The morning arrived, and Arad found himself heading out of the cave with Gojo to scout the ruined city before they took on its ancient walls.

Without knowledge, they’ll be walking into a death trap.

Liliana wanted to go, but with her power, surviving the cold and sneaking around might be a bit too much. She knew Arad and Gojo won’t return before killing the Blizzard Monster, and so, she did at least manage to get Gojo to promise her they won’t fight it until they got the city under control, and gave her enough time to arm it.

Arad and Gojo didn’t intend to just approach or look from afar; the two of them wanted to dig beneath the snow and get as close to the walls as possible.

The goal was simple: to observe and understand the steel golems as best as they could. At the current moment, Gojo’s plan was to hit them with ice and cold magic to rapidly cool them and cause their steel bodies to shatter, but that plan could be risky, and they’ll need the Yetis’ help for it.

To approach, Gojo used his magic to part the snow and crawl beneath it. He managed to create a tunnel wide enough for Arad to barely fit in and crawl behind him.

The plan at first looked unrealistic, but with the snow being over ten feet deep, the two could comfortably crawl beneath its surface.

Upon reaching the city’s walls, Arad and Gojo started to doubt their ability to defeat the steel golems. What they saw was truly troubling. The walls were all infused with magic, and from what Gojo could tell, they would repair themselves upon being damaged.

That same repair magic flew through the entire city and its buildings, even the golems were no exception. That meant the steel golems were nearly immortal.

That had spelled the end of their first day of scouting. Without being able to get inside the city, looking for more detail would be nearly impossible, and the cold wind was already picking up, so they had to hurry.

When they returned to the cave, they found Haru and Liliana waiting for them, and the Yetis seemed to have stayed quiet and obedient the whole time. Gojo had gone out of his way to shield the camp with stone walls, but it seems the Yetis aren’t getting aggressive. In fact, they have brought fish and dead monsters and dropped them by the camp.

Thanks to the Yetis, Arad and Gojo didn’t have to worry about food for now. And as a thank you, Gojo took some time to remodel and repair the Yeti’s destroyed cavern. His true goal was to carve a private spot beside the hot spring for them. In this cold, he couldn’t ignore such an opportunity.

The next day, Gojo and Arad went out again to scout the city, but this time, they climbed above one of the nearby hills and built an ice tower. From high above, Gojo had a better view of the city and could learn a few more things about its structure.

The city seemed to have four cores, one in each cardinal direction. Then there was the city’s center, a massive spire that reached the sky and acted as an anchor for everything.

From how the magic flowed, Gojo found it simple to guess that they wouldn’t be able to even enter the city. Those four cores operate the entire city and fuel it with energy, a similar spell to what Merlin built in Alina before to protect the people from the cold.

In the past, Merlin had sent Arad on a quest to bring her a red dragon’s heart to power a heater for the entire city of Alina. Here, those cores seem to be made from white dragon hearts. This made Gojo pretty sure about the reason the white dragon hated this city and its king so much.

The city had several defenses, and the first was a powerful barrier surrounding it as a whole. The walls were just decoration, and the invisible barrier looked to be powerful enough to withstand a draconic assault. Knowing the king of this city had a beef with a powerful white dragon, such protection should’ve been expected.

Destroying any of the four cores would cause that barrier to collapse.

The city’s second line of defense its powerful repair ability. Even if the walls were toppled, the magic would repair them. Destroying another core would stop this power from working, but there was a catch.

The repair ability can repair the cores, so if they destroyed one core to drop the barrier, then wasted a lot of time, the core would be repaired, and the barrier would be up again. So, they had to destroy two of the cores at the same time.

But if they wanted to use the city as a weapon against the Blizzard Monster, they would want the barrier to stay up.

Then, the last two cores would be powering the city’s guards and their repair ability. So, just like the first two cores, they have to destroy them at the same time to disable the steel golems fully.

But, as Gojo came to find out, this wasn’t where this city’s defenses ended. The spire itself had a power source, and it was set to explode if all the other cores were destroyed. So destroying all of the cores would cause the city to blow up and take everyone down with it.

When Gojo and Arad learned all of that, the city looked far more dangerous than it was before. Mainly because whoever built it seemed to know exactly what they were doing.

All of the cores were inside the city, and the city was well protected by the barrier, so it was nearly impossible to get inside and reach the cores without breaching the barrier. So even getting in was a problem, and then they have to deal with the ever-regenerating steel golems and find a way to reach the spire, without causing the entire place to blow up.

"What should we do?" Gojo looked at Arad. "I can blow a hole in the barrier if I had enough time to chant and prepare, but that would call all of the golems to us."

Arad smiled. Even though he didn’t help that much and let Isdis handle everything, he still had a whole city built and knew a few things.

"There has to be a sewer system somewhere that leads outside the city. We only need to find that and use it to get inside. It’s been so long that I’m even positive that it won’t stink." Arad pointed at the sea, then at the forest on the horizon.

"I say they either dumped everything into the sea or in a hole in the forest."

With that being said, finding that place is near impossible. Thankfully, they have Haru with them.