Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 91: Crucible of Frost

The final Encounter Zone before the boss lobby was called the Crucible of Frost.

That damned place almost killed him. It almost did.

It was not a land of sands like the Unwelcoming Hills, nor a volcano like the Volcanic Stone Land, but a glacial marshland.

It was hell but with gagged ice as the flames and freezing wind as smoke. Here and there geothermal vents met permafrost, creating a nightmarish ecosystem of steaming bogs and sharp ice shelves.

Breathing was a ruthless task. Percival found his nose blocked by congested ice at multiple occasions.

The air was a physical assault.

Even when he did manage to breathe it in, it only hurt him more. With each breath, it pushed into his respiratory system, scalding one lung with sulfurous heat while freezing the other with razor-sharp chill.

It was in this Encounter Zone that Percival learnt something difficult: Solo-clearing an A-Ranked Gate World when you’re no longer the Sword Saint wasn’t easy.

The beasts here were ruthless, calculated and focused on ending his life.

With A-Rank Gate Worlds this was always expected. The monsters ranged from Lvl 35 all the way to 120.

This was why the Gate World was only permitted for Awakeners above Lvl 81, and even then, they would have to enter as a party of five.

If Percival was a party of five high-level Awakeners with separate Talents, the Encounter Zones might have been cleared easier.

But he was only one.

To be fair, he was two—though his other Class was exceedingly lower than the first.

Challenging this Gate World had been a risky move from the start. But Percival had pushed on, and if not for his Skeleton Soldiers, death would have truly been a possibility.

The first beasts he encountered were the Frilled Lizards (Lvl 68-70).

They were pack hunters, not with mindless rage like the Saurian Scuttlers, they acted and moved with a bit more chilling coordination.

They used their frills to intimidate, but it also served a larger purpose; they emitted a ⸢Synaptic Pulse⸥ that subtly scrambled mental commands.

Percival’s order for a shield wall arrived in his Skeletons’ minds as a garbled impulse to advance.

Because of this, two Skeletons Soldiers were pulled down and dismembered before he turned to realize what was happening.

This frozen hell was the Zone Percival had the least memory of. He remembered being protected, given a warm fur coat and kept hidden from the battle.

Percival wished that he had watched. That way, he wouldn’t have been caught off guard by some of the disruptive abilities these lizard beasts possessed.

Nevertheless, he quickly learnt to adapt and took on the offensive fast. He fought closer to his summons, his personal presence stabilizing their connection.

But the terrain was the true enemy. One moment he was fighting on solid, frost-bitten stone. The next, a geothermal vent would explode, melting the ice beneath him into a boiling, sucking bog.

Agility and Speed meant nothing if the ground turned to liquid trap. He lost another Skeleton Soldier to a sudden plunge into a scalding mudpit.

With a frustrated face, he watched its icon snuff out on his floating screen.

He exhaled a breath that came out as a shard of ice. Then turned to the Frilled Lizards.

The large, intelligent beasts sensed the shift, and they immediately began to use their frills to activate ⸢Synaptic Pulse⸥, a desperate attempt to scramble the mind of the predator standing in their midst once more.

They were too slow.

Percival’s hand clamped tight around the hilt of Lightpiercer, and the world seemed to tilt. He didn’t care about the mudpits anymore.

He didn’t care about the coordinated hunting of the pack. He was done playing the role of a cautious Level 29 Necromancer.

⸢Monarch’s Tread⸥

He slammed his intent into the shifting ground.

A rush of Swordsman mana filled below his greaves and the boiling bog beneath his boots became compressed by sheer physical pressure into a platform of silver-hard glass.

The geothermal vents hissed and died, smothered by the weight of an aura that refused to let the world move beneath him.

⸢The user channels mana to exert an overwhelming downward mana through their feet. Rather than magically altering the ground, it physically compresses unstable terrain—liquid, gas, or shifting earth—into a temporary, high-density "pillar" that provides absolute footing⸥

⸢A Grade Swordsman Skill⸥

Percival sped, his body moving freely now as he ran down the ⸢Monarch’s Tread⸥.

Suddenly, it was like he vanished. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

A blink of a second past, and he reappeared in the center of the largest pack, his blade already a blur of lethal geometry.

⸢Seven-Star Decapitation⸥

Seven streaks of silver-white light erupted simultaneously.

There was no sound of impact. It was like nothing had happened prior to the explosion except the sharp music of steel passing through scale and vertebrae.

⸢An ultra-fast technique that hits seven key "Star" points in the vision field almost instantly, decapitating or bisecting foes before they register the pain⸥

⸢A-Grade Swordsman Skill⸥

The Frilled Lizards didn’t even have time to collapse; their heads remained suspended in the air for a heartbeat before seven bodies fell in perfect, synchronized ruin.

But he had been careful not to hit them at fatal points.

As ⸢Critical Hit!⸥ notifications filled his vision, Percival swung Lightpiercer in a massive, 360-degree arc.

The blade trailing a crescent moon of ⸢Soulfire⸥ that stretched twenty feet in every direction.

The arc caught the depleted Lizards and the azure flames burnt was what left of their HP as it incinerated their spirits.

It didn’t take long for the next threat to appear: The Evil-eyed Saurs (Lvl 72).

They were ambush predators. Their skin shifted to match the swirling mist and ice. They didn’t have a pack link; they had ⸢Predictive Mimicry⸥.

They watched his and his Skeletons’ fighting patterns for mere seconds, then began to counter them.

A Skeleton Skirmisher’s signature thrust was met by a Saur that had already shifted to parry the exact angle.

Percival was forced to break his own patterns, to fight inefficiently, wasting stamina and mana on awkward, unpredictable moves just to stay ahead of their learning curve.

However, the biting cold was affecting his already low Agility and Speed. Percival decided to spam his higher graded Swordsman Skills.

Such as ⸢Blade Rain⸥.

The air screamed as he unleashed a barrage of falling swords.

To the Saurs, it looked like a shower of silver light. But before they knew it, the beasts were riddled with holes, their predictive abilities failing as their bodies were pinned into the ground.

As the Saurs reeled, their health bars plummeting into the red, Percival looked to the corner of his vision.

With a practiced mental command, he pulled up the Summon Map.

His eyes scanned the skull icons. Far to the northwest of his current coordinates, a single Skeleton Soldier was a lonely white dot amidst a sea of grey fog.

It was moving through the crags, searching for the Beast Source of this Encounter Zone.

Still nothing, he thought, a flash of irritation crossing his face. Move faster.

He closed the map with a sharp blink. The remaining Saurs were barely clinging to life, their bodies.

Again, he poured ⸢Soulfire⸥ into his sword—it was the cheapest Attack Necromancer Skill he could afford.

With a swipe of his sword, the Evil-eyed Saurs burnt to corpses.

⸢Evil-eyed Saurs killed (Lvl 72) x14⸥

⸢+ 3500 EXP⸥

But this was only the beginning. With the Beast Source difficult to find, and with him having no memory of where they had found it in his last life, Percival slowly found himself in a dire situation.