Attacked Right After Landing? Sampo Needs a Lesson

The little leather shoes landed steadily amid knee-deep snow.

There was no dull crunch of heels sinking into the snow.

Su Chen simply stood suspended above the soft snowpack.

An invisible gap separated his soles from the ice and snow.

The storm slammed into him head-on like a raging wall.

Hail like shards of broken glass rode on the wind.

It struck the train's armored hull with explosive cracks.

But one centimeter from that thin black high-collared uniform, all sound abruptly vanished.

The wind was forcibly split apart.

Ice fragments struck that invisible pane and instantly shattered into finer powder, spraying off to either side.

A completely still, translucent sphere formed around Su Chen.

Not a single white hair on his head stirred.

The door to the train's passenger compartment opened fully.

The hydraulic struts let out a piercing metallic screech in the extreme cold.

Wrapped in heavy cold-weather gear, Himeko was the first down the boarding steps.

Her non-slip boots crushed the surface crust of ice as they hit the frozen ground.

The moment she opened her mouth to speak, a lungful of cold wind rushed straight in.

Her throat hurt as though razor blades had scraped it raw.

She hurriedly pulled up her windproof collar, covering half her face.

March 7th followed behind her.

She wore yellow goggles, and the wind plastered her short pink hair to her scalp.

Her teeth chattered incessantly.

"Th-this snow is way too heavy."

She stammered, her breath instantly freezing into white frost that coated the edges of her goggles.

Everything in sight was a sea of white.

Xingbao brought up the rear.

Her gray polar suit was so thick and heavy that she looked like a clumsy penguin.

She stepped into a pit buried beneath the snow.

The snow swallowed her leg all the way to her upper thigh.

She tried hard to pull her leg free.

Instead, she lost her balance and pitched forward.

Her face slammed into a snowdrift.

When she lifted her head again, her mouth was full of ice mixed with dirt and grit.

Xingbao spat out a mouthful of dirty snow.

Her lips had turned purple from the cold, and her fingers were too stiff to bend inside her thick gloves.

Dan Heng walked off to one side.

The portable heater at his waist flashed red frantically.

In the extreme cold, its battery charge drained away like water through a leak.

The blizzard completely drowned out its beeping low-battery warning.

They struggled forward through the knee-deep snow.

Each step sank to a different depth.

They had not made it even ten meters.

A mound of snow beside the path suddenly moved.

Bang.

Snow burst outward from within, scattering through the air.

A man popped out of the snow like a groundhog.

White frost covered his short, dark blue hair, almost freezing it into icicles.

He wore thin leather armor utterly unsuited to the weather.

A red scarf, faded from washing, was wrapped around his neck.

The man rubbed his hands together with the rough rasp of leather.

He raised them to his mouth and blew out a great cloud of white breath.

Then he shook the snow from his shoulders and plastered a smile across his face.

Squeezed onto his cold-reddened face, that smile held a touch of ingratiation.

And a mercenary streak that ran bone-deep.

He looked like a shady dealer who had spent years hawking secondhand parts in underground black markets, always ready to swindle someone.

"Well, well! Honored customers!"

Sampo shouted at the top of his lungs.

The wind was so strong that he had to raise his voice as high as it would go, making it crack slightly.

A living, breathing man had suddenly popped up in this deserted wilderness.

It gave the Astral Express Crew a fright.

Dan Heng reacted fastest.

The muscles in his right arm abruptly tensed.

Moisture in the air rapidly gathered in his palm, and the Cloud-Piercing Spear took shape in an instant.

Its tip sliced through the cold wind with a brief hum.

In the extreme cold, the vapor instantly froze into a sharp, thin layer of ice over the spearhead.

Dan Heng lowered his wrist.

The spearhead pointed straight at the blue-haired man's throat.

Xingbao had only just hauled herself out of the snow pit.

At the shout, she reached behind her for her baseball bat.

Her cold-weather gloves were so thick that she could not feel a thing through them.

A slippery film of ice coated the metal bat's handle.

Her fingers slipped, failing to secure a grip.

The bat fell into the snow behind her with a clang and vanished completely.

Frantic, Xingbao turned around and scrabbled through the snow with her rear in the air.

March 7th yanked off her fogged-up goggles.

She reached back and gripped her six-phased ice composite bow.

Her thumb hooked the bowstring.

She pulled with her arm, drawing the bow halfway with a faint creak of taut fibers.

A crystal-clear ice arrow rested on the string, ready to fly at any moment.

Sampo completely ignored the weapons aimed at him.

Or rather, he was too thick-skinned to care.

He raised both hands in their fingerless gloves, palms out, in an exaggerated gesture of surrender.

"Easy, easy!"

His leather boots crunched through the snow.

He edged toward them against the knife-sharp wind.

The oily grin on his face only grew wider.

"You folks aren't from around here. Just landed, right?"

Sampo rubbed his hands together, sounding as warm as if he had run into long-lost relatives.

"Jarilo's blizzards don't care who you are. Without a guide who knows his stuff, you'll turn into ice sculptures before you get a kilometer."

"I, Sampo Koski, am the most reliable friend you'll find in the Underworld. Spare a few credits, and I guarantee you'll get there safe and sound."

His sales pitch never stopped.

Yet his green eyes kept darting over the people before him.

His gaze swept over Dan Heng's spear, then Himeko's boots.

He was sizing up how much they were worth.

At last, he looked past the group.

His gaze locked onto the little white-haired girl at the very front.

A black uniform, with no cold-weather gear.

Not even gloves or a hat.

To a local operator like Sampo, who always picked on easy targets,

this was nothing more than a defenseless rich kid who had become separated from the adults.

The easiest kind to handle, and the easiest to befriend.

Once I win this kid over, won't those adults have to cough up the money?

Sampo made up his mind.

He stepped over a snow-filled ditch and went straight around Dan Heng's spear tip.

A few steps brought him right in front of Su Chen.

Less than half a meter separated them.

Su Chen stopped walking.

He stood inside that perfectly still vacuum barrier.

An unfinished mint bulged slightly in his cheek.

Sampo bent down with a grin.

He reached out his right hand.

That large, rough hand, clad in a worn leather glove and wet with melted snow, reached straight for Little Satoru Gojo's head.

"Well, aren't you a pretty little girl? You must be freezing out here in all this ice and snow."

Su Chen did not dodge.

The little round sunglasses on his face slid slightly down his nose.

His azure eyes appeared above the lenses and fixed him with an icy stare.