SING CRIER CH.6 - Fantasia The blizzard has ended, only a light snowfall remains. ...Is it time to head out? Somehow -- we don't feel prepared. Despite spending hours in self-reflection, we're still unsure of what our survival plan is... We don't think it's bad to take an opportunistic approach, but... Still... Sigh. Thinking costs time, and time costs berries, of which we have limited supply. While we'd much rather sit here and sift through all of our options... we can't really justify wasting any more time doing so. There's just... too much we don't know. We should explore while we're calm before we do so out of Eldritch Fear. If we wait until Eldritch Fear starts rising... it might be too late to stop. Ha... Fear of Eldritch Fear... what the heck... Sing picks up the long dagger, Crier carries the pouch and berries. We help each other up, trace our hands along the walls, and approach the exit. As we get closer, the grayscale colour schemes of the forest become apparent. Cloudy grey skies, black and white evergreen trees, monochrome shrubbery... It's a far cry from the lush and magical forest from «Spirit Break». Sal'venakai is turning out to be quite the depressing place. As for the cold... It's also unpleasant of course! Just standing near the mouth of the cave is giving us chills. Wearing nothing but sun dresses... of course it's going to be like this. This is what it means to have no defensive stats after all! Huff. Okay, we're just a little bit sour that we completely wasted hours of precious time. Let's just... calm down... we can just make up that time now, right? Everything will be fine... we'll manage, and it'll be okay... We just have to endure a bit... right? 『 Ah. 』 Frost Bite [LV.1] After taking a single step into the knee-deep snow, Sing picks up the Frost Bite effect. She pulls her leg back immediately, and holds it to warm up. ...Leaving is going to be a bit tricky. Frost Bite lowers your maximum health by one percent for each level. Our HP is ten, so it hasn't dropped, but it will if Frost Bite reaches level ten. That's not all though, at higher levels, Frost Bite starts to inflict debilitating effects. ...It's bad, but it's not like we're going to stop trying with just that. We can restore our maximum HP by removing Frost Bite levels. Health lost from the HP drop can be regenerated with Pure Demonic Blood. The much bigger issue will really be the high-level debilitating effects... It's having our legs frozen while in the snow... that will really kill us. ...But we should be able to solve even that. We just need to build some cold resistance in our legs. If we can train our SP in this world, surely we can train our P.DEF, right? It'll hurt but -- what's a little frostbite to feeling your spine twisting apart? There's no danger with Frost Bite if we gain it in the safety of the cave anyway. So... So so so so so so so... It's not like we have much choice here, right? Sing will go first, because big sisters care for their little sisters. We just need to pick up some snow and drop it over Sing's legs. We'll train cold resistance with over-exposure, raising our P.DEF value. Ah, let's move your arms away, we don't have time to train your arms Sing. There, now let's get some snow... and... 『 Hah! H...ah...aah... 』 Ah... it hurts, but we can manage this much. We'll brush off the snow before her Frost Bite level reaches eighty. Her legs are starting to numb fairly quickly anyway. Hm, we can't do anything about the opening and closing of her hands though. Those are... just spasms, right? She should be fine then, we've had those before, they'll go away with time... 『 ...H...a...h... 』 『 ... 』 Okay... level seventy... should be safe... let's brush away the snow... Crier is picking up a bit of Frost Bite... just doing that much... but... it's nothing compared to the damage to... Sing's... legs... The skin on her legs has turned a powdery white... but it doesn't look healthy at all, it's actually... a bit gross... As a skin whitening method... well... we can't recommend it... Aaah... but her legs don't hurt at all anymore, so that's a plus... Let's take a look... at her stats and effects... 『 I-I...I...Ide... 』 Her effects... must be pretty severe... If she can't even talk... 『 «Identify» 』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.1 ▬ Sing '' Streya

ᵈᵢBlack-Lamb Pure-Demon

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HP ▐ 3/3(10)

MP ▐ 0

SP ▐ 0/11

P.ATK ▐ 1

P.DEF ▐ 2

M.ATK ▐ 0

M.DEF ▐ 0

Effects ▐ ◈ ᵈᵢⓈ∞

▐ ◈ Ancient Shadow King Miasma

▐ ◈ Pure Demonic Blood

▐ ◈ Ruptured Mana Pool

▐ Eldritch Fear[LV.2] ▐ Frost Bite[LV.71] ▐ Deep Freeze[LV.33] ▐ Pressure[LV.55]

Titles ▐ 「 Prophet of Death 」「 Feral 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Frost Bite reducing max health... by seventy percent... check... Deep Freeze locking up her legs... noted... Pressure draining her SP... felt... Sing's breaths are... short and erratic... Honestly... it's kind of a miracle she's not convulsing... Hah... But... She gained some P.DEF! It might only be two points... You normally start the... game with about ten... but... we can do it again... and again and again... Let's shoot... for one hundred...! One hundred P.DEF of just cold resistance in our legs...! Aha... Haha... That'll be enough... Let's do it again...! Crier's turn...! Again... Again...! Ȧ͉͊͊ġ̞̾̿̔ͭ̓ain...! Ah... O-Ow... ...I don't feel too good. The ceiling is rock... the view is a bit familiar. I don't move for a bit because of the feeling of brain lag. For some reason... even when I try to remember what happened... ...Wait. I remember. I remember? I do? I sit up and look around confused; it's the cave. It's darker than usual, is it night? Something is wrong, but, it's hard to grasp. Is it the smell? What is this? It's like... Ugh... Head pain... Squish. ...Wha- 『『 Aaah! 』』 ...Huh? Sing? Crier? Are we both here? Yes? Can we see each other? Yes? Yes? We're both okay? Are we both cordial? Are we both cute? Both alive? Yes? ...Yes. ...Good. Good... that's good... That's fine... ...What just happened? One minute we were training ourselves against the cold, the next, we each woke up alone... next to- Crier covers her mouth to not much avail, so she leans over and throws up to the side of the cave. Sing shifts over and holds her, patting her back to help. It's... it's probably best not to remember that dream... hallucination... thing. If we think about it too much, Sing will throw up too. Let's just go over... what our present situation is, okay? Okay. Well, we're both at the entrance of the cave, just as we should be. We're surrounded by wet rock, presumably from the snow that melted. The snowfall has stopped, so some time has passed... Did we fall asleep during training? Did we faint...? ...But more importantly, did it work? Well... the first thing of note -- is that both of our legs are white. Not an unhealthy white like from Frost Bite, but not a healthy human white either. They're like... white, but... nylon-y? They sort of look like they're covered in scales, if the scales were completely flat and more like skin. Oh, like a fish's scales, sort of. Not exactly but that's closer... E...Eel...? It's weird... Eww, it feels weird too. Omega gross. 『『 «Identify» 』』 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

LV.1 ▬ Sing '' Streya

ᵈᵢBlack-Lamb Pure-Demon

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

HP ▐ 15/15

MP ▐ 0

SP ▐ 18/18

P.ATK ▐ 1

P.DEF ▐ 99

M.ATK ▐ 0

M.DEF ▐ 0

Effects ▐ ◈ ᵈᵢⓈ∞

▐ ◈ Ancient Shadow King Miasma

▐ ◈ Pure Demonic Blood

▐ ◈ Ruptured Mana Pool

▐ Eldritch Fear[LV.1]

Titles ▐ 「 Prophet of Death 」「 Feral 」

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ...Our HP went up. SP too... and P.DEF? Huh? How did our P.DEF get so high already?! Both Sing and Crier have ninety-nine P.DEF?! We stare at our legs, and bounce them on the ground. They feel... durable... maybe even durable enough to climb stairs with? Maybe even without needing to hold onto the railing for support...?! Is this what non-fragile legs feel like? We're a bit hesitant to stand, but it's not like we can just sit forever, right? We stare at each other's legs, and then each other. Somehow, looking at ourselves gives us reassurance. We help each other get up again... it's shockingly easy! It might have even been possible for us to get up without our hands! What is this? Standing feels great! Huh?! How can standing feel this great?! It doesn't take any effort! 『 Wah... 』 『 Sugoi! 』※¹ We jump -- and feel no pain when we land ...except for our feet against the rocks, ouch. But it's real! We actually have strength in our legs! Not fake intent-based-movement like Myriad Worlds... Real movement, with real muscles, and hard bones! Howa! Super morale up! It's... It's cool...! ... W-We should clean up Crier's... mess... ...Okay, eww. Home cave cleaned? We used our legs to kick snow at the dirty spot, and as expected, we didn't gain a single level of Frost Bite. It seems the results of our training paid off! Waha! Another win for the overpowered Pure-Demon race! This will definitely be enough to withstand the snow. That said, we should remember this ninety-nine P.DEF is mostly against cold-damage exclusively... Just by pressing our feet against the cave rocks, we can tell they'll still cut fairly easily... Oh, wait a minute, we have to take our hairpins off. Click. Press. Oww, blood. Okay, our legs are still fragile, but...! They're physically stronger than our old legs, and very resistant to physical cold. A more than welcome change! Click. Let's just keep our hairpins on. Our impact-based P.DEF is still practically nothing and our cold-based P.DEF will still resist Frost Bite, since, our hairpins only modify damage numbers, not status resistances. That's all we need, we can explore now! Ah, there's our berry pouch, now where's our dagger... ... It's... It's not under... that... is it...? Aaaah... just when things were looking up... That's what we get for looking forward to something... ...Heh, just kidding. [END]