Primordial Sage: Plight of Immortality

"What the heck?!" Zers, whose spear had fallen who knows where, almost lost his balance. It felt as if his inner ear got hurt, and he couldn’t maintain his balance after hearing that sound. Fortunately, he also had good control over his body and quickly took out a knife. With all his strength, he pierced the ice on which he stood.

Illyan did the same, using the second side of the axe that had the spike to keep himself close to the ice that started to move at an unprecedented speed towards the skies.

Once his vision, which had gotten dark for a moment, brightened, he noticed that the monster also did its best to stay in the same place without sliding down.

But the same couldn’t be said about the other winter beasts. They started to fall like ripe fruits from a tree. Some of them tried to lodge themselves in the ice, but they were either too weak or too heavy and, in the end, fell into the abyss with wailing.

This horrifying scenario made Illyan realize that they were too late to run from the shadow underneath them and that it reached the limit of its patience, finally showing itself.

The worst thing was that it was so huge that it even split the light of the sun into two, as the sea where he could still see was crumbling.

The only luck was that the core of the tribe already left. But the same thought made him realize!

"Oh no!" He looked all around, searching for any kind of survivors, but he didn’t see even a shadow of a human. Instead, he noticed that the ice covering the shadow also started to crumble and fall down.

"Zers! We need to climb! Now!" Once he realized that, he yelled at Zers that they needed to get to the real back of the creature or they would fall soon.

"Ugh… I will try…" But Zers had a much bigger problem. He was completely disoriented. His inner ears were damaged, which caused him problems with orienting himself. Illyan had the same problem but healed soon after.

Noticing that, he used his axe to climb towards Zers, held him in his now uninjured arm, and used his entire strength to climb up without slipping. The monster did the same, but it didn’t look like it did so for survival. No, it was looking at him and Zers. It wanted their blood.

However, while Illyan was much weaker than the monster, he had compensated for it all with his control over his body and his dexterity. He started to climb as quickly as any monkey, evading all cracks or pieces of ice that were falling around, until he made one big jump and fell at the back of that enormous creature.

"Oh, shit…" But once he got there, he noticed that the other wolf monsters were also there. Some were eating the rest of the warriors, while some were trying to bite the beast they were standing on. But all that stopped when they noticed the new prey.

What nobody expected was that two of the smallest ones would screech with so much power that it intimidated the bigger ones as they charged at them.

When Illyan noticed them, he felt kind of déjà vu. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very comfortable as he started to remember. His facial expression turned for the worse as he threw Zers on the ground and, with his only weapon now, he split the one in half and bashed the second one’s head with his fist.

"Arrrrgh?!"

"Eiigh!!"

The half of the body started to crawl on the ground, still staring at him with hatred and hunger as it reached for his legs. However, he didn’t let it as he lifted his leg and stomped its head with full force.

Squelch

Then he charged at the second one and, with a single swing, decapitated it.

"Haah… Haah…Haah…" Illyan tried to catch his breath as he stared at the corpses of his enemies.

‘I… finally avenged you…’

But before he could rejoice, the being that they were standing on made another sound.

"OOOOoooooorrrrgh!"

"Ugh!"

That made the already hurt Zers yelp in pain as he lay on the ground, while Illyan also squirmed in pain as the blood flowing from his ears stained his neck.

The beasts, however, didn’t have this problem. They seemed to be uncomfortable but not at the same level as Zers or even Illyan. Instead, the blood of Illyan, full of vitality, awakened their hunting instincts.

Howl

With ferocious expressions, they ran towards him, prepared to feast on his flesh. They didn’t care that he already killed two of them. The only thing on their minds was to eat them.

On the other hand, the leader of the monsters was also crawling on top of the back where everyone was. Seeing this, most of the wolf monsters showed reverence as they looked at it.

Back then, when it was still ‘alive,’ Illyan was trying to make it suffer as much as possible from within its stomach. That made it incredibly weak, which made the other creatures ignore it and eventually even abandon it.

However, after its stomach was forcibly opened by the Thearas Clan Leader, it managed to survive. Not only that, but it reunited with its pack. It ate the ones who were unwelcoming or didn’t want to be under its commands and managed to reach its former peak. No, it managed to go even beyond.

That made those monsters more tame as they listened to it. But now, the same monster had the only thought in its mind…

And that was to kill those humans!

"K-illlll…!!"

"Eee-at…!"

They started to wail and lament as they stared at him.

‘What should I do? I won’t be able to fight them all, the more so when he had Zers to take care of.

What he didn’t expect was that at that moment Zers stood up, albeit with difficulty, and took some herbs out of his sack to chew on.

"Heh, don’t worry, Stone. People like us who can die easily have always prepared some medicines. We need to take care of those bastards, right? To avenge the members of our tribe..."

It was true that Illyan completely forgot to feed him any type of medicine during this event. A fatal mistake of a physician. Illyan usually didn’t have herbs on himself as they would impede his movement. He usually had them in his backpack. On the battlefield, he didn’t need herbs, while others were healed by full-time physicians.

But now he didn’t even know where his things were. It didn’t even pass his mind as there were too many things that happened in such a short period.

It is most probable that either it was still on Zers’ sled together with Yii or it fell into one of the fissures. Either way, the only things he had was his axe and jagged blade that was now stuck in the heart of that monster.

"That is the Red Leaf Herb… That will keep you standing only for a few minutes at best!"

But Illyan knew that there were no convenient herbs that could heal everything. The most universal were those that would either upgrade your immune system or speed up your regeneration. But those still fell short in so many cases.

That's why Illyan didn’t bother to carry herbs for every case around. It wasn’t efficient.

"Hehe, that’s enough for us."

But this herb was neither. It was also called Berserker’s Kiss… The herb had the trait of making the ones who eat it berserk, as its name suggests. What was most important was that it could, to some extent, help the user with its body functioning despite some of the parts failing.

Thanks to this feature, Zers stood up and was prepared to fight despite the damaged inner ear.

"Haah… You are stubborn… Let’s go before that drug comes off." Illyan only rolled his eyes and charged at the monster that didn’t wait for Zers to block its attacks.

"It's not a drug, hahah!" Zers laughed as he also went for the smaller ones with his long dagger.

The fight itself was much more dangerous than before, as every small movement of the creature underneath them was the same as an earthquake for them. The creature seemed sluggish, as if it was sleeping under that ice, but once it would fully awaken, they would be completely swept away without an ability to do anything.

They needed to get down as soon as possible. But running wasn't an option. Those monsters could easily outrun them. Because of that, they had to get rid of them somehow.

Thud

The trembling of the enormous creature was visible to him as the bits of ice crumbled. However, once everything fell down, he finally saw more recognizable traits of this creature.

The body part they were now standing on was the same as any other. It was just one segment of many others...

The only difference in these segments was the uneven protrusions that looked like icebergs. It took him just one look to realize what this creature was. Kaoran told him about this mythical creature a lot.

After all, his warrior title was named after it.

"Frozen Worm?!"

The massive creature, which should be at least one hundred meters long, lived in the far north, consuming ice and having the ability to survive almost any kind of injuries. That was the Frozen Worm.

So many questions passed through his mind.

Why was it here? Wasn’t it just a myth? And why the heck was it so big? Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to ponder such things as he fought to the death with a wolf monster.

The only positive aspect was that he had a much better time running around now, not standing on slippery ice and being able to maintain his balance better.

His wounds once again piled up on his body as he fought for his life while Zers moved around, killing the smaller ones.

Once Zers even sneaked up on the wolf monster that Illyan fought, albeit with failure.

However, it was just a diversion, as he only wanted to draw the beast's attention. When he made contact with Illyan, both of them nodded. The beast also wasn’t stupid and learned its lesson as it expected Illyan’s attack.

But it didn’t come. Instead, cries of agony spread across the body of the Frozen Worm as Illyan started to annihilate other monsters. Zers had only a dagger now and faced the same problem as Illyan. Furthermore, he was much weaker than Illyan, who was going all out, so he couldn’t kill them all. The fact that he could fight for so long with them was already an achievement.

This obviously angered the biggest one as it turned around and shot at Illyan with high speed. However, this time Illyan also learned a lesson.

“Agh!” He grabbed one of the beasts charging at him and lifted it in the direction of the bigger one!

Before it could stop, the beast in Illyan’s hands was torn apart as it wailed its last breath.

Illyan used this opportunity to attack the beast right after.

‘Bastard! I will leave this place alive while you return where you belong. To hell!’

With one swing, he aimed at its wide-open mouth. With a crack, he felt that the jaw broke, so he took the lower part with his free hand.

“You ugly son of the…”

Squelch

Pulling back, he tore off its entire lower jaw, with rotten blood overflowing from the wound.

“Urrrgh!”

But, of course, that made the monster even more violent as it started to wave its hands around in hopes of turning him into a pulp.

However, he dodged, crouched, and even deflected all of those attacks and retreated.

Unfortunately, this made him breathless as he couldn’t keep up and had to reunite with Zers.

He quickly got closer to Zers to fight together while still looking warily at the monster. He knew that Zers’ capability to fight would end soon, and there was no chance for them to beat it. In that case, they should…

“Stone, watch out!”

“Aaaaarrrrgh!...Wh-yyy….?! Huuu-maaan!”

Suddenly, the beast crouched and lunged at him with such speed that he couldn’t react. It pierced his body with its antlers and lifted him up as it continued to charge. That was until it charged headfirst into one of the protrusions of the Frozen Worm.

Boom

Illyan, who crashed into it first, took the full brunt of it and groaned in pain.

“Agh… Stone! Are you still alive…?!” The weak voice from his right made him look in that direction. There, Zers pressed on that protrusion and breathed with difficulty.

He was lucky since the beast didn’t aim at him, and it just grazed him. But his left hand was pierced through by one of the branches of those antlers, effectively pinning both him and Illyan on one of those protrusions as those antlers pierced through it too.

Now they were trapped within the reach of the beast who wanted to kill them.

And if that wasn’t enough.

“OOOOOOoooorrrrrrrrrghhggh????!!! OOOOOOoooooooorrghh!!!”

These protrusions that the Frozen Worm used to break down the icebergs it swam in between were the most difficult to recover parts of the Frozen Worm. That made them especially sensitive to any damage.

And they definitely wouldn’t like it.