Return of the Frozen Player-Novel

A hand wearing a white glove pulled the trigger. Gilberto actually didn’t have to pull the trigger anymore because the gun and its bullets were made out of Ether. However, he felt comfortable pulling the trigger as if it had become some kind of ritual to him.

“He truly is a magician…” Gilberto murmured.

It was commonly said that magicians were always prepared.

An unprepared magician was bound to fall behind others and die.

Snipers had to be prepared as well.

Sniping locations, escape routes, and traps—snipers had to have all of those prepared, and they also had to use their brains. They had to make sure that their bullets would hit the target, and only then would they pull the trigger.

“I wonder….” Gilberto calmly stared at the approaching Isaac.

“I wonder who is more prepared between us?”

***

Isaac flew across the sea and toward Gilberto.

“You managed to hit me twice, but there won’t be a third time.”

Isaac avoided Gilbert’s bullets while flying toward the latter, but Gilberto’s bullets carried enough destructive power to create a massive wave upon hitting the sea surface.

Isaac acknowledged that he could not allow himself to get hit by Gilberto’s bullets.

Isaac picked up the pace.

Gilberto tried to keep Isaac at bay with his attacks.

However, Isaac easily avoided Gilberto’s bullets by simply moving left and right.

“There’s a limit to what a gun can achieve…”

Guns were powerful, but their attacks were projectiles that could be easily avoided by those who were strong enough.

Magicians could perform a variety of attacks with endless variations, and a dedicated magician could easily overwhelm anyone with their flurry of attacks.

“All right. I’m here.”

Isaac saw Gilberto in a prone position on a beachside hill.

“...I don’t know if I should say he’s stubborn or confident.”

Gilberto was getting ready to shoot, even though Isaac was already so close to him.

Impressed, Isaac summoned a few massive playing cards.

“This is my gift for your resilience.”

The massive playing cards flew toward Gilberto like missiles.

The entire hill was flattened in the blink of an eye.

He descended and walked on the flattened hill to confirm Gilberto’s death.

“Oh, no. Was that too much?”

Isaac shrugged upon seeing Gilberto’s horrible condition.

He bent one knee to put his hand on Gilberto’s chest.

“Huh?” Gilberto's heart was beating fast, but his eyes resembled a dead fish.

“...”

The contradiction filled Isaac’s heart with a sense of incongruity.

Gilberto’s heart started to beat even faster.

“What?” Isaac hurriedly retreated. “What is that?”

Dozens of magic barriers engulfed his figure, but before he could even start thinking about what was going on, Gilberto’s figure shone and exploded.

Many burning questions popped up in Isaac’s mind, but he couldn’t help but think that he was missing something important here.

Argh!” Isaac’s left foot exploded into a bloody mist.

If he hadn’t thrown himself to the ground, his lower body would have exploded into a bloody mist rather than just his left foot.

In other words, Isaac had fallen into Gilberto’s trap the moment he arrived on the beach.

“Magic Box!”

Four boxes manifested on the beach.

Isaac hurriedly entered one of the four boxes, and the boxes started shuffling themselves.

Two of the four magic boxes exploded upon being hit by Gilberto’s bullets.

“This is bad…” Isaac emerged from out of the boxes with a frown. He was frowning because Gilberto’s bullets had come from both east and west.

Isaac grinned. His left foot was still regenerating, so it felt itchy.

“Scan.” A magic circle manifested beneath Isaac’s feet, and it started looking for vestiges of magic.

Magic would always leave traces, and one could obtain a lot of information from those traces. Gilberto had been sniping Isaac, so there had to be traces of magic somewhere.

Isaac extrapolated from missing data and found that things would make sense if Gilberto had been using Force all this while rather than magic.

Isaac wasn’t exactly sure if Gilberto was really using Force because its pattern was a bit strange.

“It doesn’t matter...” Isaac reckoned that it would only be a matter of time before he found Gilberto because he had already identified the pattern of Gilberto’s Force.

Isaac started comparing the traces of Force he had discovered from both east and west to the traces he had seen from the illusion he had killed earlier.

In other words, Gilberto’s attacks from both east and the west were both smokescreens.

Isaac’s demonic energy spread like a fog.

Isaac pulled out a black cloth and wrapped it around the bleeding stump of his left foot.

Moments later, he unwrapped the stump, and a healthy foot appeared.

“I didn’t expect that you’re capable of entertaining me like this…”

Isaac smiled as he started looking around.

***

Isaac was right. Gilberto had created illusions made out of Ether.

Gilberto thought that the illusions would buy him a lot of time, but Isaac saw through his trick after dealing with just a single illusion.

However, he reckoned that he would become a burden for both Mio and Seo Jun-Ho if he were to return to the castle. After all, Isaac would surely discover that he had been tricked, which meant that he would inevitably return to the castle.

It had been four days since Gilberto learned to wield Ether, but he had never really tested its limits because he was busy moving along the coastline and saving his strength for the upcoming battle.

Gilberto was confident of killing Isaac.

“Father! He’s coming!” Arthur screamed, pulling Gilberto out of his thoughts.

“...!” Gilberto came to his senses and peeked at Isaac through his scope.

“Damn it.”

Isaac was making a beeline for them.

“I’ll buy you some time,” said Arthur.

“What?” Gilberto was astonished. He was about to say something, but he saw Arthur’s determined and firm eyes. The latter’s eyes were telling him to trust him.

“The two of us will die if we fight him in close combat,” said Arthur.

“...” Gilberto didn’t know what to say. Arthur was right. A sniper had to be distant from their target if they wanted to be effective. Snipers were weak in close-combat quarters, so it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they would lose the moment their target got close to them.

“...Thirty seconds,” Gilberto muttered. “Just buy me thirty seconds.”

“...Yes, Father!” Arthur responded enthusiastically to his father, who had chosen to believe him.

Arthur was a Player capable of taking care of himself while Gilberto was absent. In other words, he was a trustworthy Player whom Gilberto could trust, and he had made a rational decision by trusting his son.

“Withdraw illusions,” Gilberto muttered, recovering the illusions and the Ether he had expended to create them.

Gilberto closed his eyes. “Particle Development.”

If Gilberto wanted to kill Isaac in a single blow. He needed a weapon that would allow him to generate a destructive force capable of annihilating Isaac’s soul in the proverbial blink of an eye.

Gilberto fell into deep contemplation, but he soon emerged from his thoughts with a weapon in mind.”

“Structure Registration. Effect Verification.”

A gigantic weapon manifested on the hill where Gilberto was located.

***

Arthur’s sword was unsheathed as he waited for Isaac’s arrival.

However, his heart was beating like crazy.

It wasn’t strange that he was nervous. After all, he was about to face a Heaven.

In all honesty, Isaac could chop his head off in the blink of an eye.

Isaac finally arrived.

Arthur gripped his sword tightly.

“Who knows? Maybe he’s in your hair?”

“You’ll soon find out whether I’m just bluffing or not.”

Isaac concluded that Gilberto was somewhere preparing something lethal while Arthur was here to buy him time.

Isaac ran a number of simulations in his head.

However, Isaac was the Magician of Death—lethality was meaningless before him.

Isaac grinned and muttered, “...Equation of Death.”

A repulsive energy wrapped around him, but it was death energy rather than demonic energy.