Solo Leveling- Ragnarok-Chapter 285

Amid the raging blizzard, Sirka’s footsteps were as light and effortless as if she were taking a casual stroll across a snow-covered field. In reality, her speed had surged, and within moments, she had caught up with the storm itself.

“What?!”

“You dare try to oppose us?”

The spirits were taken aback. Their angry voices echoed loudly in the icy storm.

Their rage was justified—they were Spirits of Extreme Cold, the executors of winter.

“You are a mere elf! How dare you rise up against the winter?”

“Accept your fate!”

“Obey and endure!”

Winter was not something a mere “creation” could hope to brave.

“It is the fate assigned to all living things!”

The raging blizzard converged upon Sirka, swallowing her whole. As she raced above the ground, the cold made her breath hang white in the air.

“Winter shall take its course!”

“Winter shall claim the land!”

But nothing could halt her stride. Even in the face of the merciless cold, she did not shrink back in the slightest. In fact, the stronger the storm grew, the faster she became. She was using Elven Footstep to its maximum potential.

“Spirit Mail!”

The white snowflakes began to cling to her with each step she took. Massive plates of icy armor began to build over Sirka’s entire body.

As the ice armor grew, she closed her fist, and the Trident of the Ice Tree formed. It turned into a large hammer, and she swung immediately.

Wham!

The impact sent a shockwave tearing through the storm, reversing its direction.

The Spirits of Extreme Cold, expansive enough to fill one’s entire field of vision, seemed visibly shaken.

It’s working! Sirka thought, her eyes gleaming.

Her already enormous hammer continued to grow.

Wham!

When she swung again, the blizzard let out a wailing shriek. The relentless frost was ripped apart and shredded.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Sirka’s attacks were ruthless and unrelenting.

The spirits roared, and a monstrous hand reached out, attempting to seize her. But she tore through that too. She smashed apart arms, shoulders, and faces in rapid succession.

It was a truly incredible sight. These spirits were the embodiment of winter, born from the fruits of an Elvenwood, but Sirka did not seem intimidated by such powerful beings. She was like a flower that had pierced through the cold, icy ground and managed to bloom.

[Sillad grins.]

[Sillad reminds you not to battle the spirits unnecessarily, but simply to rule them.]

The former Monarch’s lecturing voice echoed in both Suho’s and Sirka’s minds.

Sirka took the advice to heart. “Like this, you mean?”

With a mighty leap, she soared high into the sky. Her hand, clad in a colossal ice glove, clamped down upon the head of a Spirit of Extreme Cold.

“Kyaaah! How dare you!” the spirit shouted. A violent gust erupted from its body, meant to hurl her away.

However, the attempt failed. Sirka remained where she was, gripping its head and gazing down at it from above.

“Shut up and obey,” she said. “You belong to me now.”

Her eyes were haughty and domineering like those of a queen speaking to her subjects.

The spirit shuddered at the sight of those determined eyes and wailed in protest. Something was wrong—this made no sense. She was merely an elf.

“A mere creation...!”

“You tell me not to defy winter?” Sirka said, scoffing at its resistance.

These fools had misunderstood from the very beginning. The very reason that Sillad had created a sanctuary in the cold land and had the elves live there was to prepare for this moment. The previous Monarch had not wanted any of his future descendants, regardless of who among the ice elves took up his mantle, to submit to winter.

“Our winter began at birth,” Sirka declared. “Even if it was some other ice elf and not me standing here, you would still be nothing to us.”

[Sillad smiles in satisfaction.]

“So kneel,” she ordered, continuing the Monarch’s will.

She still had the spirit’s head gripped in one hand. With the other hand, she lifted her hammer high.

“Unless you want a beating to remember.”

Wham! Wham! Wham!

She brought the hammer down again and again as the spirit’s massive form collapsed, crushed beneath her.

“Kyaaah! Kyah...”

“Ouch. That must hurt...”

Suho and Beru, who had been watching this from afar, didn’t know what to say. Children born in the winter were strong. They had to be—only the strong survived here.

But there were five of these spirits, and Sirka had been brutalizing just one of them. What of the other four?

The storm raged chaotically as roaring filled the air. The winds were blowing without a unified direction.

“Hmm... Are they running away?” Suho asked.

“That seems to be the case,” Beru replied.

The other four spirits were scattering in the four cardinal directions, eager to escape from Sirka. However, they were moving too threateningly to simply be running scared.

“Winter has come!”

“Winter shall...”

“Winter...!”

They did seem to have some reason. Winter did not need to be confined to one city. If they were allowed to escape, they would freeze over everything in their path, and the result of that seemed simple enough.

“If we let them go, the entire Earth will freeze like the world of the ice elves, won’t it?” Suho asked.

“Yes,” Beru answered.

“And we need to kill them for me to level up?”

“Indeed...”

Beru nodded, looking pleased. Neither he nor Suho had moved, however. They had a reason for their relaxation.

“Harmakan?”

“Yes, Master.”

At Suho’s call, the demonic spirit revealed himself. After last night’s visit to the bakery in South Korea, Suho had brought him here, taking him briefly from his virtual world research with Jinho.

“The leaves delayed the process of creating the magic circle, but I have just completed it,” Harmakan reported.

“Well done.”

The Spirits of Extreme Cold who had been fleeing from Sirka were suddenly blocked by a transparent force field and trapped inside the city. They howled in shock and rage.

“What is this barrier?”

“How dare you try to keep us in?”

Furious frost smashed against the invisible walls. The force field surrounding the city shook incessantly under the tremendous attack, teetering precariously as if it would shatter at any moment.

“How is this possible...?”

“A spell of a demonic spirit can’t possibly...”

The barrier didn’t budge. The instance dungeon ability that had created this expansive barrier was the legacy of Kandiaru, the Grand Spellcaster of the demonic spirits and a figure who could have become a Monarch himself. The ability had torn a hole in the dimensional rift and moved them to another world, and once trapped, even winter itself could not pierce the dimensional walls.

This was not because Kandiaru was superior to the spirits. On the contrary, Kandiaru’s Blessing had no effect against the debuff. Really, their powers were similar. Kandiaru had never been able to surpass the Monarch of Transfiguration and had remained forever in second place. The Spirits of Extreme Cold, on the other hand, were the strongest of any spirits. They were beings that Sillad had coerced into submission to become a Monarch—his equals.

Despite this, the spells Kandiaru had painstakingly crafted solely for the Monarch of Shadows were so high-level that they had worked even on far stronger Monarchs.

“Kyaaaah! Release us at once!”

“Winter shall—”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

One of the spirits, mindlessly striking against the invisible barrier, was suddenly caught from behind by Sirka as she chased it down.

It turned around and recoiled in horror. It had already seen what had happened to the unfortunate spirit she had first captured.

On the pristine white snow, the absolute being that had once been the executor of winter lay completely flattened, bowing at Sirka’s feet. It was a great humiliation for these spirits who should have been freely spanning the globe, carrying their bitter cold with them.

“You... How dare— Gah!”

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Sirka started the process all over again, repeatedly beating the spirit into submission.

“You submit or you die!”

The second spirit was no different from the first as the cycle of violence and coercion continued.

As all of this unfolded, the city’s villains were dying. They had fought tooth and nail to consume one another, and now one by one, they fell into the snow, unable to endure the cold. They were just like the elves who had once tried to flee the winter, only to freeze to death, but there was no need to mourn them.

“Spirits of murderers... My favorite kind of material.”

Harmakan was grinning. To him, nothing was quite as delightful as playing with wicked souls. And after witnessing today’s chaos—the uprising, the slaughter—he had added one special touch when setting up this instance dungeon.

Ding!

[Skill: “Mirage” has been activated throughout the instance dungeon.]

Mirage was a powerful illusion once used by Jarvier on Haeundae Beach. It manifested its targets’ most terrifying or emotionally charged memories and forced them to relive their worst moments.

Jarvier had relished every second of drawing out the glorious nightmare in the minds of those depraved humans, but Harmakan was a far higher being. He was the supreme chief of his kind. Where Jarvier had woven his illusions using shifting sandstorms, Harmakan had something far deadlier—the blizzard.

The results were becoming apparent now.

“Why did you kill me?”

“I begged you to let me live...”

The villains, barely conscious as they lay in the snow, forced their eyes open in horror. Standing before them were the very people they had murdered—as blood-soaked, ice-cold corpses.

“Wh-what? How...?”

“I-I killed you!”

Faced with this nightmare, the villains instinctively tried to back away, but their frostbitten bodies refused to move.

“I begged you to let me liiive!”

“Aaaaagh!”

“Someone, help!”

One by one, the villains were consumed by the nightmares they had created.

[Level up!] 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

[Level up!]

Perhaps it was because of the sheer number of villains who had called this city home or the weight of their accumulated sins, but Suho began to level up.

However, he wasn’t paying attention to the notifications.

He narrowed his eyes. Maybe the fallen leaves that had disrupted his perception had finally been buried beneath the snow, but now that his senses had fully returned, he could feel something.

He abruptly lifted his head, his sharp gaze locking onto the snow-covered sky.

“Who the hell are you?”

[The Apostle of Paradise is watching you.]

Somewhere from far, far beyond the instance dungeon, an unsettling gaze was studying him.