March 7th raised her head and watched the snowflakes drifting across the sky. Her cheeks were slightly flushed as she marveled at Jarilo-VI's extreme environment:
"-It really is a world of ice and snow!"
Stelle nodded, doing exactly what March 7th did and expressing the same sentiment in the same tone:
"It really is a world of ice and snow!"
"Are you a broken record?!" March 7th turned and chided her.
Jiang Yu shivered on the snowfield and rubbed his arms.
Even after changing into Dan Heng's clothes, Jarilo's environment was still too cold for him.
Although his increased strength had greatly improved his tolerance for extreme environments, feeling cold was still feeling cold.
Jiang Yu raised his hands, cupped them over his mouth, and breathed a few warm breaths into them.
Jarilo's environment made him not want to talk.
"Hey, it's nothing but white out here. Which way should we go?" March 7th turned to ask Dan Heng.
At times like this, their only option really was to turn to their dependable teacher, Dan Heng.
Dan Heng's tone remained level, his voice unhurried. "According to the coordinates, our destination is just a short distance ahead."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's get going~" March 7th put her hands on her hips, sounding eager.
Jiang Yu also said through his shivering, "Come on, let's go! I can't stay here another minute!"
"So... we still have to walk for a while, huh..." Stelle started complaining.
March 7th folded her arms and nodded, looking utterly righteous. "Exactly! Not even a spare snowmobile? Our train's way too stingy! Look how frozen Jiang Yu is!"
Dan Heng fell silent for a moment before saying, "Do you remember what happened to the last snowmobile you drove?"
March 7th froze for a moment, seemingly trying to remember. Then she quietly turned her head away, her confidence instantly wilting.
"Let's change the subject..."
March 7th hemmed and hawed, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.
From her awkward demeanor and wandering gaze, it wasn't hard to guess that the last snowmobile had met a truly grisly end in this pretty but reckless girl's hands.
Even if it hadn't been smashed beyond recognition, it must have lost a few parts. A missing arm or broken leg was practically guaranteed.
Finally, March 7th's gaze landed on Jiang Yu. She walked over and placed both hands on his face.
"Jiang Yu, you must be freezing, right? I never knew you were so sensitive to the cold. Let me warm you up."
But March 7th's hands had long since gone cold in the frigid air too. The instant she touched him, Jiang Yu nearly jumped out of his skin.
The boy quickly grabbed the girl's hands and moved them away.
"I'm sensitive to the cold, but I'm still pretty resistant to freezing. Also, your hands are cold, so they can't warm me up!" Jiang Yu looked at March 7th with a completely serious expression.
"Ahaha..." March 7th laughed awkwardly.
Behind them, Stelle and Dan Heng exchanged a look, then both let out helpless sighs.
Then Dan Heng had to remind the two newcomers and their resident goofball, "Remember, be cautious with every step you take. We still know very little about this world."
"Don't worry!" March 7th said with a smile. "The four of us work so well together, whatever comes our way, we'll sort it out with a couple of swishes!"
"Stelle has a stellaron inside her, I have my one-of-a-kind Six-Phased Ice, Jiang Yu's so strong he even battered the Doomsday Beast bloody, and Dan Heng has... uh, some mysterious past I don't know anything about.
"If anyone dares mess with us, that's their bad luck!"
A smile gradually spread across Stelle's face. She was already imagining the day the name "Galaxy Bat Hero" would ring out across the Universe.
The tall, gray-haired beauty folded her arms and proudly raised her chin. "That's their bad luck!"
"...How long have you had this broken-record problem?" March 7th quipped again.
Stelle narrowed her eyes without saying a word.
But both her golden eyes, narrowed to slits, and the smile curling across her face seemed to say something.
An unmistakably smug aura practically hit them in the face.
"Sigh..."
Dan Heng's expression gradually shifted from complicated to helpless. Leaving aside why her introduction had suddenly fallen flat when she got to him, March 7th and Stelle had absolutely no sense of tension!
He looked over at his fellow countryman, whose face had fallen because of the cold.
Although Jiang Yu wasn't much better than those two, he was at least a little better.
"Quit chatting. Come on, let's go!"
Jiang Yu stamped his feet where he stood and said with some urgency:
"If you don't get moving, I'm going ahead on my own!"
All three looked at Jiang Yu and finally decided to move on.
Still brimming with energy, March 7th called out a slogan: "Let's go boldly explore the unknown-that's the spirit of the Trailblaze!"
The four set off into the biting wind, letting large snowflakes strike their faces before watching those ice crystals drift behind them. Their trek across the snowfield left footprints of varying depths, which were soon buried beneath the swirling snowfall.
After they had walked a few hundred meters, the peaks and black rocks on either side gradually disappeared and the path ahead opened up, but the scenery otherwise remained much the same-white snow, frozen sculptures of the Antimatter Legion and humans, and fragments of buildings that had collapsed in the blizzards.
The four continued forward.
After another few minutes of walking, something new finally appeared in their field of view.
A blue, birdlike creature was wandering aimlessly across the snowfield.
It definitely hadn't lost its way in the heavy snow. Its movements were nimble, its body agile and strong. Its aimless wandering wasn't because it couldn't find its way; more likely, it simply lacked a goal, moved without purpose, or even had very little ability to think for itself.
Upon seeing the blue creature, Dan Heng frowned slightly, briefly held the others back, and slowed his pace.
Their dependable teacher, Dan Heng, explained, "This area hasn't been corroded yet, but monsters spawned by the Fragmentum have already escaped into it. The stellaron's influence on this world is probably far from ordinary.
"The one in front of us is called a Frostspawn. It's one of the simplest crystalline elementals found in the Fragmentum."
"So? Should we go around it?"
March 7th decided to leave the decision to their experienced teacher, Dan Heng. But she had barely finished speaking when Jiang Yu shouted beside her:
"Huh? We have to take a detour? How much longer would that leave us stuck out here in the ice and snow?!"
The boy was clearly reluctant to take the long way around-or rather, reluctant to spend any longer in this harsh, freezing environment.
March 7th turned toward Jiang Yu, about to say something, only to find the white-haired boy staring fixedly at the Frostspawn.
She wasn't sure whether she was imagining it, but March 7th felt as though she could see anger made tangible, leaping and burning like fire in those gray eyes.
"Look, it's spreading all that freezing air around! It's only this cold here because of that thing!"
Jiang Yu said with a thoroughly irritated expression:
"For Aha's sake! I'll teach you to chill things! I'll teach you to chill things!"
With a curse, Jiang Yu casually snatched up a frozen Voidranger beside him, wielded it as a weapon, and charged in with a leaping overhead strike!
Before you continue