Upon waking, I let out a long groan, my entire body feeling as if skelepigs had been tapdancing on me throughout the night. I was utterly sore, my head felt like it was filled with cotton and there was a funky taste in my mouth. I couldn’t even blame the state I was in on alcohol, I was simply beaten. Beaten and bruised.

With a few more groans and a couple of sounds that made me wonder if I needed some mechanical maintenance because a body shouldn’t crack and grumble as mine did, I managed to get out of bed and made my way to the showers. Well, to the drain that was installed to allow for easier cleaning of the underground area, but given that I was providing my own water, I didn’t really need the plumbing that provided water, just something to get rid of it. Though; maybe I should try getting rid of it on my own, it might improve my Water Magic even further and the dungeon run had demonstrated just how useful the school could be.

Despite my exhausted and bruised state, I tried to experiment a little with my magic. After drawing out the runic formation I used to conjure up the water for my shower, I tried to channel the Astral Power I focused into it with my Wind Magic, using a mental image of a warm summer wind.

There might have been some change to the way the water rained down on me, maybe it was even warmer than usually, but sadly, I wasn’t able to tell. For now, my shower wasn’t anything other than cold, though it might be getting towards a more temperate state, or maybe I was simply getting even more used to the cold, thanks to my emerging Firn Elf physique.

And that physique was most definitely emerging, by now, the colour of my skin was getting distinctly inhumane, though people might simply assume that I had some sort of skin condition or was naturally pale, at least for now. Soon, my skin would turn from a pale, blue-white to a more distinct icy blue and at that point, it would be obvious unless I was hidden in the dark. Similarly, my ears were gaining a slowly sharpening point, which I could hide in my hair if I so wished. Luckily, those were pretty much the major changes to my physique, I really didn’t want to consider how I’d feel and change if I had picked a different race, like a Centaur or something. Even a Valkyrie, with their wings, would be discomforting and that was with my love of flying and heights.

Clean, and feeling a lot better, I began to make plans for the day. I knew that my students wouldn’t come by, they simply didn’t know where to look for us, and that I wanted to head to the dungeon during the night. In addition, I wanted to turn the lair into a better base, add some creature comforts and improve the facilities in general.

Food Storage could be incredibly important in the coming days, especially with the army of dog that was living in the house above. They needed their canine diet, and the best way for that was to provide them with an area that could store meat. Creating a magical fridge, or even just a space that I repeatedly filled with conjured Ice, to keep things cold would be trivial, the only question was how fancy I wanted that fridge to be.

Experimenting with more Water and Wind Magic to dry myself off, I began designing the fridge. There was a part of me that wanted to make it self-powered, or maybe with some sort of runic formation that would drain blood of its Astral Power and power it that way, but I quickly realised that it just wasn’t practical at the moment. Too many intricacies, too much effort, for something that we’d most likely abandon in a few weeks, maybe a month or two. I wasn’t planning to stick around the area forever, just for now. I still needed more power, and power had to be sought out and acquired. Sure, I could gain some extra power by quietly training and introspecting, but to truly grow? For that, I needed to travel, to hunt and experience. Quite literally.

So, instead of spending hours upon hours to make the perfect fridge, I simply used a good chunk of my Astral Power to coat one of the upstairs rooms with a generous layer of magical Ice. The nice thing about the magical Ice in this context was, it didn’t melt. At least not into water, only about five, maybe ten, percent of conjured Ice ever managed to become water and what little water there was, disappeared back into the Astral soon after. Unless the conjurer deliberately tried to increase the Ice’s density, as I had with my frozen shuttle, and repeatedly used Ice Magic to restore and conserve conjured Ice, it wasn’t permanent. Not until one was able to conjure Eternal Ice, something I was far from.

Maybe it was even possible to create Eternal Ice in a roundabout way, by repeatedly, over the course of a year or two, increasing the amount of Astral Power within a chunk of Ice, constantly increasing it, never letting it melt. It was an interesting idea, one that I wanted to explore further, at least to a point. I hoped to regain the ability to conjure Eternal Ice within a year, but even if I could conjure it directly, learning about the process might grant me invaluable insight into the nature of reality and magic.

Once the room was full enough for my tastes, I informed the dogs about it, telling Silva that they could store meat in there, making it so it wouldn’t spoil quickly. We’d have to experiment quite a bit with distances and the amount of Ice and cold I packed in there, I doubted the dogs would enjoy trying to gnaw on frozen carcasses, but it was a good first step, something I could build upon.

The fridge made, I started to focus on the items I had collected, especially the bell. Just holding it didn’t do much, I could see the numbers go up on my character screen but it wasn’t as if there was a distinct change that came over me just because I had one extra point in courage and vitality.

When I rang the bell, nothing happened either. It clanged, loudly, but there was no magic emanating from it, nothing I could see or smell. So, I started experimenting, sending Astral Power into the bell, trying to channel it as if the bell was a runic formation that I fueled. That seemed to be the right step, the bell started to absorb Astral Power and I could smell the distinct scent of the elements I used when sniffing the air near it. But there was no other effect.

Until I tried ringing it again, this time while channelling Ice Magic into it.

The effect was immediate, the air around me started to instantly chill, though with the limited amount of Astral Power I used, it wasn’t anything extreme. Nothing broke or froze, just a chill surging through the air.

Grinning, I began to experiment with the mental images I used when channelling my magic, trying to see just how much the bell could actually do.

Soon I learned, it could do a lot. With the bell, I could manifest my magic anywhere within my line of sight, as long as I was ringing it. Or, more likely, I could manifest my magic anywhere within the disturbance range of the bell’s sound, but underground, that was everywhere I could see, trying to cast magic into areas I couldn’t perceive in any way was rather difficult. Maybe if I had a mental image I’d be able to, but I wasn’t about to try channelling magic into the various casks of cider, just to see if I could. Maybe into the stairwell, or I could go upstairs and use the rooms there but for now, it was line of sight.

Which was already huge.

It was pretty much equivalent to a rune defining the medium of a spell, like I had used conjured water to carry the cold I created with my Ice Runes when fighting the zombie pig, only I didn’t need water, I only needed sound. And sound was incredibly fast. Sure, not as fast as light, but at the range the current battles were fought at, the difference was pretty much academic. It didn’t matter if you tried to dodge a bullet on hearing the sound or seeing the flash of gunpowder, you were screwed either way.

A wonderful tool that increased my arsenal quite a bit, even if I had to think about the best ways to master it. Now, I only had to figure out what was going on with the weird foetus, the mysterious egg and the bone. Only, I had no real idea where to start.