captain, you go on… I can’t crawl another inch,” Chuck wheezed.
The moment he spoke, his last reserve of strength vanished.
His legs buckled, and he collapsed limply into the snow, nearly sending the mistress tumbling down the edge of the precipice.
“I can’t walk either… Even if we escape, these legs are permanently ruined,” the tavern proprietress sobbed, lifting her skirt to reveal limbs already turning a terrifying shade of blue from frostbite.
Fleeing in a panicked rush, they had brought zero cold-weather gear.
“Damn it!
Delis, don’t you dare close your eyes… Mistress!
Mistress!” Tori suddenly realized something was terribly wrong.
When Chuck had stumbled, the mistress hadn’t made a sound.
He scrambled over to check, only to find her deeply unconscious, her breathing dangerously shallow from the biting cold.
Tori felt his heart stop.
Everything he had endured, every ounce of effort he had poured out, was for her sake.
If anything happened to the young mistress, how could he ever face his master?
The final pillar of mental fortitude propping him up instantly shattered.
His vision blurred, and his body tipped backward into the snow—though the impact against the drifts instantly jolted him half-awake.
Down below, the pursuing bandits roared in triumph as they saw their prey collapse.
They had been tracking the young noblewoman since last night, fueled by the promise of a massive bounty.
After learning from captured villagers that the back-mountain trails were dangerously steep, the outlaws had paused briefly to eat, drink, and rest before renewing the hunt with renewed vigor.
“Captain Tori!
Captain Tori!”
Through a haze of exhaustion, Tori heard someone shouting his name.
He forced his heavy eyelids open to see a figure sprinting down the mountain path toward them.
It was none other than Kent, the boy from the ranch.
Tori let his head sink back down into the snow.
What good is he here?
Kent isn’t even of age, and he hasn’t studied martial arts.
Even if he had, adding one more kid to face twenty hardened outlaws is just suicide.
“Captain Tori!”
Kent had spotted the harrowing scene from above and immediately formulated a plan.
There was no way he could haul all these people up the mountain by hand alone; he had to leverage the horses.
Grabbing a thick, sturdy hemp rope, he sprinted down to Tori’s group, looking utterly baffled by the sight of everyone slumped lifelessly across the white drifts.
“Captain Tori, quick—grab the rope!
The other end is tied to the horses up top!” Kent urged, panic lacing his voice.
The pursuers were heavily armed and closing in fast.
Luckily, Kent scanned their ranks and didn’t spot any archers—though the broken arrow stuck in Tori’s shoulder still gave him a jolt of anxiety.
After all, his own magic only had an effective kill range of about fifty meters, whereas an archer could easily pick him off from a distance.
“Kent… just save yourself.
Take the mistress and tell my lord what happened here.
We can’t go any further,” Tori rasped weakly, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Tch, I’ll just handle this myself!
Ignoring Tori’s defeatist plea, Kent hastily looped the rope around the group.
First went Chuck—since the guard was wearing a metal helmet, dragging him face-first would at least keep the snow from clogging his nose and mouth.
Next came Tori, followed by the proprietress.
As for the young mistress, Kent hoisted her onto his own back; she was the very person who had saved him years ago from starvation.
Even if they were both slaves, living to see another day was all that mattered.
“Hey, kid!
Drop whoever you’re carrying!”
Just as Kent secured the last loop, the vanguard of the outlaws burst around the bend, barely a hundred meters away.
Spotting the rope and the horses above, the bandits realized exactly what was happening and charged forward with redoubled speed.
“Niu Niu, pull!” Kent roared at the top of his lungs.
Up at the summit, Niu Niu directed the draft horses.
The hemp rope instantly pulled taut, hoisting Tori, Chuck, and the proprietress upward in a rapid, sliding rush.
“Heal!”
Seizing a split second, Kent directed a first-rank light-attribute spell toward the freezing, half-conscious mistress on his back.
A soft ball of white radiance bloomed from his palm, slowly sinking into her chest.
(Kent couldn’t fathom how Niu Niu had known the exact light-spell chant when it wasn’t even in his books, but his personal philosophy was simple: if you don’t understand it, don’t waste time thinking about it.)
“Haha!
Gold!
A hundred gold coins!
Nobody better steal my kill!”
The outlaws closed the distance in a flash.
Their leader had promised a hundred gold coins to whoever captured the girl—an astronomical fortune to cutthroats like them.
“Kent!
Kent, run!
Run for your life!” Tori bellowed from where he was being dragged upward, though his voice was little more than a desperate rattle.
Chuck was completely unconscious, and the proprietress wept silently.
Facing twenty armed outlaws with bare steel was certain death, let alone for a lightly clothed kid like Kent.
She closed her eyes, unable to watch the bloody spectacle to come.
“Hmph!
I’m a real mage now—what am I scared of?”
Kent muttered the bravest words he could muster, though his knees were visibly shaking.
This wasn’t a single demon ape; there were twenty ruthless men.
Fortunately, the mountain path was narrow enough that only two could charge abreast.
Sixty meters…
fifty-five meters…
fifty meters…
fifty-five meters…
Fireball!
The steep, nearly straight path acted like a funnel.
Kent tracked the sprinting outlaws, terrified of misjudging the range.
As the lead bandit lunged forward within striking distance—
“Ha!
The brat’s scared shitless!
Get him—Agh!
What the hell?!
Magic?!
Aaaah!”
The frontmost outlaw lunged forward, his eyes gleaming with the promise of bounty, only to stare dumbfounded at the glowing red orb flickering in Kent’s hand.
A mage?!
How the hell is there a mage out here in the middle of nowhere?!
Before he could scream another warning, the fireball slammed squarely into his chest.
Half his torso vanished in an explosive blast of heat and kinetic force, sending his mangled body spinning off the edge of the snowy precipice amidst a string of terrified shrieks.
The entire ravine fell dead silent.
The remaining bandits froze in absolute horror.
To ordinary folk, mages were terrifying mythical beings capable of ripping out souls and casting inescapable curses.
Discovering a combat-capable mage waiting on a narrow fifty-meter uphill bottleneck of two-foot-deep snow was a waking nightmare.
Any idiot knew it took at least half a minute to sprint that distance—plenty of time for a master of the arcane to turn them all to ash.
“T-this…” Tori’s jaw hit the snow.
He had been bracing himself for death, only to watch the pathetic slave boy transform into an apex predator.
He blinked hard, watching in utter disbelief as the terrifying outlaws panicked and turned tail to flee.
The treacherous, icy slope turned against them; tripping over one another in their desperate scramble, several bandits tumbled screaming into the abyss.
The proprietress popped her eyes wide open, her mind reeling.
Is this really that timid, worthless slave boy we used to know?
“Stop right there!
If you don’t halt, I’m casting another spell!” Kent yelled, half-panicked himself.
He had only thrown one fireball, and the whole mob was already scattering!
Hey, wait!
I don’t have any spare cash right now—capturing prisoners means valuable loot!
“Run!
He’s coming after us!
Aaaagh!”
Terrified of the invisible doom trailing behind them, the fleeing bandits discarded their weapons and sprinted downward.
The ones in the rear pushed desperately against those in front, creating a horrific human avalanche that swept most of the remaining outlaws off the icy cliffside.
When the chaos finally settled, only two figures remained, fleeing desperately hundreds of meters down the lower trail.
Realizing he couldn’t catch them, Kent sighed and turned back up the mountain.
“Sigh, even mosquito legs are meat,” Kent muttered, unbuckling a large grain sack from his waist to gather discarded gear.
Seven broadswords, two leather helmets, and a few pairs of sturdy boots went straight into the bag.
He was amazed by how light on his feet he felt.
Carrying a young woman on his back while dragging a heavy loot sack up a steep mountain trail felt remarkably effortless.
His newly cultivated qi-gong physique had transformed his stamina completely.
He grinned ear-to-ear, basking in the triumphant glow of a gamer who had just soloed a raid boss.
Back at the cave, Kent checked on the three newcomers lying unconscious on the thick hay.
Chuck remained deeply knocked out, the proprietress had fainted from shock, and Tori was suspiciously keeping his eyes squeezed shut—likely too embarrassed to face the young rancher.
Kent turned his attention to the young mistress, who was still wrapped tightly in her heavy traveling cloak, though her under-dress was woefully inadequate for the sub-zero climate.
“Well, aren’t you a little beauty?”
Gently unwrapping the cloak, Kent revealed a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old aristocratic girl with delicate oval features, long golden eyelashes, a slender nose, and porcelain skin.
He pressed two fingers against her neck; she was still breathing.
Without hesitation, Kent stripped away her frozen outer gown, scooped her up, and carried her straight into the inner cave.
He dumped several buckets of warm water into a large wooden tub, utilizing a quick succession of seven or eight small fireballs to superheat the water until steam filled the chamber.
Carefully lowering the unconscious noblewoman into the therapeutic bath, Kent blushed furiously and hurried outside—after all, regional fashion lacked undergarments, making his quick medical inspection far more revealing than he anticipated.
Chuck and Tori were subsequently stripped of their frozen garments and laid out on thick layers of straw between twin hearth fires in the outer cavern, where the smoke could safely vent through the high ceiling.
“Niu Niu, get over here.
Use your healing spell right where I tell you,” Kent instructed, holding a tallow candle as he waved the tiny sprite over.
“Fine, fine,” Niu Niu grumbled.
Tori’s arrow wound required careful extraction first.
Kent skillfully allowed the initial pocket of stale blood to drain, cleaning the torn flesh thoroughly before letting Niu Niu channel her innate light-attribute healing magic to seal the injury cleanly.
Once Kent and Niu Niu stepped away, Tori slowly cracked open one eye, staring into the dim shadows with absolute astonishment.
Not only is Kent an elite combat mage, but he also commands a high-ranking humanoid light-attribute familiar?!
As a veteran who had fought alongside Knight Commander Terry, Tori understood the monumental significance of such power.
Relieved to find himself safe, he wisely closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep, knowing that physical recovery was his top priority.
Meanwhile, Kent crouched beside the tavern proprietress, frowning at her severely frostbitten limbs.
“That woman is already a lost cause.
Why waste your energy on her?” Niu Niu asked skeptically, floating nearby with a book in hand.
“Lost cause my foot.
Kids shouldn’t talk back,” Kent retorted briskly, unbuttoning the proprietress’s frozen traveling dress.
(He couldn’t help wondering why on earth these women traveled through a frozen wilderness wearing formal party gowns.)
The proprietress was a stunning woman in her mid-twenties with long golden hair and delicate features, though her skin was currently bruised a terrifying purplish-blue by frost.
Kent grabbed a wooden basin filled with clean snow and began vigorously rubbing her limbs, cycling the snow twice while simultaneously channeling faint healing pulses into her skin.
Slowly, the bruised blue flesh began to flush back to a healthy pink.
As Kent pressed his massage deeper along her leg, a soft, involuntary moan escaped the woman’s lips.