Extra's Path: The Eternal Frost Monarch

Noah and Leonard walked through the destroyed road, moving away from the base at an easy pace.

The city around them was completely wrecked. Buildings on either side sat in various states of collapse. Walls caved in, facades crumbled away, debris scattered across the pavement in uneven piles.

Cracks ran through the road beneath their feet like a map of old damage, some wide enough to step over, others just thin lines splitting the concrete apart. Dust hung faintly in the air.

There was nothing moving. No sounds except their own footsteps.

Stomp

Stomp

"Still nothing," Leonard muttered, scanning the street as they walked. "Just rubble and more rubble."

"Keep looking," Noah said, glancing up at the upper floors of a half-collapsed building as they passed it.

"We’ll find it." He said further.

They kept moving.

They turned down one street, then another, cutting through an open plaza that had a dried-up fountain at its centre, the stone basin cracked clean down the middle.

They checked a few side roads. One led to a dead end blocked by a collapsed overpass. Another opened into a wider avenue that looked more promising.

They choose the street which looked more developed. Liked a place where there might be huge and famous shops.

Where there was possibility of having a mall.

They sometimes run through street to move faster and save their time. Sometimes just walk normally.

By the time roughly thirty minutes had passed, Leonard was starting to look restless.

Then Noah spotted it.

"There."

Leonard looked up.

There it was a large building sitting maybe three kilometers from where their base was.

Yes. They actually came so far.

But at the same time not far at all for superhumans like them. Which somehow made the fact that they had taken this long to find it mildly embarrassing. Neither of them said that out loud.

The mall was massive. More than seven floors tall, wide and circular in its shape, the kind of building that had been designed to be seen from a distance.

Even in its current damaged state it dominated the street around it, sitting at the end of the avenue like a landmark that refused to fully fall apart.

They walked toward it.

The surrounding area around the building had taken serious damage. The pavement outside the entrance was broken and heaved upward in places, chunks of concrete tossed aside like gravel.

A few of the outer pillars had cracked down their lengths. Rusted metal barriers that had once lined the entrance plaza were bent and knocked over.

The building itself was covered in cracks that ran up the outer walls in jagged lines, some narrow, others wide enough to fit a hand into. Every single glass window visible from the outside had been shattered.

Empty frames stared out like hollow eyes, occasional fragments still clinging to the edges and catching the dull light.

As they got closer, a faint flickering came from somewhere inside. The remnants of the mall’s lighting system still half alive, buzzing weakly and blinking on and off in an unsteady rhythm.

They passed through what had once been the outer gate. The gate itself was gone, torn from its hinges and lying flat on the ground nearby.

They stepped over it without slowing down and walked up toward the main entrance.

The entrance doors were gone as well. Just a wide open mouth leading inside.

Leonard looked up at the full height of the building and let out a low sound. "This place might be doing amazing if it was in real world."

"Probably packed on weekends," Noah said, stepping through the entrance.

They walked in.

The main ground floor opened up in front of them enormous, wide and spacious in a way that only a building like this could manage.

The floor was broad and flat, stretching out in every direction, the tiles cracked and coated in a layer of dust and debris.

Broken display cases and overturned furniture from what had once been ground floor shops lined the walls, their contents long gone or buried under rubble.

In the centre of the ground floor the ceiling was open.

Noah looked up.

The floors above were built in a circular ring shape, each level wrapping around the open centre like a wide balcony, one on top of the other, all the way up to the top of the building.

From where he stood on the ground floor he could see straight up through every level to the very top.

The upper section was open to the outside, letting in pale light that filtered down through the middle of the entire structure.

Escalators ran between the floors along the sides, most of them frozen in place, their steps still intact but motionless. A few elevator shafts were visible further back, their doors either jammed open or missing entirely.

The flickering lights overhead buzzed and blinked, casting the interior in an unsteady glow that shifted every few seconds between dim and slightly less dim.

Leonard stood beside Noah and looked up at the same view, tilting his head back slowly.

"Now that," he said, "is a good place for a fight."

Noah looked around the full circular layout. The open centre, the ring-shaped floors above, the multiple levels of sightlines, the escalators connecting everything. He could already see exactly how a battle in this space would unfold.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It really is."

"Okay How about we check if there is any food here. It seems the unit for food supply still had not come here."

"Yeah."

"I will look around the ground floor and underground base. You check upper floor."

Leonard looked at Naoh with knowing smirk. "Don’t want to climb stairs? That’s why sending me there aren’t you?"

"haha! It seems you caught me on that. Well in that case I hope you will check upper floors"

"Alright man! Those stairs are nothing to someone like me"

Leonard left while laughing.

"If you found food in good condition. Inform anyone who is in recon unit."

"Okay. See you later."

Leonard walked towards the staircase.

Started to climbed on it.

Meanwhile Noah simply goes to different sections in lower floor.

Just while roaming through it. He was a door that lead to underground.

Noah walked inside, the staircase leds downside.

"Let’s check it, what’s their."

He slowly descended.

It was getting darker as he entered.

Good for him that his smartphone torch was working fine.

When he was at base. He saw that this place was like a basement.

Old machines and objects were stored here.

Filled with dust and junk.

He walked further and saw a big metal door. It was slightly opened. So he pushed it and sliding opened completely.

When he looked inside his eyes widened.

"This...might be perfect. Something that I wanted to find."

There was a empty chamber. It was clean, compare to other places.

It was massive. A square, monolithic structure of dark metal, nearly the height of a small room.

Its surface was smooth but layered with faint seams and embedded panels, each lined with thin strips of dim blue light that pulsed slowly, like a steady heartbeat.

Thick cables and reinforced pipes extended from its sides, disappearing into the walls and floor, branching out like veins feeding the entire building.

At the top of the structure sat a half-spherical glass dome.

Inside it, a concentrated sphere of blue energy hovered in place, not still, but shifting, swirling gently like a contained storm. Light rippled across its surface, casting faint reflections across the chamber walls.

A low hum filled the room.

"This must be the machine that supply power..I mean electricity in case electricity is gone. Like generator or UPS. It might be using mana...or maybe saving power from electricity."

Noah walked closer to it.

The machine was really big.

He narrowed his eyes. "It’s still working. Man it still working. It can produce electricity."

He checked the pipes and wires. Everything was intact. Without any crack or cut.

"It’s must have self sustaining reactor core. That’s why it still have power." He muttered while observing it.

Self-Sustaining Reactor Core.

This wasn’t a normal generator. It’s a compact energy reactor designed for long-term autonomous operation.

Runs on a high-density energy mana core. Designed to operate for years without maintenance.

Automatically goes into low-power standby mode when unused.

The flickering lights above.it has been barely sustaining the mall all this time. Most of the supply lines were cut from the machine. Only few remained. Thats why somehow it still provide energy.

Also the city was set like it was ruined only few days ago. So it was understandable that there was still power inside this huge generator.

"If it’s here...that means it could be used by students in one way or another. I already have one." He muttered while looking at machine.

He nodded with satisfaction. As if he found a perfect thing for something.