The Blizzard had calmed down to just a light blowing wind with a light dusting of snow just as Yuki said it would.

Now Akira, Mileena, Maya, and Azura, stood near the rear of the castle as they looked towards the open snowy land below.

They watched as a small group of people spread out in a rectangle started chanting led by Yuki. The chanting that reached them was in a language that was unknown to Akira.

A swirling wind quickly rose up around each of the people chanting. The loose snow around them was caught up in the swirling wind.

As Akira watched the wind from each person expanded and connected to the others next to them forming a swirling rectangle.

Seconds later ice started to sprout up from the ground where the swirling wind was present. It grew taller and thicker as the seconds went by. When the ice walls reached a certain height they began to grow diagonally creating a roof.

The clear ice stopped growing and expanding when the group changed the words they were chanting.

With the new chant, a new layer of ice that was a dark green started to spread out from the top of the roof down to the ground covering the entire building.

When the chanting stopped the swirling wind also disappeared from the building.

“There it's finished,” said Yuki slightly breathless as she arrived next to the others who were looking at the new building.

“What exactly is it?” asked Akira.

“A greenhouse. Now you can use it to grow important plants all year. The others will make sure to plant the flowers and other special seeds we brought you inside,” said Yuki proudly, in a cheerful voice that was unusual for her.

“But won't the ice just melt when the Warm months come?” asked Azura.

“There is no way that would happen since we added the second protective layer over the first, The others will finish adding another layer on the inside of the building. It acts as a way to attract the little sunlight there may be and magnifies it while separating the ice from the heat.”

“Well now that is finished we can go on my date right?” asked Mileena, looking at Akira with great expectations.

“I guess so since we are free for the rest of the afternoon,” said Akira.

“Great!” shouted Mileena as she tried to latch onto his arm.

“I guess it can't be helped. I'll have to join you two in order to make sure you two don't do anything indecent,” said Azura.

“I'll just follow everyone, don't mind me,” said Maya as she wiped the lenses of her glasses and put them back on.

“Then I will join as well!” said Yuki.

“No! This is supposed to be a date! A date!” shouted Mileena at the others who ignored her as they followed Akira back to the bustling town.

“Mileena, what shop do you want to go to first?” asked Akira.

“Muuuuuu~. Fine! If you're going to come don't get in my way!” shouted Mileena as she chased after the group.

They spent the next few hours visiting every stall and hastily built shack at the trading post. Buying odd food and trinkets that caught their interest.

“Let's go to the clothes shop in the town!” said Mileena as she ate a type of dessert that Akira thought no one would want to eat in such a cold place. But it seemed that all of the girls loved it, especially Yuki.

The dessert? It was shaved ice with a berry sauce and an unknown type of chopped nuts sprinkled on top.

A few minutes past as they rode the ferry that had been recently built. It had two rows of benches at the center allowing the passengers to sit instead of stand the whole time like the previous flatbed that was used.

***

“I welcome the lord! It is an honor to have you personally come to my humble shop. I am sorry that we have such a small selection of fancy clothing here.

Most of the clothes are of simple designs made by the fledgling local sowers of the town. But I do have a few special items that I managed to trade for from a few of the traders,” said a plump elderly werewolf.

“Madam Lydia, there is no need to worry about something like that. The girls just wanted to come and try out some of the clothes,” said Akira with a slight bow to the elderly woman.

“If there is anything I can do for you let me know,” said Lydia as she went back to one of the counters and continued to fold clothes and place them into a neat pile.

“Let's start!” said a happy Mileena.

“Akira you're going to have to be the judge for us and see what looks good,” said Azura as she joined Mileena in a search for clothes that she liked.

During the girls mission to try on as many things as they could find, Mileena had a mishap where her underwear was shown to an extremely embarrassed Akira.

“Oops! Now that you have seen my underwear you have to marry me!” said Mileena.

“You vixen! You did that on purpose! Stop trying to corrupt my brother!” said Azura as she yanked Mileena back into the changing room.

Akira carried a large pile of clothes to the front counter. It was everything that the girls had decided to buy and it was all based on Akira's reactions more than any words that he may have said.

“Would you like to buy a cloth flower hair ornament? They only cost a few coppers,” asked Lydia as she showed a small wicker basket that had several colorful red and blue cloth flowers inside of it.

Akira looked to the girls behind him who were all looking at him with big watery eyes full of expectation.

“Ye...Yeah. Um four of them please.”

“Any particular color?” asked Lydia.

The four girls jumped on the small basket and picked out the color they wanted before Akira could answer.

Red for Mileena and Azura, Blue for Maya and Yuki. Truly matching their personality, red for hotblooded and blue for calm or cold in Yuki's case.

As they walked back to the castle Akira turned his head to Azura who had her arms linked with one of his and said, “You know that thing that happened in the shop. You need to protect yourself properly. A pervert might try something if they saw that.”

“There was no one else in the shop beside the old lady. But what should I do if something did happen?” asked Mileena.

“If the worst-case happened you could always grab on to him to stop him from escaping and scream 'This person is a pervert!',” said Azura.

Mileena grabbed onto one of Akira's hands that was holding a leather bag containing the clothes that had been bought.

“Help! This person is a per...”

Akira quickly dropped one of the bags and covered her mouth.

“Hey, hey. Stop with the jokes! People might get the wrong idea!” said Akira.

The rest of the late afternoon until dinner time was spent having a snowball fight with several of the local kids of the town.

***

“Ah~, the 'Leg oven, toe toaster 2.0' is really nice to warm up under after a long day outside,” said Akira as he lay partially under the now modified short table and blanket with his head laying on Mileena's lap.

“It's a perfect time for me to check Akira for fleas,” said Mileena as she started playing with Akira's hair.

“I'm not a dog! I don't have fleas,” said Akira slapping her hand away from his head.

“Ah! There was something I have been meaning to tell you,” said Yuki.

“What is?” asked Akira as he turned onto his side to look at Yuki who was standing next to the window.

“While traveling to Kodria we found what looked to be a dungeon nearby. My grandfather didn't want to risk going into the dungeon to clear it due to his need to keep me protected. So I decided to let you know about it.”

Ding!

New mission received!

Clear the new Unknown dungeon near Kodria!

Difficulty Rank and rewards unknown!

“Why did you wait until now to tell me?” asked Akira as he sat up nearly tipping the table over.

“Well there was the whole standoff meeting at the lake then the meeting with the Grand elders and everyone was having so much fun today that I didn't want to say anything.”

“You forgot about it. Didn't you?” asked Azura.

“I wouldn't say forgot, just that I remembered it a little later than I was supposed to,” said Yuki as she turned her head away and looked out of the window hiding her face.

“I'll need you to lead me and the army to the dungeon tomorrow morning,” said Akira.

“You're not going to go immediately?” asked Mileena.

“I rather not go out at night with the cold temperatures. It can wait a few more hours,” said Akira.

***

“This is the entrance to the dungeon,” said Yuki as she pointed to the small cave opening in front of them.

Akira looked to the 200 soldiers behind him. He had made sure to bring the full army since he had no clue how big or hard it would be to clear.

'It is better to be over-prepared for a tough fight than to be under-prepared,' thought Akira.

“Shield formation,” he ordered as he joined the front row of shields with Dolph and Vilkas on his right and left.

As they marched forward fully alert for any type of ambush Akira was able to make out several shadows rolling around near the entrance.

With a quick blast through the dog whistle, the skirmishers aimed their weapons and fired at the moving shadows.

Thunk! Thud! The sound of the bolts hitting something hard could be heard.

“Charge!” ordered Akira pointing his sword towards the shadows.

As one the shield-wall moved forward and entered the dungeon row after row.

Ding!

You are the first to enter the 'Cute Ice slime' dungeon!

+5 fame.

Would you like to add your name to the leader board as the one who discovered the dungeon?

If you want you can stop receiving all future notifications like this.

Akira quickly declined and accepted the option to mute and decline all future discovery leaderboard notifications.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cave he focused onto one of the rolling shadows.

[Cute Ice slime: Lvl 30] 'What part of this thing is cute?'

The [Cute ice slimes] continued to roll around ignoring the soldiers who had entered.

“Let's hurry and clean up this room and move to the next! If these are anything like the other slimes only blunt damage will work. Use your shields to smash them, Fluffball you stay back I can't have you getting sick because of their poison,” ordered Akira.

“Yap!” said Fluffball, unhappy at being forced to stay out of the fight again.

They went to work herding the [Cute ice slimes] into a small pocket and continued to use their shields to try and smash them apart.

Every time Akira hit one of the slimes the area that was hit would immediately become rock-solid ice.

Several of the [Cute ice slimes] tried to latch onto the shields or legs of some of the heavy infantry and turned themselves into hardened ice that tried to cover the entirety of what it was attached too.

It took several blunt attacks to make sure the [Cute ice slimes] were completely crushed.

“Sir there are a few large ones over here!” shouted a soldier.

[Super cute ice slime: Lvl 50]

“Let's take care of them!” shouted Akira as he and his guards charged and smashed their shields into the large [Super cute ice slimes].

Before they knew it the fighting was over.

“Commander I can't find any other exits or rooms,” said a soldier.

Ding!

Cute ice slime dungeon has been cleared!

No reward will be given!

A new title has been received!

Coldblooded Overkiller: For someone to use a full army to decimate such cute ice slimes one would think that the commander has ice in his veins.

The dungeon will re-spawn a new batch of [Cute ice slimes] in a week.

Continue to train your soldiers well and they will be able to be promoted to Veteran rank!

Akira closed the notification windows and looked over to Fluffball who was digging through the chunks of broken ice slimes.

When Fluffball found what he was looking for he walked over to a pile of dark blue ice chunks, dropped it onto the pile, and ran over to another cluster of dead slimes.

“What are you gathering?” asked Akira as he walked over to Fluffball and scratched his head.

“Yap!” said Fluffball after spitting out a blue chunk into Akira's hand.

Ding!

Special magic stone discovered!

This magic stone can be socketed into armor and weapons to add a variety of special ice buffs, effects, and on rare occasions skills.

As Akira took a closer look he could see that inside of the ice chunk there was a dark blue stone.

Each of the other chunks that Fluffball had found was the same.

“Good job Fluffball. I think we really hit the jackpot! Now that I think about it I can see how these little guys really are cute money makers!” said Akira praising Fluffball.

Fluffball tiled his head to the side, not sure how Akira could call the rolling blocks of ice cute.