Whoosh.
The cold night wind blew, even more like steel blades than it had been by day, stabbing again and again through the gaps in his armor.
Fortunately, Russell had already become a Phantom Beast Knight. With source breath covering his body, such cold blades brought him only a slight chill.
Crunch, crunch, crunch...
Underfoot, the daytime snow had frozen as hard as sand, making fine, brittle sounds when stepped on.
Knights stood watch in the biting wind atop several hastily built ice watchtowers.
In truth, with the Shadowflame Dragon here, no Snow Demon or Snow Ghost dared come close. Snow Giant Da had fled far away, having lost another arm, and would certainly not dare return anytime soon—after all, the Torrent Dragon had yet to leave!
The night was pitch-black.
Russell had silently made his way before the Shadowflame Dragon. Facing a colossal being the size of a small mountain, he would have been lying if he said he was not nervous.
But he was not overly nervous either. As the saying went, nothing happened more than three times. He had already faced the Shadowflame Dragon head-on three times: once when it descended upon the battlefield, once during their stare-down that morning, and once during his oath of vengeance at dusk.
Those three encounters had thoroughly dispelled his fear of the Shadowflame Dragon.
More importantly, he had come to answer the Shadowflame Dragon's invitation. The Shadowflame Dragon had asked him to meet in the dead of night.
The snow abruptly vanished ten meters before the Shadowflame Dragon.
It was as though an invisible line divided the freezing Ice Cap from dry, warm earth, with the two sides separated by several meters in height.
The Shadowflame Dragon appeared to be lying in a shallow pit.
Russell leaped down into it.