Frostbound [LitRPG Apocalypse]-Chapter 228 - Mammoths

Chris

"Well, I'll be damned."

Light filtered through the area below where I stood nearly horizontally from how the sun was positioned and the shadows that it made were long and distorted. Even with the waning light, I could clearly see the beasts milling about down below.

The Frozen Wasteland I was marching through had its ups and downs. Not every iceberg froze perfectly level with the one next to it causing cliffs and ravines to form even though it was all one big sheet of ice.

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Below marched a line of elephant-sized creatures with enough fur to stuff over a dozen beds to the brim. Tusks extended well past their bodies and a hefty bulk that caused the frozen ice to rumble as they walked.

[Wooly Mammoth: Level 108]

[Identify] finally putting in work as the beasts didn't have any way to block it. It had been a long time since I used the skill on a Human as most picked up a way to block it by now.

I went by feel most of the time anyway.

And these things felt like a threat.

Even individually I wasn't confident in beating one in a fight. It was odd to feel myself so small as it was usually the opposite sensation I was feeling.

The line of them pounded South as I stood and watched from above. They had noticed me, and I saw at least a few look up or indicate a trunk my way, but they continued on their way unperturbed.

They didn't even feel the slightest threat at my presence.

It was humbling. It also made me realize how big-headed I'd gotten.

A part of me wanted to take one on just to see if I could win, but that died as I saw something else.

[Wooly Mammoth Matriarch: Level 132]

That was a death wish. Fighting that would more than likely end with me trampled into the ground. In the past, I hadn't run from many fights, but this was one I wouldn't win.

It was a surprise to see creatures so strong.

We knew that beasts grew faster than Humans, and we saw how fast they continued to grow as the ambient mana went up, but this was something else. The beasts around Frostheim had already increased by a dozen levels on average but that was still only high E-rank, not D-rank.

The only way for new people to find things to kill was in the first few levels of the Dungeon or if they stumbled upon an adolescent or juvenile in the wild. Everything that made it to adulthood had grown past what F-ranks would be able to kill.

And we were in a higher-than-average mana density zone.

Another reason they felt strong was because the Matriarch exuded power as she walked. The hint of Bloodline leaking out scared off any would-be predators as wolves, bears, and cats went running as they stomped by.

At first, I was curious why they were going South of all directions, but my mind started working before long. It had been weeks of the mind-numbing dull task of filtering mana through my Bloodline and I hadn't had to think about anything in a while.

My first thought was that moving away from the high mana area, especially the Arctic mana the creatures here loved, was against their growth, but it wasn't long before I figured out why.

They were following the food.

One would think stepping onto the ice shelf would completely kill all the available food that could grow but that would be incorrect.

As fantastical as the thought of plants growing in the Arctic was, it didn't stop there. There was plant growth on the sheet of ice itself, let alone where there was still tundra they could extend their roots in.

The frequency of the plant life I came across dramatically declined after stepping off solid ground, but there were still clusters of bushes every once in a while. Not nearly enough to sustain a herd of Mammoths though, which was probably why they were migrating South.

The weather would only get worse and they were riding the edge of it as they traveled. Threading the line between food availability and mana density.

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Seeing the behemoths was cool, and I was intrigued with how they reached D-rank so quickly, but I couldn't afford to follow them. I already wasted time watching them for as long as I did.

I couldn't afford to be careless like I had so far.

There was only a limited amount of time I could travel every day and I was wasting it watching from high up.

My beloved resistance, my affinity that I adored, was failing me. That sounded worse than it was, but in reality, I was in an area that went past what I could handle.

Even Vincent could be burned by Fire and I was experiencing the same now.

The fact that the North Pole was still so far away made me hopeful for the future. If I was being stopped here, barely a few miles into the Arctic Circle, what kind of place was the North Pole?

What kind of mana did it have? What kind of beasts claimed it as their territory?

But most importantly, how strong were they?

I falsely thought that Dungeons would hold the only challenge I could sharpen myself with and that had been flat wrong. I just didn't explore enough to find that challenge in the world at large.

Even though I was being hindered by the weather and I was becoming dangerously close to freezing to death, I still pushed on.

Limiting my travel to the day helped, but that slowed things down too much. There were only a few moments of sunlight this far up and they were dwindling fast. Darkness reined for the vast majority of the day and the cold plummeted as the sun stayed away.

Soon it would be only darkness until the Winter broke.

In addition to getting as much ground under me during the heat of the day, [Jotun's Resistance] propped me up enough to not immediately freeze. I had to take frequent breaks and stop completely when my mana ran dry, but it allowed me to travel without relying on the scant moments of sunlight.

It quickly became a mad dash through the day to get the most out of the light, then a mad dash as the sun went down until my mana ran dry, and then I would dig out a shelter to get out of the elements.

Digging into the ice under me was easy enough with my abilities, and the mini igloos I built weren't that hard to make. The miniature caves created a line leading North as I had to stop and make new ones every night.

Soon, when the light finally disappeared and I couldn't venture out even with [Jotun's Resistance], I would be at my end.

I would do it there and could only hope it was enough.

A positive to all the downtime I had while sitting in my carved-out shelter was the time I spent refining my Bloodline. It was going remarkably quickly with all the pure mana I had access to, much faster than how Rachel described it.

I knew density and purity of the surrounding mana played a role in how fast the process was, but this was like night and day.

If someone ever found an area made for them, it would take ripping it out of their death grip to take it away.

At least, that was how I would feel.

I still wasn't sure if I had 'two' drops yet, or what percentage I was at in terms of purity, but I continued on anyway. It reminded me of smithing in that respect. The repetitive motions and cyclic actions.

Purifying driving the size down until I couldn't go any further. Strengthening back up to the size it was, and repeat.

My first round of purifying revealed that there was only so small I could go. If that was classified as 'one' drop or some fraction of a drop was unclear, but once I reached a minimum, purifying wouldn't do anything anymore.

Maybe if I go too low the Bloodline won't work? Like there is a bare minimum Bloodline essence in order for it to function?

I wasn't sure and didn't much care about figuring out why. I could leave that to others and focus on other pursuits.

There were only a few more minutes of daylight so after I was done marveling at the extinct creatures that walked the Earth again, I took off in a sprint.

Another skill I had to pick up quickly was scanning for threats. It was how I noticed the Mammoths in the first place. I had run head-first into a fight more than once which only took away from the time I could've been traveling. It also drained my mana to fight, forcing me to stop and refill it.

It took some trial and error, but I managed to figure out a way to avoid that. It still didn't work on anything trying to be stealthy, and I'd gotten a claw to the back or face a few times to drive that point in, but it worked on anything not trying to hide.

Lynx and Snow Leopards were nasty little things full of rage and anger.

Some could say they were devil spawn but I'd fought Demons less ferocious than the angry cats.

My method was simple. The way I felt if something was strong was through my aura. Gabriel called it a primitive and rudimentary aura scan, but it was the best I could do.

Using that as a guide, I extended it out ahead of me and felt for anything that could pose a challenge. At first, I scanned for anything I could feel but that had me avoiding rodents in the snow or critters that would run rather than fight.

Avoiding them was a waste of time as they wouldn't have tried to fight me anyway.

With nothing better to do, and my mind free to the task, I iterated and tweaked what I was scanning for until I found something that worked.

My sprint in the light didn't last long and night descended rapidly, casting everything into shadow and driving the temperature even colder.

Most creatures found places to stay out of the Wind and Cold which made the trip easier. [Jotun's Resistance] flooded my body with mana, staving away the cold and I picked up my speed.

Nighttime let me be a little more careless compared to the day.

My mana dwindled quickly trying to fuel the legendary skill and less than an hour later I was digging out another cave.

I sat and focused on pulling more mana in and shoving it through my Bloodline for a few hours until I was capped again and the process started over.

Nearly an hour later I was carving out another igloo miles from the last one.

I had tried to oscillate using the skill before. Flare it for a reprieve then turn it off for a while and turn it on again when I got so Cold I couldn't go further.

While that allowed me to stretch my mana further, it stopped being effective after a few tries. The skill didn't heat me up. All it did was allow me to resist being slowed and the pain while it was active.

So when the skill turned off, the feelings came rushing back and I nearly froze stiff the one time I tried it.

The igloos allowed me to get out of the Wind for one, which was priority numero uno. And it let me trap what little body heat I produced, warming me up.

I was positive I didn't run at my previous 98.6 degrees, but it was still way above the ambient temperature, making the small dwelling much warmer than outside.

Occasionally, I would reread the technique I was about to perform, to make absolutely sure I memorized it, but otherwise, traveling and refining were the only things I did.

The process of igniting my mana heart was thoroughly burned into my brain by now.