"Phew! This was indeed quite crazy!" The chase lasted for two nights and days straight. Monsters didn't drop hunting until William jumped off a high edge cliff towards another one that was a few hundreds of metres apart.
There was a river running deep down, and monsters couldn't mimic what he just did. They had to take a longer route, going down the high cliff and finding a way to cross the river to the other side.
This took long hours, during which William kept running away with Angelica until they were at a far and safe distance from their pursuers.
"But they looked quite weird… Monsters won't act this stubborn until for a reason…" she gave William a look full of doubt and question, yet the latter acted innocent, as if he knew nothing about this.
"Let's rest here for the night," William found a cave inside a small hill in the forest, ending up clearing it and blocking its entrance and the area around with lots of arrays, "tomorrow we will continue travelling."
"Sure, I'm deeply exhausted," she even yawned, and William didn't know how he should respond to her words. He was the one who did all the work, the one who kept running and carrying her across all this distance.
He didn't sleep well as he kept worrying about these monsters catching up to them. He didn't know if the Scroll or the boxes he had would spread a scent or anything for a vast distance, enough to lead the monsters to them or not.
But eventually the morning came, and he spotted not a trace of these monsters anywhere around. They ate and then moved, travelling fast and swift towards their destination.
They took two weeks to pass through the forest alone. Most of the time they spent was thanks to them evading the towns and cities in or around the forest.
During which, the two of them grew closer to each other, learning more about their lives and pasts. William kept lots of things secret, but Angelica didn't stop talking about her life, dreams, and everything she knew.
As they got out from the forest, William was welcomed with a snowy white world.
"It's not cold, but ice is everywhere…" William stopped at the edge of this zone, feeling a bit weird from this bizarre scene.
Behind him, a lavish green world of trees expanded. And in front, a white world of ice was there. Yet he didn't feel any cold, and even he felt a bit warm.
"This is the Hot Snow area," Angelica seemed to be surprised as him, and that made him feel a bit suspicious.
"What's wrong?" he asked, and she started to speak about this area. According to her, this wasn't a fixed area in the world, a zone that wasn't normally here.
The Hot Snow zone was a wandering area in this world, a phenomenon that appeared and disappeared without anyone realising why. "... This part should belong to a grand swarm area, with lots of rain and monsters hiding here. But this…"
She spoke about how special this Hot Snow area was, how extremely dangerous it was.
"We should evade it then," William didn't want to waste his effort or time in such an area. But before he'd continued his words, he froze as the forest that spanned behind him vanished and got replaced with a world of ice.
"Sigh! Once the area appears in a place, it will expand and engulf any living spirit within," Angelica sighed, "let's go, we have no other choice but to find the exit and walk away from here."
"Anything remarkable about this exit?" William asked, and just before he'd hear the answer, he spotted a group of monsters appearing from far away.
They looked quite small with the naked eye, yet as he spread his spirit sense around, he could clearly see them.
They were monkeys, like Scarlet Monkeys he used to kill before. Yet they were much bigger, with brown fur covering up their bodies, and one horn coming out from a few of their members' heads.
When they appeared, William focused on them as there was something weird happening there. They were in thousands, and they seemed to run around in panic, fearing what place they got sucked into.
Yet that wasn't what attracted William's attention, but the ground underneath their legs. He spotted many fine cracks spreading there, and soon enough the ground fell, and the entire group of monkeys fell into water.
The moment the ground cracked, and the monkeys fell, William saw the water get turbulent as if something huge and fierce was moving down there. Then a layer of ice started to form out of thin air, covering up the water which got filled with lots of red colour.
"You saw it, right?" Angelica didn't have the spirit sense to see what happened to these monkeys, but she seemed to guess what they went through.
"They just walked, cracked the ice underneath them, and ended up getting eaten by something…" William couldn't see anything below the surface of that water, as if there was some sort of a thick curtain that blocked his senses there.
"That's the Nachies," she said in a tone that held lots of fear, "they live in the water under our feet, quite deadly and ferocious… Once the ice cracks, we have to find a way to evade the hole that will follow, or else…"
"I got it," William knew what she wanted to say. If they ended up cracking the ice and falling into the water, they'd suffer from the same fate as these monkeys.
He looked back at the monkeys' spot, and all that remained now was a thick layer of ice, looking a bit normal like any other place, except for a faint redness that spread like spots here and there.
William then spread his spirit sense around, scanning the ice surrounding him. There wasn't a single signal on what was thin and what was safe ice.
