[A/N: It is a surprise Mass Release!! Thank you for donating Golden Tickets previous Month! Keep them coming as I really appreciate your support for my work. Thank you so much! Enjoy the Chapter!!]

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Chapter 82: Grik’s Past(Part 1)

I stared through the frosted crystal glass of the stasis pod.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

"How-how is this possible? This cannot happen. How?"

My heart hammered against my ribs it felt like it was trying to break through my sternum. A cold sweat broke out over my dark olive skin.

"HaanGh! Aargh!"

The air in my lungs simply vanished. I could not breathe. My mind was completely short-circuiting. I was having a panic attack.

DING!

The glowing blue interface of the System hovered in the corner of my vision. It identified the sleeping figure as a summoned Hero of the Holy Alliance.

But the System did not know what I knew.

She wore a pristine white and gold armor, which was surrounded by the faint, holy light.

But the face resting peacefully inside that freezing magical fluid was absolutely unmistakable.

It belonged to a life I thought was buried forever under a mountain of ice.

"Anise..."

She looked slightly older. Her delicate features were sharpened by time and a life of brutal combat that I could not even begin to fathom.

"What happened to you? How did you get here?"

The curve of her jaw, the shade of her dark hair, the exact, beautiful shape of her lips... it was undeniably her. The woman I had loved. The woman I had lost.

VVRRRMM!

A sudden, violent tremor shook the pristine marble vault.

KRRR-CRACK!

The white marble tiles beneath my heavy boots shattered like fragile glass. My mana was going haywire.

My emotions were taking over me. My senses had betrayed me. I could only see her. My lost Love.

"Grik?" Nyssa called out. Her voice was laced with immediate, spiking panic.

"Boss, your core is red-lining! Pull it back!" Rolf yelled.

SHING! SHING!

Kaelith materialized right beside me, her twin daggers drawn. Her pitch black eyes darted from my trembling form to the human woman suspended in the coffin.

Lysandra stepped up next to Nyssa, her pink eyes narrowed.

HSSSSSS!

The valves in my mechanical Vanguard Arm vented a chaotic, screaming burst of hot white steam.

"You are shaking," Kaelith stated. Her voice was a low, dangerous hum.

"You know her. How does a Goblin from the Monster Continent know a human Hero of the Holy Alliance?"

I placed my organic hand against the freezing glass. My green fingers trembled uncontrollably.

For months, I had worn the mask of the cold, calculating tactician. I had lied, manipulated, and slaughtered my way to the top of the food chain in the Forge.

I had kept the secret of my past life buried deep in the darkest corner of my mind.

But looking at my pack... looking at the fiercely loyal werewolf, the brilliant scholar, the deadly assassin, and the newly awakened queen...

’No! More than their roles, they are my friends. More than friends. My Family in this Dog-Eat-Dog World.’

I took a deep breath. I calmed my mind and magic. And made up my mind.

’I cannot lie to them anymore. They had bled for me. They had followed me into hell and back. They deserved the absolute truth.’

I slowly pulled my hand away from the glass.

"Sit down," I commanded softly.

Rolf blinked as he was utterly confused by the raw vulnerability in my tone. Nyssa and Kaelith exchanged a wary glance, their weapons lowering slightly, but they obeyed.

THUD.

The four of them sat on the polished marble steps leading up to the pedestal, their eyes locked intently on my face.

"I have told you all that I survive by studying anatomy and physics," I began. My baritone voice cracked, echoing hollowly in the quiet vault.

"I told you I use logic to bypass the rules of magic. But I never told you where I learned those rules."

I looked at Kaelith, meeting her intense gaze.

"I do not know this human as a Holy Alliance Hero. I knew her before I was a goblin. Before I ever woke up on the floor of that brothel."

Nyssa pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, as her brilliant mind was struggling to process the impossible implication.

"Grik, what are you saying? Reincarnation is a myth. It is a fairy tale invented by the clerics to comfort grieving families."

"It is not a myth, Nyssa," I said, pointing a heavy brass finger at my own chest.

"My soul is not from the Monster Continent. It is not from the Human Continent or the Beastman territories. I come from a completely different world. A world without mana, without monsters, and without Systems. A world called Earth."

Rolf let out a low, disbelieving whistle. Lysandra’s maroon wings twitched in absolute shock.

"On Earth, I was human," I confessed. The words tasted incredibly strange and bitter on my tongue.

"And the woman in this coffin... her name is Anise. She was my partner. My girlfriend. The only love of my previous life."

A profound, stunned silence fell over my pack. The jealousy in the eyes of my queens melted instantly and was replaced by a heartbreaking awe.

The dark marble vault faded away in my mind, and was replaced by the memory of the crisp, blinding white of a world I had left behind.

"We were not warriors back then," I told them, my voice dropping into a quiet, haunted rhythm as the deeply buried memories flooded back.

"We were adventurers. We were mountaineers and researchers obsessed with the unexplained. While other people lived normal, boring lives in cities of glass and steel, Anise and I hunted down supernatural anomalies across the globe. We chased ghosts and myths."

I paced in front of the stasis pod, my glowing eyes lost in the snowy past.

"Our final expedition was to a place called Mount Everest. It was the tallest, most unforgiving mountain on our entire planet. The peak literally scraped the edge of the sky. Reaching the summit was a brutal test of human endurance."

I turned and looked at them describing the horrors of the Mt. Everest.

"The cold could snap your fingers off. The lack of oxygen made your brain hallucinate. The treacherous ice claimed lives every single year. Deaths were common, and we understood the physical risks."

I stopped pacing. A cold knot formed in my stomach, far heavier than the chill of the Great Iron Labyrinth.

"But in the years leading up to our climb, the mountain had changed. People were not just dying from the cold or falling into hidden ravines. They were disappearing. Entire veteran teams were vanishing without a single trace. There were no frozen bodies left behind. There were no torn ropes, and no distress signals. They were just gone."

Rolf leaned forward, his canine ears perked up, completely engrossed in the story. "Like a beast was picking them off in the snow?"

"That is what I thought," I nodded grimly.

"My instincts told me something incredibly dangerous was hunting on that mountain. I had a terrible, sinking feeling about the expedition from the very start. I wanted to call it off and go home."

I turned to look at the sleeping face of Anise in the crystal coffin. Even through the frost, she looked so incredibly peaceful. A single tear escaped my eye, burning hot against my cold, green cheek.

"But Anise was fearless. She possessed a brilliant, stubborn curiosity that rivaled yours, Nyssa. She was absolutely convinced that we could find the answers."

I shook my head as a sad smirk appeared on my face.

"She begged me to go with her to document the truth behind the vanishing climbers. I loved her too much to let her go into the freezing wasteland alone. So, I packed my gear. I agreed."

"Hmph!"

"It was the worst mistake of my entire existence."

I closed my eyes, recalling the brutal ascent.

CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

"I can still hear our boots breaking the ice," I whispered.

"The heavy, insulated climbing gear weighed us down with every grueling step. Metal spikes were strapped to our boots to grip the frozen rock."

FWOOOOOSH!

"We were pushing toward the final stretch, entering a place we called the Death Zone," I narrated, my voice echoing the sheer exhaustion of that day.

"The air was so thin it felt like breathing through a collapsed straw. The freezing wind was a constant, deafening roar in our ears. Our crew was completely exhausted."

KSSSHK!

"We were cracking jokes over the radio comms just to keep our spirits up. Our lead climber was complaining about how he would trade his entire life savings for a hot cup of coffee. We were trying to laugh away the creeping terror of the freezing dark."

I opened my eyes, looking at the stone floor of the vault.

Nyssa was leaning forward on the stairs, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.

"What happened next, Grik?"

"The wind stopped," I whispered.

The absolute terror of that specific moment washed over me again. It felt as fresh and horrifying as the day it actually happened.

"On a mountain where the storms literally never cease, everything just stopped. The howling wind died instantly. The swirling snow hung suspended in the freezing air."

...

The silence that followed in my memory was not peaceful. It was sick. It was heavy, oppressive, and entirely unnatural.

"Through the clearing fog, we saw it. It was not the summit. It was a cave. It was carved directly into the side of a sheer ice cliff, perfectly hidden until the storm mysteriously parted. It looked like a gaping, black mouth in the pure white snow."

"What happened after that? Did you go in the cave?" Rolf asked.

"Well, it was a disaster for sure."