Chapter 185: Nowhere Left to Hide.

"Learn what? They’re all dead."

Andrea did not refute that. The ancient humans were the first to fight against the corrupt god of storms and blizzards, and even though they had been destroyed, they had still managed to create a weapon powerful enough to injure the god and force it into a deep slumber. Their civilization had fallen, their people were gone, and whatever knowledge they had possessed had been buried alongside them. Yet the weapon they left behind had accomplished what countless lives could not.

"We need to find the giant siege weapon. It’s actually more of a railgun when you think about it. The ancient humans made it to fight against the Storm Blizzard God."

Damien’s face twisted. He had already seen the weapon, or what remained of it, and the thought of finding it useful now was almost laughable.

"I saw that. It’s already been destroyed. Who even has enough power to destroy something like that?"

"Malik," Elias said plainly.

Damien was definitely taken aback by that reply. He had heard Camila speak about Malik, but the name alone had never given him a clear idea of the man’s strength. Destroying a weapon built by ancient humans to wound a god was a different matter entirely.

"Camila’s boyfriend. Who would have thought? I guess he did have some spunk."

There was no time to dwell on the revelation. They all shook as the Storm Blizzard God finally reached the settlement. Its enormous body came to a halt, and it raised its head arrogantly above the ruins, as though the miserable collection of broken buildings and frightened survivors beneath it did not deserve its attention.

Then, without warning, cold energy spread in every direction.

The temperature plummeted so violently that the air itself seemed to turn against them. Frost raced over shattered walls, crawled across the ground, and swallowed whatever remained of the settlement’s warmth. Every half-broken building within its range began to freeze, while men, women, and children who had failed to escape the advancing cold found their bodies stiffening beneath a layer of ice. The storm did not need to strike them directly. Its mere presence was enough to kill.

Hannah felt her armour freeze against her body. Fine cracks spread across its surface, the sound of splitting material reaching her ears as the cold continued to intensify. She could not afford to stop and examine the damage. There were still survivors scattered throughout the ruins, and she needed to get as many of them as possible behind Rex’s barrier before the cold reached them.

As she hurried forward, she spotted Seris kneeling on the frozen ground.

The girl stared blankly ahead, her expression empty, seemingly unaware of the death spreading around her. Hannah did not know what had happened to her, but there was no time to investigate. She pointed the remaining survivors towards Rex and immediately ran to Seris.

"Seris, get up. We need to run."

Seris barely reacted. Hannah waited only long enough to realise that she would not get a proper response, then threw her shield aside and lifted the smaller girl onto her back. The weight was manageable, but the freezing ground beneath her feet made every step increasingly difficult.

"I don’t know what happened, but it couldn’t be more important than your life."

With Hannah’s help, Seris managed to reach the familiar prison where they had all been trapped when Damien first arrived. Rex stood by the entrance, maintaining his barrier as the freezing cold swept towards the building. The faint shimmer around it was the only thing separating those inside from the approaching disaster.

"Guys, hurry up!" Rex yelled in their direction.

The cold seemed to move like a living being, crawling over the ground and consuming everything in its path. It swallowed broken walls, frozen debris, and whatever remained exposed to the open air, advancing without hesitation.

They made it at the nick of time.

The moment they crossed into the protected area, the cold crawled up Rex’s barrier, spreading over its surface as though searching for a way through. For a brief moment, the frozen energy seemed to cling to the invisible wall, but eventually it gave up after realising that the barrier itself was not a living being.

Rex released a chilly breath of relief, his shoulders loosening slightly now that the immediate danger had passed.

Hannah helped Seris down, but as she looked around, she quickly realised something was wrong. There were only fifty-something people within the barrier. Compared to the total number of survivors who had made it to the Ruins of Humanity, that was less than thirty percent.

The rest were either still outside or had already succumbed to the cold. After everything they had endured to reach this place, their numbers were shrinking.

"We’ve lost before the battle even began. At this rate, we will have nothing left to fight for."

Seris suddenly grabbed Hannah’s hand. She finally raised her head, but the emptiness in her eyes only made Hannah lose hope. There was no anger or desperation in that gaze, nothing that suggested Seris believed they could still escape their fate.

"The Storm and Blizzard is a god. We are just humans, and Dormant ones at that. This is a hopeless war. We lost the moment we tried to fight it."

...

Elias felt the cold creeping over his skin as his massive body plummeted towards the ground. The Storm Blizzard God’s movements were becoming more aggressive, endless cold energy spilling from its scales and spreading across the battlefield.

Andrea grabbed Damien’s hand as the cold energy nearly blasted him off the god’s nape. The force swept past them with enough power to threaten his grip, leaving him with little room to steady himself. Andrea drove her blade between two scales, anchoring herself against the god’s moving body as she held on to him.

"It’s attacking the settlement. Your black miasma can’t protect them from the effects of its cold energy."

Damien understood what she meant. His miasma could interfere with the storm and alter the battlefield around him, but that did not mean it could shield every survivor from the god’s freezing energy. The people below were exposed.

The death toll would certainly be in the hundreds after that.