Born in apocalypse

[You have killed a monster, Lesser Freezing Squirrel.]

[...]

[...]

’Man, despite being freezing, the area is full of monsters..’ Dhruv thought as he picked up the squirrel and put it in his inventory. He wasn’t afraid he was surprised that this many monsters could survive in this cold biome.

"Master, there is a horde of tier 3 bears just 100 meters north of us.." Getting the information from his undead eagle, Azarex passed this information to Dhruv.

What are they doing..." Dhruv asked, totally uninterested in this other hoard of monsters.

"They seem to be fighting a group of some bizarre monsters, Master," Azarex answered while looking at them.

"Can go deal with them, Azarex. I have to fill my mana.." Dhruv asked, with a poor smile on his face.

Of course, Master, It would be my honor to fight for you.." Saying these things, Azarex quickly commanded his undead and began to move toward the monsters.

Sigh!

Letting the puff of cold, moist air out of his mouth, Dhruv sighed. It had been more than five hours of wandering in the snow, and he hadn’t seen a single thing... except for snow, snowy monsters, and snowy trees.

Everything he was seeing is either white or blue. This simplicity, which was nice for an hour, but now... now it began to give him great boredom.

"Man, just how long is this dungeon..." Dhruv whispered as he opened his map to check his location. Even after opening the map, the curse of whiteness didn’t leave him as everything on the map was white as well.

After confirming that he was going in the right direction, Dhruv closed the map and began to observe the surroundings. Knowing there was nothing exciting to observe, he closed his eyes.

Closing his eyes, Dhruv let his mana regenerate naturally. Increasing the number of fireballs around him, he calmly began to enjoy the mixture of warm and cold sensations.

When he was at the peak of calmness, a very subtle sound of something wandered in his ear... He couldn’t catch exactly what it was, but he was hearing something.

Opening his eyes Dhruv quickly activated his mana sense, expecting a monster trying to ambush him.

’Huh! Nothing..." he was surprised to find that there wasn’t any monster trying to eat him.

’Am I hallucinating?’ Dhruv automatically comes to this conclusion when even after observing the surrounding area for a minute he couldn’t find anything.

’Maybe I really am hallucinating...’ Thinking this, he closed his eyes and began to relax once again. Before the timer reached 10 seconds, he heard something once again.

"What the fuck... this is real." Jumping out of his chair, he began to manipulate his mana. Activating his mana sense, he began to look for the perpetrator of this whole thing.

"...." He was once again unable to find anything. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Dhruv stood there, momentarily confused. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. For a second, he thought that this was a hallucination, but the very next second, he remembered that he had resistance to these kinds of things.

’Something isn’t right...’ Even though he couldn’t tell what, his gut was telling him that something wasn’t right.

With paranoia, Dhruv began to observe the area; this time he hadn’t activated the mana sense. He couldn’t find anything to his right, nothing to his left, nothing up... no, he was able to catch a glimpse of something in the sky.

With the utmost focus he could muster, Dhruv began to focus on the area where he had noticed something...

’crack...’

The same sound rang in his ear once again... but the difference was that he had identified what it was. Although it was difficult to catch it in the clear blue sky—which was fading away at a rapid speed—with enough focus anyone could see it.

His eyes widened as the realization hit him like lightning. At this point, Dhruv knew that a thundersnow storm was imminent. Taking a deep breath, he began to think of a way to get out of the way...

"Fucking hell... How am I supposed to deal with a thundersnow storm now?" Instead of thinking about the solution, a curse left his mouth.

Even though he had won a fight with a tier 4 monster, Dhruv knew his limit... he knew that there was no way he could handle the wrath of Mother Nature. He knows that the very normal serene snowscape is about to transform into a hell of tempest and icy fury.

While he was in the middle of his thought, a sound distracted him,

"Master, the bears and the monster they were fighting with have been killed," Azarex reported with a voice filled with loyalty.

Not wasting any time hearing about the fight, Dhruv directly got to his point and brought up the only plan he could think of, "Azarex, have you seen any cave around here?"

Dhruv asked this because he knew there were caves in this dungeon... in fact, he had met one such cave about an hour before.

Instead of asking a question, Azarex tried to remember if he had seen such a thing recently. A few seconds later, he opened his jaw forming a smile on his skull, "Yes, Master, I’ve seen a cave. It is relatively close as well."

"How close are we talking about?" Dhruv asked quickly, his tone clearly showing the nature of the urgency.

Pointing to the northwest side, Azarex replied, "About ten minutes’ worth of walk... in that direction."

’Will the ten minutes be enough...’ Dhruv thought as he looked at the sky. The sky, which was blue a minute ago, had clearly begun to transform into the shade of black.

’Fuck it...’cursing his luck, he quickly manipulated his mana and summoned a metal platform wide enough to support two people.

"Stand there..." Saying these words, he climbed on the platform. Following him, Azarex climbed it as well. With this spell being active, Dhruv began to cast another one.

The metal platform began to move in a particular direction as Dhruv whispered the words, ’Telekinetic manipulation’. With the help of this newly reformed brain of his, Dhruv was able to control two spells at a time.

Cracckkkk!

Boooooommm!!

Suddenly, the sound of a massive thunderstrike rang through the realm. A chill ran down his spine as Dhruv looked in the direction from where the sound was coming.

His eyes remained wide open as he saw that the thunder was coming in his direction at a speed much faster than what he was traveling at....