Kaiser of the New World

Kai leaned back against the wall of ice he was chained to, not moving. His mind was blank, not really sure what to think of the current situation.

He had only just broken free of the mind hex, but he was already trapped again, only unlike the mind hex where he had some sort of freedom, he was chained and stuck here for who knows how long?

All because he tried to help Petunia.

Kai sighed and lowered his head, biting his lower lip. He had been out there the last six months, enjoying himself hunting, eating great food, just having a great time over all.

And Petunia was being tormented by Castillian for some sort of training that Kai still had no idea what it was for.

There was the argument that it wasn't his fault, he was being mind controlled and all that, but he still felt a guilty. He knew from the very beginning that something was very off about Anastasia and Castillian, but he let it go because she ended up paying a little attention to him.

Of course, there was the possibility that Anastasia was lying to him, giving him a fraction of false hope. He had no way of knowing if her words were true or not, for all he knows it could have been a year that had passed, effectively trapping him.

But no, the way Anastasia worded things made him believe that it had only been six months. She hadn't gloated or anything, making Kai think she just wanted to avoid saying anything unnecessary.

He chuckled darkly, weakly pulling against the chain of ice attached to his left arm.

No use.

Then, Kai gritted his teeth and pulled against the chain even harder. His wrist started to throb, his shoulder started to hurt, but in the end it was no use.

The ice here was created by the First Lord after all, what chance did someone like him have to break it.

Kai sighed, sitting limply while he stared out past the bars of ice to...

A wall of ice. All that was across from his cell was a plain wall of ice, there wasn't even a cell, just ice.

So this was where he was trapped, and where he had to break out of.

There had to be some sort of way out of here, there always was. Houdini had always escaped these sort of situations, even though Kai didn't know if he had cheated or actually escaped though.

Analysing the situation, Kai wondered to himself why only one of his arms was chained, what use was that? Why not just chain both of his arms?

They had chained both of his legs, but while the chains of ice were pretty heavy, he could still move his legs around to an acceptable degree. He couldn't stand up or anything though, courtesy of his chained arm.

It was also incredibly cold, and the fact he was wearing only a tattered piece of cloth did not help. Kai had no idea how long it took for someone to die from the cold, or how long it took to develop hypothermia. He also didn't really know how frostbite worked, so he really was kind of nervous for the coming days, if he hadn't broken out by then.

Sighing, Kai decided to get comfortable. He probably had some time before any guard came to check on him, so he could experiment with some different things, but he had to be careful not to get caught.

He knew that he couldn't summon Esurient, that was the first thing he had tried when he saw Anastasia. The cold pain was pretty terrible.

If he had to rank it, it would probably go above forming his Soul Core but under peering into the soul of that unknown being.

But that also meant that he was not going to enjoy this testing period.

Up first was Soul Sense, and Kai-

Cried out in pain as the collar his neck started freezing him again, only this time it wasn't just the tip of his fingers that turned blue, it was all of his fingers, each of them turning a pale shade of blue and looking like they wouldn't shatter from even the weakest touch.

This time, the pain and frostbite didn't disappear after a couple of seconds, it actually took a couple of minutes for his fingers to return to normal.

Kai groaned and whacked his head back against the wall of ice, instantly regretting the action as he had severely underestimated how strong the wall really was.

There was some sort of internal cooldown on the collar. The more he attempted to break free, the longer he would be frozen, a way to stop him.

So turns out Yelena hadn't been completetly wrong, it just took a little while and a bit of experimentation to get frozen solid.

After looking around a little more, Kai realised how dire his situation actually was. There was no bed, meaning that he wouldn't be able to sleep properly until he escaped. There was also no toilet, but he noticed a hole in the ice to his right that was within reach if he adjusted himself.

Overall, his stay here would not be a pleasant experience, definitely a one star rating once he got out.

But the main problem was how to get out.

Kai was limited in what he could do. Every time he experimented, the longer he would have to wait before he could experiment again. All he knew was that the time in between experiments kept going up, he wasn't sure if the time would lower if he decided to not experiment.

He was also on a timer, he had six months to escape. While that may seem like a long time, Kai didn't really feel like it was long enough. There was no way in hell that he would be able to break out of these chains, so he had to find some other method to free himself.

It would take a while, with a lot of experimentation needed, but Kai was sure that he would be able to break out.

Of course, there was also the possibility that he might not have to break out. Since it had been well over six months since his last meeting with The Ever-changing, Kai was hoping that maybe his Master could come pay him a visit now that he was out of the tutorial and maybe bust him out.

Or even if they couldn't do that, they could at least visit Kai in his dreams and give him some words of advice.

And if they couldn't even do that, they could at least pull Kai into a dream to have a bit of Soul Brew, that would make this whole situation a little more bearable.

Plus, it would be nice to have someone to talk to.

Someone to talk to...

Kai's eyes widened as be turned to look behind him, or more specifically, look at his shadow.

"Umbra?"

Kai instantly felt a little bad for his familiar. She must have spent all those six months inside his shadow as he never ended up summoning her.

But after a couple of seconds, Kai frowned as Umbra didn't end up crawling out of his shadow.

No way the collar counters this too, right?

Kai attempted to summon his Status Screen, and was successful in his attempt as watched the beautiful blue screen appear before his eyes. Even though the collar could limit his abilities, it couldn't get rid of his Status Screen.

Scrolling down to where Umbra's section could be, Kai felt a little nervous. If Anastasia knew about Contract of Artemis, then what if they manipulated Kai into taking Umbra out of his shadow and...

Kai didn't want to finish his thought.

Luckily, Kai could still see Umbra's section on his Status, meaning he was still alive, but that didn't explain why she couldn't come out of his shadow.

But a moment later, Kai ended up chuckling as he looked at the description of one of her skills.

Stalker (Rare): Allows the user to hide in the shadow of living being. Allows the user to teleport to their masters shadow once per week. When inside a shadow, the user is able to enter a state of hibernation which increases their Mana and HP recovery by 70%.

Turns out, Umbra had developed her own method to deal with being in Kai's shadow all that time. She had managed to upgrade her Stalker skill so she could hibernate and pass the time. The part about it increasing Mana and HP recovery didn't really seem that useful at the moment, considering that she hadn't used any Mana or lost any HP in the last half a year, but Kai knew that it would be useful in the future.

He also found it funny that she managed to create a hibernation skill, he thought that it fitted her. At least she probably wouldn't be bored when inside his shadow anymore.

Although he wasn't exactly sure if wolves were a creature that could hibernate, he thought that was more of a bear thing.

Then again, he was trapped in a cell of ice made by a being that was alive 87 million years ago while also having a collar wrapped around his neck that nullified his so called magical abilities that he randomly got after being teleported into an empty white room.

Honestly... a wolf hibernating sounded more realistic.

Closing his Status, Kai let out a sigh and stared blankly out the bars of ice. Now that he knew Umbra was okay, he felt a little better, but there was still a problem.

He had no idea how to wake her from her hibernation.

He could use Telepathy and wake her up that way, but Kai didn't really want to waste his next experiment on that skill. He had other things he wanted to try first, and he was fine with letting Umbra rest a little longer.

So with that done, Kai tried to get comfortable and let the cooldown lessen a little so he wouldn't turn into a statue of ice any time soon.

After all, that probably wouldn't be a good way to die.