It had been a full day cycle since Armin had faced off against those bugs and subsequently levelled. He had seriously worried that he would not be able to get any sleep in the less than ideal climate just like before, without his self-heating ability, since right up until that evening, his mana had not once budged from zero.

Thankfully, as soon as night time hit, his mana started regenerating once more, albeit at a turtle's pace, much, much slower than before. It had been just enough for him to keep his self-heating skill up in order to get some much needed rest. The whole problem of the ‘spell’ not maintaining itself and subsequently being occasionally awoken, notwithstanding. He really did need to find a way to make the ‘spell’ maintain itself, without conscious effort on his part.

Regardless, he could only hope that his mana situation would continue to improve, that whatever those damn bugs had done to him, would wear off in time, certainly seemed to be the case though.

Armin was also feeling a bit dehydrated. He had not risked drinking water for a while now, instead waiting for his health to finish topping off, just in case he were to get poisoned again. Although as things stood, he might just be tempted to take a sip or two before then.

But first, Armin found that he had to activate his self heating spell once more. For some reason, as he travelled along the riverside the temperature seemed to have been dropping for a while now, despite it being the middle of the day. While it was true that the weather in this place had always erred on the colder side of things, to the point of being uncomfortable, something that he had gotten used to, it was now such that he was definitely getting too cold.

Something had changed. It was not any noticeable weather change either. The sky was still clear and sunny. It had been, ever since he arrived here, another thing that he was curious about, was the weather always like this?

He soon got his answer. Not to the weather that is, but the unspoken question about the precipitous drop in temperature he had been feeling.

In front of him now was a crater spanning about thirty meters across. The fact that there was suddenly this thirty meter crater wasn’t even a big deal to him anymore, god knows, he’d seen stranger. No, the real thing that stood out to him was the fact that this crater was undeniably the cause of the temperature drop in the surroundings.

The crater itself, was a literal frozen wasteland. It was covered in a thick layer of ice and spiked icicles, all throughout and even extending out the rim of the crater in a jagged pattern for a good couple of meters, like the ice was alive somehow and trying to literally claw its way out of the giant whole in the ground.

Armin tried to get closer for a better look, but even approaching the rim, he quickly stopped, almost gasping at how sharply the temperature dropped the closer he got. You’d swear the crater itself was filled with liquid nitrogen or something, it was nuts.

He instead turned on his mana sense, and nearly gasped once more at the sight. He was almost completely blind with his mana sense turned on, the overwhelming abundance of mana in the area completely drowning out his senses. It certainly answered the question about why the ice hand not melted and how the cold was being maintained in such a localised form.

Put simply, it’s magic.

Crazy unbelievably powerful magic, but magic nonetheless. Armin could only but help marvel at the spectacle of it. What could have caused magic this powerful, or was it simply a naturally occurring phenomenon? He couldn’t help but feel seriously intimidated either way, not quite sure which would be worse for him, a living breathing creature capable of wielding this against him at will, or an equally merciless and uncaring natural disaster.

Armin was about to give it a pass altogether and simply go around, figuring there was little to be gained here and plenty of body temperature to be lost. But a thought suddenly occurred to him. This was magic. Different from pretty much the only magic he knew how to use, that being fire. This was ‘cold’ magic.

It had never even occurred to him how ‘cold’ magic would work. And even thinking about it, he had absolutely no idea how to accomplish such a thing with mana. Heating things he did by basically vibrating mana in place, he assumed caused the mana to heat up, but with further introspection was likely heating up molecules around it to the point of combustion. It is likely possible that the friction between the mana and the molecules around it was causing the heat rather than the mana itself. But this was of course complete speculation.

He did know that vibrating molecules caused heat. That much he was certain of. He also knew that the lack of vibration in molecules caused cold. What was cold to a human was simply a lesser shade of hot to the universe, with absolute zero being around -273 degrees celcius. Hence the kelvin temperature measurement which was far more ‘scientifically’ useful, which put absolute zero at precisely zero degrees kelvin. And everything above that was some form of plus kelvin number.

But even with that understanding, he did not know how to do ‘cold magic’. Moving mana around to vibrate molecules and heat them was one thing, but how would you slow the movement of molecules using mana? This was something he could not understand. Hence the idea to try and examine this ‘cold magic’ to make sense of it.

Of course this was proving to be considerably difficult given the abundance of mana to the point that it was practically ‘blinding’ him. Armin tried examining the absolute outskirts of the ice on the rim of the crater. This was proving to be far more practical. While it was still crazy levels of intense magic, it was at least doable.

At first he did not notice anything. He noticed a lot of mana of course, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. Inspecting a little more carefully yielded similar results. The mana was just there, unmoving.

It was the level of ‘unmovingness’ that ended up standing out to him as different. He had never seen mana this ‘still’ before. But it was more than that, the mana wasn’t so much still as it was ‘frozen in place’. Every bit of mana that he had seen up until now, had always been mobile in some fashion or another. Free flowing if you will.

For this mana, it seemed not to be the case. While this was a new and novel concept in and of itself, one that would certainly merit a lot of exploration on his part, in its own right. There was something more to this.

While initially it seemed that the mana was frozen in place, or simply not moving, this was not entirely true. After having watched for some time, he had found that the mana was moving ever so slightly, albeit in ‘chunks’. There were entire formations of mana that seemed to be connected together and ‘moving’ as one.

This was yet another novel concept for him to explore if he ever got his bloody mana back.

It unfortunately did not explain yet how cold magic worked. Armin tried to find another more isolated patch of cold magic to examine. When he finally did, something stood out to him. It wasn’t so much that there were chunks of mana that were mana connected together in completely non uniform formations following no discernable governing rule, in a ridiculous level of abundance that overwhelmed his mana sense, but rather that the mana formations present were giving off some kind of aura, or field.

This field did not seem to extend outside of any given clump of mana and only seemed to form within. It was just difficult to have discerned it thus far due to the large amount of mana formations in the area. This was yet another concept that instilled wonder in Armin, the fact that the mana itself could generate a sort of field. He idly wondered if perhaps this ‘field’ was what was causing the molecules in the area to ‘slow down’ and become cold.

Amin continued to study the scene for quite some time. But eventually had to give up. No further revelations were making themselves known and he simply did not have the mana reserves to play around with any of this, or try to recreate it.

Armin decided it was time to leave, he had been fiercely burning through what little mana reserves he had to stay warm in proximity to the crater and in spite of that had still been freezing his ass off.

The rustling of some grass suddenly caught his attention. Armin had nothing but bad memories and currently really bad feelings of such interruptions. He froze in place trying to make himself small in the face of this new and unknown threat. His back to the gaping crater of frozen death behind him, only helped to cement the feeling of suddenly being trapped.

Out of the tallish purple grass, a lone brown creature strolled. It was shaped more or less like a pig or a boar in both shape and size. It even had snow white tusks, albeit four of them and they almost seemed to be glowing. The fact that the creature had six legs only added to its unnerving presence.

Armin quickly identified it as a level three ‘Meezog’. Theoretically well within his range of what he should be able to handle. Wait scratch that, it was stupid to think purely in terms of RPG like levels and guidance said level are in theory supposed to provide players for benefit of threat assessment. Still Armin felt confident.

That was only up until two more Meezog’s around the same level came strolling out of the grass and joined their companion.

Shit.

Somehow a stare down commenced. On the one side Armin, spear clutched tightly in hand and dagger in his left. On the other, three unreadable expressionless faces illuminated ever so faintly by a total of twelve brilliant white tusks.

“I don’t suppose you guys are herbivores?”

No response.

Expected, but the real issue here was had he really just talked to a pack of wild animals? Jesus. What solitude can do to you.

As if to offer some kind of response to his question, the ‘leading’ Meezog suddenly charged him. It was strange that only it did and not the others, they had initially seemed like pack animals to Armin. Perhaps it was that they were simply underestimating him. He really hoped that to be the case, ‘cause if they weren’t, well that would be bad.

Armin briefly considered running, but his position was less than ideal for such a thing. He felt he was better off facing the lone charging creature than turning his back on it.

Armin waited for the right moment as the creature approached him and just as it was in range, he thrust his spear forward with all his might, trying to make the motion as smooth and fast as possible. The adrenaline was kicking into overdrive and both heat and the sound of his heart pumping were filling his ears.

The spear struck true, or at least its path did. The Meezog however had been quite a bit more nimble than Armin had anticipated and sprang to its left to avoid the incoming weapon. Given the speed it had been barreling forward with and its rather rotund body, made this a somewhat awkward maneuver.

The result was an off kilter boar-like creature and a lot of dirt being kicked up by what appeared to be hooves. The only reason the creature had even stayed upright during its ‘sidestep’ was likely due to the fact that it had six legs to add to its stabilisation.

While the Meezog had indeed managed to stay upright and Armin barely managing to do so himself, given his missed thrust, the meezog however, could do little about his now only mildly adjusted momentum that left him barrelling towards the ice crater behind Armin.

Armin was perfectly happy to let this series of events play out while he regained his balance. The Meezog ended up flying over the rim of the crater, not able to slow down in time and was flung right over the edge. Armin watched with a mixture of wonder and horror as the powerful magic froze the creature over instantly like something that had been dunked in fucking liquid nitrogen or something.

That was nuts. He was seriously glad he had not tried to tempt fate and get any closer to that thing than he had. Armin idly wondered if there was such a thing as a creature in this place that wasn’t hostile. Serves it right.

Armin thoroughly satisfied that the Meezog was now dead, both visually confirmed and by the notification he had just received, then turned back to face the other two that were still waiting there patiently. He could not help a smug look creeping onto his face when facing off with them waiting to see what they will do next.

And it indeed took a while for them to make up their minds. This was owed in part to the fact that it seemed they had been waiting for one more friend to arrive, something that had now only come to pass. Armin’s smug smile disappeared rather suddenly. Numbers back up to three, Armin seriously hoped there wasn’t anymore of these things lurking about, waiting for the right time to pop out and ruin his day any further than it had already been.

The staring contest only lasted a short while this time. All three Meezog’s charged forward this time, seemingly no longer underestimating him. Armin braced himself wearily for the impending battle, tension filling his body. As scared as he was, there was also something else filling him. He did not quite understand what though. If he didn’t know any better, he might have been tempted to label it excitement, but somehow he expected that wasn’t entirely correct.

Meezog ‘A’, leading the pack, was the first to enter his striking range. Armin wasted no time executing the expected spear thrust, he was quite surprised by how good he was at this, each thrust so far having been decently on target, despite the power he was trying to put behind it and never having done such a thing before. He could only assume it had something to do with this world, having come here, or having stats in the first place. Well he had upped his [Dexterity] and [Perception] a bit?

Meezog A lunged to his right to try and avoid the spear thrust. It was not as awkward as the first Meezog had been and found its footing on its altered course a lot more easily, this one with no real risk of overshooting and heading for the crater. Meezog A’s charge had seemed less frantic that the first one. Either it was more wary of Armin, or it had learned from the first ones mistake? The latter was a rather scary thought.

Meezog A’s suddenly altered course had put it right in Meezog B’s path and caused the two to collide, leaving Meezog B scrambling off in a different direction, not towards the crater, but still a little dazed and ever so momentarily out of the fray.

That left Meezog C bearing down on Armin while he desperately tried to recover from his missed attack. He would have to work on his ‘footing’ or something in future (assuming he survives this encounter), since he was once more off balance and trying to fight both gravity and his own momentum.

With Meezog C almost on top of him now, (it had trailed a little behind the other two), he had little choice but to give up righting himself and instead try to divert out of the way of those rather sharp incoming tusks. Armin pushed off to the side to try and avoid it.

The push was clearly not enough and the Meezog had already angled its head to get in a passing jab. Armin did however bring the spear end around, as much as he could manage to try and keep it at bay. This seemed to work partially as the Meezog didn’t lean into the attack as it passed by, nearly as much as Armin thought it could have. The result was a nasty gash across his left leg from one of the tusks, but nothing more serious than that.

Armin hissed in pain and then did a kind of ‘roll’ thing to get back into a ‘ready’ position. The roll would have been considered really cool if he were still ten, but as it stood, he was older, and it was embarrassing. Not that Armin cared much at the moment, he was simply trying to focus on the fight.

Meezog A had already come around for another charge. Armin was still on his knees and did not have the time to get back into position, so he instead braced himself for the charge as best he could and used his spear as a sort of makeshift shield.

The Meezog impacted hard and completely tossed Armin to the side from the force as it passed, but the spear had done its job, temporarily lodging itself between each of the Meezog’s two sets of tusks during impact and thus preventing those things from being lodged inside Armin instead.

Having stopped most of Meezog A’s momentum Armin had not a moment to spare and had barely gotten to his knees again, his bones still rattingling from the shock as the Meezog turned towards him.

Armin struck out with a desperate swing of his spear in a lateral direction, in an attempt to fend off the now close range Meezog A. This was met with partial success, as the spear did strike the Meezog firmly in the head, but since Armin’s spear was never meant for striking, rather jabbing, it did little but give the Meezog a nasty bump on the head.

Armin had hoped to use the opportunity to get to his feet, being on his knees in front of these things was extremely unnerving after all, but alas, Meezog B had other plans for him. Having recovered from getting side tracked by Meezog A, it was now charging at Armin once more.

Armin did not have any time to spare as he had only now noticed Meezog B bearing down on him, far too late in the game to try to avoid it. Something to work on perhaps, battle awareness? Once more if he survived this that is.

Armin did his best to thrust his spear into the incoming Meezogs path, from his kneeling position. Surprisingly, the unexpected and poorly planned attack caught the Meezog by surprise and it was unable to properly dodge out of the way.

It veered to the side, out of Armin’s path, with a nasty gash across its left side for its trouble. It unfortunately did not veer enough and struck Armin harshly in passing. At least it wasn’t the tusks this time. But still, the dull impact from a beast of that weight sent Armin sprawling to the ground and grunting in pain.

Somehow Armin had managed to retain his grip on his spear, he had no idea how, but this was a good thing, as Meezog A was basically hovering directly above his head at this point. There was the briefest comical moment where the two just stared at each other. Armin looking up lying flat on his back on the ground, and Meezog A, looking straight down into Armin’s eyes, from behind; its teeth dangerously close to Armin’s face.

Armin reacted just in the nick of time after the brief moment of confusion, raising his spear up as Meezog A took a snap at his face, instead biting into the flat of the spear that Armin had inserted into its path in an attempt to use it as a makeshift shield against exactly that.

Instead of letting go and trying again however, Meezog A simply bit down harder and started thrashing about like some kind of dog with a chew toy. It was taking all of Armin’s strength, holding onto the spear with both hands, to keep a grip on it.

Armin suddenly noticed that Meezog B had crept up on his left foot and was about to take a bite out of it. While still fighting with the spear, he quickly pulled the foot away just as Meezog B snapped at where it had been just a moment earlier. As the Meezog looked up to see where its meal had suddenly been retracted too, it received a full force kick to the face from said meal, forcing it to take a step back and look ever so mildly dazed.

Meezog A had stopped thrashing and by now was simply applying as much force as it could, bearing down on Armin and his spear, inching its teeth ever closer to Armin’s face. He was in turn having trouble holding the beast back the lower his leverage got. With Armin spotting out the corner of his eye that Meezog B had recovered and with no idea what the status of Meezog C was, he knew his situation was dire.

He made a snap decision.

Armin let go of the right side of the spear, while jerking his head to the left. The Meezog and the spear came crashing down. The right side of the spear hit the ground and stopped there, while the left was still being held up by Armin causing the spear to be slanted. With armin having pulled his head to the left, it was just enough to lean under the slope, with Meezog A’s teeth only grazing his face as the spear was buckling under the weight and length a bit.

Armin used his free hand to reach for his ‘knife’. The knife had been dropped upon the first attack that had sent him to the ground. Armin had not bothered to retrieve it at the time since it was easier to wield the spear with two hands at times and he had also been a little preoccupied with not dying.

Armin grabbed the knife and jammed it into Meezog A’s throat, resulting in a squeal similar to that of a pigs but not as high pitched. Meezog A disengaged and started running around and thrashing wildly and randomly.

Armin quickly got to his feet, not wasting the opportunity. He could now see Meezog C charging him. These things really like charging you with their tusks it seems. Armin simply stepped around Meezog B who was not reacting, simply eyeing him warily after Meezog A’s injury. Armin took advantage of this to position Meezog B between himself and the charging Meezog C.

Meezog C was forced to break off the charge and instead started trotting to the side, essentially attempting to circle around and flank Armin. Given their new found caution, Armin decided to try and capitalize and see how these things dealt with being on the defensive.

Once Meezog C was about to complete its flanking, that is, leave Armin’s field of view, Armin spun around and shot off in its direction. Armin was the one charging this time.

The plan had worked. Both Meezog’s had been taken by surprise by this change of pace, Meezog B simply left standing there for a moment, while Meezog C tried to scramble to get out of the way and failing spectacularly to do so. The sudden shift from being the hunter circling its prey to being the hunted had left it unable to react properly and it had stumbled over its own feet in its desperate scramble to get out of the way.

This had given Armin just the moment he needed to drive his spear into Meezog C’s side, eliciting another squeal of pain. Suddenly these lowly beasts did not seem nearly as terrifying as they did mere moments ago. Armin did not stop, he kept pushing on the spear, driving it deeper until even Meezog C’s feet were left scrambling and scuffing against the ground from the force.

Armin heard a charge from behind him, apparently Meezog B had realized things were going bad for them and this was no time to be cowering. Armin didn’t care. He kept driving into it, pushing along the ground, the spear embedded ever deeper into the squealing, panicking creature. Armin pushed with all his might, a battle cry of effort began gurgling out the bottom of his throat. He roared at the offending monster in front of him.

As the two of them approached the rim of the ice crater, Meezog B finally managed to break free of the spear, but it was too little too late. Now standing on the rim of the crater, the temperature easily below zero, Armin did not give it a chance to escape. He stepped in, planting his left leg into the ground, and bringing his right to bear with all the leg strength he could manage. The resultant kick sent the Meezog flying over the edge. He was tempted to yell ‘this is sparta’.

Meezog B, moments away from death and no longer a concern, Armin turned to the incoming Meezog C. It’s charge was a bit on the slow side, likely due to the proximity to the crater behind Armin. This gave him the freedom to swing the spear laterally in an attempt to strike the Meezog instead of impaling it. Armin was confident that such a motion would be difficult to avoid, unlike his no doubt amateurish spear thrusts.

It worked. The Meezog had been entirely unable to avoid the strike despite attempting to do so. Such a blow was small fries of course, but enough to force the Meezog off course and allow Armin to evade the charge successfully this time.

He wasted no time and took advantage of the Meezogs temporary redirect and daze, a split second was all he needed. Armin launched himself through the air, straight at the Meezog, not even having bothered to regain his balance first.

He drove his dagger into the Meezog, having aimed for its neck like the first, now very dead Meezog A, but instead found purchase just above a shoulder blade. It mattered little. His enemy was squealing in pain and would soon be on his way to death’s door.

Armin being half on the Meezog and half on the ground from his lunge, would not be able to avoid the Meezog turning its head towards him despite the blade sticking out of the creature, no doubt intent on trying to take a bite out of him. So Armin leaned away from the teeth as much as he could while not letting go of the blade.

He reached under the Meezog with his free hand and grabbed a leg. Pulling on the leg and pushing off the ground with his feet suddenly and forcefully, he used his shoulder to push the Meezog over. The creature had been once more taken by surprise and despite having five other legs to counter with, still fell over to the side, effectively negating its attempt to bite Armin.

Armin ripped out his dagger and drove it into the Meezog’s body once more. The creature thrashed and squealed, but Armin had already mounted it. Stabbing again and again, sprays of blood adorning his body like some macabre tribal markings. Until the Meezog finally stopped moving.

Armin simply sat there for a while, atop his corpsen throne. He stared down coldly at the creature below him, while he caught his breath and waited for the adrenalin to leave his body.

So this was the thrill of the kill? He idly wondered while blood dripped from his now coated hand.