Chapter 7: A Walk in the Park
Green-Rank Dungeon: [Goblin Forest].
Sector 1 – The Outer Rim.
The sensation of teleportation was nauseating for most. It felt like being squeezed through a straw.
But for Ye Han, it felt like passing through a curtain.
He stepped onto the mossy ground. The air here was humid, smelling of rotting wood, wet fur, and sulfur. The sky was a fake, digital green, illuminated by a bioluminescent canopy of massive trees.
"So this is a Green-Rank," Ye Han muttered, looking around.
Around him, hundreds of other examinees were warping in. They immediately went into combat formation.
"Shields up! Mages in the back!"
"Scouts, check the perimeter!"
"Watch out for ambushes! Goblins use poison arrows!"
The students were tense. To them, this was a battlefield. A single mistake could mean failing the exam or getting injured.
Ye Han stood alone. He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't crouch. He stood perfectly straight, his white shirt gleaming in the dim forest light, his silver-diamond hair acting like a beacon.
'It stinks,' Tiamat complained in his head. 'Low-tier filth. The mana here is polluted.'
'Food is food,' Ye Han replied mentally. 'Where are they?'
'Everywhere. About fifty meters ahead. Hiding in the bushes.'
Rustle.
From the undergrowth, a dozen pairs of yellow eyes glowed.
"KIEE!"
With a shrill shriek, the ambush sprang.
Twelve Forest Goblins, small green-skinned monsters wielding jagged daggers and crude bows, leaped out. They ignored the armored tanks nearby and rushed straight for the unarmored, glowing target—Ye Han. To their primitive AI, he looked like the easiest prey.
"Look out!" a girl from a nearby team shouted. "Behind you!"
Ye Han didn't turn around.
He simply exhaled.
[Passive Aura: Wintersbreath.]
The temperature in a ten-meter radius around him dropped to -80°C instantly.
The charging goblins didn't even finish their scream. Mid-leap, their green skin turned grey. Their blood crystallized. Their momentum carried them forward as statues.
Clatter. Clatter. Crash.
Twelve frozen goblin sculptures hit the ground at Ye Han's feet. They didn't shatter; they just lay there, perfectly preserved in ice.
The girl who had shouted covered her mouth. The other students nearby stopped their own fights, staring in shock.
Ye Han knelt down. He tapped the chest of the nearest frozen goblin.
Crack.
The ice chest cavity shattered. Ye Han reached in with a gloved hand and pulled out a small, pea-sized green crystal.
[Goblin Core (F-Rank)].
It was warm. It pulsed with weak, dirty mana.
'Disgusting,' Tiamat sneered. 'It's like eating crumbs off the floor.'
'Eat it,' Ye Han commanded.
The core in his hand dissolved into a mist of green light and was absorbed into his skin.
[Energy Absorbed.]
[Seal Progress: 10.001% -> 10.002%]
Ye Han frowned. "I need about... ten thousand of these to make a difference."
He stood up and looked deeper into the forest.
"I don't have time to pick them off one by one."
Observation Room (Outside the Dungeon).
The exam proctors and recruiters from the top universities were watching a massive wall of screens.
"Look at Team 4 from the Sun Moon Academy! Their formation is flawless. They cleared the first zone in five minutes."
"Team 7 is good too. That Fire Mage has potential."
"Hey... look at Screen 1."
A recruiter pointed to the corner screen.
It showed a single white dot moving through the forest map.
While other teams moved cautiously, stopping to rest or loot, this dot was moving in a straight line. It wasn't stopping.
"Is that... running?"
"Zoom in."
The camera drone swooped down.
On the screen, they saw Ye Han. He wasn't running. He was walking.
But he was walking through a massacre.
He walked past a goblin settlement. He didn't cast spells. He didn't swing a sword. He just walked.
As he passed, the huts froze. The goblins froze. The trees froze.
It looked like a blight of winter was spreading across the forest. Behind him, a trail of glittering ice sculptures marked his path.
"His point counter..." the proctor gasped.
[Candidate: Ye Han]
[Points: 500... 800... 1,200...]
"He's not fighting," a General from the military whispered. "He's farming. He's walking through the dungeon like he's harvesting wheat."
Dungeon: Sector 3 – The Marshlands.
Ye Han was bored.
He had collected over five hundred cores. Tiamat was munching on them happily in his Soul Space, but the progress bar was moving painfully slow.
[Seal Progress: 10.5%]
"Too slow," Ye Han muttered. "The small ones are inefficient. I need the Elite monsters."
He reached a clearing. Ahead of him was the path to the Boss Room.
Blocking the path was a large group of students.
It was the Sun Moon Academy team. About twenty of them. They were elite students, fully geared in blue and gold armor.
They were currently fighting a Goblin Champion—a massive, muscular goblin standing two meters tall, wielding a giant club.
"Hold the line!" the leader, the shield-bearer from before, shouted. "Mages, focus fire on the legs! He's the Gatekeeper! Once we kill him, the Boss Room is ours!"
The battle was intense. The Goblin Champion was a D-Rank monster. It roared, swinging its club and smashing a student's shield, sending him flying.
"Heal him! Don't break formation!"
They were struggling, but they were winning. It was a textbook raid.
Then, the temperature dropped.
The swamp water beneath their feet began to freeze. The mud turned rock hard.
"What the...?" The shield-bearer turned around.
Ye Han walked out of the mist. His silver hair was glowing, his hands in his pockets.
He walked right past the backline mages. He walked past the healers.
"Hey!" the shield-bearer shouted. "Get back! This is our kill! We engaged it first!"
Ye Han didn't stop. He walked straight toward the raging Goblin Champion.
The monster roared, sensing a new enemy. It raised its massive club, aiming to squash the silver-haired human into paste.
"Idiot!" the Sun Moon students screamed. "Dodge!"
Ye Han looked up at the descending club.
'D-Rank Physical Strength,' he analyzed. 'Pathetic.'
He raised one hand. He didn't use ice. He just used his Draconic Strength. The passive enhancement from the Dragon Queen gave his physical body the durability of a diamond.
BANG!
The wooden club, thick as a tree trunk, hit Ye Han's open palm.
It stopped dead.
The shockwave blew the surrounding students off their feet.
Ye Han stood there, holding the massive weapon with one hand. His feet hadn't even sunk into the ground.
The Goblin Champion blinked, confused. It pulled, trying to retrieve its weapon. It couldn't move it.
"You are in my way," Ye Han said.
He squeezed his hand.
CRUNCH.
The giant wooden club shattered into splinters in his grip.
Before the monster could react, Ye Han stepped forward and placed his palm on the Champion's chest.
[Inner Freeze.]
He injected mana directly into the heart.
The Goblin Champion's eyes bulged. It didn't turn to ice on the outside. Instead, it stiffened, then fell over like a cut tree.
Thud.
Dead. Heart frozen solid.
Ye Han ripped the chest open, took the D-Rank Core (size of a walnut), and fed it to his system.
[Consumed D-Rank Core.]
[Energy: Low.]
He turned around. The twenty elite students of Sun Moon Academy were staring at him with their mouths open. The shield-bearer was trembling.
"You..." the shield-bearer stammered. "That was a Champion. We spent ten minutes whittling its health down. You... you one-shot it?"
Ye Han looked at the path ahead. A massive stone gate loomed in the distance. The Boss Room.
"You said the King belongs to you?" Ye Han asked.
The shield-bearer swallowed hard. He looked at his team, then back at the monster Ye Han. His arrogance evaporated.
"Take it," the boy whispered. "We... we'll farm the small ones."
Ye Han nodded. "Wise choice."
He walked toward the Boss Gate.
The Boss Room: Throne of the Hobgoblin.
The gate rumbled open.
Ye Han stepped into a massive cavern. Piles of bones littered the floor. In the center sat a throne made of skulls.
On the throne sat the Hobgoblin King.
It was three meters tall. It wore armor made from the gear of dead hunters. It held a greatsword wreathed in green fire.
[Boss: Hobgoblin King]
[Rank: C-Grade]
[Status: Enraged]
"ROAAAR!"
The King roared, unleashing a wave of mana pressure. Usually, this roar would stun C-Rank hunters.
Ye Han walked forward. The sound wave hit him and ruffled his silver hair. That was it.
"Finally," Ye Han said. "A C-Rank Core. That should be worth at least 1%."
The King charged. It was fast. It moved like a blur, swinging the flaming sword at Ye Han's neck.
Ye Han didn't dodge.
'Tiamat. Sword.'
'You don't have a sword,' Tiamat pointed out.
'Make one.'
Ye Han raised his right hand. The moisture in the air screamed as it was forcefully condensed.
In a nanosecond, an icicle formed in his hand. But it wasn't a jagged shard. It was a perfectly shaped Katana of Ice.
The flaming greatsword descended.
Ye Han swung his ice katana upward.
CLANG!
Fire met Ice.
Logic dictated that ice should melt.
But Ye Han's ice was Absolute Zero. It didn't melt. It ate the heat.
The green fire on the King's sword was extinguished instantly. The frost spread from Ye Han's blade onto the King's steel sword, shattering the metal into dust.
The King stumbled back, holding the hilt of a broken sword. It looked at Ye Han with genuine fear. The primitive intelligence of the monster realized it had made a mistake.
"You bleed," Ye Han said, stepping closer. "Therefore, you have a core."
The King tried to run. It turned its back to flee toward the shadows.
Ye Han sighed. "Don't make me chase you."
He stabbed the ice katana into the ground.
[Sovereign Art: Glacial Spikes.]
Rumble!
The entire floor of the cavern erupted. Massive spikes of blue ice, sharp as spears, shot up from the ground.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The Hobgoblin King was skewered. Raised into the air on a forest of ice spikes.
It died instantly.
Ye Han walked over to the corpse. He carved out the core. It was the size of an apple, glowing with dense green light.
"Good," Ye Han said.
He absorbed it.
[Seal Progress: 11.2%]
"Still slow," Ye Han complained. "I need B-Rank. Or A-Rank."
Suddenly, the dungeon began to shake.
A holographic notification appeared in the sky of the cavern.
[CONGRATULATIONS!]
[Candidate Ye Han has defeated the Boss.]
[Time Elapsed: 14 Minutes.]
[New Record Set!]
Ye Han frowned. "It's over already?"
He looked around the cavern. There were still a few Elite Hobgoblins cowering in the corners.
"Waste not, want not."
He snapped his fingers.
The remaining monsters turned to ice.
Outside the Dungeon.
The scoreboard flickered.
1. Ye Han - Points: 50,000 (BOSS CLEARED) (RECORD BREAKER)
2. Sun Moon Team A - Points: 1,200
3. Azure Team - Points: 900
The gap wasn't just large. It was insurmountable.
The portal shimmered.
Ye Han stepped out. He looked exactly the same as when he went in. Not a scratch. Not a drop of sweat. His shirt was still pristine white.
The entire assembly area was silent. Thousands of students who had been evacuated or cleared early were staring at him.
The Head Proctor, a Colonel from the Military Academy, walked up to him. He was holding a medal.
"Student Ye Han," the Colonel said, saluting. "That was... the most efficient clear I have ever seen. You broke the national record by forty minutes."
Ye Han didn't return the salute. He just looked at the portal which was now closing.
"Can I go back in?" Ye Han asked.
The Colonel blinked. "What?"
"There were still some wolves in Sector 2 I missed. I need the cores."
"The... the exam is over, son," the Colonel said nervously. "You got the max score. You can't farm the exam dungeon."
Ye Han sighed, disappointed. "Fine."
He turned to the crowd. He saw the Sun Moon Academy students who had just excited. They looked traumatized.
Ye Han walked past them toward the exit.
"Mom was right," Ye Han muttered to himself, loud enough for the cameras to hear. "Goblins are boring."
The Shadows of the Stadium.
While the crowd cheered, two figures watched from the shadows of the bleachers.
They wore grey cloaks that blended with the concrete.
"Confirmed," one whispered into a headset. "Target Ye Han. Combat capability exceeds A-Rank. Ice Manipulation is absolute. No chanting. No casting time."
"Is he a threat to the Plan?"
"He is a variable. The Temple wants him dead. The Cult wants him captured."
"What about us?"
The figure smiled, revealing shark-like teeth.
"We test him. The Red-Rank Gate in the Pacific is opening next month. If he is truly a Sovereign... he will be drawn to it."
"Initiate Phase One. Release the Chimera in the city tonight."
"Tonight?"
"Yes. Let's see if the Ice Prince can protect his castle when the walls come down."
Ye Family Estate. Midnight.
Ye Han was sleeping.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open.
Thump.
The heartbeat again. But this time, it wasn't the deep, ancient thrum of a Black Dungeon.
It was frantic. Wild. Chaotic.
'Master,' Tiamat hissed in his mind. 'I smell something foul.'
'I smell it too,' Ye Han sat up, walking to the window.
In the distance, toward the downtown district of Azure Dragon City, a pillar of smoke was rising. Sirens were wailing.
And amidst the smoke, a massive, unnatural roar echoed. It sounded like a lion, a goat, and a snake screaming in unison.
"A Dungeon Break?" Ye Han frowned. "In the middle of the city?"
'No,' Tiamat said. 'That is not a dungeon monster. That is a bio-weapon. Artificial mana.'
Ye Han's eyes narrowed.
"Artificial?"
He put his hand on the glass of the window.
"If they think they can unleash a pet in my backyard..."
The glass froze and shattered outward.
Ye Han jumped.
He didn't fall. He stepped onto t
he air. A platform of ice materialized under his foot. Then another. Then another.
He began to run across the sky, leaving a staircase of ice over the sleeping city.
"They are going to regret waking me up."
Chapter 7 End.