After Dropping off Hajime and the gang at Fuhren Masashi set the route to go to the next destination— The Frost Caverns of Schnee.

“It’s going to take about 5 hours to get there so you girls should get comfortable.”

“Mmm. All right.” The next thing Yue does, she grabs Masashi’s hand and sucks his blood.

Masashi gives her head a little pat before he brings his attention to Mai who’s still lying on the couch with her head on his lap.

He lightly caresses Mai’s hair to let her get comfortable enough to go to sleep for a few hours.

…

“So this one’s going to be a bit of a pain to clear since it’s got a big maze-type layout in one of the parts. Our [Perception] should be enough but I’ll give you girls a heads up that it might not be enough.

“Also this labyrinth is in the coldest place in Tortus. The temperatures in this place are sub-zero even at the hottest times of the year.”

Masashi briefs the girls about the things that this labyrinth has, including the various challenges that they’ll be going through there.

Finally, they reach the end of the gorge that’s filled with snow and see a cave at the end that’s going to lead to the labyrinth

They drop down into the crevasse as Masashi puts the jet into his inventory.

When they reached the bottom, the three used gravity magic to slow their descent since they didn’t want to get buried in the snow.

“Fuh… This place is cold.” Yue rubs her arms.

“I agree.”

“Just turn on the heating enchantment, it’ll be fine.”

Masashi had already enchanted both Mai’s and Yue’s outfits along with his clothes to be the best possible armor that one could wear without it being actual armor.

They had a repelling forcefield that was enchanted by Masashi using gravity magic that would block attacks and keep the wearer separated from the surroundings.

There were separate enchantments on the clothes for various purposes. One of which was heating.

Yue was wearing a cute white one-piece dress with a skirt that reached the middle of her thighs and black stockings with boots.

Mai was wearing a white camisole with a shirt over it along with some dark pants. Her Jian necklace was visible due to the cleavage that was shown by the camisole.

“Let’s go.” At Masashi’s prompt, the trio started walking through the dark cave which wasn’t a problem since they had monstrous perceptions and weren’t hindered by the darkness.

After a few minutes of walking Mai notices something moving within her perception.

“Hm? There’s something there.”

“Squeak.”

“It’s so cute.” Mai squealed at the appearance of a baby rabbit.

Both Yue and Masashi turned to her with amused smiles on their faces.

”Hey it’s cute, all right.”

“It’s also a monster,” Masashi says from the side.

“No, it’s not. It doesn’t have the characteristic red eyes that monsters have.”

As Mai said that the rabbit came up to them so that they noticed its appearance.

It had a silver sheen of fur that was covered with little snowflakes that sparkled like diamonds. Its appearance was artificial and designed to blend with the surroundings.

It slowly came up to them cautiously and slowly. It kept sniffing repeatedly which made its nose twitch cutely.

“Such a cutie. Come on little fella.” Mai had already let her guard down after seeing the appearance of the cute rabbit as she beckoned it to come close to herself.

Yue was also smitten by its cute appearance as she smiled at the little thing.

“Mai don’t let it get too close. It’ll turn you into a popsicle.” Masashi smiled at Mai’s actions but still used his mana to create a barrier in front of the bunny that prevented it from approaching.

“What? No~ I don’t believe it. Look at the little thing, it’s so cute.”

“That’s the lure.” Masashi has a serious expression on his face.

“Yeah, I know.” Mai pouted a little and did something that shocked Yue. She stabbed the cute bunny with her dagger, killing it.

With that, many more bunnies with the same appearance started coming out of their hiding spots surrounding Mai, Masashi, and Yue.

Looking at Yue’s shocked face Mai said, “Hey, we might play around every once in a while but I’m not gonna risk any of our’s lives because I couldn’t kill some cute bunnies.”

Masashi was already expecting Mai to do it so he wasn’t surprised. He knew that Mai was sensible enough to do what much be done at the right times.

Masashi silently cast a large-scale magic spell that took control of the surrounding snow and condensed it into icy spikes that impaled the rabbits around them.

The spell also served to make a temporary icy fence that kept the rabbits away from them a good distance so they weren’t able to get any chance to suck the heat out of the group.

Masashi, Yue, and Mai kept using ranged ice spells since they were the most efficient here and killed the rabbits in large groups.

After a new minute of the destruction, it looked like the trio was on an island fenced by icy spikes and surrounded by a sea of blood on its sides.

After the rabbits were taken care of, they started moving on to the next part.

Further, into the path, they ran into a large snowstorm that would be very dangerous to traverse.

“Mai, if you will.” “Gladly.”

Mai cast a defensive wind barrier that surrounded the trio. It was a greenish hexagonal-looking barrier that used wind magic to deflect all incoming projectiles back into the direction that they came.

They continued forward for about a hundred meters when they arrived in front of a well-lit opening.

Mai dispelled the barrier since they were already out of the intense windy area.

In front of them was a triangular opening. The shape was well-defined enough to show that it was man-made but the edges were jagged enough to signify that it’s been a very long time since this entrance has been created.

Inside was a crack in the space as if it was a void fissure made from space magic.

“This is the entrance to the true labyrinth,” Masashi states the obvious.

“Then what were those bunnies?” Yue is curious as to why there was a test even before they entered the labyrinth.

“That was just the pre-labyrinth test that one much pass to even be allowed access to the real deal. It’s used to ward off people overestimating themselves by challenging the labyrinth.

“Should we go it?” Mai chimes in.

“Let’s go then.”

The group walked into the opening and went through the fissure as they appeared in the true labyrinth.

With the appearance of the group, the dormant monsters in the place were also woken up.

“Bigfoot type monsters, 6.” Masashi signaled for Yue since she didn’t have as good of a perception as Masashi and Mai.

She knew the bigfoot reference since she’d consumed enough media to connect the dots.

“I’m having more and more confirmation that someone from earth was there when the liberators were doing their thing against the gods.”

“Even if they were, wouldn’t it have been medieval earth during that time? I doubt that the rumors were the same at that time.”

“Time is a pretty loose concept when it comes to world travel.” 

At this point the bigfoots were already upon them so Masashi pulled out his swords and coated them in compressed blue fire, instantly slicing two of the six bigfoots that appeared into two parts.

Meanwhile, Mai stabbed two of them in their heads with her enchanted daggers that cut through the gorillas like butter.

At the same time, Yue cast two of her Crimson Javelin spells which were supposed to be crimson flames condensed into the shape of a spiral spear but after Masashi’s enhancements that she’d gone through her mana quality was also increased which naturally created blue flames instead of the red ones.

“I think you should be calling that spell Azure Javelin from now,” Masashi commented as all the monsters were dead within the first attack from the trio.

 “I already have Azure Blaze as my spell, how does Cerulean Javelin sound?”

“That sound’s nice.”

After killing the bigfoots, the trio finally noticed their surroundings. They were in a cavern that was completely formed of ice. Looking at the walls of this cavern they could see their reflections as if they were looking in a mirror.

They moved on to the next area through the single cave that gave way to the next cavern. The walls were made of the clearest ice which was almost see-through.

Almost see-through because they also reflected some of the light which caused barely perceptible shadows to be formed in the ice that seemed like they were following them around.

“This place has a weird ominous vibe.” Mai noticed.

“It does.”

“Mmm. They keep reflecting out shadows.” Yue didn’t have much to say.