“Where… is this place?” The princess looked around in confusion at the endless expanse of white light, realizing that the teleportation magic had gone wrong.
This should still be within the borders of the Ice Empire, but the princess had never left the capital her whole life.
She’d only heard stories about the outside world and was completely unfamiliar with it.
In this vast snowy field, there was no way to tell direction, and she had no idea where she was.
“Is anyone there?!” The princess called out helplessly into the snow, surrounded by a blinding whiteness that brought a strong sense of loneliness and fear.
But none of that compared to the terror of the thing on her thigh.
“Ugh!” The princess grimaced in pain, looking down at her left thigh.
Under a thick layer of ice, a black substance was tightly wrapped around her leg.
It was still growing and spreading.
At first, it had only just passed her knee, but now it seemed to have crept up a few more centimeters.
The initial chill had faded as she got used to it, leaving only the feeling of being tightly bound.
The princess could also sense that this thing was seeping into her skin, burrowing into every pore.
And that wasn’t all.
When the princess tried to fight it with her magic, she was horrified to find that her magic was actually being absorbed and assimilated by the thing! It turned into a kind of evil, dark magic that backfired on her.
Luckily, the princess had plenty of magic in her body, so the black substance couldn’t assimilate it all at once, and she could still hold it off for now.
“What the hell is this?!” The princess summoned an ice blade, planning to cut the thing off.
She made a small cut in the ice and tried to slice the black stuff, but it was incredibly tough—the blade couldn’t cut through it at all.
Worse, it seemed almost alive; when the blade touched it, it started crawling up the blade toward her hand.
Frightened, the princess quickly dropped the blade and sealed the black thing back up with ice.
“I have to get this thing off me… If it spreads any further, I’m done for.” She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she absolutely couldn’t let it keep spreading.
With the way it was burrowing everywhere, if it got past her thigh, then…
“This thing isn’t afraid of ice, but what about fire?” Desperate, the princess started frantically searching for something to start a fire with, since she couldn’t use fire magic and had to rely on an external source.
When she couldn’t find anything, she even took off her outer clothes, lit them with a firestone, and stuck her foot into the flames.
“Huh? Why… doesn’t it feel hot?” She melted a bit of the ice, letting the flames lick at the spot, but she didn’t feel any heat at all.
It seemed like the thing could block out heat.
Actually, the princess had already noticed its insulating properties.
All the clothes on her leg were gone, and it was wrapped in a layer of ice, but she didn’t feel cold at all.
“Not afraid of fire, not afraid of ice, and it can assimilate my magic.
Does that mean the only way is…” A terrifying thought flashed through the princess’s mind.
She looked at her long thigh, her eyes flickering.
She raised her hand and summoned a sharp ice blade, planning to cut off her own leg before things got any worse, to keep it from spreading to the rest of her body.
“Something this terrifying has appeared in the country—I have to warn the others, so I… can’t just die here…” Summoning the ice blade, the princess gritted her teeth and prepared to strike at her thigh.
But just as the blade was about to fall, a sudden gust of wind blew in from the side, knocking the ice blade out of her hand.
“Who’s there?!” The princess looked up into the distance.
Through the blizzard, a figure slowly emerged—a beautiful woman dressed in black, sitting on a broom, with flaming skulls floating around her.
The princess thought she recognized this figure.
“You’re… that fake witch from the cult?!”
The higher-ups in the Ice Empire knew about Salina impersonating the second-generation witch.
As one of the top empires, their intelligence department had definitely figured out their enemies.
They knew the real second-generation witch was still sleeping in the far north, and that a powerful cultist had been impersonating her—looking exactly like the woman in front of her.
“So you recognize me, Your Highness.
Then I don’t need to introduce myself.
My master ordered me to come here and keep an eye on you, so you don’t do anything drastic.”
“Your master? Does that mean the witch has awakened?”
“Hmph~” Salina didn’t answer.
She just smiled mysteriously and said, “You’ll understand soon enough.”
Looking at the princess, tainted by darkness, Salina showed an envious expression.
She’d once been corrupted by her master in the same way, and had learned what true pleasure was.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t been “eaten” by her master since then.
As a lowly servant, she didn’t dare hope her master would taste her again.
Now, seeing the princess about to be devoured, Salina could only feel jealous.
“What do you want from me?!” Most of the princess’s magic was being used to fight the corruption on her leg, and she didn’t have the confidence to defeat Salina right now.
“I won’t do anything.
You’ve been chosen by my master, and you belong to her now.
I wouldn’t dare touch you.
My job is just to watch you here.”
“Lunatic!” the princess muttered under her breath.
She didn’t want to get tangled up with this cultist woman.
Even though she didn’t have much magic left, she started chanting a spell.
In this icy world, her magic would be at its strongest.
Suddenly, the blizzard around them grew even fiercer, and visibility dropped from a few meters to nothing at all.
As she released her magic, the corruption on her leg began to slowly creep upward, visible to the naked eye.
“Frozen Snow Burial!” Every snowflake turned as sharp as a blade, shooting toward where Salina stood at incredible speed.
The sharp snowflakes sliced into Salina’s body, each one leaving a tiny cut.
In this blizzard, there were tens of millions of snowflakes.
In just a few seconds, millions of snowflakes had cut through Salina’s body, shredding her like meat in a grinder.
“Let this snow be your grave!” After all that, the princess staggered back, exhausted.
She looked down and saw the black stuff had reached the top of her thigh—she had to cut it off now, or it would be too late.
This time, she didn’t hesitate.
She summoned an ice blade and prepared to strike, but out of the corner of her eye, she caught something.
Where Salina had been standing, countless black beads suddenly bubbled up from the white snow.
They weren’t hard, but soft and bouncy like jelly.
The black beads gathered together like mercury, and soon Salina’s body reformed from the sticky black liquid.
“How is this possible?! Your body… I clearly cut you to pieces.”
“Jealous? Don’t worry, you’ll soon have the same immortal life as me.”
