“...Maybe, but the feeling of doing it yourself. Your own magic, Aediva, that’s when you really knows that magic is real”

That moment, in the rumble and tumble of emotions, she remembered what Blackhorns told her once while drowning in the merciless sea of things she never even remembered she felt. Maybe once she had felt that way. In a time she couldn’t remember.

“Your own magic”.

It’s a statement of varying meaning for each individual in the world. That ‘meaning’ is what gave magic its forcing power to even manifest. And for her, it meant ‘sacrifice’.

She may have misunderstood what the Black Mirror told her. Maybe the sacrifice wasn’t the people. But… it was her. Her sacrifice.

Sacrifice of comfort. Sacrifice of her own will. Sacrifice of her own self-importance. Sacrifice for the so-called ‘greater good’. The worse thing? It was another's sacrifice for her.

When flashes of that supposedly Vestigium memories appeared in her head, she was reminded of the meaning of her own magic and the path she’s always bound to walk on.

Alone. In the cold, nothing but a sacrifice.

It is the price of a powerful gift. A curse and a blessing at the same time.

As she tread in between the rubble, a dry smile appeared on her face. In the end, no matter how tired she is, she simply cannot rest until the very end.

“Ah… This is so tiring…” she sighed heavily.

Even if she had to drag her feet, she still went on towards the battle.

She’s forced to still find strength to keep going.

And in the end, she cannot deny the new-found strength for her to continue on.

And… the joy that bubbled from the pit of her stomach.

To hell with the cold. To hell with honor. To hell with everything.

“Ah... Even if it’s bitter. You still can’t deny there are still good things in your life isn’t it?” she murmured as she came to a stop - staring at the one thing that is in her way to get to the three she is desperate to save.

Even now, the innocent smile of that boy in her memory remained in her head. Even if it’s only that smile… It is a reminder of the good times she had probably experienced. Her head was never any clearer. Her vision is pristine, no longer blurry with tears as she looks straight at the incoming slime’s tentacles.

Even before they could go any nearer, all four that came from the cardinal direction immediately froze and fell apart within the sphere of translucent white around Aediva.

Aediva raised her hand as if pulling something from her left hand, shards of white and light silver circle around her and with a reverberant sound of chiming and loud crackling making everything almost silent in her surrounding vicinity.

Like a scene in a fairy tale, white tint cascaded over everything in the 50 meter radius from Aediva. The fire that was flaring hot, turned silver as the temperature dropped like it was in the middle of a freezing winter night. Aediva sighed, her misty breath visible as she swings a sword made out of ice gleaming black and white under the dim environmental lighting.

“Bitch! How the hell are you still alive?!” Rachel’s voice almost sound deafening and about ready to destroy the very loudspeakers broadcasting her voice.

“So noisy” Aediva growled, standing still as she look at the slimes incoming towards her. Little did the spectators knew, it was as though the view was like a still image with Aediva standing silently with the sword raised and flashes of silver lightning appearing from time to time.

The one adventurer who had returned to chase after Aediva was completely stunned when seeing the sight of the countless slime getting slashed to mere tiny frozen shards. Only after a few seconds more of actually seeing what is actually transpiring did the adventurer noticed that the Aediva that was standing there was merely an afterimage and the girl had long been traversing on and around the slimy protrusions equipped with the sword made of crystallized ice.

Long shards of thin ice flew all around like missiles freely being shot from the countless amount of magic glyphs appearing in the air as Aediva passed through, leaving clear trails of various shades of blue circles as she danced a Danse Macabre.

“FUCKING--” hearing Rachel’s angered response to her actions, a smirk tugged at Aediva’s lips as she landed on a piece of debris, the sword breaking in her hand - albeit her lack of concern. A new one formed right after.

“Am I being too good, Professor Rachel? I do apologize, it’s the lowest difficulty I swear” Aediva said, casually splitting a tendril coming her way into two with the sword she raised upright so nonchalantly. Her silver eyes looked at the frozen jelly with an impassive look before looking at the slime tower. She disappeared in an instant before the other three could smash her flat - although they were sliced to pieces right after its impact that shattered the debris.

“Dammit!” some random adventurer cussed, groaning to even lift the huge debris off a girl who was stuck underneath. At that moment when everything seemed futile, a sudden impact at the side of the large debris shifted things around. Literally.

The debris flew towards the incoming slimes from the west - flattening their advance towards the Frost mage as she stopped her sliding to a screeching halt. She blinked as she looked at the one girl tinier or rather, much petite than her on the ground right beside her feet and the dumbfounded adventurer.

Probably sensing the heavy weight on her body suddenly gone, the girl turned to look at the female figure backed by the light from the fire behind her - her features almost unclear except for her shining silver eyes. Aediva broke off her stare from the girl although pastel rainbow-coloured eyes and hair will probably remain in her head for how beautiful it is. She needs to remember she’s in the middle of a fight.

“Get out of here” Aediva said before disappearing yet again, leaving the stupefied adventurer to snap back to his senses when feeling the wave of cold shifting back to the warm temperature as it was before. He picked up the girl on the ground, supporting her as she tried to stand up straight. The girl hissed at the pain but she gasped when seeing her wound slowly being wrapped with what seems like ice except it’s not even cold and it stopped the bleeding from the gash on her legs.

“Let’s get out of here,” the adventurer said, and replied with only a nod from the female student. Before the left, she spared a glance at the flicker of light dancing around the slime extensions quite far off from her location.

“Tch”

As she expected, no matter how good she’s fighting, she is wasting time. Even when everything is quite literally slowing down when in her vicinity, she feels like there are even more tentacles in her way than it was before. Aediva gritted her teeth, growling when finding herself so close at the base of the slime tower only to have a single slime protrusion slammed at her and caused her to fly off quite ways away from its main body.

Aediva almost struck her blade into the random softness she felt behind her if not for the unknown adventurer - a female adventurer whose physique resembled a lot like her gym teacher, Ms. Thalla, immediately calling out to Aediva.

“Whoa whoa whoa kid! Calm down!” the adventurer said, snapping Aediva back from her hyper-sensitive senses enough for her to realize that she was practically dangling from a branch with that female stranger in a loose white blouse that reveals her cleavage and combat trousers. Aediva was practically a little doll tucked under her buffy arm as the adventurer let go of the branch and dropped to the ground like she didn’t drop from at least 10m off the tree.

The woman let go of Aediva - chuckling right after when seeing how stiff Aediva was, with a definite frown on the forehead.

“Oi, Carla! Did you get the kid?” someone shouted from a far, sounding like they’re coming closer.

“Yeah. Got her. Spooked you pretty bad there huh, kid?” the adventurer named Carla grinned. For a while Aediva merely stared before her shoulders dropped and she stuck her magic-made sword on the ground, stumbling.

“Oi!”

Little did Aediva noticed, she was already surrounded by a lot of those adventurers who had been the major rescue power for those who involved in the initial explosion when the slime appeared. Aediva pants, feeling Carla’s hand on her shoulder.

“We saw you fight that thing. Splendid job but…” Carla hung her words as Aediva nodded - knowing what everyone was probably thinking at that time. The silver-eyed girl looked from the crack in the leaf canopy above - eyes trained on the slime tower.

“Yeah… There’s no end to that thing. Shit. Just a bit more... I would’ve been inside…” Aediva cursed, kneeling on the ground and slamming her fist on the ground - cracking the otherwise even layer of dirt.

“Carla. We’ve been taking orders from you. But at this point, there’s nothing much we could do but fight off that slime…” one of the outsider adventurers said. Aediva tightened the grip on the hilt of her sword.

“We need to hold off but everyone is getting tired. We need some sort of strategy!”

“Well, there ain’t much strategy when we were all getting hammered way too much time by that slime isn’t it?”

Aediva stand up even if she was shaking as she does. With the sword supporting her weight, she walked towards the slime tower - much to the shock of the adults around her.

“O-oi! We need to get you out of here!” one of the adventurers said but Aediva merely swiped away the hand that almost reached her. Her gaze straight at where Rachel holds her friends hostage.

“I could care less about you guys but stay out of my way. I’m going in even if I have to blast my way into that thing” she said, flickering ice shards circling around her. The adventurers looked with googly eyes as some shouted for Aediva to come back but it was already too late as they only witnessed the ground cracking as Aediva leaped away and disappearing into thin air - leaving only flickers of lightning in her wake.