Over the next few days, Ivette visited Old Book Street several more times, but whether at Snow Smoke Manor or the bookstore, she never ran into Frost Hua again.
She did see Sara often. After all, Sara was a waitress. Every morning when Ivette stepped out of her room, Sara would spot her and greet her warmly.
Thus, one morning near the middle of October, Ivette finally decided to begin her first exploration of the Snowfields.
However, this trip was mainly meant as a trial. To her, the greatest difficulty might not even be the Snow Emperor's gaze, but getting lost.
Yes, getting lost. Even in Ice Hammer City, she simply could not buy a map that could be called reliable. At best, there were maps of the area from the Edge Belt to the Cold Mountain Belt. As for the Blizzard Belt and Frost Abyss Belt, they were utterly mysterious lands shrouded in uncertainty, vast enough to be practically a new continent.
It was not as though she would be unable to find her way back, but her carpet-style search definitely required the aid of a map.
Otherwise, repeatedly returning to places she had already explored would be a waste of time, and terribly frustrating as well.
The morning cold was sharp enough to pierce the bone, and the white mist she exhaled instantly froze into frost. Setting out in the quiet dawn, Ivette left Ice Hammer City and soon reached Furnacehold, the largest barbarian settlement at the border between the Edge Belt and the Cold Mountain Belt.
The Snow Kingdom was essentially a tribal confederation founded by the four great clans of Ice Hammer, Winter Wolf, White River, and Cold Star. Furnacehold was a village-town under the Icehammer Clan, inhabited mainly by the independently minded Snow Dwarves. They