The Anomaly's Path

Ah... Fantastic.

Truly, what a gorgeous, breathtaking view.

If you are wondering what magnificent sight I was currently admiring, it was the sight of a beautiful, gleaming silver blade sticking directly out of the middle of my own chest.

Yep. That’s my ”noble” blood dripping down the fuller. Cool, neat and awesome.

Fucking trash-tier, piece of dog-shit luck.

Seriously, if my life was a web novel, the author would have been hated in the comments, mass-reported, and permanently banned from the platform for terrible writing. What kind of shitty story drops a main character into a new place just to have their own observer stab them?

The destruction around us was total.

The old, frozen ruins of the square were completely shattered, broken apart by the force of the fight we had just finished. Giant pillars of ice were snapped in half, and the ground was a wrecked crater. Dark, black smoke from my Soul Flame was still swirling in the air, hissing as it mixed with the heavy frost.

But right now, I couldn’t focus on the ruins.

I slowly tilted my head back, my vision blurring with dark spots as the cold aura of the sword pumped into my chest. Standing right behind me, holding the hilt of the blade with a perfectly blank face, was... Seris.

Even with a sword through my heart, I could feel the strange pull between us. Underneath her cold, deadpan face, there was a sudden flicker in her eyes — a strange, deep emotion that didn’t match the brutal scene at all.

”...You are being reckless,” Seris said. Her voice was just as flat as always. She did not sound angry. She did not sound mean. She just sounded like a teacher stating a fact.

”...Do you not think...” I coughed, blood spilling over my chin, a crazy smile on my lips. ”...It is a... pretty romantic view...?”

Seris said nothing. Her blank gaze stayed on the back of my head, but her grip on the sword stayed steady.

My knees buckled. The world was spinning. The black fire inside me was finally being pushed down by her cold Lunar power, acting like a safety lock before I could explode and kill all the students watching us in horror.

As my body hit the cold stone floor and darkness swallowed me, one final thought flashed through my mind.

How did a simple school tournament turn into a murder zone in less than five hours?

_

Five Hours Ago...

BZZZZZZT!

The sick, twisting feeling of space travel hit my senses like a truck.

One second we were stepping through the purple tear of the Gate in the academy underground hall, and the next, the loud hum of the machines was gone. It was replaced by a dead, heavy, and very scary silence.

Thud!

My boots hit the ground. I dropped into a low crouch, my hand on my weapon as my space power spread out around me, looking for threats.

”Oh, fuck me,” I said under my breath, shaking the dizziness out of my head. ”It’s freezing...”

A white cloud of fog came out of my mouth with every breath. The water from my lips turned to ice before I could even swallow. I stood up and looked at the world we had been dropped into. The size of it took my breath away.

It was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a graveyard.

We were standing on what looked like a massive, broken road made of dark stone. The road was split open by huge cracks, dropping down into a deep nothing filled with shifting frost. All around us, tall old buildings, grand palaces, and sharp towers reached up into a black sky.

But there was no sun or stars.

Instead, a giant, cracked moon hung above us, giving off a pale, cold light that covered the whole dead world in a ghostly silver glow.

Every building was covered in thick, unmeltable blue ice. Frost crept along the walls like frozen veins, sealing the big wooden doors and stained-glass windows under centuries of freezing cold.

Thick fog rolled through the empty streets below like a living blanket, hiding whatever horrors lay in the dead city. The air wasn’t just cold — it was so sharp and biting that it felt like breathing in tiny pieces of broken glass.

Thud.

Beside me, Malva landed perfectly on her feet. Her core pulsed quietly, and she used her Void abilities to hide her presence. The sound of her boots hitting the stone vanished, and she became almost invisible as she scanned the frozen land without a hint of fear.

A second later, a heavy, silent presence appeared right behind us.

Seris.

She made no sound. Her arms were folded, her hair swaying in the icy wind, and her blank, empty stare was fixed on me. As our second-year observer for this Grade 4 Gate, she was only there to watch. She would not interfere unless our lives were in immediate danger.

I ran a hand through my hair, watching the frost form on the tips of my gloves.

This theme... it’s completely wrong.

In the game, Gates always had themes. Some were volcanic, some were dense jungles, and some were endless loops. When a Gate was cleared, the rift would close normally. But looking at this frozen wasteland, my mind raced.

I didn’t remember any Gate like this from the game. The academy must have just discovered this one.

That was the real reason they panicked and sent second-year elites like Seris to watch us. They knew this place didn’t follow the normal rules. It was an unknown variable, and we only had five hours to clear it before things got worse.

In the game’s lore, I always thought Gates were just random dungeons full of monsters. But standing here, feeling the ancient weight of these frozen palaces, the truth hit me hard.

These weren’t random dungeons. They were connections to other worlds. Worlds that had been destroyed, abandoned, or wiped out. The game never explained this properly — the true origin of Gates was always left as vague background lore.

But looking at these silent ruins, a cold shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the freezing temperature.

If these Gates are just dead worlds... I thought, my chest tightening as I looked up at the cracked moon. Does that mean Aetheris will end up like this one day? Is this the fate we’re trying to stop? Is this what happens when a world loses against the Abyss?

SCREEEEEECH!

A loud, sharp screech cut through the silence of the frozen plaza below, breaking my thoughts.

The thick fog in the streets began to swirl violently, spinning into tiny whirlwinds of ice shards. From the shadows of the ice-covered buildings, several shapes crawled out onto the broken road.

They looked like twisted, broken wolves, but their bodies were made of jagged black ice that pulsed with a sick purple light from deep inside their hollow ribs. Their eyes were empty, glowing with the hunger of the Gate.

As normal monsters of a Grade 4 Gate, these things were Expert-rank threats.

”...Well,” I said, a low laugh escaping my lips. My core flared as my bloodline kicked in, giving me steady power. The space power under my skin began to hum.

Gravity pulled us down as we jumped off the edge of the broken road, falling into the street where a dozen of the black ice wolves were waiting.

”Malva, go,” I said in the air. ”Show me what you can do.”

Malva did not answer with words. She dropped toward the frozen ground. Her Void power spread out, erasing the warmth in the air and making the wolves slow down.

The moment her boots hit the ground, she moved.

A pack of wolves lunged at her, but her blade carried her Void power. The steel connected, and the energy inside the creatures was erased. The first wolf did not even get to howl. Its purple core went dark, and its ice body broke into dull pieces.

Without stopping, she moved through the pack like a ghost, taking down three more before the monsters could even see her.

”Now it’s my turn,” I smirked, landing a few yards away.

Being at Expert Low and needing that final push to hit Expert Mid, I was not going to hold back. I grabbed my sword, Tempest.

My black lightning affinity flared, crackling around my legs and making me move like a blur. I closed the distance to the remaining six wolves in a second.

Eclipse of the Singularity, First Form: Fractured Eclipse.

Using my space and lightning affinities together, the world seemed to break. In an instant, six copies of me appeared all around the remaining beasts. Each copy moved fast, delivering sharp slashes that tore through space itself.

Slash!

The cuts ignored the thick ice armor of the monsters.

Before the copies faded back into me, the six wolves were cut into pieces, their dark purple smoke exploding out before fading into the cold wind. The plaza went quiet again. The whole group of Expert rank monsters had been killed in seconds.

I flicked my sword to the side, letting a spark of lightning burn off the frost before putting it away with a sharp click.

I turned back to face Malva, a confident grin on my face.

”Collect their cores,” I said, pointing at the glowing shards on the broken stone. ”...And let us go. We still have a lot to hunt.”

Malva nodded without a word, her face still blank as she started picking up the high-grade materials.

Seris followed us from the high rooftops like a quiet, unreadable shadow.