The icy cold seized Alagina’s right hand the moment she touched it, as if she had come into contact with the coldest object in the world, instantly losing all sensation. From the palm of her fair skin, a blue-purple hue spread rapidly, turning her muscles as rigid as blocks of ice.
This was the consequence of a human directly holding the Ice Prince’s true form, but now was not the time to consider gains and losses, she had to hurry...
Gritting her teeth, Alagina swung her frozen right hand violently through the air, and with that slash aimed outward, an icy chill, dozens of times colder than normal, howled to life.
The ice that had been cracking outside burst forth with a massive amount of solid ice, as if the ice blocks surging from nowhere had suddenly pushed the almost capsizing Iceberg Queen back to an even keel!
The ship’s metallic groaning slowly settled as it righted itself, but using the Ice Prince’s true form, Alagina’s entire right hand went completely stiff after delivering that blow.
In pain, she crouched on the ground, and had to use her left hand to pry open her fingers, frozen like an ice sculpture, so she could remove the Ice Prince Sword.
As she arduously pried each finger open one by one, the light that had been emanating from the Ice Prince Sword finally dimmed and fell to the ground.
Normally, when the Ice Prince Sword hit the ground, a layer of solid ice would immediately form around its blade, but to Alagina’s surprise, this time it didn’t freeze. Instead, it began to shine with a crystal-clear brilliance, as if it were breathing.
"What... is going on?"
Alagina, clenching her frostbitten right hand, looked toward the blade of the Ice Prince Sword and glimpsed, within the flickering light of the blade, a feather-like object faintly visible, forged right into the core of the sword.
That feather in the blade, like a gemstone carved in tranquil nature, was distinct from the feathers of any bird species in the world, recognizable at a glance for its transcendental stature...
It turned out that it wasn’t the Ice Prince Sword that was glowing, but rather the feather inside it. The luminescence produced by the feather shone through the sword, allowing Alagina to see the hidden feather.
The scene furrowed Alagina’s brow as she looked toward the ongoing turmoil outside.
Something in the distance seemed to be resonating with the feather, but aside from the light she could see, she felt nothing.
"You son of a bitch, dare to ambush your mom?"
Just as the Iceberg Queen was about to capsize, it was pushed back into place by the growing ice behind it, but the crew members hanging on the railings doing pull-ups were out of luck.
They waited for the ship to right itself, each of them then being dragged back down by gravity, and they smacked into the deck face first.
Pahetz’s face had a bit more fat than the others, but by bad luck, she hit her forehead on a piece of solid ice, marking her brow with a big red imprint and causing her to curse out loud in pain.
The Chief Officer, who had served in the military and was hot-tempered, instinctively prepared to draw her gun and shoot at the monster, but quickly realized that all her weapons had fallen into the sea. Finding nothing in her hand, she looked resentfully at the giant beast that had returned to the water,
"What the hell is that thing?"
She hurriedly lifted her telescope, and through the lens, she saw a huge shadow moving rapidly below the water’s surface. The Sea Beast was far too large, four to five times bigger than the sea ghosts they had hunted before, its gaping mouth alone big enough to swallow the giant sea ghost.
This was the first time Pahetz had ever seen such an enormous creature at sea, and it was extremely unfamiliar; she had never seen anything like it...
The unnerving feeling made her involuntarily swallow, she put down her telescope, glanced back at the solid ice that had grown behind her, looked up again at the Captain’s Room wrapped in ice, and then shouted at the crew beside her,
"You, split into three groups! Two in group one, three in group two, the rest of you go to group three! Group one, go see if the Captain is alright, she must be injured from using that relic, go help her heal! Group two, go to the cabin and make sure people below aren’t hurt! The rest of you, help me save those idiots still in the water, got it?!"
After barking these orders, Pahetz quickly stood up, clutching her reddened forehead, and then looked through her telescope once again.
In her line of sight, the giant shadow made a large circle in the distance, then turned around and headed back towards the Iceberg Queen.
It wasn’t ready to let them go!
The creature moved quickly, stretching out delicate, fleshy tentacles from its body as it swam; oddly enough, these tentacles stretched out like clay, forming into countless humanoid shapes in mid-air.
On closer inspection, those numerous human-like forms seemed to have female features, but they bore a multitude of other creature traits as well: feathers, fins, scales, wings, and so on – a chaotic mishmash of everything.
After those tentacles fully formed into the visage of humanoid creatures, all the human figures above simultaneously opened their white eyes, and all at once, they shouted loudly towards the Iceberg Queen.