No matter how fast Queen Mab created the ice soldiers to replenish the ones that were destroyed, they were already decimated in the process of making it.
Her speed of creation was further impacted by the constant barrage of small, fast metal projectiles, which she needed to use a combination of ice and telekinetic barriers to stop it before she could remake her ice soldiers.
Shiva did not pull her punches as well, causing it harder for Queen Mab to counter attack and it was indeed a battle of the Ice Users.
Even when Queen Mab saw the slightest opportunity to breakthrough the series of attacks, their commander Nubwort somehow had the perfect timing to disrupt her, allowing the Orc’s offensive to continue on.
Whether Mab liked it or not, there was a chance for her to be defeated if she was not careful. Even though she was the almighty Fey Queen, there were still limits to her powers, Mab felt that it was not wise to continue further, especially when she was out of her Winter Court.
Thus, she had decided to break away from the battlefield by lowering the conjured telekinetic barrier to save Mana. She also shattered the ice sheet which she was so insistent in keeping to distract Shiva and her Orc Army.
In doing so, Mab hoped to create a diversion with it, but the Winter Queen knew that it would take more than that to stop them from chasing after her when she retreats. Hence, with the leftover reserved mana she had from lowering the magical barrier, Mab decided to feign her retreat by conjuring a giant ice ball and hurled it at her enemies.
Thinking that it was the very same magical technique from the castle which Ifrit had defeated, Shiva used merely a fraction of her powers to create an ice thin blade to cut the ball of ice into pieces.
However, The Ice Shaitan was dead wrong when the blade was caught with the emergence of a beak from the ball while wings of crystalised ice feathers grew backwards. It subsequently became animated as its claws and legs popped out at the bottom too.
It wasn’t hard to figure out that it was a giant Ice Roc whose screech brought it fully to life. Its cry dipped the surrounding atmospheric temperature further, beyond the zero celsius mark. If not for the Orc’s hardy skins and their constant adrenaline generation, they probably would have shivered and trembled, suffering from all the symptoms of hypothermia. However, that was not to say that they were coping well with the sudden drop in temperature.
“Heh, not a bad trick to learn,” Shiva said to herself as she propped up the icy snowflakes barrier in front of the Orc Army in case of any widespread attacks.
Pretending to go all out, Mab stood at the top of the Ice Roc and cast one last magical spell to reduce the chances of them chasing her even though she made it seem like she wanted to end everything once and for all.
A series of icy winds blew, and the army later realised that they were currently within an eye of a magical polar hurricane. Shiva guessed that if they were not careful, the Orc army could possibly be caught in a winter storm which potentially turned them into muscular looking ice figures.
“Our objective is completed. No need to further harass the enemy.” Shiva suddenly spoke out to Nubwort, and with a snap of her finger, a solid dome covered the entire army. It blocked all sight, allowing the Orc Army to teleport back before they had any serious frostbite injuries.
Similar to Queen Mab, who had been pushed to the corner, Frost Echo meant what he said before the Orc King turned to Shiva. There was no need for them to fight the Ice Roc or be stuck in a possible winter storm which would further damage Jin’s troops. Also, Shiva did mention she did not want to keep too huge of a debt from Jin. Thus, withdrawing now was not a bad idea too.
On the contrary, Queen Mab did not expect Shiva to go all defensive and also took the chance to leave when she assumed that they were blinded by the total defensive ice dome her opponent created. Still, she did ask her animated Ice Roc to peck at it a bit to show that she meant business, but Mab emphasised to ‘poke’ around and not overturn their defences.
Therefore, both sides retreated safely, with only their pride wounded.
Jin was relieved to know that his Orc army was relatively unscathed from the whole battle thanks to Shiva’s protection, and at the same time, he felt rather terrified by the extent of their powers were. “No wonder, the System locked Diabolos away. If he ever defied me, we probably need more than an entire army to fight again.”
But other than that, Jin was relieved that his second mass operation on the Giant World was a success. Although he could not have saved every single Animal Tribe in the ruined kingdom, he did what he could.
However, he was not done with the operation efforts, especially after knowing how Queen Mab literally wiped out almost every existence of life from the surface of the kingdom. If there was a chance the remaining Animal People were not affected by the Ice Age spell, they would eventually suffer due to the lack of food or sudden change in weather.
In a way, Jin would feel a little bad leaving those innocents in a barren icy wasteland and so he had decided to send a minion which was comparatively impervious to the cold to look for the survivors.
The Ice Wyrm Ants.
Both mother and daughter were dispatched as a group to check the remaining spots as indicated on Pepper’s Scan spell. Since those tribe hardly move during the operation, Jin continued to assume that they should be there. All he needed to know was whether all that was left were corpses or living, breathing potential allies.
In addition, the Ice Wyrm Ants had grown a little stronger since Jin last saw them. All the constant dungeon fighting had somehow allowed them to develop a pair of translucent wings.
When Jin queried whether it was considered as a side evolution, the System denied such a possibility. “When you captured them, they were still regarded as infants despite the fact that they could mate and gave birth to two new ants into our world.”
“The System’s database had also shown such ants grow the more they gave birth, evolving their body limits and eventually earning the status as the King and Queen of their species. As of now, the two Wyrm Ants were considered as children after giving birth once.” The System replied further to Jin.
It also added their children will always copy her parents’ traits, so they were essentially making copies of themselves, just the slightly inferior versions in terms of development. However, when it comes to overall powers, their offsprings were definitely stronger.
The System derived such an explanation after noting the evolution of the first generation of Wyrm Ants. The Ice counterpart had ice dust flying out of her wings compared to the second generation, which had nothing but wings.
“That’s such a weird way to grow. If that theory is true, their royalty isn’t exactly due to their strength but because they are at the peak of their evolution.” Jin gave some thought about it before commenting.
“Of course, it’s weird if you are looking at them through the perspective of humans. Should you be a Wyrm Ant, you will find humans are weird and abnormal too.” Yun appeared with a cup of warm coffee and a plate of French toast with scrambled eggs. Though he appreciated the gesture, he was pleasantly surprised by it until Yun told him the following.
“Eat up before you meet them. I believed it had been a tiring morning and the System had noted you had not taken anything since the night before.” Yun stated, and Jin did not understand what she meant.
“Who’s them? Who am I meeting?” Jin questioned, and Yun clicked on the console to show a bunch of teenagers waiting impatiently in one of the carriages in the Restaurant Train instance.
“Ack! I totally forgot about them!” Jin finally recalled that he had sent the newly promoted Demon Exorcists to find out about the formats of the existing training centres.
“They came about an hour ago, but I told them that you were busy revising a dungeon instance, which was very evident from the crowd. So, the kids understood and decided to wait for you.” Yun replied as she magically snapped out a bottle of salt and a jar of honey to accompany his breakfast.
“Enjoy.” She smiled and returned to entertain the crowd on the ‘frontlines’.
