Hand lifts, blade drops like winter rain.

Soldiers swarmed like locusts, and Nana Toki harvested them like frost scything wheat.

In her grip, the slender sword moved like a silver ice-snake, each strike a shard of polar wind.

One soldier after another crumpled like felled timber, turned to cold, empty husks.

The Demon Hand on her wrist iced over like a crimson gauntlet, growing fiercer with every soul she reaped.

“Are you all useless? Thirty thousand men can’t beat an apprentice-level woman? What good are you to me!” Jiggs roared like thunder over a dry plain.

On the rooftop terrace, Jiggs glared down at Dragonbreak City’s streets, where Nana’s slaughter ran like a red river. “Useless! All of you!”

If this kept up, his plan would sink like a stone into a dark lake.

“Kill her for me!”

He stared at the frozen mound below like a hawk sighting prey, then barked at the officers beside him. “Didn’t you prepare a mage corps? Use magic and put her down!”

“Lord Jiggs, we can’t! Even if Her Highness trespassed into Dragonbreak City, she’s still the princess. It’s not a capital crime.”

“You think we’ll be fine when she leaves and tells His Majesty we started a private war with the Marl Kingdom?” Jiggs’ hand clamped the man’s breastplate like iron tongs.

“Do what I say. Kill her now. If His Majesty asks, we’ll say the princess mishandled the Demon Hand’s power. It rampaged, and we had no choice.”

“Even His Majesty can’t fault us then. Understand?”

“Y-yes, my lord.” The soldier shook like a leaf in a storm, then stumbled off the terrace, tumbling toward the camp to carry the order.

Below the terrace, time piled like drifting snow. Nana Toki faced a rising tide of bodies, and pressure pressed like a millstone.

Her bodywork bridged this world’s limits like a makeshift plank over a gorge, but two fists can’t stop a river.

Dragonbreak City held more than thirty thousand soldiers, a forest of spears in steel wind.

Each time she cut one down, another stepped in like a wave filling a broken seawall. Without noticing, blade-bites stitched red seams across her skin.

Crimson ran like spilled lacquer down her body, and her vision fogged like frost on glass.

She took step after step toward the main keep of Dragonbreak City, leaving a road of corpses like a winter-red tide.

Nana went numb like stone under snow.

She couldn’t recall how many swings she’d thrown; the fallen lay like scattered logs beyond counting.

Even if all thirty thousand stood still like statues, cutting them down would cost time; in the melee, it cost blood.

Her ice-element Spirit Energy bled away like sand in an hourglass. Cracks mapped her ice-forged blade like spiderwebs, notches biting its edge.

Jiggs’ mage corps arrived like crows to a field and began their low chant like bees under a lid.

The weight and the drain pressed down like nightfall; she nearly fainted like a candle in wind.

This exhaustion, body and soul, was a wound even the System couldn’t stitch, a bruise under the world’s law.

“Loose!”

At the shout, the mages behind the soldiers raised their staves like saplings in a storm. A flight of fireballs hammered in like meteors.

Boom!

She wrung her last ice-element strength like water from dry cloth. Spires of ice surged from the ground like fangs, her only shield against their spellfire.

“Host, use the gear in your hidden inventory!” The System’s healing array spun like a pale halo, its voice urgent like a bell at dusk. “You’ll die if this drags on!”

I know. Frustration flared like a spark in oil. But I can’t use it!

She carved down another man like cutting rope, teeth clenched against the iron taste. Her answer to the voice was a sigh in winter air.

She knew how bad it was, clear as frost in moonlight. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t use her hidden space; she couldn’t.

Something severed her link like a blade through thread. She could sense the items like stars behind clouds, but her hand never reached them.

Otherwise she wouldn’t be fighting with nothing but ice condensed from her own Spirit Energy, a razor made of breath and snow.

“Loose!”

Spells fell in volleys like rain on a drum. Some she couldn’t dodge, no matter how the wind bent.

Bare skin seared black like scorched bark, and blood soaked her clothes like dye in silk.

Her mind was overtaxed, a bowstring stretched white; even pain dulled like embers buried in ash.

If I can hold a little longer, it’ll do. The thought floated like a leaf over a whirlpool.

She clenched her jaw, drew her last sliver of ice-element power, and formed an ice-crystal sphere around her like a winter cocoon.

Magic pounded the sphere in sheets like hail on glass. When that last thread of Spirit Energy snapped, Nana sagged to her knees inside, breath tearing like saw-teeth.

“Host, are you alright?” the System asked, worry heavy as rain. It had watched her carve from Dragonbreak’s gate to here without a pause, a grindstone day.

Dusk fell into night like a lantern guttering. The yellow sun sank behind the back mountain like the last coin swallowed by the sea.

The System held the healing array like a dim hearth, and Nana’s eyes half-closed with fatigue like shutters in wind. Its mood sank like a stone to a cold riverbed.

This wasn’t a xianxia plane; there was no second Nesting Phoenix to gift her rebirth, no miracle wing to carry her.

And because this was a third-stage plane, Heaven’s Dao pressed like a mountain. With only first-stage capacity, the System couldn’t teleport her out, only mend her with small stitches.

“I’m fine.” The words were flat as ice. She pushed up from the ground like a reed through frost and exhaled cloudy breath.

Through the ice she watched the frenzy outside like wolves at a pen. The corner of her mouth curled in a thin, winter-sick smile.

Even someone like her had been driven into this narrow canyon. How long had it been since that happened?

If this spreads, old friends will laugh like sparrows at dawn. The thought pricked like sleet.

Even in a game, you can’t relax an inch; the board bites like a trap.

Time to stop playing soft. Time to play for keeps, like storm against cliff.

“How is it going?” On the rooftop, Jiggs saw the soldiers pause like a river momentarily dammed. His heart kicked like a drum. “Is she dead?”

“...”

“What... is she doing?”

Evening deepened like ink. Below, soldiers ringed the ice sphere like stones around a pond, watching the woman inside raise a forefinger to the sky, eyes closed like a statue.

“...”

She stood motionless inside the shell like an ice-locked saint, as if she’d slipped into another world behind a crystal lake.

Murmurs rippled through Dragonbreak City like wind in reeds. A few bold ones stepped up and tapped the sphere like boys knocking on a shrine.

Vmmmmm—

A strange hum rolled out like a low bell.

Suddenly.

The woman’s eyes snapped open like flints. A sneer tugged her lips like a hooked thread.

The soldier at the front hadn’t even blinked.

Crack!

A blood-red, monstrous arm thrust out of the ice like a spear from a glacier, grabbed his neck, and yanked him inside like a fish on a line.

Crack, crack!

Bone and ice traded blows like stones in a grinder, the fractures popping like firewood.

In the next heartbeat, before anyone could breathe, Nana burst through the sphere like a hawk through paper and slid to another soldier like a knife through silk.

“I choose you.” Her voice was lovely as a chime, and cold as sleet.

The man’s vision blurred like heat-haze. Before he moved, pain burned his gut like a coal.

Squelch—

Under a thousand stares, metal and flesh rasped like torn sailcloth.

Rip-rip-rip-rip—

Nana Toki drew a Black Great Axe from his belly like a butcher pulling a blade from a barrel, its black surface smeared with viscera like tar.

People near her froze like deer in sudden torchlight. Even as she finished drawing the Black Great Axe, no one reacted.

“Come on. Let’s keep this challenge going, the kind that carves itself into history.” Her whisper fell like snow, to no one and to everyone.

Splat!

Splat, splat, splat!

Skulls burst in a string of wet pops like watermelons under hammers. Power roared from her grip like a storm breaking a cliff, and blood geysered like red fountains.

The soldiers closest to her hadn’t recovered from the shock when their heads went bright and empty, popped by the Black Great Axe like lanterns in wind.

She swung the Black Great Axe, and it howled like a black gale. The broad blade cut wide in a gorgeous sweep like a crescent moon.

Those who tried to block shattered like reeds before floodwater; waistlines parted clean, and torsos toppled like felled trees.

Some upper halves hadn’t hit the ground when her returning blade lifted like a tide and smashed their skulls to pulp.

Not even a scream made it into air; pain died like sparks in snow.

“Is that a monster...” Soldiers in the rear trembled like leaves, staring at the slaughterhouse scene blooming like a red peony in mud.

That crude, absolute violence broke everything before it like a cudgel through clay, a spike pressing into every chest until breath came ragged as torn cloth.

If earlier, with an ice-sword, Nana was a dancer painting frost on air, then now, with the Black Great Axe, she was a tyrant, cruel as midwinter wind.