SWNOVELXO Chapter 697: White Death makes his debut
Max slowly looked around, his senses immediately kicking into high alert as his Three Dimensional Body allowed him to absorb every detail of his surroundings at once. He had been transported to what could only be described as a frosty, desolate world—one where the very air crackled with icy energy.
Everything around him shimmered in pale shades of blue and white. The jagged mountains in the distance were glazed with thick sheets of frost, the ground beneath his feet was slick with a thin layer of frozen mist, and even the air itself carried a biting chill that clawed at his skin.
It was a frozen battlefield where even the silence seemed sharp. Across from him stood his opponent—a man who, at first glance, appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties. But it was the grotesque detail of his face that made Max narrow his eyes.
The entire right side of the man's face was encased in thick, translucent ice, as if it had permanently fused to his skin, distorting his features into something monstrous. The frozen flesh glinted in the frosty light, making him look like a ghostly figure born from winter itself.
Roger Hale—this was the infamous frost-region warlord Max was up against. The man stared at him for a moment, then sneered in clear disgust. "A kid… in the 1st level of Master Rank? Are you kidding me?" he scoffed, his voice echoing off the icy walls of the realm. His face twisted further, equal parts annoyance and mockery.
"What kind of sick joke is this? Either you're some green rookie entering the Battle Realm for the first time, or another arrogant brat who thinks a bit of talent makes him invincible." He spat to the side, clearly cursing his luck.
To him, Max wasn't worth the effort, wasn't worthy of even raising his hand. And that kind of underestimation… made Max's eyes flicker with a dangerous glint beneath his mask.
"Kid, just having a cool name doesn't make you strong," Roger said coldly, the disdain in his voice as sharp as the chill in the air.
As he spoke, his entire body began to emit a dense white smoke, not from heat, but from pure concentrated frost. It hissed and swirled around him like a blizzard coming to life. The ground beneath his feet cracked as layers of ice spread outward, and the already frigid world grew even colder.
Max could feel the change instantly—his clothes stiffened with frost, the moisture in the air crystallizing against his skin. It was like standing inside the breath of a glacier.
Then, without warning, the battlefield exploded into motion. From all directions—above, below, and the sides—ten massive hands formed entirely of ice surged toward Max, each crackling with power and sharpened edges that could pierce through steel.
But Max didn't flinch. His Three Dimensional Body caught the shift in energy before the hands even fully materialized. To him, the ambush wasn't sudden at all. It was like watching ripples in a still pond before a stone even hit the water.
A smile curled beneath his mask as he whispered, "Absolute Reaper." The moment the words left his mouth, the space around him distorted, and black flames began to flicker into existence, coiling like serpents hungry for destruction.
In an instant—faster than a heartbeat—those black flames erupted outward. A sphere of searing darkness materialized around Roger, swallowing him whole. It all happened so fast that Roger didn't even have the chance to react. In fact, he didn't even see the attack.
From the moment Max moved to the second the black sphere consumed him, everything was silent, invisible, absolute. One second he was about to crush his opponent with a ten-pronged ice assault, and the next he was completely engulfed in black fire.
The battlefield, frozen just moments ago, now cracked and groaned as dark flames danced against the frost. And the entire Battle Realm watched in stunned silence.
"What is this?! AHHH! I'm burning! My ice… it's not working! It's not working against these flames! I'm burning!" Roger's desperate screams echoed from within the pitch-black flaming sphere, his voice raw with panic and agony.
Inside, the Absolute Reaper flames coiled like cursed serpents, devouring his flesh, melting his bones, and rendering all his icy defenses useless. His powerful frost techniques, which once froze entire battlefields, were utterly meaningless against the devouring nature of the black flames.
They didn't just burn—they obliterated.
Max stood still outside the sphere, his gaze cold and unmoving, watching the flames twist and dance as Roger screamed in horror. But he wasn't satisfied. Not yet. With a single motion of his hand, dark energy surged through him again, and he raised his palm.
Then—Boom!—the sphere collapsed inward on itself with a violent implosion. A shockwave of black fire burst out, tearing through the icy land and kicking up waves of frost and debris. And then… silence.
The black sphere was gone. The battlefield returned to its frozen stillness, but Roger had vanished completely. There wasn't a trace of him left. No body. No ashes. Not even a smear of blood. Just empty, scorched frost.
In the real world, Roger still lived—no one truly died in the Battle Realm—but that didn't make it any less brutal. The pain he suffered was very real. Every second of being burned alive, of having his body torn apart by cursed flames, was imprinted into his mind like a nightmare he couldn't escape.
Roger Hale, the frost region's famed warlord, had suffered one of the most agonizing deaths the Battle Realm had witnessed in a long time. And the one who did it… was just a masked boy known as White Death.
Silence. Absolute, bone-deep silence.
In that very moment, the entire Battle Realm—an arena that usually roared with excitement, shouts, and endless chatter—fell into a state of pin-drop quiet.
Tens of thousands of people from every corner of the Middle Domain had gathered here, watching through the countless floating screens, but now not a single voice rose from the crowd.
It was as if the entire realm had been frozen in time. No one moved, no one breathed too loudly, and no one dared to break the eerie stillness that gripped the air.