He slowly rose, grabbing a large colorful red blanket. He then powerfully clenched his fist as he grinned. “Enjoy your conquest, little tortoise.” That’s when he jumped off the Tower.
For an instant, the world seemed to come to a halt. But then it happened, and a slight change occurred to the castle.
Everything suddenly blew up. It wasn’t as much an explosion as everything crumbling down simultaneously with incredible momentum.
That’s when they finally realized the true nature of the castle. It was one giant death trap!
The foundation gave up and made the behemoth tumble, the ceiling turned into a gigantic net, the remaining walls turned into restraints, and the Towers turned into colossal skewers.
The creature cried out in pain and confusion. It was…hurt! How?! It was destroying the human’s base and then….?! The Nords watched on, eyes popping, blue blood overflowing everywhere!
”I-is this really happening?!”
”This man’s a god!!”
Jack was slowly descending from the sky, gliding as if a heavenly being. His target was the screaming Tortoise. He dropped on a Tower/Skewer, entering the structure’s remains.
Before long, he was inside the creature’s body, staring at an enormous blue heart that was beating insanely powerfully.
— Ba-dump! Ba-dump! —
”Hehe, that’s a tad loud, ain’t it? How about we put an end to it.” He evilly chuckled as he approached the organ.
That’s when the creature bellowed once more. — GAOOO!!! — But this time it wasn’t as much an intimidating shout as one of supplication.
Sadly for it, all that Jack saw was XP, shiny, very very shiny XP. He summoned a dark flame in every hand, and then…
He unleashed the entirety of his fury on the thing.
”That’s for destroying my previous castle, you bastard!”
”That’s for not even sparing the regular Igloos!”
”That’s for spawning annoying ice creatures!”
”That’s for being obnoxiously loud!”
”That’s for the XP!!”
The damage had finally accumulated a little too much. That’s when the gigantic Overlord Ice Tortoise lost its heart and its life.
[#$”%”?&/$&?”]
[Analyzing Igloo Creation Skill!]
[Unbalanced! Something’s Unbalanced!!]
”What are you waiting for? Give me my XP already!” Jack berated.
The NPCs had helped him build the death trap that had immobilized the behemoth, but he had been the only one to deal the last killing blow.
This was a raid-level Boss that was supposed to be impossible to hunt. To exit the trial, one only had to manage to seal the creature temporarily.
If Jack remembered correctly, the usual clear method was to strike a friendship with the Nords, then use their expertise to find legendary flames to accomplish the quest.
Killing it?! This had never been supposed to happen!
[Level UP!]
[Level UP!]
[….]
[Reached Level 34!]
[Analyzing! Error! Error!]
The system was utterly losing its mind trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. To be fair, it hadn’t.
Jack’s castle of doom was something that had taken an eternity for a builder’s guild to create in his past life.
When they had finally succeeded, the monsters had long grown strong enough to resist it. It was akin to the holy grail of castles.
Where the creature’s heart once stood, a tiny crystal of ice glowed as if a tiny blue sun, an Everfrost Heart. Jack quickly grabbed it, leaving the Tortoise’s body.
A sea of Nords stared at him with veneration. He raised his fist in the air powerfully, showcasing the spoils of his victory.
”Now, who wants to eat some tortoise meat!! There’s plenty to go around!!” That’s when the realm truly rumbled, the cheers even louder than the enormous monster army.
A warm sun fell on a small peaceful Nord village.
The Curse had been defeated, even reformed, the snowstorm surrounding the place had disappeared with the Tortoise, and terrified monsters were scurrying away.
A small wolf took its rightful place near its master, already salivating. Tortoise meat? It wouldn’t miss that for anything in the world!
As if on cue, the Everfrost Curse was also expiring, as they regained 100% control of their bodies. It was time to be merry and enjoy!
—
Back in Timber City, many curious players were entering the Dimensional Trial area.
Many talked with the Employment Jelly, trying to get information out of it. They had to be cautious as no one had come back alive from any trials just yet.
The trials were truly perverse difficulty-wise.
But just as they were conversing, the jelly suddenly turned silent as its body started rippling endlessly.
It seemed…shocked?! In fact, its body had already morphed to a “‽” shape. It looked so damn strange!
The creature slowly turned toward a seemingly empty corner of the white realm. The air started glowing golden, and a second later a leaderboard appeared.
But as they checked it, they couldn’t help but gasp. What the heck was this?! There was only a single name up there.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Iceland Ranking: Score!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. #&%?! Error! Error! Jack’O!
*PS: Score based on difficulty!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Was he hacking or something?! No, this was impossible: otherwise, he would have been banned from the leaderboard and game, right?!
There was only one explanation: the system simply didn’t know how to grade his performance! Then again, this shouldn’t have been possible either?!
Just as they were wondering what the hell happened, this appeared…
[First Iceland Clear: Jack’O! Congratulations! :party_popper:]
[Igloo Creation Temporarily Disabled!]
”Igloo Creation disabled?!”
”Does that mean it was bugged?”
”How can something like that even be OP?!”
”Doesn’t this guy have his own channel or something? Pancakes, right!” The players all rushed to exit the game and connect on their favorite streaming platforms.
—
As Jack exited the game, his phone lit up like crazy.
— Ding! Ding! Ding! —
Pancakes had sent him so many messages. He already had heard about the last announcement, and he wanted to footage ASAP.
But just as he was replying, he suddenly noticed a post-it on a nearby wall. This was his sister’s handwriting. There was a time (soon), an address, and a name, a guy’s name.
So what if she was meeting a guy? It wasn’t any of his business. He calmly sat on his bed, rejoicing for her. But a few minutes later, he rose and left their apartment.
He suddenly felt like taking a walk. If he just happened to see Lilly in passing, it would be fate… yes, fate! Yes, he would just happen to walk nearby… what was the address again?