After the first round of magical combat, Big Ugly seemed to mentally sit back for a moment, giving me a moment to think. If we wanted to get down there, we first would have to take down all the Querder. I wondered if that was even possible, there seemed to be hundreds, maybe thousands of the things. So, was the right tactic to directly attack Big Ugly? After a moment of consideration, I decided to test a little, combining three Devour runes, three Magic runes in triangles, forming a six-pointed star with a Curse rune in the middle and started channelling power into the formation.

I felt the curse trying to attach to Big Ugly but I felt a powerful resistance, likely the thing was either resistant to Darkness magic or to magic in general. Both were very possible scenarios and I rather doubted that I could simply try to brute force my approach to taking the thing down, it was a boss-monster after all. I tried a few more spells but they were all smothered out by the freezing mist around Big Ugly.

For a second, I took stock of the situation the others were in and realised that they might actually be able to take down the Querders that were squirming up the ramps, as surprising as that seemed to me.

Sadly, the next moment, Big Ugly was demanding my attention again, this time the attack had even more power, as if that helped anything. All power on Mundus was useless unless it got to us. And again, there was a weakness in the magic that I could exploit.

Big Ugly and I exchanged magical attacks a few more times, or rather, I parried away its attacks. In one of my moments of down-time, I noticed that the mist around it did not seem to fade and that the amount of Querders had not decreased at all, it seemed as if there were more coming up from underground. And those were not the barely formed Queders with soft shells, those were slightly more grown up, their armour fully formed and solid.

My ruminations were interrupted by a scream and I noticed that one of the Querders had managed to get by Adra’s spear and tried to latch onto Rai’s leg, using its sharp teeth to shred the flesh in the process. With barely a thought, I used my Eisblumen to help, battering against the Querder, wrapping around them and tossing them away, taking the pressure of Adra and Rai so they could reorient.

But my distraction had a cascading effect, Big Ugly tried again to strike and this time I didn’t manage to parry away all of its attack, parts of it striking Sigmir, causing her to stumble, something the Querders used to their advantage. Ylva surged forward in a brave attempt to keep them from burying her but she paid for it in flesh and blood. Again, I struck with my Eisblumen, pushing the Querders back for a second but it became clear that the fight was not going as well as I had hoped. Instead of slowly winning, we were losing and the death-spiral became faster and faster. Rai’s wounded leg was no longer fully supporting him, causing him to be slower and less secure, the wounds Ylva had suffered hindering her just as much, maybe more.

“The Eternal Ice!” Lenore cawed in my head, transmitting her insane idea together with the words. It was an idea that could have been my own in its insanity. But, as I heard somewhere, sometimes crazy works.

Grabbing into my bag, I thought for a moment before deciding to go for mostly broke, pulling the Eternal Ice core from the Clast Elemental out, the freezing cold instantly seeping into my body, numbing my hand. But I welcomed the cold, I would need it to do what I was planning. I felt a huge amount of Astral Power transfer into me, Lenore giving me what she had before leaving her Hallow and taking cover behind me. Not that I really minded, her pain would only distract me from what I had to do. As an insurance, I also pulled the last fang from the lamprey-boss from my bag, handing it to her. If I failed, she would try using it to open the barrier behind us. I doubted it would work, not with Big Ugly alive, but who knew, maybe it would. But I would not fail, at least that was what I told myself.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward, to the foremost edge of the balcony we were on. Holding the Eternal Ice in front of me, I looked down at Big Ugly, mentally throwing down the gauntlet. What I was planning had a good chance to kill both of us but I just wanted it to die. That was okay with me, I was a Gamer. I would respawn.

After that second of preparation, I activated Overflow and Bullet Time, letting my magic flood freely out of me and into the Eternal Ice. And I let the the power from the Eternal Ice flow back into me, not even trying to keep it from harming me, only focusing on unbinding the power and throwing as much as I could at Big Ugly. The numbing chill that had invaded my hand spread all over my body, into my mind and even my soul, trying to numb me to everything, making me as cold and uncaring as ice, eternally unchanging. But I held onto a single idea, the knowledge that I needed to control the power I had unleashed from harming Sigmir. And to do that, it needed direction. Somehow, the giving it direction was easier now, and I idly noted that there was some blood flowing from my hand, apparently I had cut myself on the sharp edges of the Eternal Ice without even noticing.

But that mattered not to my numbed mind, only what I had to do mattered. A smile crept on my lips and from somewhere deep within my mind, words bubbled up, almost making me giggle as I said them out loud.

“Cone of Cold!”

With those words and the rune for Liquid Moonlight in my mind, I managed to force the power in front of me into a semblance of what I wanted. The dense, glowing mass of power in front of me boiled outwards, not a stream of Liquid Moonlight but a blast of cold, not just the coldness of a glacier, no, what I had imagined was the absolute coldness, the absolute expression of stillness, a coldness so extreme that even time itself froze.

The blast of silvery white power streamed forward, blowing the mist away and crashing against Big Ugly and breaking against the wall behind it, like a wave. And like a wave, it washed outwards, some of it blasting back towards us, annihilating the querders and continuing on.

My mind was turning fuzzily numb, dropping like an arrow at the end of its flight. I pushed against the wave of power I had unleashed, trying to keep it away from me and my companions. But I was at my limit, my mind simply folding under the burden I had placed upon it, falling into darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in the capsule, the game having booted me out. I must have missed the announcement that I had died or fallen unconscious. Trying to log back in told me that my character was currently unable to act, making me wonder just what had happened. Back when I had overdone it with my magic, creating and subsequently destroying a bridge to escape from Jongarn, there had been a timer telling me how long my unconsciousness would last. But now, I only was told that my character was unable to act, strange.

After taking care of a few real-life errands, I went back into the capsule. I was unable to log into Road to Purgatory but I could access my home-space, so I did just that. My mountain top temple, that I had created what seemed like ages ago was still like I had left it Not that I spent a lot of time here. I had greatly enjoyed making it but I preferred the world of Mundus.

But for now, there was a desk with that served as an interface to allow me looking into the huge amount of gossip about Titania on the forum. For a while, I kept reading in a rather disinterested fashion, wondering if anything useful would come of it.

Finally, I had enough and because of the affinity I had with the esthetics of the dungeon in Mundus, I started to recreate a similar cave, below my temple, making it a basement of sorts. There might have been some inspiration coming from a strange guy, dressing up as a bat and fighting crime by punching one mugger at a time. I let myself be inspired by the dungeon on mundus, but my basement-cave was not a copy, it was my own design. One of t the big differences was that I did not use the dark, tainted ice but the pristine, silvery white ice Morgana commanded, making the cave shine in sparkling light.

It was fun, making spires and spirals but my heart and mind yearned to go back into Mundus. And finally, after what felt like ages, the game gave me the message that I was able to log back in.

Curious what I would find, I did just that.