NOVEL NEXT Chapter 110: Frost Unleashed!
Their blades clashed again, sparks bursting, metal ringing, the ground trembling beneath their feet. Jean twisted, Bruce countered, their weapons screaming with every collision, until suddenly…
Jean stopped.
Not because she wanted to. Not because she planned to. Her body simply froze, mid-swing, as though the thread controlling her movements had been abruptly severed. Her knees buckled slightly. Her breath hitched in her throat. The cold in her chest had nothing to do with her ice affinity, it was the shock of waking up.
Bruce lowered his dagger the moment she halted. His stance shifted back to neutral, relaxed, unthreatening, head tilting slightly as he studied her with the patient curiosity of a man observing a puzzle rather than an opponent.
Jean's chest rose and fell rapidly. Sweat rolled down her jawline, dripping onto the frost that had begun to spread under her feet. Her eyes trembled, unfocused, dazed, like someone who had just been shaken awake from a deep, suffocating dream.
Inside her mind, panic crashed in hard waves.
'How… how did I get into that trance? How did he make me fight using only weapon technique… without me even thinking to use my class?'
From the moment Bruce knocked her out of the sky, until the instant her mind snapped back, she hadn't been fighting of her own free will.
Her body had moved automatically, instinctively, following a rhythm she had never chosen. Every step, every twist, every counter had flowed out of her as though her limbs belonged to someone else. It wasn't hypnosis. It wasn't fear alone. It was like being high on something potent, like that sharp, dangerous "autopilot" state people slipped into when drugged with something too strong. Not the same sensation… but eerily close.
Only now did her consciousness claw its way out of that haze.
Jean's grip tightened around her weapon as the realization sank deeper, colder, more terrifying.
She lifted her gaze.
And the moment she truly looked at Bruce, her heart skipped painfully.
She no longer saw a fellow recruit of similar age range. She no longer saw a rival. She saw him the way she saw Frost elders, people who had lived with blood and killing for decades. People whose very presence demanded respect from the soul.
It hit her like ice water pouring down her spine.
'It's his bloodlust…'
Her mind replayed the battle, the slaughter, the precision, the violence, and everything finally aligned.
'His bloodlust triggered the trance. My body reacted on instinct, falling back to the most basic form of combat just to survive. Even though I have far stronger techniques… more destructive moves… more deadly abilities…'
She swallowed hard.
'But he's my age. How? How can someone my age carry bloodlust on par with warriors who've survived a hundred battlefields? Has he been killing since he was born?'
The thought made her shiver.
She recalled the corpses he left behind, the screams, the way he had moved through death like it was familiar, comfortable, almost natural.
'No. It wasn't experience. It wasn't age. It was something far worse. Death isn't new to him.'
If she only knew that this VR trial was his first time killing humans, she would have laughed herself into insanity.
Bruce still watched her silently, dagger resting casually at his side, posture relaxed as though this entire moment was expected. As though he'd already foreseen her snapping out of the trance.
Jean drew a slow breath into her lungs, forcing the trembling away. Her expression steadied. A cold line settled over her lips.
So he wanted her to fight on his terms. With bare technique. No class. No abilities.
A Frost would rather die than be toyed with like that.
She lowered her stance, her heart cold...
Bruce's brow lifted slightly. "Don't tell me you've lost the will to fight, Jean Frost…"
There was no mockery in his voice. Just curiosity. Almost disappointment.
Jean raised her head, meeting his gaze with eyes that had regained their Frost steel.
"With how things have turned out," she replied, voice cold and sharp, "quitting would be a disgrace to the Frost."
Her chest rose. Her aura gathered.
"I'll fight you, now, with my full strength."
Bruce's lips lifted into a slow, genuine smile.
The air changed instantly.
Jean's mana stirred, swirling around her weapon like a storm of crystalline winds. The ground beneath her feet frosted over once more, thin cracks of ice threading outward in jagged paths. Her posture settled into something primal and refined, a stance she had never used against him before.
Now that her mind was free, now that her heart had steadied, now that she had braced herself against the suffocating pressure of Bruce's bloodlust,
she wasn't the same girl who clashed blades with him moments ago.
She was Jean Frost.
She is a prodigy. One of the top five talents of the trial. A girl whose class and will sharpened like winter steel.
The atmosphere trembled.
Bruce raised his dagger again, the calm predator. Jean spun her double-ended sword, the frost-born genius. Mana thickened. Frost cracked. Leaves froze mid-fall. The air turned sharp enough to cut.
And as the ground split beneath her feet, ice blooming outward,
The duel between Jean Frost... and Bruce Ackerman, was finally, truly, about to begin.
Bruce's smile lingered, faint and unreadable, the curve of someone watching an unfolding secret rather than an opponent. His curiosity sharpened as Jean gathered power, her aura condensing like a storm ready to break.
And then…
BOOM!!!!!!
Jean moved.
She didn't dash, she erupted forward, her body bursting into a blur of motion that ripped frost from the earth in a spiraling wave. The temperature dropped sharply. The ground cracked beneath her feet, ice blooming in jagged patterns as sub-zero mana surged violently through her limbs. Frigid air billowed off her skin in a mist-like whirl, coating her in a swirling, smoke-like aura of pale blue cold.
...
A/N:
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