NOVEL NEXT Chapter 75: A Creeping Chill
The air grew heavy with pressure, not from mana, but from laws.
He had made a decisive decision. The imp was far too dangerous.
Norm's foot stamped the ground like a gavel, and runes exploded outward from his position in a precise twelve-meter ring, scribing radiant white lines through dirt and stone alike. Each mark shimmered with angular authority, etched in divine-derived script and law fragments.
Then the dog of the capital spoke.
"Tenet: Judgment Without Delay."
It was one of a devil's ultimate powers, more than technique, more than aura.
A tenet was a personal domain of their innate laws, a culmination of their affinities and will, the expression of one's philosophy enforced through the fabric of reality itself.
Within reason, of course.
Every trained devil dreamed of forming one. Most never could.
Norm had.
His Tenet was functional, clean, and widely respected among council-trained duelists. But it was average in tier. Nothing like the Paradoxical Tenets that only a handful of devils in history had managed to form. The kind that manifested both a law field and an accompanying mythical monster, born of belief and contradiction.
Something devils like him would spend all their stars trying to form.
And those were the kinds of Tenets once used to shape entire dungeons. Living territories bound by devil twisted laws. Devils, after all, were the original dungeon architects, long before humans and gods claimed 'mastery'.
Norm's Tenet was no dungeon.
But it was enough to crush most.
"All resistance must be resolved without delay."
That was the rule.
His law.
The battlefield responded instantly. The pressure of his laws pushed inward, compelling action, punishing hesitation. Every tick of the clock began to favor him.
But Shela didn't resist.
She advanced, unfazed.
Without interruption.
Each step ignored the friction built into the Tenet's structure. She didn't slip. Didn't pause. Didn't even blink too long.
Norm's frown deepened at the display.
She was moving too cleanly.
He adjusted his grip and swung forward, precision-boosted by the glyph network beneath him.
His sword came down hard.
She met it with her own.
The blades stopped, as if the world had forgotten momentum.
She twisted slightly, displacing the impact with effortless geometry.
The pressure in the Tenet should have punished her for that, should have destabilized her footing or bent her sword angle a half-degree off.
It didn't.
Because there was no delay in her reaction to correct.
Shela didn't hesitate.
And without hesitation… Judgment had no foothold.
He activated a rune in his boot, launching himself backward to reset spacing.
She didn't follow.
Instead, a faint white shimmer spread from her last step.
Something colder.
Slower.
Inevitable.
Norm felt it in his law field.
The outer edge of his domain dimmed, barely, but enough to signal disruption.
He unsheathed his second blade, a short, serrated sword keyed to his internal circuits, and rushed her again, this time applying the full measure of Tenet-assisted acceleration.
Shela turned her body slightly.
Her sword moved a single hand's length.
His blade missed.
What's worse, it lost power before impact. She'd nicked the rune near the hilt. With precision.
It was subtle.
But it told him everything.
She wasn't learning how to beat his Tenet.
She already understood it.
Norm exhaled hard and fell back to the core of his field.
From here, his control was strongest. The closer the action was to him, the faster the Tenet could enforce judgment penalties, adding weight to delayed actions, applying inertia drift, disrupting thought-to-movement synchronicity.
Shela walked into it like she was strolling into shade.
The next ten seconds passed in cuts and parries, each more jarring for him than the last. She responded before law penalties could apply. She turned his feints against him. The Tenet field wasn't failing… It was being ignored.
Not by will.
By her lack of hesitation.
The frost at the outer edge of the glyph ring continued to grow. A fine sheen of white had settled along the western arc.
Norm tried not to stare.
[Absolute Zero].
The imps innate ability, a law mutating energy emitting from her awakening devil core.
He didn't know the name.
But he was beginning to understand the shape of the threat.
"This field defines the outcome," he said aloud, voice heavy with a righteous tone. "You're not above it!"
Shela tilted her head, only blinking once.
"No," she said. "I'm past it."
Norm's lungs burned as he reset his stance, sword low, weight spread, core tight, breath shallow.
He'd fought through cursed air, mana turbulence, and Tenet suppression fields.
But never this.
The sigils beneath him were still active,
But the field wasn't answering him.
His laws were intact.
But the battlefield wasn't.
The outer rings of glyph-script had stopped responding to his thoughts. He sent pulse signals to reorient the Judgment edge… no return. A few of the sigils still pulsed near his feet, but the rest glowed like candles submerged in frost.
Still. Silent. Disconnected.
Norm didn't curse.
He reached inside his chestplate and pressed a knuckle against a subtle seam, activating a narrow-encoded communication talisman lodged in the weave of his armor's binding strap.
It pulsed once, twice.
The signal went out.
Far beyond the battlefield, Showeuff stood cloaked beneath jagged stone. His personal contact badge buzzed against his palm, the response tingling with Norm's resonance frequency.
He raised an eyebrow.
'So, you're finally asking for help.'
He didn't move. Not yet. The elite soldiers he'd brought, five of them, all armored, trained, and ready, stood behind him waiting for orders.
None had seen the duel clearly.
Showeuff had. And he didn't like what he saw.
Shela wasn't winning by force.
She was rewriting the tempo of the fight.
Still, Norm was no slouch.
If he needed a recovery team, Showeuff could oblige, after the girl was softened up.
"Hold position." he muttered.
The talisman pinged again.
This time weaker.
Back on the battlefield, Shela moved without a twitch of aggression.
Her hand dipped slightly.
Her blade realigned itself into narrowing vectors.
She'd seen the motion.
Norm's touch to the chestplate.
The slight break in posture.
'Oh, He just tried to call for backup.'
She didn't ask who. She didn't look away. She moved.
A single step forward, measured, exact.
Her sword rose, striking at center mass, just below the sternum.
Norm twisted, defensive.
But her blade didn't need to pierce.
It tapped.
The blow connected against a rune-inscribed node tucked just under the front seam of his armor, the housing point for his talisman matrix.
The silver-lined crest shattered instantly, sparks blooming from beneath the plate.
His glyph field stuttered again.
Stolen novel; please report.
Norm stumbled backward, the breath knocking out of him.
'She saw that. She read it. And struck the exact counterpoint.'
He looked up at her, disbelief beginning to sour into fear.
She said nothing.
But the frost along the battlefield deepened.
It now reached all the way to his second ring of glyphs. The law-etched ground felt slick beneath his boots, not in a physical sense, but in a lawful one.
His footing wasn't wrong. It was uncertain. Like the world was hesitating in his place.
And his Tenet punished hesitation.
That irony sat heavy in his gut.
His teeth clenched.
He activated his inner circuits, runes built directly into his muscles, drawn from core-forged authority sigils.
Body modifications. A dangerous and forbidden art.
They'd override feedback, increase his output, force a last clash.
Power surged through his veins.
He leapt forward, both hands on the hilt.
Shela remained perfectly still.
And then…
A breath. A pause. A redirect.
Her foot shifted one inch. Her sword tilted left, then forward.
His blade missed.
Her elbow collided gently with the side of his jaw.
The kinetic blow wasn't deadly.
But it turned him.
And as he passed by, she raked her blade across the side of his cuirass, cutting one of the binding locks open. Armor peeled from his rib, exposing bare skin to the biting cold.
He stumbled.
Now the frost clung to him. Not as snow. As lawful quiet. Sinking to [Absolute Zero].
Back on the ridge, Showeuff's talisman went silent.
No follow-up.
No pulse echo.
"Lord Showeuff?" one of the soldiers asked. "Is it time?"
He didn't answer right away.
He felt the frost now, even at this distance.
And he knew what silence meant.
'Either Norm won and didn't need me, or he lost. Badly.'
He turned his gaze back to the battlefield.
And narrowed his eyes.
Norm's feet shifted sideways, not by choice but by compulsion.
The frost that had crept into his Tenet ring no longer flowed, it settled. Each sigil under his control turned brittle, as though the laws they once enforced had become memories written on old glass.
His override circuits sparked. His limbs twitched with power.
And then, stillness.
The final hush of [Absolute Zero] overtaking motion itself.
His sword lowered a fraction. His body hesitated. And the Tenet snapped like cracked ice.
The collapse of the law field was total.
Norm dropped to one knee. Not from injury, but from realization.
He'd called upon one of a devil's greatest gifts, a structured law domain carved through years of discipline and backed by the capital council.
And it had failed.
Not by strength.
By silence.
Shela stepped forward.
Norm's grip weakened. His blade slid free of his palm.
She raised hers in return, it hovered, just beneath his chin.
"Yield." she said.
He looked up.
And saw no rage.
Just winter. Clean and vast.
He opened his mouth and said, "I yield."
~~~
Across the mist-veiled summit, the air hung tight with the scent of spiced wine and coiling incense. The table of factions, Dream, Pride, and Mountain, sat in uneasy silence as Hannya unfurled a parchment scroll.
Each edge of the scroll was rimmed with golden wax—neutral faction sealwork. Its contents were written in stylized devil-script, formal and fluid.
At the top, it read:
[
The Dreamveil Compact : A Treaty of Stabilization and Mutual Oversight
]
Her voice, veiled and honey-smooth, cut through the awkward stillness.
"For the sake of cross-faction safety and fissure balance, we propose the formation of a neutral oversight body composed of Devils, Demons, and designated Acolytes trained in structural Dream law and Haze observation."
She didn't raise her voice.
But the words felt inevitable.
Lazion, Dream's envoy, furrowed his brow. "This wasn't discussed beforehand."
"No," Hannya replied, folding her hands. "Because it wasn't available beforehand."
Sovar of Pride squinted. "And you believe your mountain, your so-called 'neutral devils', should form the core of this treaty?"
"Unless you'd prefer the Pleasure faction lead it?" she asked calmly.
The two envoys blinked in surprise.
And turned, because at that moment, the Pleasure faction finally arrived.
They entered with laughter and scent.
Three of them.
Two aides and one main envoy, Lord Vequess, draped in silk robes that shifted from wine-red to rose-pink in the light. His voice purred without needing to be loud.
"So sorry for the delay," he said. "Our carriage was… distracted by the scenery."
Lazion and Sovar did not rise.
But Hannya did. She rose fluidly, folding her scroll without haste.
And Vequess paused mid-step.
His eyes flicked over her posture, her presence, the veil…
And the natural charm that shimmered off her like heat from candlewax.
Subtle, subconscious. Not a spell.
Just gravity.
Charm aura wasn't supposed to affect fellow Luxuria devils unless it was trained, refined into the threshold of control.
Their faction leader was known for it: Silarra of the Silk Divide, whose presence could make mortals kneel just from sharing air.
This girl, Hannya, wasn't there yet.
But she was brushing the edge of it.
Vequess's smile sharpened slightly.
"Fascinating." he whispered, just to himself.
He stepped forward and offered a shallow bow. "Lady Hannya, I presume."
"I am."
"You wear it well."
The veil shifted slightly, but she did not answer.
Just watched.
And smiled, without curving her lips.
~~~
The Tenet was broken.
The air had stilled.
And in the slow breath that followed, Shela stood over Norm, her sword no longer raised, just angled downward, gleaming faintly in the frost-stained light.
Norm remained on one knee, still breathing heavily, one arm limp from exhaustion.
She didn't need to threaten him.
The battlefield had done that already.
With no fanfare, Shela turned and raised two fingers, motioning the medics who had been waiting behind the battlefield, just arriving from the mountain.
They sprinted in without needing further instruction, their cloaks fluttering like tattered scrolls.
One knelt by Mirro, checking his vitals.
Another slid to Nini's side, whispering as he examined her arms, her eyes, the faint mana residue in the air.
"He's stable," one muttered. "But he's burnt himself out. Her circuits are overloaded."
"He bought them time, they both did." Shela replied softly.
The third medic approached Norm cautiously.
Shela gave him a nod. "Strip his statial rings. Neutralize his core. Bind his hands behind his back, use fleshscript shackles. Don't let him speak, though he's barred from using his wishes, a dog might still bite when unmuzzled and backed into a corner."
The medic's eyes widened. "We're… taking him alive?"
"I don't kill enforcers who follow procedure." the imp said.
She turned from them all, shoulders loose, sword sliding back into its sheath with the soft sound of steel returning to sleep.
On the northern ridge, Showeuff's talisman had stopped pulsing for almost ten minutes.
The silence grew heavy.
His soldiers looked to him, expectantly.
But he didn't move.
Not forward.
He watched the battlefield and saw Shela's hand on Norm's shoulder, gesturing for medics.
She hadn't just won.
She had claimed the outcome.
"…We're leaving." Showeuff muttered bitterly.
"Sir?" one of his squad asked.
He clenched his jaw. "Now."
The team turned.
And Showeuff turned last.
Right into a smile.
A man stood behind him.
Unassuming. Holding a wooden bowl and a dull iron ladle. He had no aura. No pressure. Just a warmth that made the air feel slightly humid.
Cieron.
"Leaving already?" he asked politely. "You didn't finish your meal."
Showeuff's hand reached for his sword.
Cieron's bowl tilted. Just a slosh of broth.
And suddenly, the soldier behind Showeuff staggered, asleep mid-step, falling to the ground with a sigh.
Showeuff froze.
The ladle was pointing at him now.
"I wouldn't," Cieron said kindly. "She doesn't like her guests slipping away unannounced."
Showeuff raised both hands slowly.
"…Who are you?"
Cieron just smiled wider.
And the wind blew colder.
~~~
Back at the summit pavilion, the Pleasure faction envoys took their seats like silk shadows, folding themselves with grace beside the central flame brazier.
Hannya remained standing, veil drawn low, her posture relaxed but unreadable.
She finished re-sealing the Dreamveil Compact scroll and turned her eyes, barely visible, to the Pleasure envoy, Vequess.
"Would your faction like a copy?" she asked.
Her tone was simple. Neutral.
Yet when she spoke, Vequess's fan lowered.
His lips parted. But no words came.
For a half-second, his blood reacted before thought.
Not resistance. But submission.
A gentle tilt of the chin.
A hand resting delicately over his chest.
It passed quickly, so smoothly it could have been mistaken for courtesy.
But Baku noticed.
He sat next to Hannya like a statue, arms crossed. He tilted his head ever so slightly, eyes narrowing.
He knew. Among Luxuria, charm did not normally affect other Luxuria without effort.
Unless it touched the edge of something higher. And this did not occur with the luxuria girl back on the mountain.
The Dream and Pride envoys hadn't noticed.
But Vequess had.
His pupils narrowed slightly.
And then he laughed, a little too late.
"How... refreshingly precise," Vequess said. "We'll take two copies."
He smiled again.
But this time, it wasn't amusement behind the expression.
It was calculation.
~~~
Shela sat beside Mirro, one hand pressed against his shoulder as he drifted in and out of consciousness. His skin was pale, but not dangerously so. His mana circulation had stabilized, though the veins along his forearms still glowed faintly from overuse.
Nini knelt a few steps away, face unreadable.
Shela didn't speak.
Not until both medics gave the signal.
"They'll recover," one said. "But they'll need time."
Shela nodded and stood, brushing frost from her knees. Her gaze drifted down the slope, where Norm now lay bound, fleshscript shackles glowing faintly around his wrists and ankles. He was unconscious, finally, though still breathing deep and defiant.
'He'll wake. And when he does, we'll have questions.'
A third medic approached from the path, passing a communication talisman to her.
She took it, reading it carefully.
The message was brief:
[
FROM: NOH
TO: HANNYA, SHELA
Mirro secured. Norm detained.
Secondary target captured.
Enemy forces withdrawn.
Ragescar held.
Salitha has departed. Left without Shela.
Full report pending.
]
Shela stared at the line.
Salitha has departed.
No goodbye.
No message.
No wait.
She closed the sigil quietly and tucked it beneath her cloak.
Then turned back to the others. "We return to the mountain at dusk."
~~
At the summit, the tension had shifted into contemplation. Worse, none of the envoys had received any messages or instructions from their factions, leaving the discretion of decision to them.
The Dreamveil Compact lay unrolled on the center table once again, its gleaming script cooling like poured metal. No faction had signed it yet, but no one had dared tear it.
The Pleasure envoy, Vequess, toyed with his pen, inking and uninking it over and over without touching the parchment.
Lazion of Dream was unusually quiet.
Sovar, the Pride envoy, had leaned back, but not in confidence, more like someone afraid to lean forward again.
And Hannya?
She said nothing now.
Her silence was not dismissive. It was weight-bearing.
Each second that passed without interruption only added to the pressure in the room.
Then, finally…
Baku spoke.
"This is what stability looks like." he said.
He gestured to the scroll.
"To oppose it would be to admit instability."
He looked directly at Sovar. Then at Lazion. Then, pointedly, at Vequess.
None of them responded.
But in that pause, something changed, and they knew it.
The game board had reset.
But not in their favor.
Hannya's communicator lit up within her sleeve.
Inside a report was included, but the summary was highlighted, two lines, written by Noh:
[
Area secured.
Two captured.
]
Her fingers brushed the edge of the veil covering her lips.
No smile. Just a thought.
'One was expected. But another… kikiki delicious.'
Noh wouldn't specify that without it being important.
She turned and gave the communicator to Baku, who flicked it open and read it in a glance.
His eyes narrowed. A faint grin, sharp and satisfied, ghosted his mouth for just a second.
~~~
On the mountain's lower path, Salitha's caravan left under mist.
She rode alone, head forward, veil pulled up against the wind. No banners. No fanfare.
Behind her, the mountain continued to breathe.
She did not say goodbye to Shela.
She did not wait for approval.
Her departure was not registered as betrayal.
Not yet.
But the wedge was visible now.
And it had settled deep.