Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe kept digging through the hematite for the next few weeks. Every few days she’d come back to her cave and work on testing some more of her skills. Most of them were quite boring, she found. Fishing didn’t seem to do anything, though she imagined it might have if she had a body of water to actually go fishing in. Maybe it would help her lures perform better or wiggle around in the water.

Mana Manipulation did more or less the same as the other Manipulation skills. She was able to move mana around with her enchantments and could see some possible uses for it somewhere. Maybe if she managed to find a more systematic approach to manipulating mana into more diverse effects, she could build complex enchantments that performed a variety of tasks.

Immaculate Enchantments was a simple enchantment that just kept things clean, though it was quite mana intense so she didn’t end up using it on anything. It was far easier to just cast the spell every so often.

Gathering was an interesting one. She half hoped it would make an enchantment that would harvest crops she planted for her so she could set up her dream automation for her home, but it was nothing like that. Rather, the enchantment made an object radiate mana the closer it was to whatever image Zoe had when she enchanted it.

If she enchanted her Frost with the image of Klir, then it would intensify when she brought it near Klir and wear down when she took it away. The interesting part was that it acted as more of a general search, whereas the Gathering skill itself only worked for things Zoe wanted to forage.

If Zoe wanted to find where she left her dagger of ice, the Gathering skill would be useless, but if she enchanted a ball of ice with the image of her dagger? Then it would radiate mana when she brought it closer and calm down when she brought it farther away.

The trade-off was that it was much less precise and generalized for things that weren’t already in Gathering’s category of searchable objects. If Zoe enchanted her ice with the image of klir, then it would help her find all of the klir in the forest around her. But if she enchanted it with a more general image of a dagger, or even ice, then it didn’t care about her dagger made from ice. Only if she used the specific image of the dagger she wanted to find.

The fighting skills were simple enchantments that made whatever they affected more like whatever they were aligned with. Dagger-fighting made weapons sharper and lighter. Spear fighting increased the piercing power. Shield fighting increased sturdiness. Simple, but powerful, and she kicked herself for not trying them earlier. Shield fighting in particular was interesting, and gave her ideas for other uses her Frozen Arsenal might have, too.

Both Cooking and Alchemy did the same thing, from what Zoe could tell, which was quite a variety of effects. She could make things a little bit sharper, a little bit hotter, or a little bit colder. A whisk that mixed things a little better. The effects weren’t very strong, but they were noticeable improvements to her tools for when she was cooking things. Every aspect of it was just a little nicer to use. The pan conducted heat a little more evenly. Her metal grate would char things just a little nicer.

Maybe there was a difference between the two skills, but at least in her few days of playing with them she couldn’t notice anything. They both seemed to do the exact same things, with near the same intensity. Alchemy was the slightest bit less powerful in its effects, but Zoe attributed that to it just being a lower level.

Carpentry made something much sharper, but only when it was cutting into wood. She could make a saw that sliced through a large wooden stump like a hot knife through butter, but it would struggle to handle anything else. It was quite helpful since she could make a duller blade that still cut through the wood just fine, and wouldn’t risk cutting off her fingers in a freak accident.

Enchanted Mirror was a very fun one for Zoe, though not wholly practical yet. She could enchant something with it, and then with a pulse of mana, she could flash the enchantment onto another object. It took an immense amount of mana since it had to first flood the target object with mana to be able to enchant it. And it didn’t flash the Enchanted Mirror part of the enchantment onto the target object, so there was no recursive enchantments taking over the world.

But it was a fun one. Zoe could make a tool that would enchant toys for Oliver and Emma could use it without difficulty. Or she could make something that would let Joe enchant his cookware to make it a little more effective at cooking, or maybe gems that flashed on archery enchantments to people’s arrows. There were so many options with Enchanted Mirror, and she wondered why it wasn’t more popular.

The mana cost, she supposed. The conversion rate was, if she were being honest, terrible. Even if Zoe summoned a ball of ice for herself that was already saturated with her mana, the enchantment would need to first remove all of that mana, and then dump in new mana before it could enchant anything. It seemed that the enchantments created by it were ‘owned’ by the enchantment as it were, not by Zoe.

And it wasn’t just a straight conversion, either. If Zoe enchanted a ball of ice with Enchanted Mirror, Meditation and Wind Manipulation and then tried to enchant another ball of ice through the first one, it would take far more mana than if she just skipped the middleman. By a factor of about three from what she could tell.

It was by far the most mana hungry enchantment she’d made, but it was still quite fun. If she combined it with mana stones or maybe a separate enchantment that accumulated and stored mana then it might be more functional for people. But at that point, it might also be quite a premium product so she understood how she hadn’t seem them around.

Her remaining skills didn’t seem to do anything, the three Vampyric skills that she still hadn’t discovered the use of as well as Pottery and Smithing. She assumed that they had some kind of an effect, but hadn’t been able to find anything yet. Pottery didn’t help her mold clay, Smithing didn’t help if she hammered away at some hematite. She figured she’d try again later when she had proper tools to try things with. Maybe Pottery made her creations more stable when they cooked.

The Vampyric Skills continued to confuse her. She’d tried them before but Immortality was still an enigma, she had no idea what it might do or what she could try testing. Resistance she imagined would give some kind of resistance to natural weather effects but had no way of really telling. Maybe once she had the tunnel finished, she’d be able to try something out with it.

And Senses she still thought should make it more visible. That would be in line with Empathy, Identify and Charm, but she had no idea what it was doing. Though she had the idea of buying some glass whenever she was in town next and seeing if it would help make a magnifying glass.

Her tunnel was going well, the hematite was a consistent problem for her but she sucked it up and dealt with it. At first she was dumping all of it back at her cave where she lived, but after the pile had grown a little large, she ended up just piling it up next to the rocks and logs she had back on the other side of the hill. If she really ended up needing that much iron, she’d rather just run back to town and buy some more storage items to ferry over larger loads.

She’d managed to dig about one hundred fifty feet into the hill, and found that she needed ventilation for the tunnel. Zoe spent a few days digging out a small tunnel just below and to the side of her larger main tunnel, only a few inches wide in diameter. It didn’t take her all too long to get it cleared out and then sealed back up.

Zoe designed some makeshift fans to help move air around — which ended up being a combination of two separate objects. The first was enchanted with Wind Manipulation, Meditation and Enchanting and the second with Mana Manipulation, Meditation and Enchanting. The first was responsible for blowing the air, while the second helped pull in mana for both of the objects to absorb and restore their enchantments with.

She found that the Mana Manipulation objects ended up drawing in a lot more mana than they consumed and it helped to keep the Wind Manipulation enchantment running longer. She still needed to come by and fill it up every so often, but that wasn’t a big deal while she was working in there. And when she wasn’t, it didn’t need to be running anyway.

Zoe put one of the makeshift fans in the floor at the end of her tunnel so it blew the carbon dioxide she exhaled into the air vent she’d made, and put a bunch of them back at the start of the tunnel to blow new, fresh air down towards her.

When she was done, she hoped the problem would just solve itself. She wouldn’t need to be in it for very long and could even just hold her breath if she really needed to. But for now, it felt necessary to keep it as filled with fresh air as she could. Without it, the air was thin and her breathing grew unsteady. But her solution worked, and she kept on digging for weeks on end.

The whole ordeal was a much larger undertaking than she had expected it to be. When she was up at the top of the hill it seemed like the cavern was so close to the walls, and yet she’d dug so deep towards where she thought it was, and still didn’t feel like she’d gotten any closer.

Until one day when she reached into the rock wall to grasp at it with her Earth Manipulation and found that she wasn’t able to probe as deep as normal. There was something that wasn’t rock in the way. She pulled away the heavy hematite and stored it away in her bracelet to see a thick layer of translucent blue ice.

Through the ice, she could see a wide tunnel that was covered in frost. Icicles hung from the ceiling and the walls were made of the same thick layer of ice. Zoe reached out with her Frost skill and ripped away a chunk of the wall and was buffeted by a heavy, frozen gale that rushed into the hole she carved and down her tunnel.

Zoe chipped away at the rest of the ice and connected her tunnel to the frozen cavern. Or at least, to the maze of tunnels that surrounded it. Later, she would build a door to keep the cold from leaking out and causing problems. But excitement rampaged within her. Weeks of digging, of not knowing if she was going the right direction, not knowing if it was a magical cave that could only be accessed from the top.

And she finally did it. She stepped into the frozen tunnel and felt the temperature plummet, colder than any winter she’d experienced. Zoe watched her health chip away slowly. Not so quick that she was afraid, but that it was so cold that she was losing health at all amazed and excited her. At first, it was understandable. But with her resistances and bonuses to still be taking so much damage just from standing in a cold tunnel?

She shivered with excitement and listened for anything that echoed through the tunnels. It was quiet except for the occasional cracking as ice split and water froze. There was a faint breeze coming from her left, and Zoe decided to follow after it to see where it came from.

Zoe walked down the frozen tunnel while she dragged her claws through the wall on her left so she’d be able to find her way back. The crackling of the ice kept echoing throughout and the occasional frigid gale would rush past her. Every few minutes, she pulsed Restoration through her to recover the few dozen health she’d lost.

It was a short walk before she found her destination. The large cavern she’d peered into from the top of the hill. This tunnel connected to it about halfway up, and the view was breathtaking. From the top of the hill, the cavern looked immense, like a massive chunk of the earth carved away and filled with the very essence of cold.

But from within the cavern, from one of the many tunnels that connected to it, the size was awe inspiring. She felt like a tiny ant trying to climb a skyscraper. Light shone through the hole far above her and bounced around on all of the ice. The very bottom, far below her was filled with specks of blue that almost seemed to move around as the light reflected off them.

Zoe squinted and corrected herself. They didn’t seem to be moving, they were moving. Something was alive at the bottom of the cavern. Or rather, many somethings that scrambled across the cavern floor like a bunch of hungry kittens crawling over each other in their bed.

Identify didn’t tell her anything, she assumed because they were just too far away. And they were too small and far away to see them clearly even with her Vampyric Senses. She turned around and made her way back to the tunnel she’d dug. The warmth as soon as she stepped out of the icy tunnel covered her body in goosebumps.

Zoe walked all the way back to grab some of the more mundane rock that was easier to enchant and then used it to seal off the icy tunnel. Then she enchanted it with Earth Manipulation, Meditation and Enchanting to make it squish off to the side when she flooded it with mana.

She did the same at the start of the tunnel to make a sealed off section in between with stagnant air that wouldn’t conduct heat very well, and then made her way back home to her cave. She wanted a good night’s rest and a nice meal before she began her exploration of the maze of tunnels.