“How long is it until we make it there?”, Alice complained while we climbed up a snowy hill, she was panting hardly it was as if she was starting to get out of breath.

“If I had to guess, then one more hour.”, I responded to her complaint, the sun was already in the middle of the sky, but I could barely tell due to the clouds covering the little sunlight that shone through.

“ONE HOUR!?!?”, Alice fell to her knees and landed face flat on the snowy ground. “Couldn’t we have chosen a different quest instead?”, Alice’s muffled voice reached my pointy ears.

The quest I chose was a simple one, an Alchemist needed some sort of weird flower to make a ‘special’ potion. The quest sounded simple at first, but apparently the ‘flower’ could only be found inside an icy cave. All these informations were written down on the quest including the path to the mountain which a ‘icy cave’ is and a picture of the flower.

At the time we were at the guild it was morning and the sun was barely out, and now it was already afternoon. I always keep on losing track of time.

“Believe me, if I could I would rather be at home wasting my whole day watching anime and play games instead of this.”, I told her my thoughts on the matter and she lifted up her face from the snow.

While I was out cold for two weeks, Willow had told her more about me and that included about the fact that I was from another world.

“Oh yeah, you’re from another world. What is an ‘anime’?”, Alice asked full of curiosity while wiping the snow from her clothes.

“Uhm, it is sort of hard to explain. Could you please forget what I just said.”, I asked her, and she gave up on asking me any further.

We continued our way up the small hill which was slowly becoming a mountain the closer we got. I suddenly felt something cold on my nose, I looked at the sky and small little snowflakes slowly floated down on the palm of my hand.

‘It’s snowing?’, I got confused by the sudden weather change, a couple of seconds ago you could see the sun in the sky and now it was snowing?

“Why is it snowing?! This is weird?!”, I spoke out loud what came through my head. “There’s only one explanation.”, Alice looked at the sky where the small white particles floated down like feathers.

“It’s been said that around areas with dense mana have have a different climates, one of the examples are volcanic areas with dense ‘Fire Attribute’ mana are always filled with heat, this mountain may have the same case.”, Alice explained.

“That explains the weird feeling I’ve been having this whole time.”, ever since we have entered the area with snow, I felt like I was surrounded by water everywhere.

‘Spirits’ are known to be extremely sensitive to mana, that is also one of the reasons as to why I’m exceptionally good at the manipulation of mana.

Growl, the sound suddenly made its appearance, it was like the sound of a stomach growling.

“I-it wasn’t me!”, Alice shouted with her face flushed all the way to the core. ‘Nope, that was definitely her. I don’t even have the need to eat.’, I sighed.

“Alice could you help me gather branches and I’ll start a fire and make some food.”, I started gathering branches from the dead trees surrounding the small location on the mountain we were at.

 

 

 

<< The levels of ‘Dismantling’ and ‘Cooking’ have increased. >>

 

 

“Thish ish shoo good.”, Alice with her mouth full of food mesmerized. “Is it really that good?”, I questioned her taste in food.

We found a small cover to make the fire, I searched for animals to hunt. The best I was able to do was hunt down two rabbits.

“Or was the food you ate at the castle that bad?”, I joked as I took a bite of my cooked rabbit foot. “It isn’t as good as the food in the castle, but it is exceptionally good. Is your ‘Cooking’ skill high leveled?”, Alice asked after gulping down her food.

The effects of ‘Cooking’ were that it also increased the taste of the food and quality. It is like the Skill ‘Blacksmith’, the quality of the item increases depending on how high level the skill is.

“Hey princess, do you know why there are dense ‘mana’ zones?”, I asked her. “Hm, dense mana zones are difficult to make, there’s been an experiment made in Zeltram where they tried making an artificial dense mana zone. They had gathered many mages with a lot of mana and asked them to senselessly pour mana into the ground.”, Alice explained.

“And did it work?”, Alice shook her head. “No, it was a failure. The only notable thing that came out from that experiment was that one hundred years later a huge tree sprouted from the ground.”

I nodded towards her explanation, but there was something odd I did not understand. “Why would they try to make an ‘artificial’ dense mana zone?”

“Other than the possibility of the climate changing within the zone, it’s also been noted that in specific zones with dense mana have more fertile land. That is also why most animals living within those zones produce high quality resources.”, Alice explained.

“That’s why it’s been requested that you report to the guild if you find one of those zones, but of course if it’s one like the one we’re in it won’t exactly be useful for humans.”, Alice after finishing her explanation, rubbed her hands to warm up.

“One of the reasons why they request you to report to the guild, is because in those areas new type of monsters are born.”, the last sentence got my attention. “New type of monsters?”,

“Yes, an example would be the zone we’re in. We’ve been requested to go get a certain flower that can only grow in areas like these, that means that it’s a flower that is related to ice. And the same thing goes for monsters, despite we not been meeting one yet there may be frost giants or ice wyverns.”, I listened with full awe to her explanation.

“Ever since the failed experiment they chose to find natural mana zones instead of making one. Natural mana zones are hard to explain, not even I know how they came to be.”, she tried answering the first question I had asked her.

“You sure do know your stuff, don’t you princess?”, I complimented her wisdom. “I may have spent half of my life within a castle, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing the whole time. And Athena would have been able to explain you the same thing as me.”, Alice referenced back to the girl who’s sleeping in ‘Ashen’.

“Also, could you stop calling me princess!”, she complained. “I have a name and it’s Alice by the way.”,

“Okay, I’ll call you Alice from now on and you’ll start calling me Shiro.”, I asked her to call me by my name in exchange and she nodded.

“So, princ…. Alice were you and Athena close?”, I brought up a topic for a conversation. “Yeah, you could say that. She was the one who made me get interested in creatures in the first place.”

“Every other noble thought she was weird, but to me she seemed the most normal one among everyone else.”, Alice continued with a nostalgic look in her eyes. “When I heard her parents had been found deceased, I got scared and worried. I kept on thinking ‘Please tell me this is a lie.’, I hoped the report was lie. But the next day she appeared right before me.”

“I was really glad to know she was alive. I heard that you were the one who found her, right?”, Alice asked me, and I simply nodded.

She closed the space between us and held my hand, her hands were warm and soft to the point where I asked whether this was real or not.

“Thank you, thank you so much, Shiro.”, her voice trembled as she spoke, tears were flowing down her eyes. “Thank you, so, so much for saving her.”

She suddenly heard that her friend’s parents had died and that she went missing, in this world where monsters existed it wasn’t too odd for her to already be dead.

However, I appeared and brought her with me. So, in a way I had saved her. “You don’t have to thank me, I did that because I would gain something in return.”, I  removed my hands from hers.

The dark flames that fluttered from the wood were slowly cooling down, I stood up from the hard stone floor and stretched my arms despite not having any bones to crack.

I looked outside the small cover and the sun started showing itself again and it had stopped snowing.

“Alright, I’d like to finish this quest as fast as possible.”, I said preparing myself to leave and Alice did so as well.

 

 

 

“I think this is the place.”, I speculated by the amount of time it took us to reach the huge cave hole heading inside the mountain. “I think so too.”, Alice agreed.

The flower we need to find looked like a blue lily, but badly drawn on the quest description. The flower could only be found inside ice caves in dense mana zones.

‘I’m having a déjà vu right now.’, I remembered when Athena and I went to gather magic metals to forge the swords.

We entered the cave, but before I created a small flame to illuminate the way. The cave started glowing in a bluish neon color, I looked towards the ceiling of the cave and saw magic crystals glowing.

“Wow, how pretty.”, Alice’s eyes shined in awe. “Why are there magic crystals here?”, I asked.

I could tell they were magic crystals by the feeling I got from it. “It’s probably due to the dense mana, magic crystals are formed over time in an area with dense mana. It’s been said it could take up to thousands of years to form.”, Alice explained.

“But wouldn’t people mine the crystal so that they could produce magic items?”, I asked Alice whom I’ve grown fond of her knowledge. “Hmm, you’re right. It is weird that there’s this insane amount of magic crystals. If someone sold all of this, they could make a fortune.”

I used the ‘No-Attribute Magic’ spell ‘Sense’, but the mana around me was interfering with the spell. ‘Damn it, I knew this was going to happen’, the moment I set foot inside the cave. I knew where I was heading towards.

The only reason why this place has not been touched yet is because ‘something’ is inside and keeping away anything that may enter.

“Alice, there might be something inside this cave. If we encounter it before we find the flower then run away.”, I told her.

“What do you… now it makes sense. There’s something inside this cave isn’t there?”, Alice understood what I meant.

She suddenly grabbed my collar and looked at me into the eyes. “Hell no! We came all this way to get a flower. I don’t care if there’s a monster inside or not!”, Alice was irritated.

I too was irritated by the possibility of us having to retreat. “Fine! I’ll try to make sure we don’t die then, but don’t blame me if we die!”, Alice released her hands from me and nodded.

And thus we ventured into the cave, which the unknown awaited for us.

 

 

 

Skill Explanation: Cooking

This Skill increases one’s ability in cooking, the higher the level of this skill is the more delicious the food will be. This skill doesn’t increase any stats nor can be used in an offensive way. It also shows how good one is at cooking.

 

Skill Explanation: Fast Healing

This skill heals a user from small wounds like cuts, it cannot exactly regenerate lost limbs. The best it can do is stop bleeding from a life-threatening wound. This skill is mostly only acquired by monsters like vampires or ogres.