The three planned a hop at the Sidonia Dragon Fortress, then a dragon coach to an ice-free harbor on the Arctic’s rim—Boralestock—before crossing the glaciers on foot like ants on glass.

After they reached the fortress, Aurora thoughtfully sent two familiar young drakes, Ivan and Nina, to guide them, like warm lamps in frost-fog. Lu Yao and Dorothy rested and swapped into down jackets. Yekase headed to the leader’s chamber to finish talks with Aurora, her breath a thin ribbon in the cold air.

By a root-twisted table, they spotted an old face, like a stone resurfacing in a clear stream.

Yekase lifted a brow. “…Harrison? You moonlighting as a tour guide now?” Her voice cut like a dry reed in winter wind.

The man was Harrison Jones, the explorer who’d once teamed up with them during “Fog-Seeking Notices,” a driftwood name bobbing back into view.

“You know each other? That saves me a speech.” Aurora smiled, happy to skip the preface, like a dragon gliding past turbulence.

From Yekase’s read, this great dragon’s slacking was second only to Sandryon’s, a lazy comet trailing just behind. Far lazier than Xiaoyuan, who worked two jobs like a mule in sleet. And compared with the Violet Industry pioneer from Labyrinth City who didn’t even have time to tour the Cosmic Bubble, Aurora wasn’t in the same weight class at all—different skies, different birds.

On paper they were both city lords. But one ruled a monster metropolis in Europe’s heart, a tide of souls ten thousand strong. The other herded a few hundred dragons farming potatoes and claiming low hills like snow hares staking mounds. You call that both “cities”? Apples and meteors.

…All that, Yekase kept behind her teeth like smoke under ice.

“We ran into each other by chance not long ago,” she said, voice leveled like a frozen lake.

Harrison laughed. “I was wondering which daredevil is running to the Arctic in a time like this. Turns out it’s Miss Luciferin. The real daredevils are the Shadow Realm War crazies.”

After a few cold sparks of small talk, Yekase said farewell to Aurora. The four merged into a neat light recon squad, a spearhead cutting into white silence, and the Arctic run officially began.

Step one: ride a freighter across the ice-free harbor, then out to the tundra, like a beetle crossing a steel-blue plate.

Behind them, the city lights sank into frost-mist, fading like embers under snow.

“All right then, Harrison.” Yekase stared at the distant icebergs, jagged as sleeping beasts, and her tone dropped like an anchor.

“Someone once told me, ‘First meeting is chance, second is fate.’ Your real goal—going to tell us, or keep your cards under the snow?”

Harrison froze like a deer in headlamps. “What… Why do I sound like some big villain? Dorothy, little sis, talk some sense into your doc—”

Dorothy scooted her butt toward Yekase, like a small penguin shuffling across ice. “I think the suspicious uncle is definitely hiding something.”

“Suspicious… uncle?!”

The light recon squad nearly fell apart at launch, sails flapping before the wind caught. Harrison glanced to the last teammate for help. He hadn’t met this composed lady, but she hadn’t said a word yet—surely gentle as fresh snow…

Lu Yao was scrolling her phone, a dark moon behind glass. She felt a stare land on her like a moth to flame. She looked up, impatient, and rattled off, words like sleet:

“Harrison Jones. Forty-four. From Mysidia. Orphaned. Registered as a merc in Vienna, but too weak for combat—so you forage herbs and guide for a living, and call yourself an explorer. At thirty-five, you stumbled on a sacred tomb, branded yourself ‘Tomb Visitor,’ got invited by the Explorers’ Association… and have achieved nothing since. Didn’t expect you to have channels in Sidonia Dragon Fortress.”

“—?!”

“One more note—ancestry, Arcadia,” Yekase added, crisp as a twig snap.

“Ehhh—”

Harrison dropped to his knees in the cabin, and the little boat rocked twice like a startled duck.

“I… I admit it…”

(Cue the Detective Conan theme.)

“I want to find Arcadia,” Harrison blurted, voice shaking like a flag in gale. “No matter what—find it! The mist showed me my hometown’s face. That means the city still exists somewhere, intact as a pearl in shadow! But I’ve drifted across Europe for years and haven’t heard a whisper about Arcadia…”

“So you thought: maybe that floating city isn’t in Europe at all,” Yekase said, calm as snowfall. “And the unpeopled Arctic started ringing like a bell.”

“…Yeah. Exactly that…”

Yekase and Dorothy stood on either side of him, arms folded, looking down like dark birds on a branch.

“Teacher, how’s that line go again… Should we count his sins one by one?” Dorothy’s tone was candy over a knife’s edge.

“Think about it,” Yekase said. “Besides lying, he hasn’t done much. Let it slide.”

“But if we bring him, he’s dead weight—” Dorothy drawled, voice stretching like taffy.

“He calls himself an explorer, right?” Yekase smiled, a thin crescent. “Camp work, fires, kitchen, the whole backline—give it to him.”

“Yes! I’ll get it done!” Harrison nodded like a woodpecker pecking bark.

Lu Yao watched their two-person routine in silence, a cat on a fence, eyes half-lidded.

Hero or not, she let the “bullying” play out. Why? Mostly because she couldn’t camp either; her hands were city-bred, not pine-sap rough.

Someone had to contribute. Let the man handle logistics; a cog is a cog.

Harrison’s grievances kept bubbling like a hot spring under ice. “You don’t know. That ice-dragon crone is a real psycho—heartless, shameless, bottomless! She… she actually…”

“She what?” Dorothy’s eyes brightened like matchheads.

“She made me cover the entire squad’s logistics, and then she sent me to solo a tentacle monster while they stood around watching for fun! I almost died there!”

“Oh, but aren’t those tentacle things only half a person tall?” Dorothy blinked, owl-wide. “Don’t they grow bigger back home?”

“That’s what I said… Oww, my old bones. Two sprints and I’m a pile of screws…”

“That sounds rough,” Yekase said, soothing as warm smoke. “So what exactly did she make you do for logistics?”

“Camp setup. Foraging wood. Fire and cooking. Bug deterrent…” He ticked them off like stones on a riverbank.

Yekase produced a little notepad from nowhere, like a coin from a magician’s sleeve. For each item he named, she made a mark, neat as winter tracks.

“Mm. Mm.” The pen whispered like a skater’s blade.

If he claimed ignorance later, she’d have the ledger like frost-etched proof.

Dorothy admired how Yekase could chat up anyone, any age or rank, like sunlight that finds every crack. Lu Yao realized exactly what that notepad was for. It fit Yekase to the bone; she’d benefited before. Hard to complain.

The little freighter nosed up at the edge of the tundra and stopped, like a seal sliding onto ice. The four jumped from the cabin to the frozen sod, boots thumping like drums.

Low shrubs hugging the earth and mosses like roadside greens looked sickly at first glance, all gray ribs and windburn. Look closer, and you saw soft vigor—tiny green leaves, tight flower buds, life curled like fists against the cold.

Boatmen from Boralestock shoved a compact off-road buggy down the ramp, then gave a curt nod and rolled back toward the harbor, gulls wheeling like white commas.

Yekase stepped from the warm interior into the iron-cold wild. She wore no down jacket. She began “evolving” on the spot like a game sprite dinging a level in blue light.

Then something impossible happened, like a fox walking on water.

Her evolutions had always been pure numbers, invisible to the eye. But after she broke through the Mind Energy barrier, a flavor of ascension bled in. Flash Energy started refitting her flesh to the climate, like a smith tempering steel.

Energy turned to subcutaneous fat across her body, a soft armor like seal blubber. It piled on her chest in particular, and under Dorothy’s stunned gaze, she went from a B to about a D, swelling like rising dough.

Her hips and thighs gained a ring of softness, warm as bread fresh from an oven’s mouth.

A wonder: the master-tailored dress her teacher made didn’t pop a stitch. It clung perfectly, tracing a dangerously inviting silhouette like ink lines on rice paper.

“Ugh. I turned into a chub…” Yekase sighed, mournful as a winter flute.

Dorothy’s eyes went wide and glassy, twin moons in frost.

Harrison didn’t notice. He was busy waving a simple radar over the endless tundra, the screen blinking like a lighthouse. The device marked zones where dragon flocks had spotted suspicious activity. Out here, landmarks were rare as green leaves in snow. Even navigation felt like divination.

“Mm… We head straight first, then turn left at the edge of a rift valley, then hit an oasis… Oasis?!” His voice hopped like a startled hare.

“A geothermal hotspot,” Lu Yao guessed, tone level as a plum line.

“What’s a geothermal hotspot?” Dorothy asked, curiosity fluttering like sparrow wings.

“In active plate zones, heat rises through cracks under the crust and makes little geysers. Much tundra sits on old volcanic slabs—”

“It’s a mana node,” Yekase cut in, clean as a blade.

“Oh! Got it.”

“…” Lu Yao shut her mouth, breath coiling in the air like a pale ribbon.

Yekase realized she’d just stomped on a rare chatty moment from Lu Yao. She felt a flicker of guilt, a wick briefly dimmed. She blinked twice, then fished two lollipops from her portal box, like a magician palming sweets. She unwrapped the strawberry for herself and clamped it between her teeth. The yogurt one, she held out to Lu Yao.

“Scram,” Lu Yao said, annoyed, her voice a frost crack.

“If you won’t, fine. No need to be so frosty… I’ll have both then.”

Yekase bit both lollipops, one left, one right, like a vampire with cartoon fangs. Dorothy giggled, a chime in sleet, then asked, “Where’s mine?”

Yekase produced a third and slipped close to her ear, voice a warm whisper in cold wind. “Secret for you. Don’t let Lu Yao’s ‘keep out’ face fool you. She’s soft on kids—total children’s-TV host material. Need anything, ask her. Remember a tear or two.”

“Ooh~” Dorothy sang, sweet as spun sugar.

Lu Yao didn’t need to hear the words to catch the conspiracy. The whispers pricked at her like pine needles. Not her problem, she decided, and let the wind take it.

Harrison seemed to have parsed the map. He handed it to Yekase for a quick cross-check, the two of them peering like hunters at tracks. Maybe they were right, maybe wrong, but confidence warmed them like pocket flasks. They piled into the buggy.

Worn down by two teenage storms before the engine even turned, the uncle heaved a tired sigh, fogging the windshield. He straightened his brown wide-brimmed hat, buckled in, and brought the engine to life, a low growl under snow.

Yekase claimed the passenger seat like a queen on a low throne. She even tossed a leg up on the dash, her heel a black crescent.

All in black among three down-padded marshmallows, she looked like a raven at a goose party. The skirt fell with her raised leg, but even if someone crawled below to peek, they’d see a galaxy—stars stitched where secrets might be. Ancient Alchemy is why she fears no wardrobe malfunctions.

Lu Yao and Dorothy huddled in the back, two sparrows in a nest of nylon.

Lu Yao pulled out the cotton gloves and scarf Aurora had packed, winter gifts from a dragon’s hoard, and passed them to Dorothy. Dorothy’s face lit up like sunrise breaking fog, as if a private guess had hatched.

“Thanks, Sister Yao~” she sang, sweet as warm milk.

Lu Yao shivered as if the words were snow down her collar. She kept her eyes on Dorothy, but her hand shot over the seat, sharp as an icicle, and pinched Yekase’s ear hard.