Starting out as a Dragon Slave-Chapter 89: Affinity

The snowy plain stretched before them like a silent sea. But then, something shifted. A vibration. The air grew denser, colder, as if the surrounding magic were tightening.

A sharp noise cracked to their left—a crisp snap followed by an icy gust. frёewebnoѵēl.com

— "Get ready!" Yvan hissed.

Massive figures emerged from the mist. At first blurred and indistinct, they soon became terrifyingly clear: ape-like creatures covered in frozen white fur, muscular, with claws thickened by layers of ice. Their eyes were pale, almost glowing, and their arms dragged along the ground like blades.

But it was their mobility that made them deadly—one slammed its palm to the ground, and a ramp of ice surged beneath its feet. Instantly, it launched forward, gliding at blistering speed.

— "Take cover!" Victor shouted.

The beast shot through like a missile, cleaving a tree in half as it passed.

— "Damn it, it’s not just brute force—it’s technique!" Charlotte cursed, already conjuring a protective ring of fire.

More of the creatures burst from the mist, forming their own ramps, launching, twisting, leaping from track to track like supernatural skaters.

Isaac narrowly dodged an attack, activating [Flight] to rise above the battlefield.

— "They specialize in speed and impact. Their attacks are brutal but precise. They use the terrain to their advantage—we need to intercept them midair or slow them down!"

— "I’ll handle it," Yvan replied calmly.

He drew a blade as white as the snow, infused with razor-sharp mana. Effortlessly, he intercepted one of the monsters mid-charge, slicing it in half with a single horizontal stroke.

— "A rank A..." Sophie murmured in awe. "No wonder the guild wanted him here so badly."

Isaac was impressed too. Not a trace of hesitation. No wasted movement. Yvan moved with surgical precision, reading trajectories as if he’d drawn them himself.

But Isaac had other priorities.

— "I’ll take care of the ones in the rear," he announced.

He dove toward the first monster, dodging ice spikes it launched. As he neared, he felt something strange... a pull. The cold. The air currents. The vibrations beneath the ice.

He struck with a quick, clean slash. The monster dropped, sliced cleanly at the neck.

[Ding: Glider Yeti defeated][Absorption Choice: Magic Skill][New Skill Acquired: Ice Affinity – Level 1]

Isaac felt a wave of cold settle in his chest. A vague understanding. He couldn’t manipulate ice... but he could feel it.

The cold in the air. The shifts in density. The lines where ramps would form. An invisible map of the battlefield etched itself into his mind.

— "Interesting..."

He dove toward a second yeti, adjusting his path to intercept where he sensed it would generate a ramp. He caught the creature mid-air, impaling it with his draconic hand before hurling it into the snow.

[Ice Affinity +1 → Level 2]

The sensation sharpened. He no longer saw attacks—he sensed them before they came.

— "Isaac! Right side!" Léon shouted.

A yeti shot out, gliding at full speed along a curved ramp. Isaac turned, and with pure reflex, deployed his wings, lifting himself and twisting midair. He let the creature pass under him, then dove straight down, reactivating Narukami and slicing the monster’s back from top to bottom.

[Ice Affinity → Level 3]

With each kill, his understanding of the element deepened. Not in brute force, but in finesse, in terrain reading, in sensing the cold like a guiding thread.

Below, Yvan continued cutting down foes without missing a beat. A wrist flick. A rotation. A half-step. Every move was lethal. He wasn’t fighting—he was dominating.

Isaac downed a fourth. Then a fifth.

[Ice Affinity → Level 4... 5... 6]

His wings thrummed through the air, trailing frost behind them. A resonance was forming.

And then, something shifted.

Isaac raised his hand. He cast no spell. But a tiny ice particle crystallized in the air before him.

— "I’m starting to call it..." he murmured, fascinated.

It wasn’t conscious control yet. But the ice was responding. Faintly. Cautiously. Like a wild beast beginning to recognize its new master.

Yvan struck down the last yeti with a lightning-quick thrust, wiping his blade with a flick of his wrist.

— "Regroup," he ordered calmly.

The team gathered, breathless but unharmed.

— "That was... incredible," Charlotte breathed, looking from Yvan to Isaac. "We couldn’t do anything. They took them all down."

Isaac landed softly on the snow, his wings dissolving into a bluish mist.

The group advanced slowly through the snowy plain, their steps sinking into a now denser layer of powder. The once mild wind had become a cutting blizzard, dragging with it swirling ice crystals and muffled gusts.

Visibility had dropped drastically. Beyond five meters, everything vanished.

The snowflakes struck their faces violently, like needles of frost.

Charlotte was shivering despite her magic-reinforced coat, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

— "This isn’t normal..." she whispered. "Even for an ice-themed dungeon, the wind is too strong. It’s trying to disorient us."

Victor growled, jaw clenched:

— "Can’t see five feet ahead. We’re gonna end up lost or skewered by a frozen spike."

Isaac said nothing. The cold bothered him, but he could feel it. He sensed the threads of frozen mana around him, the underground currents forming this blizzard like a living being.

But even with his resistance, he was starting to feel the bite in his limbs.

Except one.

Yvan.

Unshaken.

He walked straight ahead, his cloak whipping in the wind, gaze locked forward, as if the storm was nothing but background noise.

Then... he stopped.

The group halted as well, Victor dropping to one knee to shield himself from the wind.

Yvan said nothing at first. He closed his eyes.

His breath slowed.

Then he slowly reached over his shoulder... and drew his sword.

A long, silver blade—straight, unadorned. Simple. Elegant. And yet, as it left its sheath, the blizzard seemed to hold its breath.

Isaac felt his mana core tighten slightly, instinctively reacting to the presence of a superior force being revealed.

Yvan planted his feet in the snow, raising the blade diagonally in front of him, its tip pointed skyward.

He closed his eyes again.

— "Stay behind me," he said calmly. "And don’t speak."

A heavy silence fell.

Then... the sword shone.

Not like a torch. Not like elemental magic.

It was an inner glow—a vibration of pure mana. The blade wasn’t casting a spell. It was revealing itself.

Isaac narrowed his eyes.

— "He’s... speaking to his weapon?" he murmured, fascinated.

Without warning, Yvan raised the blade above his head.

He let out a short, guttural cry—like a battle order torn from a forgotten battlefield:

— "LORD OF STILLNESS!"

And in the same motion, he swung the blade in a wide vertical arc.

A shining SLASH, several meters long, tore through the air in front of him.

Mana condensed into a line of pure silver—incarnate, razor-sharp, and blindingly fast.

And the blizzard split.

Literally.

The wind, the snow, the swirling crystals—everything was cleanly severed. The storm dissolved in a perfect line, opening a sudden pathway of silence, calm, and death. As if winter itself had forgotten to breathe in that direction.

The group stood frozen. The silence that followed was louder than the storm.

Charlotte’s eyes went wide:

— "What... was that?"

Yvan slowly sheathed his sword, saying nothing.

— "A spiritual style technique," Isaac murmured, eyes fixed on the glowing trace slowly fading from the air. "He didn’t just cast a spell. He sliced through the mana of the sky."

Yvan turned back, his gaze calm but a shade more serious.

— "Let’s move. This calm won’t last."

Victor let out a soft "holy shit," still in shock.

The group resumed their march, now with clear visibility, the mist parted like a sea before Moses.

The stillness Yvan had carved through the storm granted them a rare opening in this cursed land. The snow crunched softly underfoot, the pale light revealing a now-cleared expanse. No wind. No sound.

But as they rounded a snowy ridge, the group stopped cold.

— "By all the gods..." Victor muttered, taking a step back.

The ground was stained red, soaked in a deadly heat that had nothing to do with fire. Lying across the path were several of the yetis they’d faced earlier—perhaps from another group, or another part of the dungeon—now dead in the snow.

But it wasn’t a chaotic massacre.

Each body was split by a single cut.

A perfect, surgical line. No tearing. No sprayed blood. Just... a clean red trace from the crown to the hip. Limbs lay nearby, neatly disconnected, and their eyes... were frozen in expressions of pure, paralyzed terror.

Isaac froze.

His mana core spun violently in his chest, as if some primal alarm had just been triggered. A chill shot up his spine. His pupils instantly flared a brighter orange than ever before.

He stepped forward, studying the markings, the cuts.

Then, in a soft breath, almost inaudible:

— "There’s another one. Again."

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