Within a large citadel, where many large buildings were erected and where thousands of Ice Giants walked around, interacting, selling meat, herbs, materials, clothes, and more, there was a certain building, the largest there was in the entire citadel.

It somewhat resembled an enormous palace of the middle ages, although many Ice Giants were walking inside and out of it, carrying materials, some bought them, others sold them.

However, most of the Ice Giants within this place exuded stronger auras than the people in the citadel, most of them being above Rank 1 Initial Stage, various of them being Middle Stage or even Upper Stage, with a few at Peak Stage, and there were even the auras of some at Rank 2… and more.

This was what was named a Sect, and the citadel around it was built by the families and the servants that served the powerful Cultivators that protected them from the wilderness outside. Even as Ice Giants, if they were mere mortals who had not awakened Mana Cores or had too low of an aptitude to even reach anywhere with it, the powerful high-ranked monsters that roamed around, some even being Rank 2 or even higher might end up killing them anyway.

In Jotunheim, there were many sects and nations, however, most of them maintained rather far away from each other, and because the entire Continent was as vast as all the continents of Earth combined, it was an immense place with vast snowfields, forests, and deadly beasts roaming every corner.

Due to the vastness of the continent, many Sects were not related to any nation, but still did many negotiations with them, often selling goods and exchanging them for the previous Mana Cores, the currency of the entire world of Yggdrasil, it was the most precious material that cultivators needed, as they could tear them down into potions to restore mana and enhance their cultivation speed, or certain techniques even let cultivators consume mana cores by turning them into pure mana particles.

Alongside this, there were many other cultivation materials endemic to certain regions of the continent, which was merely divided into four, the South Region, the North Region, the West Region, and the East Region… Each region had endemic life, materials, and more importantly, dungeons.