Chapter 182 (2/5): Frozen Stiff

When Victoria woke up from her dream, it was already almost noon, and the whole mansion was silent. Even when she cast out her senses to see if she could catch a trace of someone’s mana hanging around, she came up empty. In the whole mansion, it was just her left.

“I see. So they’re gone,” she muttered, rubbing her head, clearing away the drowsiness she always felt after dreaming. It was weird to not have Ismelda around after so long when she spent years trying to get rid of that young vampire lord. In the end, all it took to have a quiet day all to herself was to send Ismelda out on a mission. How could she not have thought of that before?

Wondering if she was getting a bit senile and her brain rusting, Victoria quickly changed and headed to her office as normal. But on her way to the office, she came to a place where the hallway branched off elsewhere, namely the room where Camilla and Kagriss had been resting the day before.

Victoria didn’t know what possessed her to make that decision, but she found herself pushing in through the door. A tidy room greeted her. The bed was made and everything that could be moved was in its original spot. If there was anything that might’ve looked out of place, it would be a small flax bag sitting on the desk.

She walked over and picked it up. The reaction she felt when she examined it with her magic hinted at what it was, yet aside from the bag itself, there was nothing else on the surface of the table. No note. However, the intentions of the person who left the bag of money behind was obvious.

With a sigh, Victoria decided to do as Camilla wished and pass that bag over to the widow.

“Camilla… They should be quite a distance away by now, shouldn’t they? I hope they stay safe,” she murmured.

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Kagriss couldn’t stay silent anymore as she watched Camilla sigh for who knows how many times that day. “Milla, don’t think about it. You already did what you can.” Just thinking about the money they gave away made her heart hurt, and the worst part about just leaving that money on the table didn’t even make Camilla feel better.

“I’ll try my best to not think about it,” Camilla said. She shook her head, trying to chase away the negative thoughts. Even if she wasn’t cheering up for herself, she should cheer up for Kagriss as well. Every moment she spent sulking was another minute that Kagriss had to shoulder that heavy burden with her. She smiled, hoping to trick her mind into being as happy as her face was. “I think I’m better now.”

“Good. Stay like that and you’ll be fine.” Kagriss nudged her horse closer and took Camilla’s hand off her reins. She squeezed them in her palm, enveloping them in a smooth, cool feel.

They were traveling toward the Belrian Mountains, accompanied by a few other teams of hunters. Each of them rode on horses in order to speed up the pace. The scale of the mission this time was massive. There were almost fifty people spread out over three teams, all of them B-ranked parties. Camilla’s party was the only C-ranked one.

Although Lucienne’s departure with the twins dropped their party’s rank down to D, Ismelda’s addition brought it back up once more.

It was only with Victoria’s recommendation that they managed to join this expedition.

The group of fifty people quickly ate up the distance between them and their destination in the mountains, at least at first. Moving with a large number of people usually caused the overall pace of the group to slow down to the speed of the slowest member, but because every one of the hunters present were experienced fighters and with the necessary skills to survive outdoors, the speed at which they traveled was not slow at all.

Thanks to the size of the group, not many threats dared get near them and any that did draw close swiftly became food for the party or were harvested for parts to sell later.

“You know,” Camilla said, “this really takes me back to when I traveled with my Order, although we usually didn't travel in quite as big of a group as this is. It’s also a bit different.”

“Do you miss those times?”

“Not really. When I first became an undead, I hoped upon hope that I would be able to become a human again. But now I don't really care anymore. After all, I found someone else that I want to be with. Traveling with you is better than traveling with anyone else.” Being around the person she liked made everything better.

Camille's words almost made Kagriss blush, but she hid her emotions too well for it to actually show. However she did look away. Although she was a little embarrassed, she would much rather Camila be sappy than depressed.

“How is it different?”

“Well, it’s not that different once I thought about it. The largest teams of templars usually had less than twenty or so, and most of them were trainees being taken out for experience by older members. So you have the team split up into little groups like this, with the trainees gathered into their own cliques and the older templars stuck together.

“However, it’s also different because there is a clear hierarchical relationship where we’d send those trainees out on errands or give them instructions during battle… which would be unthinkable here.”

Camilla thought that she might lose herself in her memories when she thought back on those simpler times, but to her surprise, she found those memories blurry and not at all as nostalgic as she thought they might be.

Undead did not have memories of when they were human. Was this because they lost them on death or because they faded with time, replaced by the new, eternal memories they gained after being reborn? Perhaps it was the latter, but until she found another newborn undead that became intelligent enough to think, she would probably never know if she was an exception or part of the rule.

Behind them, Ismelda rolled her eyes, trying her best to shut out their voices. She looked away when Kagriss intertwined her fingers with Camilla, feeling a bit sick to her stomach with some emotion that she knew was jealousy. Jealousy that Kagriss could get what Ismelda always wanted.

Even though Camilla and Victoria were both vampire lords…

She will never understand what Kagriss saw in Camilla, especially when she met Victoria at around the same time. To her, it was much more logical to be smitten with Victoria than with anyone else.

It was truly unfortunate that Victoria could not come with them. She didn't understand why Victoria would not come, especially since the mission was so important to her. Gathering the feather pendants seemed to be Victoria’s highest priority, and whenever something anomalous happened that might be because of the feather pendants, Victoria would always drop everything else in order to dedicate more attention to those anomalies.

it should have been the same this time but for some reason, Victoria did not come. Ismelda frowned. Why did Victoria insist on sending Camilla on this mission?  For that matter, why did Victoria pay so much attention to Camilla in the first place?

Perhaps Camilla had something to do with those feather pendants, but Ismelda could not tell what. She didn’t know enough to make an educated guess either, since the only thing that she knew about those feather pendants was that there were five in total and that no one but Victoria knew about them.

Yet… Camilla…

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Part of the reason why there was a B-rank minimum was to keep casualties to a minimum. Higher ranked parties tend to have an experienced core that could educate less experienced members because of their larger scale. By raising the minimum party rank to B, Victoria ensured that at least some people in each party were experienced enough.

With winter well underway, experience in wilderness survival was mandatory. A less prepared hunter might die to the elements during a sudden storm long before they saw any fighting.

Their first night in the mountains, temperatures dropped below freezing during a cold snap along with a blizzard, forcing the fifty-man team to find a spot in the forest with a dense evergreen canopy to shelter from the storm.

The stout branches dulled the bite of the winds enough that what warmth the hunters managed to retain did not get swept away instantly.

Of everyone present, Kagriss and Camilla had things the hardest.

Camilla stretched, working her frozen muscles. The cold seeped into her flesh and bones, overwhelming the magic that normally kept her at a normal human’s body temperature. She couldn’t even clatter her teeth when she was so stiff that she felt she might break apart with every movement.

Or rather, she was already breaking apart. However, her magic constantly repaired her, regenerating the torn and bruised flesh right after they broke apart.

“I hadn’t realized that undead had a weakness other than holy magic,” she grumbled.

Kagriss nodded. “I didn’t know either. When it snowed, we usually stayed indoors. The zombies and skeletons outside usually shut down and hibernated, but I never thought much of it. I had no idea that things could get this bad.”

During her tenure as a templar, Camilla had noticed that undead were less active during the winter, but because she lived in more temperate regions, it never got cold enough for undead to freeze completely.

The only reason she and Kagriss could still move was because they were high undead with the necessary strength and mana reserves to remain active. A normal undead would have long turned into statues of ice or, if they insisted on moving, exhausted their mana while regenerating.

Luckily, unlike the living who died once they froze, an undead merely became inactive. The moment they thawed, they’d be able to continue with their unlives as if nothing had happened.

“Do you think that we could clear out Amaranthine Point if we had an ice mage with us?”

Kagriss thought about the question for a bit before she shook her head. “It’d be tough to keep so many undead frozen even if they can stop a high undead in the first place. It took hours for us to freeze, and that was because the cold is everywhere. Can your average mage keep focus for that long?”

“That’s a good point.” Camilla dropped the idea. It had just been an idle thought anyway. She hadn’t been serious when she suggested it. She stretched again and pulled the blanket around her tighter, wrapping both her and Kagriss up in hopes that the blanket would keep the cold long enough for them to thaw. “We really need a fire.”

“Too bad all the dead branches are frozen solid, and the live ones won’t burn.” Kagriss sighed.

At that moment, Ismelda walked into the tent and shut the flap behind her. She looked to be in a hurry.

“What’s wrong?” Camilla asked.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you in a rush then?”

Before Ismelda could answer, they heard the voice of a woman outside the tent.

“Miss Ismelda! Come on, just for an hour! I promise nothing will happen to them!”

Them? Camilla looked at Ismelda. “What is she wanting from you? Some weapon or tool you’re hoarding?”

Ismelda rolled her eyes. “It’s the two of you! She thinks you’re under my control!”

“That’s ridiculous!” Camilla said. She turned her attention toward the woman standing outside in the frigid cold. She concentrated on the woman’s mana, finding a hint of death affinity. However, it was weak, and she clearly had another more powerful affinity that dominated her magic: wind.

Ismelda scoffed. “You tell her then.”

“Please!” The woman’s cry sounded again from outside.

“No!” Camilla shouted. “You can’t borrow me or Kagriss! Neither of us are available! What do you want anyway?”

There was a pause and the woman’s voice came again. “You can’t trick me! You’re making them say that!”

Camilla wanted to groan. This woman was a wannabe death mage and it really showed. Everyone with even a passing understanding of death magic knew that once an undead evolved into a higher stage of being, it became near impossible for them to become mentally dominated by anything other than another undead who resides at a higher stage of evolution.

Because of the woman’s ignorance, it would be almost impossible to correct her when the woman already thought that everything Camilla and Kagriss did was due to Ismelda’s commands. She sighed.

“No means no! Go away!”

Behind them, Ismelda had already covered herself in several layers of blankets, burying even her head and ears into the bundle, ignoring everything that was going on.

Camilla looked at Kagriss, seeing her own thoughts mirrored with Kagriss’s eyes. The only way to deal with someone stubborn was to be equally stubborn. All she had to do was ignore the woman until she either left or froze to death outside.

The woman obviously strove for self-improvement, so it wasn’t likely that she’d be willing to die waiting outside.

Hugging Kagriss to share their coldness and warmth, Camilla began conserving mana, her temperature dropping even lower as she let herself fall into a trance, a trance where she was aware of nothing but Kagriss in her arms.

Who cares if she froze anyway? She didn’t.

If anything attacked in this weather, it was going to be an ice elemental that she would be useless against anyway. Might as well rest her nerves to prepare for the unknown dangers ahead.