The Ice Age Came And I Just Got Married - Chapter 31

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 31
I’d expected as much. That’s why I’d deliberately turned to glance behind me, making a show of relaxing my guard.
“A wolf pressures its prey, searches for weaknesses, and waits patiently for the moment it slips. So if you want to stand against one, Eve, you need to lay bait and set traps.”
Bang!
Click. Boom! Click. Boom—boom!
I caught the first rushing wolf in the head and sent flames erupting behind it.
I spun around and fired at the two wolves that had flinched from the blaze before lunging again, putting bullets through their skulls.
Silence settled over the corridor, broken only by roaring flames. I withdrew the Red Stone Power. The fire subsided, and darkness rushed in to fill the void.
“Eve, if Mother and Father ever tell you to go somewhere with just them, you don’t go. You tell them you won’t unless Graham and Julian are with you. Do you understand?”
Looking back on it now, it seemed Graham had said an awful lot of suspicious things.
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he’d warned me against following Mother and Father.
No matter how hard I thought about it, there was no one to answer that question.
‘Besides, my parents disappeared long before the Ice Age came anyway. And they’d never said anything like that before they vanished…….’
Would Graham be all right?
Now that I thought about it, I’d never heard why Graham had gone to study abroad in Norsellan, our neighbor country.
He’d left nothing but a letter, without a chance for us to talk.
‘……I don’t know. First, I need to find Logan.’
With that thought, I checked the wolf corpses once more.
They didn’t look like ordinary animals—they seemed closer to the Snow Monsters I’d read about in novels.
‘Could they be experimental animals?’
If they were mutated wolves that had suddenly appeared in the underground of a military base, it seemed plausible enough.
The fact that I was coming from the Research Lab made it seem even more likely, though the truth remained unknowable.
I walked past the wolf carcasses. I didn’t know the way forward, but I could sense the presence of Winter Stone in a certain direction.
It felt like the Red Stone aura I’d shared with Logan, Marcus, and Charlotte before.
Thump! Thump-thump-thump!
From somewhere, I heard a faint, dull sound—like knocking on a door.
Howwwwl—!
Then came the sound of a wolf’s cry.
I created flames again to light my way, chambered my shotgun, and pressed forward, watching ahead while keeping alert to my rear.
Thump!
Thump! Thump!
The knocking was growing closer. These had to be living people. Several of them, too.
I ran toward the sound.
End of the corridor.
A heavy iron door appeared. It was a solid, sturdy door—the kind even trained soldiers would struggle to force open with strength alone.
Above the door hung a rusted nameplate.
[Isolation Zone]
And in that instant,
Howwwwwl—!
A wolf’s cry erupted from directly behind me. The wolves had appeared.
Pairs of blue eyes began to materialize in the darkness, one by one.
At least five of them.
Each one was twice the size of an ordinary wolf.
Bang!
A rough voice called out from beyond the iron door.
“Is there anyone out there?!”
“If you’re alive, answer us!”
I didn’t know how long they’d been trapped here, but the heavy frost crusted in the door’s gaps suggested they’d been confined for quite some time.
I glanced at the iron door, then turned my gun toward the wolves. If I opened the door now, they’d pour right through.
I had to deal with them first.
Click.
I chambered the shotgun again.
Boom—!
The shot rang out.
The lead wolf’s shoulder exploded.
I’m good at hunting, but I don’t have the kind of combat power Logan does.
So I’d use the Red Stone Power.
I opened my palm. A small spark kindled into flame, then swelled into a roiling ball of fire.
The fireball spun fiercely, scattering embers. After a moment of suffocating stillness, the flames surged toward the wolves that were charging at me.
Whoosh—boom!
Whoosh!
Brilliant flames erupted in the dim corridor like a bomb detonating, fire rising up with menacing force.
Three fell dead in an instant, and while the remaining two faltered—
Click.
I chambered a fresh round into the shotgun and took aim, hunting them down.
Bang. Bang.
Two shots, both finding their mark in the skull—
I straightened from my crouch.
The crackling of dying flames filled the silence.
It was over.
I turned immediately toward the iron door behind me, studying it in the quiet.
The voices of the people who’d been in such chaos moments ago were nowhere to be heard.
The explosion and gunfire from just before seemed to have told them what to expect.
They likely thought I was dead.
Blood trickled from my nose.
I wiped it away roughly with my hand, then reached for the door handle before pulling back.
The metal was almost painfully cold.
I pulled gloves from my pocket, slipped them on, and turned the handle. It wouldn’t budge—the metal was frozen solid.
Now I understood why the people on the other side were trapped inside. The iron door had been sealed by ice.
I removed the gloves again and concentrated the Red Stone Power into the palms of my hands.
The frost and ice coating the metal door melted, water trickling down.
Click.
I turned the handle, and the door swung open.
Creak.
I eased the door open and thrust the shotgun barrel straight through.
“Don’t shoot.”
Someone on the other side shouted. I heard the sound of rounds being chambered.
I shaped fire into a sphere and rolled it across the floor.
“Ahhhhh!”
A scream pierced the air.
But as the ball of fire settled and blazed brighter, expanding in size, the interior finally came into view.
As expected, soldiers were trapped in the Isolation Zone. The thick iron doors had frozen solid, leaving them sealed and immobile.
Five soldiers in total.
Three of them had weapons trained on me.
“How long have you been in here?”
At my question, the soldiers aiming at me exchanged glances.
“About ten days, I’d say.”
Tally marks on the floor showed they’d been counting the days.
“How did you open the door? There had to be one of those wolf monsters out there…….”
“I killed it.”
“You did what?”
Ignoring their bewildered responses, I assessed their condition.
The men in Navy uniforms were armed, but not in combat gear—more like they’d fled their quarters in a panic and gotten trapped.
“Did all five of you run in here to escape the wolves?”
“That’s not it. It was a trap.”
“A trap?”
“There was a traitor. Food running low, too many people.”
Ah. Could the person who opened the door for our group have been that traitor?
It seemed likely. Logan had mentioned feeling like someone was watching us.
“And on top of everything, mad wolves stalking the corridors of the Naval Base. Every day was hell.”
According to the soldiers’ account, the Ice Age had brought significant changes throughout the Naval Base.
Temperatures had plummeted exponentially even in the deepest levels underground.
Many had abandoned the base. About a month in, only about twenty people remained.
Some had wandered outside by mistake and frozen to death; others had died in their sleep without proper cold protection.
That left only six people alive in the base now, they said.
And one of them had betrayed the rest.
“What’s the traitor’s goal? Hoarding all the food for themselves? Then they’d still be somewhere in this base?”
The soldiers nodded at my question.
Now that I thought about it, I could sense a faint aura of a Winter Stone, distinct from the Red Stone that Logan and the others carried.
“Could that traitor have one of those special minerals with unique power?”
The soldiers’ eyes widened slightly at my question.
“That’s right. It has a blue Winter Stone.”
So it seemed they’d lured the soldiers into this Isolation Zone and then sealed the iron door by freezing it shut.
The Blue Stone was a Winter Stone that could create ice, snow, and water.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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