Above the mage

Chapter 442 Birth of Ice and Snow vs. Master Sheep

The city hall's official system is still imperfect, and there are still many things in Phoenix that Sunefa needs to oversee, so it's not the right time for her to just leave.

But Winter's Hammer attacked Gaode, so she has to leave no matter what.

For her, the dignity of Gaode is the highest priority.

In addition, with Gao De still in the North at this time, Sunafa was quite at ease knowing that he was stationed in Phoenix and overseeing its development.

Because he was going to confront the perpetrator alone, Sunafa chose to travel by air.

Her flight speed is unmatched by Gaode Maps; even when just traveling, her average cruising speed exceeds 100 km/h.

At this speed, coupled with the fact that it's flying and can travel in a straight line, even though there's a great distance between Phoenix and the Winterhammer tribe's stronghold, Sunefa could easily reach them within a day.

The following day, she arrived outside the Winter's Hammer's base.

Sunafa did not conceal her whereabouts or movements.

Therefore, even before she arrived at the Winterhammer tribe, Yarna, the Winterhammer War Mother, had already noticed something.

As a war mother, Yarna was naturally a smart person and would not take any chances. When she saw Sunafa from afar, she realized that things must have been exposed.

Her expression changed drastically.

The scene from last year, where he teamed up with Helica but was still easily crushed by Sunefa, resurfaced in my mind.

That time, she was completely subdued and terrified.

Sunefa was too powerful, so powerful that Yarna couldn't muster even the slightest desire to fight back.

That was a complete and utter crushing defeat.

Not only was it her personal strength, but even her most prized asset, the Winterhammer clan's foundation, the Icebreaker, was utterly crushed by Sunefer's Blizzard.

Although she unconsciously became trembling with fear, a glint of cunning flashed in Yarna's eyes.

She knew she was no match for Sunaf, and the other mages in her clan were no match for her either; she was aware of this.

There is still a powerful outsider within the clan!

Yarna's reason for targeting Milo with God was not only to use the new king to control Zhenbing, but also to lure Sunefa to her door so she could use him to kill her!

The plan did not go smoothly, and they failed to capture the new king, but Sunefa did come knocking on their door.

Once Sunefa is defeated, even a newly awakened king with the Zhenbing bloodline can only stand alone and will not amount to much!

Before Sunefair even reached the skies above Winterhammer's stronghold, the Grand Elder of Winterhammer had already come out to greet him.

"May I ask what brings you, Mother of Ice, to Winter's Hammer?"

Even with Winter's Hammer and hundreds of thousands of its people behind him, the old elder's voice still trembled uncontrollably when facing the lone and incredibly young Sunefair.

Sunafa remained calm and casually took out two portraits.

"You two know each other, right?"

The Grand Elder glanced at it and his heart skipped a beat. How could he not recognize it?

He wanted to deny it, but he didn't dare.

They wouldn't dare admit it.

Seeing his attitude, Sunefa didn't stand on ceremony with him.

"These two men ambushed outside my Phoenix a few days ago, intending to attack my king. Their intentions were sinister. After they were captured, they confessed that they were agents planted by your Winter's Hammer within our True Ice, and that their actions were at your behest."

"Our king is the king of my people. Since you, the Winter's Hammer, harbor such evil intentions, then you are the blood enemies of my people."

She came here to demand an explanation, without beating around the bush or hiding any ulterior motives; she directly accused Winter's Hammer of wrongdoing.

The Grand Elder was already trembling with fear, and after hearing what Sunafa said, his vision went black and cold sweat poured down his forehead.

"There must be some misunderstanding about the Battle Mother of Sunafa." He quickly explained, trying to clear himself of any involvement.

"I didn't come here to hear your explanations." Sunefa looked down at the Grand Elder with a cold gaze.

Seeing the chill emanating from Sunefa, the Grand Elder knew that passing the buck was useless. He lowered his head and said, "War Mother Sunefa, what these two did was not at our behest. But since things have come to this, we, the Winter's Hammer, are willing to apologize to you. We don't know how we can appease you."

"Such a momentous event must have originated from your clan's War Mother," Sunefa said calmly. "It's simple: a life for a life."

The Grand Elder was taken aback by Sunafa's directness and domineering manner, and blurted out instinctively, "But isn't the new king alright?"

"You've made your move." Sunefa's eyes grew even colder as she reached behind her and took down the [Blizzard] from her back.

This action made the Grand Elder tremble.

As news of Sunafa's underdog victory and decisive kill of the five-ring Ryan spread, the power of her [Blizzard] weapon grew stronger and stronger.

The elder had no doubt that if Sunefa activated [Blizzard], he might not even be able to withstand a single arrow.

"War Mother Sunafa, wait!" the Grand Elder shouted hurriedly, his heart filled with anxiety as he wondered why his War Mother had not yet appeared.

The moment Yarna realized Sunefa was coming, she instructed him to stall for time while she went to seek backup.

When the nest is overturned, no egg remains intact. Even though the elder was terrified, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and accept the task, stepping forward to buy time.

He thought he could at least delay the attack for a few minutes, if not how long. But he never expected Sunafa to be so domineering and ruthless. He didn't even say five sentences before he drew his bow.

He doesn't want to die!

As Sunefa slowly drew back the bowstring, the elder's Adam's apple bobbed incessantly.

"Yarna, the War Mother, is out today and not in the tribe!" Finally, he had a sudden inspiration and shouted in a trembling voice, trying to buy some more time.

"Then you'll have to suffer for her for now. When she returns, I'll settle things with her separately." Sunafa said this in an extremely calm tone, a cruel statement devoid of any warmth.

Tiny ice crystals clung to her brows, and murderous intent surged in her lake-blue eyes.

As the bowstring was drawn, icy blue magic gathered between it as if it were alive, and wisps of cold air condensed into crystal-clear ice at a visible speed.

Every line in the gradually forming ice arrow exuded a bone-chilling cold.

The solemn killing intent and coldness enveloped the Grand Elder as if they were a tangible thing, making him, an Iceborn mage, feel a chill run through his body, as if he had fallen into an icy hell.

Just as he was filled with panic, his life hung by a thread.

boom!

A loud bang shook the ground violently.

A sudden burst of intense flames erupted from the depths of the Winter's Hammer stronghold.

A wave of orange-red heat swept up, instantly evaporating the surrounding snow and turning it into billowing white mist.

The flames, which should have been suppressed in the frigid North, now condensed into a massive fireball several meters in diameter, like a giant beast breaking free from its cage.

The fireball's surface pulsed with eerie purplish-black flames, soaring upwards with a sharp, piercing sound.

The air along the way twisted and deformed, crackling and popping as it sped past the Grand Elder and continued onward.

The icy arrow had already left the bowstring, leaving a trail of icy blue light in the air.

The moment the fireball and the arrow collided, the ice and fire energies clashed violently, bursting forth with dazzling light.

Ice and fire devoured each other frantically, forming a huge energy vortex, with ice shards and sparks flying everywhere.

The elder staggered backward from the heatwave, the scorching air and the biting cold assaulting his body at the same time.

After the sparks and ice crystals dissipated, two more people appeared in front of the Grand Elder.

One of them is Yarna, the War Mother of Winter's Hammer, who is Sunefa's target on this trip.

The other person was somewhat unfamiliar, radiating an unsettling, scorching aura that clashed terribly with the Northern atmosphere.

He was a middle-aged man.

His physique was as imposing as a mountain, yet standing next to the already robust Yarna, he made her look like a little girl.

On the broad shoulders, the heavy cast iron shoulder guards were covered with pits, and the edges were covered with a layer of blackish-red slag, as if they had been tempered by magma countless times.

Beneath the chainmail, welded with sharp, protruding ridges, dark red patterns are faintly visible.

The most striking thing was the helmet he was wearing.

The helmet appeared to be crafted from a single piece of lava, with dark red lava patterns flowing across its surface, and a scorching heat emanating from it.

The helmet only covered the top and back of the head, leaving the face completely exposed—the angular face had skin that looked like it had been scorched by the high temperature, and a hideous scar ran diagonally across the corner of the right eye, extending from the cheekbone to the chin, like a solidified lava flow.

His eyes were like two flickering ghostly flames, with a lava-like orange-red light shimmering deep within his pupils, while the whites of his eyes were covered with spiderweb-like blood vessels, as if they were about to burst forth with flames at any moment.

The man also had a giant hammer hanging from his waist, with an unusually strange design.

The hammer handle is made of twisted black metal, with a rough texture similar to volcanic rock on the surface, and there are charred handprints of varying depths on the grip.

The hammerhead is covered with honeycomb-like holes, inside which leaps crimson flames.

With each breath the man took, thick smoke billowed from his nostrils, as if a volcano were hidden inside him.

Sunefa noticed that the man's exposed arms were covered with crisscrossing burn scars.

The skin at the scar site is a wrinkled, dark red color, resembling the patterns formed by cooled lava.

But what truly made Sunefa wary was that her opponent effortlessly blocked the True Ice Arrow she fired with Blizzard.

Sunefa was perfectly aware of her own strength.

Even a seemingly ordinary, casual arrow, empowered by both Blizzard and True Ice, is enough to instantly kill a fourth-ring mage.

Therefore, the person who could so easily block her arrow must be a mage of at least the fourth rank.

The vast Northern Territory has not produced a mage of the fourth rank or higher for a long time.

Last year she had just shot and killed a fifth-ring necromancer, and now a fifth-ring mage has suddenly appeared out of nowhere? And a fire elemental mage, the least likely to appear in the North?

When did Five Rings Mages become so rampant?

Sunafa frowned slightly, but she didn't feel much panic.

"Who are you?" Sunafa's voice was icy cold as she addressed the strange man, her silver hair whipping in the wind.

Sunefa's composure earned Yarna's secret admiration: an ordinary person would have already given up in the face of Master Sheep's overwhelming pressure, how could anyone be as calm and collected as Sunefa?

But at this moment, she could not allow the two of them to communicate.

Because the Yang family members beside her were, in the end, not really anyone to her.

She was only able to persuade the other party to help by leveraging the situation, by smearing Sunefa's identity and intentions, and by taking advantage of the fact that this member of the Sheep family needed the Winter's Hammer to help find the item that had unsettled the master craftsman and their past connection.

"Master Yang, this woman is the leader of our rival tribe. Relying on their power, they have waged war and annexed many smaller tribes. In recent years, they have repeatedly provoked us, trying to instigate war with our tribe."

Yarna used the [Communication] spell to have an encrypted conversation with the man beside her, continuing to smear Sunefa.

Through these days of interaction, Yarna vaguely sensed that these sheep people seemed to be extremely averse to war, which was why they isolated themselves from the world and lived in seclusion in the Molten Plains.

The reason they went out on their own initiative this time was because the master craftsman had sensed that the thing born in the western part of their northern territory possessed too great a power, a terrifying power capable of overturning the northern territory.

He was worried that the thing containing this power might bring about negative changes to the North, which was why he wanted to find out everything.

Yarna seized on this sore spot and directly labeled Sunefa as a "war maniac," attempting to incite Master Sheep's dislike for Sunefa.

To Yarna's surprise, although Master Sheep had made a move, he had no intention of taking any further action.

He seemed not to have heard what Yarna said, nor understood its underlying meaning, but simply looked at Sunefa and said in a rough yet extremely gentle tone:

"You are powerful, but you are no match for me. Yarna has been working for me lately, and I will not stand idly by while she does nothing. You should give up."

Master Yang was simply trying to dissuade Sunefa from leaving; that was all.

He had no intention of taking action against Sunafa.

Yarna, realizing this, was extremely anxious.

Master Sheep won't stay in Winter's Hammer forever. Once he's finished dealing with his own affairs, he'll return to Molten Core. If Sunefa comes knocking again then, she'll still be doomed.

But she didn't know how to persuade Master Yang, so she could only worry anxiously.

"Perhaps I am no match for you, but that doesn't mean you can protect Yarna," Sunefa's icy voice rang out.

These words struck Yarna like a hammer blow. She was first shocked, then overjoyed.

Master Yang has already let you off the hook, but you don't know when to stop and still provoke me to my face!

Even if Master Yang has the kindest personality, he wouldn't be able to tolerate this situation, right?

Thinking this, Yarna looked at Master Sheep with expectant eyes.

As expected, Master Yang frowned slightly, his right hand already reaching for the giant hammer hanging at his waist, seemingly displeased: "Although I usually focus on blacksmithing and forging and am not good at fighting, I am not this incompetent."

"Then let's give it a try." Sunefa's silver hair danced wildly in the wind, and her cloak fluttered behind her.

They said they came to hold Gaode accountable, so they would definitely demand an explanation. How could they be so easily forced to back down?

So what if you're a Five Rings Mage?

I am the daughter of Boreas, born of ice and snow. She once again drew her bow, her killing intent fully revealed!

(End of this chapter)