Their average level was around 25 to 30. They were sluggish and slow, but every single blow they landed was devastating; even a glancing hit could be fatal.

But that wasn’t the real problem.

’...Frost immunity.’

He’d read about it on the Info/Strategy Board.

Golems with specific elemental properties, like Ice Golems or Flame Golems, had absolute immunity to attacks of their own element.

Among them, Ice Golems were especially tough opponents with considerable resistance to water-attribute attacks as well. And to make matters even worse, there wasn’t just one or two of them.

Thud! Thud! BOOM!

"You’ve gotta be kidding me..."

A rough estimate put it at thirty, no, easily more than forty.

It hit Walfred then.

Every single chunk of ice he’d seen from the rooftop earlier had been an Ice Golem.

"M-Mister? What are those things?"

Lauren, too, had spotted the Ice Golems, and all the color drained from her face. Instead of answering, Walfred frantically checked for an escape route.

"...Damn."

But it was already too late.

Golems had broken through the ground behind them as well, blocking the way back.

ROOOOAAAR!

The roar of the Ice Golems sounded like an avalanche.

The encirclement was tightening.

Nowhere to run, no way to fight. Walfred’s mind raced furiously.

’What do I do?’

Jump and try to vault over the golems?

No, there were too many for that.

One attack while airborne or a single botched landing and it would be game over. And having to carry Lauren on his back made it even harder.

’Think. There has to be a way.’

Biting down hard on his dry lips, Walfred kept scanning his surroundings. All the while, the encirclement continued to close in.

Then, right at that moment.

They stopped.

The golems, which had been advancing relentlessly, froze in place out of nowhere. Then their hollow gazes all locked onto a single point.

Lauren.

’What? Why did they suddenly stop?’

Walfred narrowed his eyes.

Meanwhile, the golems that had been staring fixedly at Lauren began backing away, one by one. As if they’d come face to face with something they should never go near.

The instant he saw it.

’Could it be...!’

Walfred’s eyes went wide.

The sight of the Ice Golems forming a circle around Lauren and pulling back was unmistakable; they were clearly shying away from her.

’Because Lauren is a fire-attribute Awakened?’

Or maybe it was because of Lauren’s Heat Emission skill, or her Heat Preservation skill.

Monsters had an uncanny sense for what helped or harmed them.

Especially for Ice Golems, whose entire bodies were composed of ice, heat was practically poison. That could be why they were instinctively keeping their distance from Lauren.

’Let’s test it.’

To turn a hunch into certainty.

Walfred turned to Lauren.

"Lauren."

"Yeah?"

"Walk ten steps in that direction."

"Wh-why...?"

"I need to test something."

Lauren looked unhappy about it, but after repeated urging, she finally shuffled forward.

One step, then another.

As she cautiously approached the side where the Ice Golems stood, something remarkable happened.

Rumble!

The Ice Golems backed away again. And watching this unfold, Walfred let the tension drop from his face and smiled.

Now he was sure.

’Wait, if that’s the case...’

Walfred looked toward the south end of the Pulaski Bridge.

The pursuers chasing him and Lauren.

The direction where Hector and his hunters were. And the dozens of Ice Golems swarming right in front of him.

A moment later, Walfred’s eyes flashed.

A brilliant plan to turn this situation around had just come to him.

---

Hector.

He had been a perpetual B-rank hunter.

He’d failed time and again at the "Trial," the mandatory test for promotion to A-rank, and his attribute wasn’t exactly a great one either.

He spent his days living as just another mediocre hunter, steeped in a nagging sense of inferiority.

Then something happened that changed the course of his life.

[Antarctica ’Black Gate’ Liberation]

The world froze over in an instant, and as countless monsters began appearing even outside the gates, areas once considered safe, everything changed.

In a world where survival depended on water and food, hunters with water-attribute abilities were suddenly treated like gold.

Hector was no exception.

Just like that, Hector went from a hunter stuck in an awkward position before the Antarctica gate liberation to the leader of hundreds of people practically overnight.

He was satisfied with his new reality.

The power and the sense of superiority he could never have had in a world governed by the Hunter Association, the government, and the law; those washed away the inferiority complex he’d been carrying.

Hector believed this state of affairs would last forever. As long as the Antarctica gate wasn’t sealed again, a frozen world would never return to the way it was.

But recently, a problem had emerged.

’...The temperature keeps dropping.’

The average temperature had fallen nine degrees compared to the previous month.

It was already freezing anyway, so that alone wasn’t a big deal. The real problem lay elsewhere.

’The temperature inside the gate is dropping too.’

The D-rank gate inside the Newark Galleria.

The Singing Garden.

Hector had repurposed this previously cleared gate as a farm for growing food.

But the temperature inside the gate had suddenly started falling, throwing their farming into serious jeopardy.

’This can’t go on.’ 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

If they lost the gate, the food supply would be in dire trouble. So Hector searched for a way to restore the temperature.

Then an opportunity presented itself.

Among the refugees created by the liberation of the Crown Heights gate, a gate nobody even knew existed, he happened to come across information that there was a fire-attribute Awakened.

[F-rank Hunter, Lauren]

Having secured her identity, Hector was overjoyed. Better yet, if she was just an F-rank hunter, he could tame her to his liking with the right mix of stick and carrot.

That would solve everything.

But first impressions were everything when it came to breaking someone in gently. So he’d planned to use his subordinate Chaz as the stick, while he himself played the carrot.

But then...

’Chaz, that bastard had the nerve to betray me?’

He’d been blindsided when he least expected it.

Hector ground his teeth.

’When I catch him, he’s going to wish he was dead.’

He’d ask why he betrayed him, then torment him until Chaz begged to be put out of his misery. Just as Hector’s face was twisting into something ugly.

"The trail goes cold here, sir."

A report snapped him out of his thoughts.

Past the south end of the Pulaski Bridge, the subordinate walking point indicated a building. A commercial building housing a movie theater and various restaurants.

After surveying the area, Hector determined that the people he’d been chasing had entered that building.

"Seal the exits and search inside."

"Yes, sir!"

The hunters stormed into the building.

Hector, too, stepped inside to get out of the cold. As he casually looked around the first floor and waited for his subordinates’ reports.

Several of them returned to him.

"We found footprints on the rooftop. It looks like they were here just recently."

"Did you find any sign they left the building?"

"No, not that far..."

"Then they’re still hiding somewhere in here. Tear the place apart and drag them to me."

"Yes, sir."

His subordinates bowed their heads.

Each one took a floor and began a more thorough search.

Then, just at that moment.

"Boss!"

One of the subordinates who’d gone toward the rear exit came running back in a dead panic. Gasping for breath, face drained of color, he shouted.

"W-we’ve got a huge problem!"

"What? Spit it out and stop making a scene."

"Yes, y-yes sir! It’s, well, the thing is..."

The hunter, stammering and unable to string his words together, swallowed hard. Then he finally blurted out what he’d witnessed.

"Ice Golems are heading this way!"

"...What?"

What kind of nonsense was this, all of a sudden?

Hector stared blankly.