At the very least, it would be impossible to expect much from my Ice Sword since my opponent was Karwenz.

We had the same background and upbringing. It would be impossible for a Northlander not to be accustomed to ice and snow. Our warriors would play around in the snow ever since young. Only outsiders from other places would be allowed the newbie excuse of having trouble advancing due to the weather here.

Even though Karwenz hadn’t returned to the Northlands for a winter battle for many years already, it was impossible for me to expect that Karwenz had already forgotten about how to fight in ice and snow weather calamities.

The knowledge and techniques carved most deeply in oneself would always be the ones from childhood, after all. What one learned ever since young wouldn’t simply be knowledge and techniques, as it would also create the basic foundation for a person’s personality and way of thinking.

Fishermen living by the sea would fear the unknown of the endless fickle sea. Veteran sailors and ship captains would always be a bit superstitious about luck being more important than power level in the sea.

Eich’s mainlanders viewed Northlanders as taciturn, barbaric, unreasonable, and as sturdy as the tundra on the icy plains, as a people who were even less civilized than barbarians.

This was indeed a type of bias, but in a way it was also a choice made in order to survive.

As a Northlander, when you constantly met nothing but bad weather, and had to face endless despair due to the extreme lack of resources, no outsider would possibly understand how resolute your personality would become. Such a personality became a necessary condition for surviving in the Northlands.

You couldn’t count on good weather here, as bad weather was always far more common.

You couldn’t hope for good luck, as the dangerous natural conditions would always make anything worse with the fastest speed possible. Any young livestock or young plant exposed to the weather outside wouldn’t possibly live for a single day. You would have to think everything over many times and prepare as much as you possibly could in order to receive a harvest.

One accident or a sudden snow calamity might make one’s plans fail completely. So, your hard work for the entire past year had become useless? You’d better hurry up and crawl back up because winter was coming, and you would freeze to death unless you prepared enough food for winter. The cruel Northlands would never give you enough time to sigh and complain.

Was it really depressing to always be pessimistic about everything? When the great majority of situations would always worsen beyond one’s expectations, such pessimism would actually become a “normal” way of thinking.

One required tenacity, the resolution to shamelessly live on no matter how bad the situation became. Perhaps outsiders would consider this way of living quite stiff and sad, but it was indeed necessary in the Northlands.

“…It’s all actually the same. Even in places other than the Northlands, cruel reality is everywhere in this damned world. If you want to live a good life, then there’s no such thing as too many preparations or backup plans. Only by calculating for as many things as possible and planning as carefully as you can will one survive.”

“Well, the world is just as unpredictable as the Northlands’ blizzards. Misfortune might descend at any time, so shouldn’t we just focus on having fun in the moment? At the very least, when I die, I will be able to loudly declare to the entire world that ‘I, Karwenz, had a far more enjoyable life than any of you did,’ and ‘I had plenty of fun in this life!'”

Karwenz and I were identical twins who grew up in the same environment with the same status. Yet, we ended up having completely opposite personalities and ways of thinking. Was this a joke of Fate? Or was it because of the Goddesses of Order and Chaos? Or, was it simply just a… coincidence?

“Roland, your ice and snow is useless against me. You should stop it, otherwise you’ll be dragged to your death by this meaningless mana consumption.”

Karwenz wasn’t lying at all. He was enjoying this fight against me, and he didn’t want to obtain victory too easily because of something like this.

Any ability that changed the entire area, no matter what type, would always require tremendous mana expenditure to maintain.

Rather than opening the door to the dimensional barrier, Karwenz probably wanted more to have a proper fun fight—the crueler, the better. He was such a single-celled organism…

“You bastard single-celled organism, other people justify the means with the end, but you’re actually forgetting about the end because of the means!”

“Other people? Are you talking about yourself? Your current objective should be quite clear. You can only stop the door to the dimensional barrier from opening by killing me. Why are you hesitating? Bring out any aces that you have! Let me have my fun!”

I confirmed once more that Karwenz was the type who didn’t want to use his brain rather than being brainless. He desired stimulation and amusement far more than anything that had to do with reason. He had incredible logic and intelligence, yet he only ever used those to think about “how to have more fun”, that selfish bastard.

“If a human allows their sense of logic and reason to be subordinate to instinct, then what difference is there between him and a beast?”

This blizzard was obscuring our vision. A snow mountain was collapsing. Amongst all this snow, our voices were one of the only weapons we could still spar with.

“Thinking so much about everything and living according to so many rules? What difference is there between you and a puppet?”

I kept buying time while speaking seemingly useless things. My Ice Sword Northlands was incredibly ineffective against Karwenz.

“Aaaah!”

My shout of pain came slightly after the pain in my body.

Every judgement would take twice as long as the next one while also doubling the effect. The next judgement would come after 16 minutes, but I would likely be unable to wait that long.

I was capable of using Holy Light on myself to heal by exhausting my life, while Karwenz could devour souls to heal his injuries. 16 minutes would be more than enough for both of us to completely heal our physical bodies. Using Law Sword Vengeance alone to determine victory would require waiting for the judgement to become powerful enough to instantly kill both of us. That would take far too long.

Judging from the current combat situation, Karwenz was already far more accustomed to this snow and ice environment as he was the type who thought mostly with his instincts. He easily dodged hailstorms beforehand and dug pits to protect himself from avalanches. His reactions were quite swift. If this went on, paying so much mana to maintain a world of ice and snow around us would be incredibly unwise for me.

Not far away, the altar was now completely covered in snow. Either hail or an avalanche had already destroyed the Goddess statue on the right. The lower half of the altar was completely buried in snow. It would be impossible to use without some repairs.

Still, I wasn’t working so hard at maintaining this environment simply to destroy the altar. I could have used many methods which were far quicker and more convenient if that was all I had wanted.

I kept persisting in maintaining Northlands’ ice and snow arena effect despite knowing that it was incredibly ineffective against Karwenz. This was for more than just limiting his mobility.

Since I had already achieved my first objective of damaging the altar, then I might as well test out this new ace I finished researching not long ago. This ace was definitely powerful enough to be at the Creator Goddess’s level.

Didn’t Karwenz want to see my aces? This ace was probably more than enough to crush a Main God.

“Arise, Conservation’s army,” I called out in a low voice, causing all of the frigid land to tremble as countless white figures crawled out from the snowy ground. They had bodies constructed from ice and snow, with skeletons made from crystallized ice.

These existences were clearly the crystallization of snow and ice, yet they didn’t have the dullness and coldness of elemental creatures. They seemed more like newborns who crawled around on the ground in confusion.

However, their figures were changing swiftly as skin of ice and snow grew on their skeletons. Their limbs began to evolve into ordinary limbs. It was as if they completed an evolution from newborn to adult, from monkey to human in just a short instant.

“First is the physical body…”

In the world of Eich, ice and snow was probably the least hospitable environment of all for any life. But in the Hell dimension, all undead physical bodies were constructed with ice and snow as the foundation. In Hell, ice was the element of life.

In my eyes, the Northlands wasn’t a forbidden zone for life at all. Activating my Ice Sword Northlands also meant that I had opened up my own domain of life.

The ice and snow scattered by Ice Sword Northlands became seeds for life that gave birth to various creatures of ice and snow. Still, I really needed to thank the “selfless” Undead Emperor Conservation who donated all of her research results to me, enabling me to accomplish this.

Back during my fight against her, when she was trapped in my personal Hell world, she had shown me something inconceivable while using her nearly infinite mana—the magical creation of bones.

Any Undead Emperor with no undead underlings would have their combat strength greatly reduced. Corpses were forever a necessary combat resource for any undead mage… until Conservation’s research results suddenly arrived out of nowhere.

Conservation used magic to create bones which should have originally required something formerly living. She was then able to use these “bone resources” just like ordinary bones and control them using undead magic to create undead cannon fodder and bone giants.

To her, perhaps this was only a simple shortcut for saving time on having to gather undead resources. Only she would be able to extravagantly waste so much mana on creating artificial bones because she had practically infinite mana with her principle of conservation. But, when I saw her technique, it was as if I had received a heaven-sent revelation.

Hell’s existence allowed the ice element to become the element of life under certain conditions. That was the foundation.

Artificial bone creation magic was about using magic to create bones with the properties of life. This was a process and technique for creating artificial life.

Once I had the foundation and technique, all I needed to do was to use the two major tools of ice magic and undead magic to constantly experiment and extrapolate until I finally arrived at my own completed research result.

What just happened seemed like I had only summoned the lowest-level elemental creatures. However, this had actually touched upon a realm where only the Creator Goddess previously held power: creating life.

Yet, this was only the beginning. This technique originally was nothing more than pure theoretical research. Creating a horde of babies on the battlefield would be completely meaningless.

However, something unexpected then occurred. A”nice person” gave me a “generous gift” and filled in the biggest missing link for my research, which instantly allowed this ultimate technique to become incredibly practical… no, incredibly scary.

Perhaps some readers might have already guessed. The “nice person” I referred to was the Sky Tower Spirit.

His knowledge on artificial souls and knowledge injection technology combined with my own soul separation technique finally created a Creator Goddess level forbidden spell, which I named Roland’s Eighth Original Sin.

Army-level, city-level, country-level, species-level, God-level forbidden spells, and so on. Forbidden spells had a simple classification system based on the destructive power of the forbidden spell. However, if I had to classify my Roland’s Eighth Original Sin forbidden spell, then I could only describe it as a world-level forbidden spell.

I had originally planned for this spell to be used against multiple Main Gods and the endless Chaos Abyss army. Karwenz should be proud to die to this spell!

“Forbidden spell, Roland’s Eighth Original Sin, part one, Conservation’s army has now ended. Part two, activate… the forbidden result of artificial souls.”