As her progress through the Ice God's divine examination accelerated, Ice Snow grew increasingly adept at controlling the Far North.
To her, this frozen plain was no longer an endless wasteland. She knew exactly what lay buried beneath every layer of ice and what slumbered within every glacier.
She remembered it clearly. When she first arrived in the Far North in search of a god's inheritance, she had sensed two ancient ruins in the Crystal Ice Mountains, deep within the frozen plain.
One was the place where the Ice God had fallen, where she now stood. The other lay at the opposite end of the Crystal Ice Mountains, across a bottomless ice abyss.
She had spent a long time wavering between the two ruins.
Back then, her control over the Far North was not comprehensive enough for her to sense the core powers of both ruins at once.
Besides, both ruins were buried beneath ten-thousand-year-old ice. With her strength at the time, there was no way she could investigate them both thoroughly. In the end, she had followed her instincts and chosen the Ice God's Ruins.
As it turned out, her instincts had been right. Her compatibility with the Ice God was absurdly high, and her divine examination had sailed along with favorable winds and smooth waters.
But she had never forgotten the other ruins. Later, she had considered letting Snow Empress and Ice Empress try their luck. After all, the power of those two ruins rivaled the Ice God's inheritance, and the divine seat within was bound to be extraordinary.
If either Snow Empress or Ice Empress could inherit it, that would be an enormous boon to the Far North.
Unfortunately, neither could.
Snow Empress had tried, only to be repelled the moment she drew near. Ice Empress had