I Have Become The Snow Maiden I Created

Translator: Marctempest

Editor/Proofreader: TempWane

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Chapter 15: The Journey to the Empire (3)

Sasasak-

A sinister noise crept closer.

Realizing the emergency, I quickly ran toward the campfire.

Pababak-! Snakes followed, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them.

My heart pounded loudly.

Panic-stricken people were frantically shaking off the snakes however they could.

“What’s all this commotion?!”

“Where did these things come from?!”

“Aaaah! My leg got bitten!”

The midnight silence was shattered, and the area was filled with screams and loud noises.

Among the evacuees, there were only a few armed with proper weapons.

The rest grabbed whatever they could, from wooden pokers that had been stirring the fire to firewood, and began swinging.

The snakes weren’t strong.

The ones struck by these makeshift weapons fell limply.

However, their fallen numbers were immediately replenished severalfold.

“This is…”

I stood in a daze, looking around.

A black sea.

The writhing mass filling the ground resembled turbulent waves.

There was no escape route in sight.

“It’s the Serpent God…! The Serpent God sent them! We’re all as good as dead now!”

Hearing the despairing voice of a man brought back a memory.

They were small, but their appearance was undeniably that of the Serpent God.

That’s when I remembered the powers of certain minor gods—abilities to summon their familiars.

These weren’t the Serpent God itself, nor even its avatars.

They were beings you’d call minions or familiars—most likely a type of special monster known as “Black Snake Hatchlings.”

At that moment, several black snakes leapt toward me.

Their target was my throat. I quickly repelled them with a blast of cold breath.

This was dangerous.

I looked around urgently but didn’t see the Serpent God’s main body.

That was a small relief, but it didn’t mean we were safe.

The god’s absence only meant it deemed its familiars sufficient for the task.

At that moment, I saw invisible blades slicing through the snakes’ necks.

Anasha’s voice rang out.

“Everyone! Circle around the campfire! Let’s form a defensive formation!”

Though she had been momentarily flustered, she quickly regained her composure.

Her commanding voice inspired instinctive trust, and the people obeyed.

It was a sound strategy.

Snakes had poor eyesight to begin with.

They relied on vibrations or heat detection, making the darkness their home turf.

Humans, on the other hand, were utterly dependent on vision.

Without light, they’d be wiped out in an instant.

Fighting in the light was our best shot.

Besides, fire was something most animals feared.

“Quellière! I saw you using ice magic earlier. Are you a mage?”

Anasha shouted urgently.

At some point, she had positioned herself next to me.

“…Yes.”

“That’s a relief. Every combatant counts in this situation…! Please support me!”

She requested my assistance.

There was a confidence in her demeanor that made me follow her without hesitation.

Anasha was indeed a skilled mage.

Her casting speed and spell potency were exceptional, and her control over magic was leagues ahead of mine.

She was the most effective fighter on the battlefield. I focused on adding support with my cold breath.

Swak-!

Wind sliced through another snake’s neck.

Pointing her wand forward, she spoke.

“This must be the work of the Serpent God, right?”

“Probably.”

“Do you think they started chasing us as soon as we left the city? What a terrifying deity.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Even when playing the game, I had hunted numerous minor gods, but the Serpent God, who had taken control of Yulistia, was in a league of its own in terms of cruelty.

It was so extreme that it felt strange.

Sending so many familiars just because we left the city?

There were still plenty of humans left in the city.

It was as if it was dead set on eliminating us, no matter what.

“Anasha! There are too many of them··· Ahhh!”

Although a significant number of people had chosen to migrate, the sheer number of snakes was overwhelming.

No matter how desperately we fought, casualties kept mounting.

Even Anasha’s expression darkened.

The Black Snake Hatchlings weren’t inherently strong.

Their defenses were weak, their bite force wasn’t fatal, and they weren’t venomous.

To kill their prey, they could only rely on incessant biting.

But… when they swarmed together, the story changed.

The lack of killing power became irrelevant when faced with a swarm.

Their attacks turned into fear and despair.

Even if you wanted to die, they wouldn’t let you go easily.

You’d have to endure what felt like eternal agony, slowly fading away.

Saaaaak- Aaaaah-!

The battlefield echoed with unpleasant screams.

The ringing in my ears pounded against my skull, and my head throbbed.

What came to mind was… one of the Snow Maiden’s special magic abilities—’Transformation.’

If I used it, I could at least escape on my own.

“Everyone, hold on! You can’t fall!”

A gloomy weight coiled within me.

After all, I wasn’t supposed to be in this world, in a place this dangerous.

Being dragged here against my will and subjected to this… it was too much.

For over a year, I had lived buried in loneliness and monotony in that desolate land.

Was it so wrong to want a little bit of excitement?

That’s why I came out to the continent, only to end up like this.

So, what do they expect me to do?

Spend eternity in that pure white paradise? No… Could a Snow Maiden even die of natural causes?

The Quellière I created wasn’t a living being nor a spirit, according to the setting.

Around me was a hellscape.

Surrounded by vicious black snakes, people were dying slowly.

Their skin was scratched, blood flowed, and the wounds kept increasing.

Soon, their bodies would be completely covered in injuries.

“God…”

It was the work of the Serpent God.

The one who cast me into this world must also be some so-called god.

I loathed them.

How great could they be to ruin someone’s life as they pleased?

And why… Why do they push me into these unsettling moral dilemmas?

Some people must live.

That much was true.

But I had already come to know these people.

I remembered their faces and their voices.

If things continued like this, they’d all perish.

If I alone survived pathetically, would I be able to forget this moment?

Wouldn’t it haunt me for the rest of my life?

I didn’t want that.

Some might call me foolish, but I wasn’t a particularly strong person.

I was just an ordinary citizen.

“Quellière?”

My eyes naturally hardened.

Rage welled up.

When my support magic stopped, Anasha turned to look at me.

My gaze must have been fiercer than ever.

“Disgusting.”

“What?”

“The Gods are.”

Judging by her stunned expression, she must have found my words shocking.

I surveyed the battlefield.

The group was primarily made up of ordinary citizens.

I had thought only Anasha and I were capable combatants, but I was wrong.

There was one more.

A composed woman with short purple hair—Sigila.

She had tied a dagger to a wooden branch she had been using as a fire poker, turning it into a makeshift spear.

Despite the dire situation, she remained calm.

She wielded her weapon cleanly, slicing the snakes in one swift motion.

Given their numbers, she wasted no time, cutting down several at once.

Her skills and resolve.

There was no way those were ordinary.

Was she really that capable?

I was curious about her identity, but having a strong ally was always a good thing.

Suddenly, I chuckled softly.

It wouldn’t have been noticeable on the surface, but it didn’t matter.

“You there······.”

Everyone was fighting, even if they were terrified.

And yet here I was, thinking about running away.

What a pathetic excuse of a person I was.

Transform and flee? It could work.

Though not invincible during the disguise, I could escape the snakes’ range while transformed.

But would I truly survive afterward?

I wasn’t sure.

The black sea stretched endlessly.

I had no idea where it ended.

Besides, transformation magic consumed an enormous amount of mana.

If my mana ran out mid-transformation, I’d plummet.

Even if I escaped safely, the snakes would continue their pursuit.

Could I deal with that while completely drained of mana?

There was a far safer, more thrilling, and all-encompassing way for everyone to survive.

“How foolish…”

A simple idea.

One I could have thought of with just a little more consideration.

But in my panic, my mind had frozen.

I prided myself on being a clever and resourceful veteran, and yet I was this pathetic.

A self-deprecating laugh escaped me.

I had just been devising a plan to take down the Serpent God not long ago.

I hadn’t acquired the “necessary artifact,” but if the Serpent God itself wasn’t here…

These familiars were nothing I couldn’t handle on my own.

“Ahhhh! Help me!”

At that moment, a scream more desperate than any before echoed through the air.

It seemed that his posture had collapsed. The body of the fallen man was engulfed by a swarm of black snakes.

“This is…! Miss Quellière! Quickly, assist me…”

A life-or-death situation.

I didn’t want to watch someone die right in front of me, so I gently raised my hand.

Magic surged from my outstretched palm.

At the same time, snow began to fall.

Ice crystals and snowflakes fluttered gracefully, like dancers twirling in the wind. The delicate dance soon turned into a fierce, turbulent storm.

…As some may know, snakes are cold-blooded creatures.

And cold-blooded creatures are highly vulnerable to temperature changes.

Unlike mammals, they lack a system to regulate their body temperature, so fluctuations in air or water temperature can significantly affect their vital functions.

Moreover, minor gods were essentially ordinary animals that had been mutated into monstrous forms through contact with divine power.

Such transformations often came with inherent flaws.

The prominent exposure of weaknesses was one of those representative flaws.

Of course, if their overwhelming physical strength couldn’t be countered, those weaknesses might not matter… but I could exploit them. After all, I was practically their natural predator.

Thus, what I targeted wasn’t merely a weakness—it was a blind spot.

The black tide of snakes froze in place.

“This is… what in the world… Miss Quellière, could it be that you are…?”

Anasha muttered in stunned disbelief.

“…Hey… isn’t it summer right now…?”

Even Sigila, usually calm, lost her composure, her voice trembling.

Their reactions amused me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

They were exactly the kind of responses I had expected.

Snow Maiden’s ultimate magic, “Blizzard.”

One of the exclusive skills I created solely for the sake of aesthetic effect.

A fierce blizzard, accompanied by howling winds, swept through the entire area.

But there was a problem.

A problem I had anticipated.

While the overwhelming mana consumption of Blizzard was an issue, that wasn’t the main concern.

As someone who couldn’t even properly control ice spears and could only manage cold breaths, there was no way I could fully control a Blizzard.

The mana inside me went berserk, wildly out of control.

Instead of stopping it, I sped it up even further. To wipe out all these snakes, I couldn’t afford to hold back even a single speck of mana.

My mana was being drained completely.

The mana circuits in my body trembled violently, like a truck with its steering wheel broken.

It had been a long time since my body had turned translucent.

I looked at my hand, now see-through, before lifting my head.

A pure white world stretched before me.

*

…Anasha Sheryl stood dumbfounded, staring at the scene before her.

She had once been a magic instructor employed by the Duke of Grypheon’s household.

Not just an elite in name, but a true elite, treated accordingly.

Through her role as a tutor, she had developed a close relationship with the duke’s young daughter.

However, the duke’s extreme fondness for his late-born daughter proved to be her downfall.

Anasha was dismissed simply because the child had gotten a minor scratch on her hand during a lesson.

Such obsessive overprotectiveness.

The duke already had a son who was a renowned swordmaster and heir, celebrated for his talent.

What kind of monster did he intend to turn his genius daughter into?

Losing her position wasn’t a problem for Anasha, though.

She had saved up plenty of money and had long yearned to explore foreign lands.

After wandering across the continent at her leisure for some time, she eventually settled in Yuristia.

It was a small but pleasant city.

At least, it was until the Serpent God appeared out of nowhere.

The peace that had seemed so natural for years was shattered in a single day. Many brave soldiers had lost their lives trying to fight back on the very first day of its arrival.

Although Anasha wasn’t lacking in combat experience, that only made her more aware of how powerless she was against it.

She knew it was an unwinnable fight.

But humans are creatures of intellect.

When you can’t solve something yourself, you seek help from others. She decided to appeal to the Empire for assistance.

So, when she offhandedly mentioned to Quellière that there was no hope of defeating the Serpent God, it had been more of a joke, spoken with resignation. She had intended to seek help no matter what.

And then there was Quellière.

From the moment she first saw her, Anasha had been blinded.

Because she was just too beautiful.

A beauty so stunning that she seemed like a goddess from myth.

If her looks had been more moderately stunning, perhaps Anasha might have felt jealousy as a fellow woman—but her beauty transcended such feelings.

Instead, even Anasha found herself gazing at her in admiration.

And so, with curiosity piqued, she approached Quellière to speak.

Quellière was a cold, aloof woman.

At first glance, it seemed as if she were putting up walls around herself.

She seemed to carry some kind of untold story, but Anasha, ever considerate, chose not to pry.

Her icy demeanor made it difficult to view her as simply having a unique personality.

Soon enough, Quellière found herself isolated from the group.

Anasha, unable to ignore her plight, tried to help her by keeping an eye on her from a distance.

…Which was why the current situation was utterly unexpected.

When the legion of black snakes arrived, Anasha realized Quellière was a mage.

A rare ice-element mage, at that.

Until then, she had only thought of her as a skilled magic-user, one among many. But then…

Snow began to fall.

A raging blizzard enveloped the area.

At the center of it all stood a woman in a white robe, with hair as pale as snow and blue as frost.

Anasha stared at her in astonishment, her mind blank.

Suddenly, a scene flashed through her mind.

—I can defeat it.

Those words, spoken casually and calmly by Quellière when Anasha had joked about the Serpent God.

At the time, she had thought it was merely a joke, a dry remark to match her own sarcasm. But now… was it truly said without even a shred of doubt? Was it entirely sincere?

Unconsciously, Anasha took a step back.

Though Quellière had seemed so close, she now felt impossibly far away. She was so distracted that she failed to notice a rock underfoot.

She tripped and fell to the ground.

Hwooooo—!

The blizzard continued to rage on, fierce and relentless.

The campfire had long since been extinguished by the chill. In a world devoid of light, Anasha slowly lifted her gaze.

Her eyes captured a breathtaking sight.

At the heart of the blizzard.

A woman stood tall, her expression serene and noble.

Her skin, so white it seemed translucent—like that of a snow fairy—glimmered faintly.

And beyond her…

…Stars were falling.