A few days passed since Ethan’s class changed and he escaped from the cloud titan. In that time he thought about the next steps he would take for the remaining time he had during the war preparations. So far he managed to win over strong allies with the dwarves under the mountain range, he found a well functioning group of guardsmen and converted a surprisingly large amount of people into winter elves. When he stood there in the forest, his eyes staring at the back of the cloud titan after his escape, he laid out a plan of action in his mind.
The first thing he would do was to honor his promise he made to the ice drakes and find the cave that he was shown through a mental connection. He would help those that were captured by the other monsters. While he had other factors motivating him like gaining these drakes for his fighting force and finding the person responsible for the rune covered spikes that were controlling them. While that was the plan, actually finding the ice covered cave and seeing if he could find a clue where the goblins hideout was. Only to then find their hideout…yeah his mind was running in circles because if he found nothing this search could eat up too much time. Because even if everything works out there still was someone above everything he knew, the person that was controlling the goblins. That mess just kept growing in his mind with every thought he put into it as there were so many unknowns at play.
Still Ethan had to start somewhere and for the first few days he flew through the skies on his new and improved ice cloud to see if he could find the cave from his memories. He travelled north to reach the areas that were covered in snow, but when he noticed the first signs of actual snow he wondered how he should even search such a big area properly, coming up north already cost him two days while the next three days were used searching for the actual cave. After a while he decided to take a break as he was hungry and thirsty but the mental exhaustion was the worst of the three.
Ethan sat on a small clearing, a fire was burning in a pit he had one of his soldiers make with the ice shovel it held in its unmoving grip. Another had gathered wood for the fire only for Ethan to spend an embarrassingly long time on trying to get the fire started, but when that was done he went out to hunt something as his stomach was gnawing at his backbone. After a short search he found a deer-like creature but it had horns instead of antlers. But calling them horns might also be wrong as they were soft and glowed with a purple light. Before he killed one with an accelerated ice needle launched at the brain he saw it lift stones with its mind or probably gravity magic to reach things it wanted to eat.
After a quick kill he brought the deer back to his temporary camp. He did a sloppy job skinning it with an ice knife despite his increased dexterity it seems one couldn’t offset real skills with raw stats it seems. He cut some strips of flesh from it and roasted it over the fire on some stick he had cleaned up. He sighed while watching the strip of meat slowly changing color. “Not the most fun meal I ever had, though I’m very hungry enough after those few days…evolutions really drain you…” He waited for the meat to cook properly, thinking that with his stats it would’ve been fine even if he ate it raw.
While chewing on the meat he thought about what to do next, the cave was clearly in his mind with all the details but he had no clue where it was. The only feeling he got from the drake was that it’s close so somewhere in this area. With them being so slow at walking that would also give them a different perception of what is close or far away. After filling up on unseasoned bland meat and some water he made by boiling snow in a very thin bowl of eternal ice, which of course didn’t melt, before he returned to his search once again.
He searched from high up and close to the ground and while he found many hills covered in ice and snow there was no prominent cave, which was weird as the entrance was quite big and obvious in his mind. While floating up in the sky he went through the memories again but it was literally just the cave so- there it was, he could see the snow covered ground and the arch of the cave entrance but there was no sky just a white ceiling that looked a lot like snow which a stone wall right behind it.
Ethan groaned but after rubbing his temples for a moment he had an idea. Landing on the ground he pushed all the snow and ice away in a wave of magic and constructed a pillar to stand on top of. He remembered something because his equipment, or rather his boots, had the earth sense ability and he hoped to find something with it as digging through the snow sounded like no fun even as an ice magic user. Pushing mana into the boots he started to feel more of the surrounding area. It expanded quickly with the supplied mana and he actually saw where openings were, though there were mostly small cracks or crevices. Still it worked and so he made his way through the area he left the pillars as a reminder where he already searched the area.
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After around an hour he actually found what he was looking for, between two hills which were covered in a thick mantle of snow and ice he found a large empty space. Without hesitation he launched an ice drill into the earth, big enough so he could fit through the opening.
The moment he landed on his feet he summoned four big ice soldiers which formed a loose circle around him. They walked forward, the tunnel having a slight bend until they reached the nest of the ice drakes. At the entrance were clearly the signs of struggle, deep claw marks covered the floor and ceiling and by the looks if they were caused by drakes being dragged out of the cave system. The amount of dried blood in this area was also staggeringly high but he couldn’t waste time.
With his soldiers he entered the cave and wasn’t surprised by what he found. Scattered through a massive long cavern were nests built from ice, hardened snow and some frozen tree branches, bark and other pieces of wood scattered throughout the nest builds. While carefully walking through this place he saw crushed eggs and dead drakes which didn’t even rot from the freezing temperatures in the cavern. There were some tunnels leading away but it just led to empty caves or nests constructed by the smallest of ice drakes. After walking to the opposite side he turned back and looked towards the entrance.
He created more soldiers, these ones regular in size as the group of around forty swarmed out. It seems he could create more than fifty though the big ones took up more “slots” at least that was his way of thinking about it. While walking back towards the entrance he stopped and focused every time one of his soldiers pinged him through their connection. He had ordered them to find things out of the ordinary and now he waited for something the attackers might have dropped here.
When he stopped at the halfway point of the cavern one of his soldiers alerted him, for a moment he waited for it to approach him but nothing happened. He frowned and walked into the direction of the soldier and found it struggling to pull something from the frozen ground. It was one of those rune covered spikes but while the others he had pulled from the drakes seemed dull this one was shining brightly. He wondered how he had missed it before but by the looks of the soldier had dug it out, with the spike laying in a shallow hole with snow pushed into small mounds on either side.
“Hmm I wonder.” He reached out to it but the moment his fingers lightly grazed the surface he was thrown back. With a yelp he landed in a pile of snow but without any injury he pushed himself back up. “Alright…clearly active, more so than I thought.” His soldier had no trouble touching it so he had others help to dig it out. When it laid in front of Ethan he rubbed his chin in thought because the spike was broken off, the jagged edge looked like it almost splintered under excessive force, he wondered how strong the drake must have been that had managed to do that.
This, sadly, was a question for later as he held now the key to actually finding the goblin hideout in his hands. With two soldiers carrying the large spike out of the cave where it was raised on an ice pillar to the surface. While soldiers guarded the spike and the area in a loose perimeter, Ethan froze the snow until it formed a solid piece of ice where he started to draw his runes. Instead of iron sand which he usually, he now had to improvise with ice particles which as they started to swirl over the ground. These crystals were hard and if used correctly could strip the flesh of a person’s body in seconds but now they were a stand-in for his ritual materials.
Watching his ritual circle get created was less exciting as he didn’t really need to work for it, especially for just a locating ritual which was quite easy. While his knowledge of runes had grown and he could picture more complex circles in his mind, for improvement outside the skill he needed to actually practice more to further his understanding and to upgrade the skill someday.
Once it was finished he instructed two soldiers to carry the spike in the middle, the moment they were gone he pushed his mana into the circle which started to glow pale blue, in contrast to the red runes of the spike. For a few moments nothing happened but then it rose from the ground and started to turn in circles for a few minutes and finally coming to a stop, pointing to the southwest. It seems he found their new destination.
