I Put Far Too Much Faith In Book Knowledge

“What is this? Snow…!?”

“It’s connected to another weird place again.”

When Orphe chanted, “Warm Sphere,” a transparent spherical wall covered her.

From the way the snow melted with a sizzle when it approached that sphere, even Kikori could guess that there was a warm space inside it.

When he tried sticking his hand into it, it felt faintly warm.

“Orphe. Can’t you use this on me too?”

“There’d be no point.”

“Huh?”

“Because you’re not really feeling the cold that much, right?”

When she said that, Kikori realized it.

Come to think of it, he was hardly feeling the cold at all.

He thought it was cold, but that was all. He was not even shivering.

It should have been a level of cold completely different from the cold at night, and yet this…

“…Dragon Crown, huh.”

“That’s what it is.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Sure is.”

The fact that there were almost no traces of this place having been trampled through might have meant that most humans had not been prepared for a place like this.

Well, thinking about it normally, there was probably no one who would willingly want to set foot in a snowfield caught in a blizzard.

Even as they trudged forward through the crunching snow, visibility was terrible.

That said, looking at it the other way around, that was about all. It was not enough reason to turn back.

No monsters were attacking them, either.

“Does nothing live here?”

“How would I know? It’s my first time coming to a place like this too.”

“That’s true.”

Even Orphe probably did not know everything about the Contaminated Region.

Now that it had been labyrinthized, that was even more true.

Well, he did not want to stay here too long.

Even if he could barely feel the cold, he did not have the nerve to spend a night in a place like this.

They kept crunching onward, but still did not encounter any monsters.

In that case, so long as you had protection against the cold, could this not be called a safe route?

The moment he thought that.

Thud. An “arm” growing out of the snow grabbed Kikori’s leg.

“Huh?”

An arm covered in something that could only be described as fur.

That arm, which looked thicker than Kikori’s neck, grabbed his leg and squeezed with all its might.

“Guh…!?”

Under that unbelievable pressure, the bones in Kikori’s leg creaked and groaned, followed by a cracking sound.

“Gah…!”

“Fire Arrow!”

Before the three arrows of fire Orphe had launched could hit the arm, it threw Kikori away.

The fire arrows struck Kikori instead, and he let out another scream of pain as he rolled across the snowfield.

“Uwah, sorry!”

Before Kikori could say anything to the flustered Orphe, something emerged from the snow.

It was a bipedal monster with a gigantic body reminiscent of a Hobgoblin… and the face of a gorilla with pure white fur.

“A yeti…!? It was hiding in the snow…!”

That was right, it was a monster said to live in frigid lands.

But the books had not said it would do something like this.

And because of that, Kikori thought to himself.

He had put far too much faith in book knowledge.

Feeling the pain in his shattered leg, Kikori glared at the yeti.