Harem Cultivation System

Nibel and Vex returned from the northeastern shrine two days after Consul Meiying’s visit, empty-handed but alive — the shrine’s fragment, according to Nibel’s terse report, had already been extracted before they arrived, leaving nothing behind but scorched earth and a message carved crudely into the shrine’s remaining wall: *Try harder.*

"Corvin’s handwriting," Nibel said flatly, dropping into a chair at the war table with none of her usual composed grace. "He wanted us to know he beat us there. That’s the entire point of leaving a message instead of just taking the fragment quietly."

"Petty," Vex said, though the tightness in her jaw suggested she found it considerably less amusing than her tone implied. "Confirms something useful, though. Kargekin’s not just reacting to us anymore. They’re actively racing us now, and they’re not bothering to hide it."

Thessaly, who’d spent the two days since Meiying’s departure refining her fragment-location diagram into something considerably more precise, tapped the map with a mixture of frustration and grim focus.

"That leaves us with a significant problem," she said. "We’re now down to a two-location margin instead of four, and Kargekin has demonstrably closed whatever gap existed between our search efforts and theirs. If this pattern holds, we lose the race entirely within the week."

"Then we stop treating this like a search and start treating it like a war," Haruki said, surprising even himself with the flatness of his own voice. Three weeks in Akiou Prefecture had worn away whatever patience he’d once had for half-measures. "Where’s the next location?"

"A frozen ruin two days’ travel north," Thessaly said, indicating a mountainous region on the map that even its crude illustration made look forbidding. "Historical records list it as an ancient burial ground for a nomadic ice-attuned clan, wiped out centuries ago in circumstances the guild’s archives are conspicuously vague about."

"Convenient vagueness," Sana muttered, still nursing the last of her exhaustion from the coastal ruin fight. "Seems to follow this artifact everywhere it goes."

"We leave within the hour," Haruki decided. "Nibel, Vex — you’ve earned rest, but I’d rather have you with us if Corvin decides to make another appearance."

"Wouldn’t miss it," Nibel said, already rising despite the exhaustion visible in the set of her shoulders. "I have a debt to collect, and he’s not getting away with another cheap message carved into a wall next time."

"For what it’s worth," Sana added, gathering her own gear, "I’ve cross-referenced the frozen ruin against every guild survey I can access. There’s almost nothing on record. A single expedition attempted a full study of the site roughly forty years ago. None of the four surveyors involved ever filed a report."

"Comforting," Rosalia muttered.

"I didn’t say it to comfort you," Sana said. "I said it so nobody walks in there assuming this will be simple."

The journey north tested every one of them — the terrain shifting rapidly from Akiou’s temperate lowlands into jagged, snow-choked mountains that made even Rosalia’s usual bravado falter somewhat under the bone-deep cold. The road narrowed within the first day to little more than a goat trail cut into the mountainside, forcing them to abandon the wagon and continue on foot, packs slung heavy across their shoulders as the wind picked up in earnest.

"Remind me," Rosalia said through chattering teeth on the second night, huddled close to a fire that seemed to do very little against the mountain wind, "why we didn’t wait until spring for this particular expedition."

"Because Kargekin isn’t waiting for spring," Thessaly said, entirely unbothered by the cold in a way that suggested either remarkable discipline or some innate resistance Haruki hadn’t yet asked about. "And neither can we."

"You say that like it isn’t currently trying to freeze my blood into slush," Rosalia grumbled, pulling her cloak tighter.

"Human circulation is remarkably resilient," Thessaly said. "You’ll survive. Possibly with minor frostbite, which I can treat."

"Possibly," Rosalia repeated, unimpressed. "Wonderful bedside manner."

Ariel, seated nearer the fire with her knees drawn up to her chest, offered Rosalia a faint, sympathetic smile. "It gets easier once we’re moving again tomorrow," she said. "The cold’s worse when we’re sitting still."

"Everything’s worse when I’m sitting still and thinking about how Corvin’s probably warm and smug somewhere right now," Rosalia said, though some of the bite had gone out of her voice.

They pressed on through the second night and into the third day’s climb, the terrain growing steadily more hostile — narrow ledges glazed with black ice, whole stretches of trail buried under drifts deep enough to swallow a person to the waist. Haruki found himself grateful, more than once, for Corwyn’s absence from this particular leg of the journey; if the ruin’s resident truly proved to be another Transcendent bound in ice, he suspected they’d have use for exactly that kind of affinity before this was finished.

They reached the frozen ruin by midday on the third day — a sprawling complex of ice-crusted stone archways and collapsed burial mounds, half-swallowed by glacial drift, radiating a cold that seemed to seep directly into the bone regardless of how much Dao anyone channeled to ward against it.

"This place doesn’t want visitors," Ariel observed, crimson essence flickering weakly against the oppressive chill, her usual vibrant Dao dimmed by the sheer, ancient wrongness saturating the air.

"No," Thessaly agreed, consulting her instruments with a frown. "And I suspect that’s quite deliberate. Whatever’s buried here, someone wanted the cold itself to serve as a deterrent."

"Deterrents imply someone expected people determined enough to ignore them," Nibel said, scanning the ruin’s outer archways with narrowed eyes. "Which means whoever built this expected exactly the kind of visitors we’ve become."

They pressed deeper into the ruin regardless, picking their way through collapsed archways and half-frozen burial chambers lined with faded carvings — stylized figures wreathed in ice and lightning, locked in poses that looked less like burial art and more like warning. More than once, Vex paused to study a particular relief before shaking her head and moving on, unwilling or unable to fully explain what unsettled her about the imagery.

Finally, in the complex’s deepest chamber, past a final archway choked almost entirely shut with ice, they found what they’d traveled two days through brutal cold to reach — a third fragment of Lougen, embedded in a block of ancient, unnaturally clear ice, pulsing faintly beneath its frozen prison.

And beside it, encased in the same ancient ice, unmistakably alive despite centuries of imprisonment, a woman with frost-pale hair and closed eyes, chains of frozen crystal wrapped delicately around her wrists.

"Another one," Vex breathed, staring at the frozen figure with something between awe and old, weary recognition. "How many of us did they scatter across this world?"

"Apparently, at least this many," Haruki said quietly, already stepping closer to the ice, studying the woman’s still, frost-rimmed features with a strange, unshakeable feeling that this particular unbinding was going to test him in ways the previous ones hadn’t.

The ice groaned, shifting subtly at his proximity, as though something ancient and patient had finally, after centuries, noticed it was no longer alone.

— End of Cultivation —