"You're smart. You know what I want. If you don't want trouble, hand it over." Ur's cold gaze fixed on Diana.
Diana glanced at the carnage ahead. Fear bubbled up from deep inside, but she forced herself to remain composed.
"I'm a member of the Dori family and your employer's sister. Even if I told you to attack me, would you dare?"
Slap!
Before her words even finished, Ur struck her across the face with a sharp backhand.
"Hand it over. I don't like repeating myself three times." His expression was cold, unchanging, utterly indifferent.
Diana froze, pressing a hand to her cheek, pain radiated from the spot; her face a mixture of disbelief and horror.
"You… you dare hit me… you dare—!" She trembled, her visage gradually twisting from noble elegance to something grotesque, screaming, "You're dead! I will kill you! I will kill you!" Her eyes blazed with unrestrained malice.
Ur responded with another backhand.
Slap!
The crisp sound echoed across the ice plain.
Not only Diana, but even Pasfield and the three from Angel's Wings gaped in disbelief, as if they were witnessing a ghost.
Is he really a man? He just hit such a beautiful woman? The thought ran through the minds of the men present.
Pasfield, who had been angry at Diana for her previous ambush, now felt a sudden pang of sympathy for his sister. Facing such a ruthless person, it was almost a cruel fate.
Jelka, on the other hand, remained calm, even feeling a sense of "finally balanced" justice.
Clearly, it wasn't her fault. It was that Ur didn't discriminate.
Ever since Ur had seriously wounded Jelka, she had felt a quiet anger. She was, after all, Angel's Wing's most beautiful member. Others had always fawned over her, but to Ur, she was no different than anyone else.
Her vanity had taken a blow. But now, seeing Diana in such a pitiful state, the scales balanced in her mind.
Thank goodness Ur didn't have mind-reading or face-reading abilities, or he would have spat blood at her thoughts. Even in the middle of this deadly battle, her thought process was surprisingly peculiar.
"You dare harm my lady? Our family will never forgive you!" The butler-bodyguard, who had been kicked flying by Ur, roared with anger.
Diana, still stunned from the two slaps, couldn't respond.
Ur, however, walked up, with one precise kick, sent her flying nearly a hundred meters. Her injuries worsened; several ribs were broken, but he no longer had to hear her shrill complaints.
Silence blanketed the ice plain.
Ur's ruthlessness had terrified everyone. The survivors—those dead, alive, or feigning either—held their breaths, trying not to attract his attention.
Finally, after this "friendly" exchange, Ur retrieved the navigation chart from Diana. Without delay, he left, tossing Diana aside. His team departed immediately.
After all, not only was Pasfield searching for the Azure Water, but Ur also needed to secure his own assets before anyone else could reach them first.
Before leaving, Ur returned to where Diana's party had docked their ship, unleashing two explosive fireballs that destroyed their vessels, then returned to the Dori XVII.
Due to his relationship with Pasfield and the Dori family, Ur would not have left Diana and her companions stranded permanently, but he could leave them temporarily if he wished. Though Angel's Wing's three members plus Diana's faction were still weak, allowing them to regroup under her sister could have caused Ur significant trouble.
With the chart in hand, Pasfield had no time to relax. He activated the magic crystals, pushing the Dori XVII to full speed. However, after nearly a full day of travel, an unexpected problem arose.
"Ur! Come look! This map… something's wrong!"
Ur had been meditating on the ship's upper deck, recovering his magic power and adapting to its slight increase.
Pasfield rushed up, visibly flustered.
"What's wrong?" Ur stood, noting the urgency. He knew Pasfield well enough now to sense that if he was this flustered, something serious had gone wrong.
"This map is wrong," Pasfield said grimly. "The Vichy tribe's map is fake. It doesn't mark the location of the Gulya Glacier at all."
"What?" Ur snatched the chart from his hands and examined it carefully.
He had only skimmed it earlier, not noticing anything amiss. But now, inspecting every detail, he immediately spotted the discrepancies.
"There's… no endpoint. How is this possible?"
Suspicion and doubt flickered in his eyes. Had he truly been deceived?
No, that was impossible.
Ever since the Vichy tribe handed the map to Diana, Ur had kept a close eye on her. She could not have tampered with it.
Moreover, he had personally retrieved this chart from Diana. No one else could have swapped it. Ur trusted his own search skills implicitly. At that moment, there was simply no way Diana could have hidden another map.
The map, it seemed, had been deliberately falsified.
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Next Chapter: The Iceberg
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