Amy blearily blinked her eyes as she woke up from passing out. She took a deep breath and looked around her tiny room, trying to see if there were any changes. But no, nothing within the room changed except her core.

The heart of Amy’s new species, her core, had changed colour as well as grew 1.5 centimetres bigger. Her core was now 3.5 centimetres bigger and lighter in colour than her previous cobalt-blue colour.

Amy stared at her core and sighed. Nothing like what she thought would happen, like gaining a creature or monster, happened. So, she got back to the work she was initially doing before she had to choose an affinity, increasing her territory.

With a lot more ease this time, Amy was able to grab a thread of her mana and manipulate it. Her territory was currently one metre in height and one metre and 5 centimetres in length.

Amy took the mana thread and pulled it as far away as she could, measuring out to be 50 centimetres. She tried to go further, but her control of the mana thread was lost, and she had a hard time feeling it like the rest of her territory. So Amy decided to hold the mana thread in place until it settled, and in turn, allowing herself to gain a more precise control of the thread.

As she was waiting until the thread settled, Amy realized something. Before choosing her affinity, she could only push her mana a couple of centimetres away from her territory. Afterwards, she could move it half a metre away.

‘Well, at least there was an instantaneous effect from choosing an affinity.’

After waiting a bit, Amy could feel her control of the mana thread become a lot more solid than it once was. So she went back to work.

Amy grabbed the mana thread and looped it around her territory until the thread connected with each other. She again waited until her control of the thread became more solid before she started making the in-between of the mana thread and her territory part of her. To consolidate that part into her territory, Amy started pushing her already circulating mana into the area and started connecting the mana thread with sections of the circulating mana.

Amy waited until she felt that she had total control of the new territory before starting the process again.

******

~ Five Hours Later ~

Amy continued the process repeatedly until she breached the ice, gaining 9.25 metres of new territory.

What she found was unexpected. When Amy realized that she was encased in ice, she thought she might have been in an arctic environment, like the south pole or Antarctica, or on top of a mountain, like maybe Mount Everest. But no, what greeted her was not land or ice but water. Water. Water as far as the eye could see. There was no land, just an all-encompassing land of blue with what looked like other pieces of floating ice.

She assumed that she was in an ocean or sea. But how was she floating? She was encased in ice but not in the typical environment that would produce such a thing. Amy scrounged her brain for what could be carrying her core in ice. Then it hit her. She was on an iceberg. It made sense; icebergs can float and are made up of ice.

But the discovery of her core situated on an iceberg was disturbing. What if the iceberg melted? Or what if it started to fall apart? These were just some of the numerous concerns that Amy had about being on an iceberg. Still, she knew that she would have to overcome these challenges as they come.

With a bit of time thinking about solutions, she came up with an idea about countering the iceberg from melting or breaking apart. It was, in her mind, quite simple. Add the iceberg into her territory, and as long as she had circulating mana, it should hold firm.

Though her situation was not ideal, it did give Amy a chance to be really creative with this. But before she could do anything about it, she had to make sure that her iceberg had been entirely under her control.

So, she got to work. Unlike before, where she worked on circularly adding territory bit by bit, Amy would go about it a different way. With a part of her territory, including the edge of the iceberg, she decided to start there.

Amy created a mana thread at the edge and decided to work her way left. She wanted to see how large the iceberg was, so she would work her way around the outside than in. Kind of like how you would do the outside pieces of a puzzle first before making your way into the centre.

Amy pushed and pushed before she had to stop. Finally, she was able to push her mana thread about 10 metres from her territory. While still keeping a connection with the thread following the iceberg outside, Amy pulled another thread from the circulating mana. She pulled it towards the outside thread before connecting and attaching the threads together. With a bit of pushing, pulling, and creating, Amy incorporated more of the iceberg into her territory.

Using the mana threads working, she knew that she would continue using this method. Amy would not stop until she finally had complete control over the iceberg. Once she did, she could finally have fun with her new reality.