Chapter 784

With a blinding steam explosion, a deafening roar shook the canyon.

The entire ice sheet, thicker than my height, shattered into thousands of pieces and flew upward. The lake water, touched by the intense heat, boiled in an instant, and clouds of steam erupted like a volcanic explosion.

The scalding steam could have boiled a person alive in seconds. Thanks to the protection of the runes, I managed to avoid severe burns, but without them, I wouldn’t have been so lucky.

“What the hell are you doing, Ha-shal-leur?!”

Damien, who had leaped into the air with all his might to avoid the steam, shouted at me from a distance. His voice carried the anger he had recently learned to express, thanks to me.

Honestly, I didn’t think it was worth getting that mad. I even warned him beforehand to stay clear in case things got messy.

“I told you! We just need to get rid of all the water!”

“Evaporate the entire lake? Is that even possible?”

Damien asked in disbelief.

Ah, I see. He must have thought I was going to use Up-hwa to evaporate the entire lake and turn it into dry land.

“I’m not sure if it’s possible… but there’s no need to waste that much energy.”

I flew up next to Damien and pointed at the result of my strike below.

– Kwa-rurururur!

With a thunderous roar, the blue lake was sucked into a massive hole at the bottom, swirling like a whirlpool.

“If you want to drain a bathtub, you just need to punch a hole at the bottom, right?”

From the start, my goal wasn’t to dry up the entire lake. Damien might not have known, but I did. The Holy Sword wasn’t inside the lake but deep beneath it, in a vast cavern.

So, by delivering a reinforced strike to the surface, I created a shockwave that collapsed the lakebed, causing the icy water to drain away like pulling the plug in a bathtub.

“How’s that? Professor Ha-shal-leur always has a plan.”

I turned to Damien with a smug grin, satisfied that everything had gone according to plan.

All that was left was to wait for the water to drain completely, then casually descend to retrieve the Holy Sword.

There was still one tough task ahead, but things were going so smoothly it felt like the heavens were on our side.

“…….”

But Damien, instead of praising my solution, was staring blankly at the canyon walls.

“Damien?”

“Ha-shal-leur. So… you’re saying that punch, strong enough to split Nidhogg in half, was all part of your plan?”

“Exactly. Why?”

His tone sounded more accusatory than impressed. I tilted my head in confusion, and Damien sighed deeply, clutching his forehead.

His expression was one of utter despair. It was so natural that I almost doubted his earlier claim of not understanding emotions.

“Then… is *that* also part of your plan?”

Damien pointed toward the cliff with his right hand, looking at me like I was a six-year-old who had set the house on fire while playing with matches.

“Please… tell me it is…?”

His glare was infuriating, but I couldn’t exactly poke his eyes out. Instead, I turned to look at the cliff.

And then I realized.

This was not the time to be poking Damien’s eyes.

– Kwa-dududuk!

The shockwave from my punch had traveled through the ice and into the cliff, causing cracks to spread.

Like an axe splitting firewood, like a hammer shattering rock, the small cracks grew larger, and the once-sturdy cliffs, which had stood firm for centuries, began to split and crumble like dry farmland.

The thunderous sound shook the canyon.

“Uh….”

I stared up at the cliff, thousands of meters high, my mouth hanging open.

I could roughly guess what was about to happen.

And then.

– Kwa-rurururung!

The rocks, unable to hold on any longer, broke free, and an avalanche, triggered by the earthquake-like vibrations, came crashing down toward us like a torrential downpour.

“Ha….”

Faced with this triple disaster of a landslide, avalanche, and ground collapse, I could only let out a weak laugh and mutter curses under my breath.

I messed up.

Did I hit it too hard?

—

The torrent of rocks and snow that poured into the lake mercilessly buried the entire lake, reducing the canyon’s depth by several dozen meters.

Well… at least, that’s what I assumed. I didn’t actually see the aftermath of my colossal mistake with my own eyes.

“Achoo! Ha-shal-leur…! Please, cough, cough…! Next time, warn me before you do something like that…!”

Damien coughed violently, scolding me like a tuberculosis patient.

I had no words to defend myself, so I silently stoked the campfire. Seeing him soaked and shivering made me feel a little sorry for him.

When the avalanche of snow and rocks filled the canyon, I grabbed Damien by the collar and leaped into the hole at the bottom of the lake.

Since the icy water hadn’t completely drained yet, we ended up soaked despite the hole I had made. But if we hadn’t jumped in, Damien would have been seriously injured by the disaster.

Of course, the price wasn’t light.

We managed to dive deep into the freezing water and enter the cavern beneath the lake, but the moment we escaped the waterfall-like torrent, our bodies began to freeze rapidly.

I quickly lit a fire to prevent our hearts from stopping, but while I could endure the cold, Damien couldn’t. He shivered violently, collapsing like he had caught a severe flu.

The water that had soaked his clothes and body froze instantly, stealing his body heat.

Even when I tried to thaw his frozen clothes and body with heat that wouldn’t cause burns, his body temperature dropped dozens of times faster than his clothes could dry.

So, I had no choice but to strip off his outer clothes and warm his nearly naked body and frozen clothes separately.

As for me?

Well, I was fine. Unlike Damien, I could just ignite my body with flames to raise my temperature.

While Damien shivered in his underwear, my only issue was that parts of my clothes had burned away. Otherwise, I was perfectly fine.

In fact, I felt refreshed. The combination of water and fire had cleaned my body, which had been a bit grimy from days without washing.

Though, it wasn’t exactly a relaxing hot spring experience.

“…Feeling better now?”

I asked softly, turning my head slightly. Damien was huddled under my coat, clinging to me for warmth.

Hersela was throwing a fit in my head, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being this close to a half-naked man, but…

I couldn’t just leave Damien, a mere hero with a normal body, to freeze in sub-zero temperatures with only a campfire for warmth.

So, I had no choice but to let him cling to me, sharing my body heat until he calmed down.

“Uh… better than before….”

Damien stammered in response.

He was still shivering, but compared to earlier, when his face was pale and his lips blue, he looked a bit more alive now.

“Good. That’s something.”

I lit a damp cigarette over the campfire, exhaling smoke as I waited for Damien’s clothes to dry and my half-burned outfit to regenerate.

“…Sorry about this.”

Since this mess was 100% my fault, I awkwardly scratched my cheek and offered the apology I owed him.

—

After drying his clothes with the heat of the runes, Damien moved away from me, got dressed, and rested by the campfire.

Meanwhile, I sorted through the soaked and frozen pile of supplies, thawing what I could, while conversing with Hersela.

[You’re really something. The self-proclaimed strongest on the continent, yet you can’t even control your strength properly. Have you gotten dumber lately?]

It was less of a conversation and more of a scolding.

‘No, that’s the weird part… I definitely didn’t hit it that hard. I only struck hard enough to break the lakebed…’

At the time, I was too rushed to think about it, but no matter how I looked at it, a single punch shouldn’t have caused the entire cliff to collapse.

[What a lame excuse. How could a strike meant to break the lakebed bring down a cliff?]

‘That’s what I’m saying… I don’t know how to explain it.’

I flexed my right hand, recalling the sensation at the time.

I had definitely put all my strength into that punch, but the amount of Feats consumed, the intensity of Up-hwa, and my usual physical strength shouldn’t have produced that level of power.

So, either there was some external factor… or my strength had surpassed my calculations….

First, there was no change in the Power of Feats. Both Feats and Life Force Technique were the same, and the output of Up-hwa, fueled by Life Force Technique, was also unchanged.

So, was it my physical strength that had changed…?

Even without the enhancement from Feats, my pure physical strength was enough to tear apart a troll. Or-han had called it the Blessing of Divine Blood.

Had this superhuman strength grown even stronger without me realizing it?

That seemed to be the only possibility.

In fact, there was even a plausible reason. Not long ago, I had dragged Nidhogg’s remains all by myself.

At the time, I thought it was because the Power of Feats I had accumulated was enough to handle the Dragon’s Remains, but…

Maybe my basic physical abilities had also improved beyond what they were before.

If my previous strength was enough to wrestle with a troll, and it had grown even stronger… I might not even be considered human anymore.