Despite my new outfit and preparations, the icy wasteland was clearly not somewhere I could stay permanently. Bundled up as warm as possible, there was a frigid mana in the air which ripped away any body heat it touched. I could keep it at bay with Mana Barrier alone but it wasn’t particularly cost effective.

  Thankfully, a few Magic Missiles into the icy ground would bore enough of a hole for me to avoid the elements for a while. I was surprised to find that Crafting Savant had its uses out here, and I was able to create an honest-to-goodness igloo. Once feeling returned to my extremities from a short rest protected from exposure, I would continue, but it was slow going. I could handle slow, though. Combining Mana Barriers with these instant igloos where I could recover my lost mana was enough to keep punching deeper into the icy land.

  In terms of landmarks… there was none immediately visible. Thanks to the potent blizzard in the air and the dense, icy mana of the place, it was hard to see more than ten feet in front of my face, even with my perception. I was immensely grateful to the connection between myself and Merownis which was acting a little like a compass. It would be very easy to get lost out in the icy haze.

  Flaring Mana Barrier, I gasped as the encroaching fingers of frost were pushed back. It didn’t do much good, as the skill then left me alone with my body warmth, of which there was none to start with. “S-s-s-s-shit p-p-p-p-place,” I stuttered out a curse at the frozen wasteland from inside my icy hole in the ground. I couldn’t even risk avoiding the world by entering my Mind Palace, as my physical body would still feel the cold. If I got distracted or lost track of time, I could genuinely die. The cold was brutal enough that if I stood without protections, it could sap away my health points. Tag commiserated at me from inside the warm, a fireplace he had imagined bursting into fiery life within a cosy room. “Y-y-yeah, f-f-fuck you, t-t-t-too.”

  The ground seemed to respond and I launched myself out of the hole just in time for the ice to crush together where I had just been. A new nightmare of aggression and ice tore itself from the frozen ground quicker than it had any right to. A long, tentacle-like arm rose up and caught my foot. I used Mana Barrier in combat for the first time as I was whipped back into the packed ice at breakneck speed.

  The nearby ground cracked, my icy breath forced from my lungs before I even had a chance to analyse the enemy. Before I could be dragged across the floor and slammed again, a salvo of Magic Missiles ripped the limb apart. Freed from the grip as the elemental lost control, I finally saw the main body of the thing and let the System do its work.

  Monster - Bulky Snow Elemental - Level 30

  Not quite Grade One, but a sturdy fighter on a similar level to an improved Scorpion Prince. If I had faced this thing before my battle with Reysault and her army, I might have had a hard time. Worse than its assumed strength, and the abilities it was likely keeping hidden for now, was that it took no damage from my Magic Missiles. The snow it had attacked me with was a controlled element, not the elemental itself.

  The monster’s true form was a shimmering crystal at the centre of an increasingly dense block of ice. That ice was then surrounded by ambulatory snow, given force and form by the magic of the elemental at the core.

  It looked like it would take a while for the elemental to get ready. I didn’t interrupt it, though. This was my first fight against a creature of pure magic. There was no flesh and bone to destroy here. Whatever else this fight would be, it was a learning experience. Checking my own status for the first time in a while, I could hardly worry. This was my first fight in a while, and though my skills had changed, I was in no way weaker than I had been against the claimant.

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  I hadn’t been fully charged with mana when the fight started and then gone on to use some quick skills in the initial clash. Even with that, I was still fine on mana and my health had barely been touched. An admittedly strange thought when that attack would have outright killed me at level one. Facing down the still growing Snow Elemental, I realised my pulse hadn’t even quickened yet.

  This level of threat was not enough to truly worry me. I even knew where I went wrong in letting myself get ambushed. The elemental had likely been dormant in some way before I blasted apart the snow around it and shoved myself into the ground. By using Mana Barrier, I had then become a beacon of energy for the disgruntled elemental to unleash some rage upon. Thinking I was safe, I had lost focus on Mana Manipulation and the ambush was sprung at the perfect moment. In fact, it was possible the elemental had waited for that exact moment.

  As a being of magic, its mana control was more powerful than even my own skill strengthened domination. I couldn’t just use Mana Manipulation to wrest control of the energy in the area, though I gave it a try while I waited for my opponent to get ready. A sensation like a tug-of-war immediately started with the mana in the air, but my control slipped away quickly from the frozen rope. The icy properties of the mana itself worked against me, and were perfect for the monster. We were literally in its element.

  My face split, my teeth bared. They weren’t chattering now. “Finally done?” In a more serious combat, I would not allow the elemental to gather itself as it had. Seeing the full realisation of its form, I was still glad I did. With facsimile muscles created with packed snow, tendons of ice running through its many limbs, I could easily say this was the most beautiful creature I had ever fought.

  Standing an easy four or five metres in the blizzard, an ice and snow sculpture of the weirdest centaur I had ever seen began to charge at me. Its four long legs were thick and powerful, the body atop them a small iceberg covered in tentacles. The core was buried in that berg but the blender of icy whips, dozens of metres long, all over the torso structure would make getting at its vulnerability difficult.

  Hell, it might not even be all that vulnerable on reflection. “Pretty,” I commented, unsure if the creature could hear me or understand if it could. While there was low light in the tundra, the mana in the air danced like I had never seen, working with the elemental to destroy me. Without warning, the icy blender centaur charged at me.

  My own preparations were much quicker. I had instinctively drawn the Jingu Bang and it was more than ready. I was not the only one who had changed after the fight with the scorpion queen. This wonderful staff of mine had rested in the sands of the desert and just like the mana in the air here acted like it had been designed with cold in mind, the heat of the desert was the same. Basking in the dense, hot mana had left the staff with a permanent warmth to the touch. Numbness faded from my fingers as my weapon hummed with excitement at the prospect of a fight. “Let’s get it then,” I agreed.

  Shooting forward with only the force of my attributes, I clashed with the sharp whips of ice for the first time. They smashed like glass, but were replaced quickly by another. With impressive aim and speed, the attacks rained down on me relentlessly. Trusting the Jingu Bang, I dropped the Mana Barrier which was draining my mana slowly. The winds immediately started to tear at me, but I needed the energy elsewhere. Spinning the staff with both hands, I activated King’s Training.

  Within seconds, the balance shifted in my favour again. The regally named skill automatically made me a more skilled fighter when mana was used to fuel it, as did the Jingu Bang itself. At the same time, the moves and techniques contained within the memories of the artefact and granted by the System were being ingrained into my muscles. Each block and counter became easier to perform the next time it was needed. I fell into the flow of battle governed by the staff and the skill, with the elemental powerless to gain any leverage against me.

  I was unsurprised at the level of strength but… “Disappointing.”

  The air filled with Magic Missiles. I had practised with all of my new skills, but this was going to be my new bread-and-butter. As I stole control over all mana in the area, I was reminded of my first Mana Bolts against the Attack Animal. It felt like so long ago now. If that scared, unsure version of me could see me now… he would probably get himself killed rushing after Master Thorn. He would also see how I filled the world with stars and then set those celestial bodies attacking the very elements which rose against me. The salvo of Magic Missiles rained down on the elemental like the wrath of a vengeful god.

  Focused only on defending itself from the storm of missiles, the elemental had no chance to stop me from physically ending things. There was nothing more to learn here and it was still cold, despite the Jingu Bang’s warmth and my own exertions. Better to end it quickly and move on than to let the elemental surprise me. So, even as my mana continued to drop from the barrage, I used two of my other newest skills.

  Infusion. Perfected Strike.

  The blow came down like Thor’s hammer. Infusion was used to charge my muscles with more power than even Reysault had been able to manage in her smashes, and Perfected Strike was used to hit the core directly. The Jingu Bang stretched and its weight jumped by magnitudes for the final collision. With the sound of a smashing chandelier and a scream like a banshee, the crystal of its core was shattered and elemental was dispersed.

  Without messing around, I quickly looted the body, receiving a Snow Elemental’s Core and some gold. Now that I knew what to look for, I found that there were a lot of elemental monsters in the snow nearby and how easy it was to avoid them. I probed a few more times, but wasn’t shown anything new by the aggressive snow creatures. They weren’t impossible to damage, but they definitely took more of a beating than things with physical bodies could. On the flipside, they had absolutely no issues ruining my day and leaving me shivering in victory with their own attacks.

  Some elementals fought physically, others seemed to tap into the cold around us and make it worse with some kind of elemental control. Tag was hard at work trying to figure out a way to most effectively deal with the various monsters, but it was slow going. Thanks to the temperature, even my own mana was moving slower, my thoughts stuck in the snow along with my legs. The glacial pace of combat combined with the necessary breaks I was forced to take by the weather to compound the issue of the cold even more.

  “Zero out of ten, would not recommend visiting the tundra,” I complained to Tag, who in turn drew my attention to a shadow in the distance. What to me looked like a dark rock in the mist had instead been something much further off. Even with my speed and the ability to avoid fights where I wanted to, it would take me a day or two of travel to reach whatever it was, based on the distance it seemed to be.

  With one final look towards warmth, and the bed I had used only one, I grumbled and set off into the even colder sections of the tundra, following the sight of the shadow in the ice.