The reality of it all

Kai had known there was something special about the blizzard for a while.

It began back when he was in the cell of ice that he had called home for a month. Cecilia had told him that story about that gargantuan fireball at the peak of the mountain that had been countered by the blizzard reacting to the threat.

That was when Kai first learned there was something off about the blizzard.

Then, while he had been riding the titan's leg, he would always catch glimpses of various things that would vanish the next second, as if they had never existed in the first place.

A frozen lake? Nope, it would disappear the next moment.

A tree? No, the land was all flat with the odd hill, there wasn't a single tree.

It was like the things he saw were being obscured by some unknown force.

And now... Kai knew what that force was.

The goddamn blizzard around them.

And the worst part was...

It had also been obscuring the Royal Peak.

Before, the mountain had looked incredibly tall, but not that horrifying. Kai had thought to himself it would just be a long climb and that would be it.

Turns out he had been wrong, so wrong.

After he had gotten close enough to the base of the mountain for the blizzard to decide to stop deceiving him, Kai was now able to see the Peak in all its unimaginable glory.

Up close, it was much, much taller and much more menacing. If before it looked like a spear trying to pierce the sky, now it looked like a fang of some horrifying beast that had been ripped out of a mouth by some other unimaginable monster.

The blizzard was swirling around the mountain, the amount of snow in the air getting bigger the higher up he looked. Down at his current level, it wasn't that bad, but the higher Kai would climb, the worse the blizzard would get.

There were chunks of the mountain missing, pillar sized pieces just gone, the aftereffects of the fireball all those billions of years ago.

The parts of the mountain that weren't coated by snow were pitch black, the exact same colour as the legs of the titan they were just on, making Kai wonder if the two were somehow related.

But that was not the worst part.

The worst part was not the fact the blizzard would get more overbearing the higher they climbed. The worst part was not how steep the mountain actually was. The worst part was not the fact the mountain had been obscured by the blizzard.

No, the worst part was the gargantuan bones that were clinging to the mountain's body.

The bones of some unimaginable monster rode up the mountains entire body. It looked like there was a tail down low, which slowly continued up the mountain, eventually connecting with a ribcage that manages to fit about half of the mountain inside its broken bones.

The bones were incredibly thick and massive in size, Kai had no idea how to even begin describing them, all he knew was that he didn't want to imagine what had killed the titan that was now clinging to the Royal Peak.

There were other various bones scattered on the sides of the mountain, those bones having broken off of the main body at some point in the past eighty billion years.

Kai's neck continued to crane as he kept looking higher and higher, his eyes tracing the gargantuan beast's bony corpse.

However, no matter how high he looked, he could not spot what remained of the titan's head.

Because the neck of the titan was utterly shattered, presumably destroyed by whatever it had been fighting.

There was no skull of the titan remaining.

At least, that's what Kai had believed until he turned around.

At first, he just wanted to turn around to talk to Cecilia and Petunia, mainly to ask Cecilia if it was even possible to climb the mountain.

But it was then that he saw what else the blizzard had been obscuring.

To Kai's left, a fair distance away, was the gargantuan skull of the long dead beast that was clinging to the Royal Peak.

It's eye sockets were hollow and empty and spanned way too wide for Kai to feel comfortable looking at. It's snout stretched out incredibly far, two prominent nostrils accompanying it.

Kai felt as if he faintly recognised the shape of the skull.

Then, his eyes widened.

A dragon, a goddamn dragon, a dragon of unimaginable size is what the bones clinging to the mountain belonged to.

Its ribcage, its tail, its skull, all of it was what remained of the long dead titan.

Kai sucked in a shallow breath.

But he wasn't finished looking at what else the blizzard had hidden.

Down to the south-east of the city was an immense forest, but all of the trees in it were dead, not a single leaf or even branch there, only the trunks.

They were a shade of an extremely dark brown and reached incredibly high into the sky, not as high as the titan's leg, but still high enough for Kai to have to lift his head a solid amount to see the top of them.

And yet, even though there were no branches or leaves to hide whatever lived there...

Kai did not want to imagine what sort of creatures roamed the dead forest.

To the south-west of the city were countless gargantuan spikes made of ice. They were a little smaller than the trees of the immense forest, but still eerie and menacing nonetheless.

And much like the creepy forest, Kai did not want to imagine what sorts of beasts roamed the area surrounding it.

Finally, to Kai's right, also known as north-west of the city...

There was nothing.

At least, nothing that Kai could see, but that was the direction that he believed he had seen the massive lake of ice, so there was the chance that it was really over there.

Kai sighed.

For a Small-Tier Subdimension, it sure had its fair share of incredibly creepy places, and it's not like the city had actually been much better.

"So..."

That was all Kai said.

Cecilia was incredibly pale, making Kai believe that she had no idea about the bones of the dragon, the creepy forest, the gargantuan shards of ice or even the massive lake of ice.

Who knows how long the blizzard had been obscuring it all, billions of years, at least.

"Are we still climbing this thing?"

Cecilia bit her lower lip softly as Petunia clung to the fur of her coat.

"... Do we have any other choice?"

Kai sighed again.

"Not really."

If there was one good thing to come out of all of this, it was that since they hitched the ride on the obsidian titan's leg they effectively had nearly five months to scale the Royal Peak, that meant they could take their time, scout the area and try to not encounter any terrifying beasts that could end their lives in an instant.

Slowly, the group began to head towards the base of the mountain, none of them feeling as confident as they had felt an hour ago.

Every step made Kai's heart ache. While he had mostly recovered from going all out back in the city, he still wouldn't be able to fight at his full capacity.

So if anything attacked them...

Kai shook his head and continued walking.

After about half an hour, they finally reached the base of the mountain.

But when they did, Kai couldn't help but frown.

There was a faint outline of a path, the snow acting like a sort of road.

Only on the faint snowy path...

Was a pair of footprints.

But to Kai's surprise, Cecilia's eyes lit up at the sight of them.

"They're still here! Apparently, the first monk who scaled the Royal Peak used an item that allowed him to leave his footprints in the snow as a sort of guide. I didn't think that they would still be here though."

Kai sighed in relief. At least having some sort of guide would make the climb a little easier.

"Well, is everyone ready?"

After getting a nod from everyone, Kai took a step forward...

And walked into an invisible wall.

Stumbling backwards a step and clutching his forehead, Kai was just about to curse when a notification went off in his head.

Quest Received

Quest: Scale the Royal Peak

0/5 Trials completed

Accept Quest?

Yes/No

Kai scowled.

Why was there a damn quest to climb the mountain, as if it wouldn't already be hard enough.

Still, it's not like Kai had any choice other than to accept.

But trials? Why the hell did there have to be trials climbing the mountain?

Hopefully they would be easy challenges, like write a song or something.

And yet, Kai couldn't help but feel as if that was wishful thinking.

So with a sigh, Kai made his choice.

Quest accepted

Shaking his head, Kai turned around and said:

"Well, this is stu...pid?"

Kai stared blankly at the area behind him.

Why was no one standing there?

Where had everyone gone?

What was-

The next thing Kai knew, something had wrapped around his ankle and pulled him into the snow below.

Then, another notification went off in his head.

Trial 1 beginning

Trial 1 objective...

Survive