Frostfire Legacy

*Gurrrgleee....*

Hearing the sound of the weird monster behind him, Aster turned around. There, he saw its horrid body jumping off the edge, expanding wide like a piece of cloth, and gliding downward!

"Shit!"

Aster cursed as he felt his blood run cold. He thought he was already safe! Without wasting another moment, he turned in the other direction and jumped up toward the next closest floating block!

Still, despite its amorphous shape, the abomination was faster than Aster was. Given a few seconds, it would definitely catch up to him. Of course, he didn't wish for that to happen!

"Crysta, delay that thing as much as you can!"

"As you wish!❄"

True to his orders, Crysta did as best as she could to hamper the blob's advance. However, her prided ice walls were treated like they were just paper doors, broken in an instant, and barely slowing it down.

Aster didn't look back, but he could tell the situation from the loud thuds that echoed a few times a second. Instead of fearing the enemy catching up, he instead focused on finding a path onward, heading somewhere, anywhere, away from the enemy.

Thankfully, the entire space was flooded with gigantic, floating metal cubes. As such, Aster didn't run out of space to jump toward. Although he was making headway, there was one problem that he was facing.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

'I'm gradually going down!'

As it was harder to jump up to the next block than to leap to the next one below, he naturally moved down, spiraling toward the dark abyss below them. He wasn't sure if there was something there or if it was a place where you couldn't return once you reached it, but he now had no choice but to continue.

There's an "angry" monster hot on his tail, after all. Turning back would expose him to the monster's attacks, so that's a big no!

*GURGLE!*

"...!"

Suddenly, a familiar, abominable monster appeared, falling toward the abyss from before his eyes. He felt joy for a short moment, thinking that his enemy made a mistake, falling to its death... But then he realized that the one chasing him was still behind, approaching him gradually.

Without much thinking, he realized what was going on. "Fuck! There's more of them?!"

Looking around, from a few more of the passages, other slime-like abominations appeared, moving as if to chase Aster. They were like moths drawn to the flame, gathering with Aster as their destination!

His situation was gradually turning worse, making him grind his teeth in frustration. As seconds passed, the more the army of abominations would come closer to him. Time wasn't his ally in this situation. He needed to find the exit or whatever along those lines and escape fast!

After about a minute of running, Aster finally noticed the bottom of the dark space. It wasn't actually bottomless, so his fears were alleviated, even just a little.

"...!"

But still, his chasers were hot on his tail. He couldn't even let down his guard, as they would sometimes throw things over at him, which he had no choice but to dodge using his own strength.

Crysta was busy delaying the few dozen blobs chasing them, while Pyra was handling the miasma coming out of them and making sure it wouldn't affect them. Aster was busy running away while also dodging the infrequent long-range attacks coming his way.

All three of them were focused on their tasks, each pivotal to their survival!

About three more grueling minutes passed, and finally, Aster reached the bottom. The place was the same make as the passage they first arrived at, completely made out of metallic materials. It was to the point that Aster was getting worried about electric attacks, as he couldn't avoid getting into contact with the floor.

"Master, over there!🔥"

Right then, Pyra shouted right beside his ears, pointing toward the right. Aster turned to where she was looking and noticed something. A giant crystal, about five meters tall and three meters wide, in the shape of a scalenohedral prism glowing with a peaceful blue light.

Although he wasn't sure what it was, Aster turned and ran straight for it. Along the way, he saw the splattered bodies of the few monsters that fell before. From that, he could at least learn that they weren't immortal, at least. However, it was useless information for him, who couldn't even deliver effective damage against them in the least.

As they approached, Aster noticed something drawn on the floor. A complex magic circle, shining faintly in the same blue color as the giant crystal.

"Master, that must be this Dimension's Core!" Pyra exclaimed. "If we can destroy that, we can get out of this space altogether!🔥"

"Is that true?!" Aster felt as if he finally found the solution to his problems.

Without missing a beat, he increased his speed, rushing toward the "core." But as he did so, he forgot one thing—the mysterious magic circle drawn on the metal floor.

When he reached midway through the gigantic drawing, all the lines that were originally glowing faintly started to release a bright flash. Aster, who completely forgot about the magic circle's presence, was shocked by its sudden activation.

"Fu—!"

And before he could even curse, his body was covered by a bright light and sent toward a different space. As luck would have it though, only he was teleported away, leaving the blob-like masses of abominations behind.

"..."

When Aster's vision returned, he was already in another space entirely.

Around him was nothing but darkness, but a short distance away, a few figures could be seen. One was a silver-haired beauty, standing straight while keeping watch over a few monitors floating before her. Her profile looked so graceful that anyone who saw her would feel her dignity overflowing.

To the left, a sofa set was placed. And on it, two more figures could be seen. The one facing toward Aster was a man, wearing what would be classified as "magician's" wear. Not a mage, but the "slight of hands" type of magician.

And the last one, with her back facing Aster, was barely visible, other than her alert pair of orange rabbit ears. Seeing her familiar figure, Aster's voice came out by reflex.

"... Cassy?"