Return of the Frozen Player-Novel

Seo Jun-Ho stood on the roof of the hotel and looked down at the city.

“Contractor, do you think the Quest is truly telling you to defeat Erebo by yourself?”

“It should be...”

He recalled the requirements of the third Quest. ‘Destroy Erebo’s hivemind by yourself.’

The hivemind referred to the puppets Erebo controlled, as in the cockroaches. However, it definitely wasn’t just referring to the normal ones.

‘The thirty Quests decreased to five. The first and the second quests were difficult.’

It would make no sense for the third Quest to suddenly tell him to just kill one bug.

‘My friends and I already killed him a few times. The World Tree is asking me to kill Erebo by myself.’

At last, the whole city was blanketed in darkness, and another black mass started pouring in.

“Night Walking.”

This was a technique that concealed all his traces and his presence using Watchguard of Darkness. Unless the other side had an exceptional skill for detecting magic, no one would be able to sense him.

“Let’s start by warming up.”

Dudududu!

As usual, the cockroaches tangled into each other and flooded into the streets.

“Ew.” The Frost Queen looked very disgusted.

“Are you going to go down to fight them?” she asked.

“No,” Seo Jun-Ho said.

He retrieved two bows from his Inventory: Tempest Butterfly and Final Horizon.

“There’s no need to overexert myself this early.” He was planning to hunt the cockroaches safely from the rooftop and use the effects of Exterminator at a later point.

Tempest Butterfly’s bowstring creaked as he pulled it taut as if it was about to snap.

‘Where have they gathered the most?’

Seo Jun-Ho spotted the area and let go of the arrow without hesitation.

Fwoooosh!

Filled with condensed magic energy, the arrow flew out swiftly and destroyed the cockroaches.

‘And the Quest...’

As he had expected, it was still ongoing. His suspicions turned into certainty.

“Contractor. Did you not say that those insects cannot be harmed without at least the use of a sword aura?” Frost asked.

“I did.”

“...Then, how did they break so easily with a mere arrow?”

“The arrows I shoot are stronger than a standard sword aura, you see.” Seo Jun-Ho shrugged and continued to snipe them. The cockroaches skittered all over as they tried to dodge the attacks from the sky, but they were at a loss because they had no idea of their enemy’s location.

“This is fun. It’s good stress relief,” Seo Jun-Ho remarked.

“I disagree. I dislike it because it is revolting,” the Frost Queen covered her eyes, unable to watch.

Seo Jun-Ho continued to do nothing but shoot arrows until he met his goal of three hours. By then, he stopped.

“I knew it. I knew it would take about three hours,” he muttered while squinting. He could see the special entities flying in from outside the city.

‘Erebo will start sensing that something’s off after about three hours.’

Erebo had definitely accessed the hivemind earlier than that, but he wouldn’t have been able to find Seo Jun-Ho because it was impossible to do so with a normal cockroach’s senses.

“So, he sent the special entities. There are... about twenty-two, I believe.”

Was Erebo himself not coming?

Seo Jun-Ho shook his head.

‘I can’t exclude the possibility that he sent them ahead and that Erebo himself is already on his way.’

Seo Jun-Ho thought for a moment. Then, he lowered Tempest Butterfly and picked Final Horizon up. He could easily pull the bowstring back thanks to his 600 points in Strength.

‘Even Ihave never shot so many arrows before.’

Seo Jun-Ho wondered how far he could go. Afterward, he shot an arrow at a cockroach resembling an eagle flying in from the distance.

Boom!

It sounded like he had fired a canon. The air around them quivered as the arrow shot out like a laser.

“...”

Seo Jun-Ho was momentarily speechless when he saw the aftermath. A few of the monsters flying into the city were destroyed without a trace.

‘If I had used this on Telgia, I could have taken it out with one shot.’

Feeling confident now, Seo Jun-Ho pulled back the bowstring once more and shot down a few more special entities.

“Huh?” His eyes glinted. Obviously, the special entities were making their way toward the hotel, but the cockroaches roaming the streets were starting to come this way as well.

‘Well, I suppose it’s not like they’re stupid.’

They probably hadn’t noticed him yet, even at this point. However, they had to have finally realized where the arrows were coming from. As such, Seo Jun-Ho put the two bows away and retrieved a spear.

“Now that I think about it, I was going to give this guy a name, but I forgot to,” he remarked.

“Hm? Was it not called Cold Spear?” asked the Frost Queen.

“Well, according to Graham, it doesn’t like that name. So I told him I’d re-name it.” Of course, he hadn’t been able to go to a fortune teller because he was so busy.

The Frost Queen stared at Cold Spear. “Then, may I give it a name?”

“You?” Seo Jun-Ho stared at her in disbelief. He suddenly remembered the title of the video he had made in the past: ‘Salmon in the Mountain.’

“But you’re bad at naming things...”

“Do you really think I would be as bad as you when you named it Cold Spear?!” The Frost Queen fumed. She then crossed her arms and watched the stream of cockroaches rushing toward them. She thought for a long while, and when cold sweat started to drip down her face, she finally spoke, “What about... P-Pain of Creation...”

“It’s too bad, but let’s just name it another time.”

Now, wasn’t the time to leisurely come up with names.

‘They’re coming.’

The special entities that could fly came in like fighter jets. As soon as they did, Seo Jun-Ho leaped off of the roof.

‘I’ll break through them in one go.’

A great amount of magic power pooled into Cold Spear in his hand. Just like that, he pierced it right through one of their heads.

‘And directly to the next one.’

He froze the vapor in the air and jumped across them like steps before cutting through more monsters.

“Frost, let’s go down!” he yelled after landing on the hotel roof.

Keen Intuition was telling him that Erebo was getting closer and closer to him.

‘I have to kill as many cockroaches as possible before that bastard gets here.’

He sprinted down the side of the building and started his descent. He swung his spear erratically at the hordes of insects crawling up the hotel.

Cold Spear had the ability to freeze the enemy with just a graze. The dead cockroaches became lumps of ice, and they inflicted collateral damage on their allies as they fell and shattered.

‘It’s not enough...’

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. Since he usually fought them in a party of seven, their numbers weren’t decreasing as much as he initially expected now that he was fighting them alone.

‘I suppose this is Night Walking’s limit.’

In the end, Seo Jun-Ho judged that he couldn’t maintain it any longer and released his concealed state.

When he did, the cockroaches swarming the outer walls froze like broken machines.

‘Hup!’

He put Cold Spear away and gathered his magic energy before swinging an enormous scythe made of condensed darkness across the wall.

Slice!

With a deafening sound, the corpses of the cockroaches started falling down.

“Frost!” he yelled after landing on the ground.

“Y-yes!” The Frost Queen summoned twenty ice golems. And with her eyes squeezed shut, she started attacking the disgusting cockroaches.

“I-Icy Fist!”

“...”

Seo Jun-Ho already knew it, but he became sure of it once more—he couldn’t let the Frost Queen name the spear.

With Seo Jun-Ho, the Frost Queen, and the golems, the cockroaches quickly decreased in numbers.

‘Dammit. Even with this, it’s way too little.’

He gnashed his teeth a little. They had already killed approximately more than three thousand insects. However, there were still thousands more left in the city.

‘And...’

Seo Jun-Ho turned his head. In the distance, he saw a familiar monster flying in, leading an army of cockroaches.

‘Erebo.’

He was moving much faster than Seo Jun-Ho had expected.

‘It took about forty minutes. Did he move earlier because I used Night Walking this time?’

Erebo wasn’t with an enormous army similar to what accompanied him the previous time, but that was probably because he was in a rush.

The gears quickly started to turn Seo Jun-Ho’s head.

‘Then, that means the number of cockroaches I have to kill is...’

Around fifteen thousand, along with Erebo’s clone.

As Erebo approached, the cockroaches broke out of Exterminator’s effects one by one. And as always, Erebo didn’t enter the battlefield right away. He observed the battlefield from a distance.

“Hooo.” When the cockroaches finally managed to pull themselves together, they rushed in once again. Seo Jun-Ho mustered his magic. For the first time in this battle, he activated Overclocking with a hundred percent output.

pαпᵈα-noνɐ1·сoМ “...”

His body felt as light as air. At the same time, he felt full, as if he were holding all the power in the world. It was a contradictory feeling.

Seo Jun-Ho gently extended his palm toward the rush of cockroaches.

“Fuck off!”

Bang!

He sent them flying toward the neighboring building with just a small wave of his hand.

Afterward, he retrieved the Sword of Ambition from his Inventory. As soon as he unsheathed it, a jet-black aura covered the blade.

‘There’s no way Erebo will enter the battlefield until I run out of stamina.’

However, it also meant that he didn’t have to worry about Erebo until then.

Seo Jun-Ho steeled himself.

‘It’s fine. Anyway, I’m not really thinking I can do all this in one try.’

His goal for this regression was to get a grasp of Erebo’s state and his responses. And to try out the techniques he had only been imagining so far to his heart’s content.

“So there’s no need to drag this out...”

With his heart set, an enormous amount of magic started pouring out from his body.

“I-impossible! How could a mere human do this?!” Erebo exclaimed.

The aura was so fierce it shocked him.

Seo Jun-Ho condensed the energy more and more.

‘This is my first time using this technique, but...’

He wanted to know just how effective it was, so he wanted to try it out at least once. This was also why he had practiced the Frost Queen’s instrument nonstop throughout his regressions.

‘First, breathe in.’

He imagined pulling in the oxygen running through the blood in his veins, deep within his lungs. His chest swelled as he took a deep breath.

‘Second. Spit it out.’

He infused his breath with the magic energy and released it from his lips.

“Hooooo!”

The white breath shot out and spread into the air. Every building, being, and street it touched froze over without exception.

“That was quite exceptional, considering it was your first attempt.” It was so powerful even the Frost Queen acknowledged it.

Seo Jun-Ho watched as his breath swirled around the city, freezing the cockroaches.

‘How ironic...’

Once upon a time, he had hated and resented this skill. It was none other than the power that froze his friends, the Queen’s Breath.

“Actually, maybe it should be called King’s Breath now,” he remarked.

When he walked out into the pale, frozen streets, the surviving cockroaches ambushed him.

‘Shit. I don’t think I can use it more than once.’

He felt like all the energy had left his body. Considering that it was this bad, even though his Overclocking was at a hundred percent output, he wouldn’t be able to use it in his normal state.

Seo Jun-Ho swung his sword and spear until both his physical and mental energy reached rock bottom. From the very beginning, it was nearly impossible for just one person to kill so many enemies. His sword shattered, and when he used up all his magic energy, his knees buckled to the ground.

“You... I simply cannot believe that a human like you exists.” Erebo shook his head as he entered the battlefield. Even as he studied Seo Jun-Ho’s near-collapsed state, fear was visible on his face. “It is as if you were created just to put me down.”

It was unlike him, but Erebo didn’t ramble on and on about his luck or whatever.

“Die.”

He ripped Seo Jun-Ho’s heart out as if he couldn’t stand the latter’s presence for even a moment longer.

“Cough!” Seo Jun-Ho’s blood flowed backward, and he threw it up. Still, he smiled. When he lifted his head and looked up at Erebo, the ends of his lips curled up into a smile.

‘I have a chance.’

He was confident that he would be able to fulfill this near-impossible Quest one day and break Erebo’s neck once he refined his techniques and became capable of maximizing his stats.

“So... just you wait.”

He would do this tens—no, hundreds of times.

Seo Jun-Ho’s smile widened.

“Until... I kill you!”

***

With a vigorous shout, Seo Jun-Ho’s body fell forward. As always, the Frost Queen sat next to him, spilling fat tears.

This time; however, she didn’t beg him not to die. Perhaps because he had grown more than usual.

“Contractor. Don’t lose heart.” She only gave him words of support while smoothing his hair out.

Seo Jun-Ho’s eyes slowly closed as he muttered, “Yeah... I’ll make you evolve again.”

“You will not get so lucky every time. Do not concern yourself with me.”

The now-familiar shadow of death loomed over him. However, he still couldn’t hold back laughing after hearing her words.

“You... You evolved because I fed you the Spirit Crystal.”

Like an idiot, she still had no idea.

If he fed her that much Spirit Crystal shavings, he was sure she would evolve the next time as well.

Fwoosh!

Seo Jun-Ho was prepared, so he managed to instinctively balance himself.

When he slowly opened his eyes, he saw the familiar faces he had been missing.

Wei Chun-Hak, Kim Woo-Joong, Rahmadat, Gilberto, Mio, Skaya, Cha Si-Eun, and...

“Huh?”

And a silver-haired middle-school girl. There was a forlorn look on her face as if she had just learned a horrible family secret.