[System]
You are a skilled LitRPG progression fantasy author. Write chapters based on the story bible and instructions provided.

## Premise
Frostbound Apocalypse — a LitRPG progression fantasy. I would like to thank you guys for reading and please leave a comment if you see any mistakes. Enjoy! Callum, The Sovereign of Flames

Callum stood at the edge of his domain staring off into the direction where his entertainment would soon take place. All around him, blue-white fires burned with enough heat that the air warped and distorted. The heat didn't bother him, even as he stood right next to the blistering flames, for the fire was his.

## Main Character
Name: Kyle | Gender: male (he/him)
Key supporting characters: Granddad, Points, He

## World & Power System
level-based progression; class system; skills (e.g. Healer's Hands, Splitting Shot, Foraging Sense, Sweeping Slash, Power Shot, Cleanse, Human – Level 10, Crude Iron Knife)
System notification style: "System protected space to process incoming integrating populations "

## Writing Style
first-person narration, past tense. Dialogue-heavy (76% dialogue). Balanced pacing.

[User]
Write Chapter 191 - Summer Snow
Target length: ~2000 words
Key events: dungeon content

[Assistant]
First Chapter of the New Year!

With a ferocious roar, I slammed into the charging Demons with all I had. With the boost from [Fury] and [Avalanche], even as small as it was at the start, I swung my hammer with over a thousand points of strength behind it.

That didn't even include the boost from burning my bloodline. My bloodline didn't show up on my status sheet in the form of additional points, it was a more foundational boost, pushing every point of those thousand further than before.

Honestly, my Bloodline was the largest boost I had even if it wouldn't last as long.

With all the strength I could muster behind my leading swing, I didn't even use any attacking skill. Only sheer force.

The leading Hellhound that had the honor of receiving my opening blow vaporized. Not even its bones could withstand the force of my swing, turning into a bonemeal mist rather than white projectile shards. The poor thing wasn't even in E-rank, and now never would be.

Even with all my dungeon running and training, I had never leveraged my entire strength for such a weak monster, and seeing the resulting death was... something. My swing didn't even slow down from the impact, carrying on to gift the same treatment to three more beasts.

My charge didn't slow, it couldn't slow, and I wouldn't allow it to slow.

My legs pumped just as hard and fast as before and I rocketed into their front lines. The warriors behind me would land in a softened line or I couldn't call myself a leader.

While I knew not every leader was the same, I had had a lot of time to think about the kind I wanted to be. Spending nearly a year being in charge of people had made me ponder about it a lot.

While I might not have solidified every aspect of the kind of leader I wanted to be, I knew one thing at least.

I was the kind to lead from the front.

Charging through their ranks left broken and devastated corpses in my wake and I didn't stop. Their density of bodies and sheer number of enemies made it nearly impossible to miss with my wide swings.

Even when my hammer was in motion somewhere else, just my body was enough to run through beasts. Using myself as a human missile to kill even more as I charged deeper in.

While the front lines of both sides collided with each other with vigorous explosions of skills, I torpedoed through it all. The other designated 'champions' tried to follow my lead but most were left stalled out only a few ranks in.

Some made it farther than others, but it wasn't long before I left them all in the dust. Extending my breakthrough deep into the army of Demons.

Then, only when I was right and truly surrounded, did I finally shine. I went so far into their lines I could see the flashes of light the other half of the army was flinging on the opposing side.

Faint and distant as they were, I could still see them over the sea of Demon bodies.

Standing alone, in a sea of bodies. I wasn't sure if it was the rush of power, the feeling of my bloodline coursing through me, or it if was something else entirely, but something was different.

I could feel a part deep inside of myself that was coming alive. Reveling in what I was doing.

Knowing I could go a step further, I pushed everything I had.

My Spirit flowed out into my budding domain and it exploded in size. Where once [Permafrost] and [Blizzard] only went tens of feet, it reached nearly a hundred in every direction around me and size wasn't the only increase.

While my Spirit rushed through the skills, my bloodline pumped through them as well, strengthening and empowering it further. And not only my bloodline but both my Law of Ice and my Law of Wind pushed into it.

For the first time, everything I had was pushed into the skills with no reservations and it was marvelous. The temperature drop was enough for [Glacial Presence] to fill me with strength, pushing all of my stats even further.

It still wasn't the largest boost I had ever received from the skill as the dark days of Winter eclipsed what I could do alone, but it was close.

The numbers on my status sheet wouldn't represent how strong I felt at the moment, but if I had to guess, it felt like my strength was north of fifteen hundred, maybe even two thousand.

With both skills billowing out at full power, they started to mix. Swirling around each other and combining, becoming more than their standalone parts. Stronger than when they were separated.

The skills were using my Spirit and my Law as conduits to combine and mix in interesting ways. I had never merged a skill before, but this felt like one of the first steps to doing so.

As the frost built up on the ground and the foliage froze and popped, as snow fell from the sky, the Demons weren't spared either.

The lowest-leveled Demonlings froze over and died just from my domain of skills alone. The other weak Demons fared little better. Ice built up on their skin and even with the bestial vitality pulsing through them, they couldn't combat the Ice ripping away their body heat.

They slowed as they lost more and more of their heat until they couldn't move any longer. After that, it wasn't long until they fell into a sleep they would never wake from.

While the weakest froze and died instantly, they had a better death than those who died slowly. At least in my opinion. The ones who died to the swings of my hammer at least had the honor of dying to a weapon instead of the weather.

The Hellhounds fared the best out of the Demon races, as they had flames rolling off them to combat to cold, but even so, they were visibly affected.

The lowest leveled of the hounds could only watch pitifully as their prized flames extinguished completely, leaving their skin bare to the elements. Holding on purely based on the inner fire their species carried.

The higher-level hounds didn't have their flames extinguished, but they still greatly reduced in size. Not even E-ranked hounds were spared from the suppression because it wasn't just a power disparity, but a Law disparity.

They didn't have a sufficient Law to back themselves up and shrug off the cold I was forcing on them.

The least affected were the Lesser Demons and the hulking Giants of combined Demonlings. They were able to power through my skills the best, but even they showed hints of weakness from the cold.

All of this happened within the first few minutes of combat they got to witness firsthand as my swings only got more powerful.

They would soon realize the [Avalanche] building inside me.

* * *

Elliot

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

He was dead. He was so going to die. Only if he hadn't deluded himself into getting stronger, he might not have been given the job he was.

After seeing their leader silence the pack of wolves like it was nothing a few months ago, Elliot had rededicated himself to getting stronger.

He no longer wanted to be average and he pushed himself to go further. He even finished comprehending a Law and could step into E-rank. His Least Law of Metal was helping him stay alive now, even if he knew for sure he was going to die.

They had all known the risks, City Lord Christopher didn't shy away from telling them. Everyone knew it was going to be a hard battle but Elliot hadn't known it then, but he did now.

He wanted to go back and beat up his past self for getting stronger. Now, with his elevated strength compared to his peers, he was given the job of 'champion.'

Sure, it sounded cool, but in reality, it was a one-way ticket to the Underworld. An express ticket at that. Charging into their lines and being a disrupting force would only make him be targeted by attacks he couldn't handle.

His Law of Metal could only protect him from so much, and opening himself up to thousands of attacks was a quick way to die.

That realization of his pending death didn't really hit until they were charging headlong into the thousands of Demons but by then it was too late. His body was carrying him forward even if his mind wished to be anywhere else in the world.

The charge started fine, they weren't given an inspiring speech but were told of the honor of their actions. It worked on some and even he conjured the courage to run knowing he was protecting those he loved, but that all fled him when faced with what they were up against.

Their magic barrage was a sight to behold, but when the smoke cleared, the Demon's numbers didn't even look affected! They had just as many charging toward them as before, even if he knew they lost hundreds.

What didn't help his confidence was the structured line the Warriors charged in started to break up. Their City lord encased himself in Ice and seemed to be unaffected by the Demon's return attack charging ahead of the rest while others broke apart depending on their defensive abilities.

Christopher charged through it all unflinchingly. No, he even increased in speed somehow. Watching him mist the first few Demons helped even Elliot's heart, but that didn't last long when it fell to his turn to do the same.

As best he could, he steeled himself and dove in.

Luckily, he was one of the ones close to the center where his City Lord plunged ever deeper in, making his job a bit easier. His entry wasn't as smooth or dominating as pulverizing four Demons with a hammer, but he still ran in.

His sword grew and extended under his skills and sliced through a score of bodies in his first swing and before he knew it, he was in the thick of it.

Leveraging his new Law for all it was worth let him cut through the first few ranks of demons but he couldn't go further than that. The Demons only got stronger the further in he got and his skills weren't powerful enough to keep going.

His job now was to survive as long as possible.

His mind didn't even have time to lament volunteering as he couldn't afford any distractions. His sword and shield were his only focus. Blocking claws with his left and taking limbs with his right.

The metal in both glowed under his control, sometimes even shifting unnaturally to take an arm or defend an attack he didn't see coming.

That all changed when he felt the explosion of power from ahead of him. Not many were further in than he was but it wasn't hard to know who was responsible.

He had felt this bone-deep chill before, only it was multitudes stronger now than it was then.

Snow began to fall from the sky, even as the sweat beaded up on his face from the near summer heat. Even when his underclothes were soaked through with sweat, his metal armor feeling like a sauna, snow fell from the sky.

The flakes cascaded down on everyone in the area and they could only look up in wonder at the oddity.

They were a week away from the heart of summer and it was snowing.

[User]
Write Chapter 192 - Warning Intuition
Target length: ~2200 words
Key events: combat-heavy

[Assistant]
Rachel

"There he goes," Rachel muttered to herself.

She would have to be blind, deaf, and incapacitated to miss the veritable blizzard of power taking place inside the valley. Even before her magical abilities were enhanced with her bloodline she would have sensed it. A part of her believed even a normal person could have.

Chris was anything but subtle, but that didn't really matter anymore. The fact that his current display of power nearly matched the collective strength of all the mages here was irksome, though.

Rachel wasn't arrogant and wasn't envious, but she at least felt they were in similar leagues, but she knew she wouldn't be able to do what he was currently doing.

Sure, she could match the power output and area size, but her mana would run out eventually and she would be surrounded with nowhere to go. Chris, on the other hand, had asinine amounts of stamina.

She scoffed at his display and turned back to what she was doing. Being in charge of the [Ritual Cast] made her not able to split her focus too much. It was already hard enough to link seven people together, no need to add daydreaming on top of it.

Most of her skills weren't useful from how far away she was, but there were ways of getting around that. Sure, [Flamethrower] cast from her hand would do nothing, but if she moved the point of origin, it would be fine.

Manipulating spells to do something against what their Skill matrix indicated was difficult, but not impossible. Over a year of training had gone into making it easier and she prided herself on doing just that.

With Chris ruining the area closest to him with Ice mana, she started targeting the flanks of the formation. It was just in time too, because with the numerical advantage the Demons had, they were starting to wrap around the edges of the lines.

Giant pillars of fire exploded on either end, incinerating any of the creatures trying to get around. She took it a few steps further with a creative touch of [Fire Manipulation], feeding and expanding what was already there.

She knew this was a marathon, not a sprint, and conserving her mana pool was more important than flashy spells. Using [Fire Manipulation] on already casted skills used way less mana than activating new ones.

From her vantage point, she could see that the number of Warriors dropped. Areas where skills flashed for the last time and Demons rolled over the line.

While the number of Demons fell at an astonishing rate, they weren't without casualties themselves.

* * *

Ashton

"[Call of the Light]" He shouted as another beam of light descended. He had been fighting what seemed the endless tide of Demons for nearly an hour.

His sword was covered in Demon blood and so was his shield. His armor had dents and cuts all over it, yet he soldiered on. His people were dying and he had to do his best to stop it.

[Call of the Light] didn't only work as an offensive beam of light, but it buffed all of his allies in the area as well as himself. While he didn't have the most damage-aligned skills, he did his best.

Still, only about half the people fighting on either side of him were in range. They were spread too far apart for him to buff everyone, much to his dismay. He had already seen people fall, even with his light there to help.

His sword lit up and he unleashed large crescents of light out in front of him but that did little to slow the Demons down. It was like they didn't care about their fellow comrade's death and some would even stomp over them to advance. Pushing their bodies into the dirt to walk over them.

No matter how many he killed, it was like they were unaffected. Ashton wasn't sure if they were mindless, or just that selfish and uncaring. He wasn't sure he wanted to know either.

"Giant Demonling approaching!" Carson shouted which got his attention.

Those monstrosities were difficult to take down, and he would have to do it himself.

After being notified, he saw the amalgamation stomping up to their lines without a care in the world about the Demonlings it was crushing as it walked.

Ashton sprinted out ahead of it before it could attack the other Warriors, even launching one of his [Light Crescents] to get its attention.

The damage the skill did was minuscule, but his affinity worked wonders on the Demons. He wouldn't go so far as to call Light their weakness, but he could see the lingering Light Mana in the wound eating away at the Demon's flesh.

Having dealt with one of the monsters before, his sword and shield lit up and were encased in a blinding light. [Sword of Light] and [Shield of Light] overlayed an ethereal sword and shield overtop his own made of light.

The skills were the hallmark of his class, Paladin of Light, and boosted his offensive and defensive abilities. Ashton was lucky they attacked during the day as the drain on his mana wasn't as much under the light of the sun.

He had another, more powerful skill, that could be used in addition to the two he used but it wasn't time to bring that out yet. It wrecked his mana pool and would only wear him out faster.

As he battled the combination Demonling, his sword flashed out as he tried to cut along the seams he could see. He knew from experience if he cut it just right, it would cause the monster to fall apart.

It took him a few tries, but he managed to land a slash just right and the giant fell, deconstructed back into its base form, and the Demonlings comprising it tried to scramble to their feet. It was only a few more sword slashes until those too were dead.

With his foe dead at his feet, he looked back over his army. So many of them were already dead and his heart ached at seeing their lifeless bodies. Even seeing the mountains of Demon bodies didn't help his mood.

He was no stranger to loss, but he had never experienced it on this scale before. He had never had to look over a field and see the expressionless faces of those he knew in such quantity.

His eyes turned grim and he turned to look at the center of the Demon army. He couldn't see much with all the things going on, but his intuition was telling him to hurry.

He didn't know why, but he felt like there was a clock counting down and he wouldn't like the outcome when it hit zero.

As he pondered on what to do, he couldn't help but notice a flake of white drift past his eye. It wasn't an arrow or the flash of a skill, but something smaller. He held out his hand and watched as the snowflake landed on his armored palm before it melted.

Looking up, he didn't see any clouds or anything and even if he did, it would be rain, not snow.

His gaze shifted from the center of the Demon army over to where he knew the other half of their forces were fighting. It didn't take long to see the disturbance.

A hurricane-like blizzard was currently taking place on the other side of the valley and it was quickly making its way deeper, toward where Ashton was once looking.

Ashton could only marvel at the sheer spectacle that was taking place. Nothing in his arsenal of skills would be able to do anything close to what he was witnessing, even if his level was higher than the other man's.

His mind warred on whether to leave his line behind and charge in like his counterpart was doing, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. His buffs and skills were the reason that many on his side were still standing.

If he left, the Lesser Demons and Giant Demonlings would be left free to slaughter whoever stood before them. If he left, people would die. Even if what his intuition was telling him was true, and they were on the clock, he couldn't bring himself to leave.

Shaking his head bitterly, he could only hope the other City Lord had what it took to do it alone. Even though the plan was for the two to meet in the middle and take out the leader, he couldn't go through with it.

With his mind made up, he deviated from the plan and stayed put. His people needed him.

* * *

Chris

Faster. Faster!

Something was wrong but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. Over the many fights I had experienced, a sort of sixth sense had built up. Nothing supernatural or anything like that, but a scarily accurate intuition.

Jonathan once mentioned something similar happening to him so I didn't think it was anything odd, but the fact it was acting up now made my nerves flare.

Something in my gut was telling me to hurry. Even if my mind didn't know the reason, I went with the feeling I had. It hadn't done me wrong before.

I poured more mana into my skills and the Winds around me sped up and the air turned even colder. My hammer whipped around as fast as I could swing it and I marched into where I assumed the leader to be.

[Desolate Blizzard] and [Permafrost] did wonders to kill off the rabble, but that left the stronger Demons behind to bar my way. Strong Lesser Demons took chunks out of my armor with their spear-like limbs and Greater Imps blasted me with sickening balls of black rot.

My way toward the center caused me to run into higher and higher leveled resistance and the Demons before me already out-leveled me. [Identify] put them in the 80s and 90s.

[Frozen Patchwork] cooled through me and left any cuts frosted over in ice and I powered through the wounds. One leveled 89 Lesser Demon had a skill that penetrated through both my armor of Ice and what lay under it, punching a hole through my gut before I could bring my hammer around to crush its head.

It flopped to the floor dead with a flattened skull, but I still had a bleeding hole in my gut.

Something else was inside the wound, causing it to fester and get worse as well. Ice ran through the area to counteract whatever was causing it, but that only caused the bleeding to continue.

If that continued to happen, fainting from blood loss would be a very real threat.

I felt some of my Spirit well up inside me and it helped me push on, but at the rate I was using the mystical energy, it wouldn't last forever.

It was already being used to infuse the two Domain skills and empower my armor, I didn't have limitless amounts of the stuff either. The pool available to me had grown from using it to saturate the castle, but that didn't make it endless.

My mana was also being used at an astonishing rate. The only thing that I didn't have to worry about yet was straining my mind, as not even any hints of mental fatigue had arisen yet.

My mind was still sharp, even after using my Laws as much as I had. A chilling sensation overtook my brain any time I felt like I was edging toward fatigue. It was something I didn't know [Frozen Patchwork] was capable of.

It wouldn't last, I knew that already, but I had to push on.

My stats were well and truly the highest they'd ever been, but even with the mountain of power I had behind me, I still couldn't help but feel like it wasn't enough.

I felt a Greater Imp start powering up another of its skills and there was nothing I could do to stop it. They had already dodged any [Ice Arrows] I sent at them before and I didn't want to waste the mana to keep using them.

I knew my ranged capabilities were lacking but there was nothing I could do about it now. [Frost Armor] had already re-froze over the previous hole but my armor was left weakened for it.

The dungeons weren't like this. They didn't have hundreds of monsters at a time laying waste to my defenses.

Imps and the magical Lesser Demons launched spells while Hellhounds and melee Lesser Demons attacked relentlessly. There was nothing I could do to stop it except take them down one at a time with my hammer.

Even so, I didn't let despair build inside me. I couldn't afford the mental attention of letting helplessness build.

Even when I felt I might actually die.

[User]
Write Chapter 193 - Unwinnable Battle
Target length: ~2200 words
Key events: level-up occurs, combat-heavy

[Assistant]
My hammer came swinging down followed by a sickening crunch. The earth shattered from the blow, causing cracks to spiderweb out from the impact.

I didn't pay any attention to the blood that rained down, seeping into the shattered earth and picked the hammer up to swing yet again. The notification chime in the background signaling the creature's death didn't even register in my head.

The chime had happened so many times my brain filtered it out.

[Momentum of the Avalanche] had reached its peak and I would get no stronger than I was currently. [Righteous Fury] was already activated and my bloodline had long been burning in my veins.

I had over 2000 points of strength behind my swings now and that didn't even account for my bloodline strengthening the base rather than adding more stat points.

My swings shattered the very earth with its power. Let alone the level 80 and 90 Demons standing in my way.

[Mighty Blow] and [Pervading Cold] weren't even necessary to fell most, as a precise swing to the skull ended them all the same.

Dark red mixed with streaks of black Demon blood coated me in thick, sticky layers. The Ice my armor was made of was long dyed the corrupted reddish-black. The lifeblood of my foes stained upon it.

It was times like these that the class choice Chilling Death of Helheim made sense. Even if my rational mind didn't like it, and my emotional mind found it disgusting, that all went out the window in the face of a threat.

I didn't care if the blood of hundreds, let alone thousands, had fallen at my hand. The only thing that mattered to me now was ending it, one Demon at a time.

It was with a grim resolution that I marched ever forward. One step in front of the other, dragging Winter with me.

It wasn't easy, and the environment didn't welcome it like it used to, but I wrangled it into line all the same. My Spirit, Law, and Mana would not be denied my little slice of Winter.

Snow fell from the sky from the natural moisture in the air as it cooled, unable to hold onto it anymore. My Winds picked it up and sent it careening through the space I had claimed.

The circle of death that was mine and no one else's. Oh, they tried to assert what they could but it faltered and crashed in the face of overwhelming power.

Their piddly domains of Blood and Death couldn't defeat mine. Some tried to impose what I assumed was the environment of their home planet but even that failed in front of my chilling winds.

My form was battered and bruised, wounds caked in ice and frozen blood. At this point, my body was half wounds. My pristine armor and Ice were nowhere to be seen, but snow continued to fall.

Lesser Demons crashed down on me, natural weapons bared taking chunks of Ice with their attacks. One chunk, two chunks, the third Demon's attack ripped away my icy protection completely.

In sight of their foe weakened, it was like their eyes lit up and redoubled their attack. My hammer was swift, but numbers had a quality of their own. Even as my weapon came whistling around to take out three of those who surrounded me, a fourth plunged its dagger-like hand into my leg.

Its limb was awash with its Demonic Mana and empowered with a skill of some kind as it met no resistance from my tempered body. If my flesh hadn't been enhanced from refining it, my leg would be at risk of being lopped off.

[Identify] lashed out at the one who did it seeing level 99.

A step away from D-rank, and a strong Law to back it up. It was a Law I was unfamiliar with, an ugly aura that tried to scrape and penetrate my own. Demonic Blood, perhaps, maybe Demonic Perversion because that was what it felt like in my leg.

[Frozen Patchwork] sallied my Arctic mana coursing through my body from [Reinforced Body] to attack the intruding mana but it met its match. Even having the advantage of being within my body didn't help.

My left hand shot out from its spot on my hammer and grasped the arm of the Demon. The limb crushed in my grip, shattering the Demon's bones as I ripped its arm out of my leg. Not to let an attack go without reparations, I pulled the arm so hard it ripped off.

A red waterfall spewed out of the newly made cavity and where the humanoid Lesser Demon once had two arms, it now only had one.

Taking my Hammer in one hand and new weapon in the other, I redoubled my efforts and called on what my body could give me. My doubling of strength was the only reason I could swing such a heavy weapon in one hand.

Just as I was about to dive into the next Demon that stood against me, a spear of black shot up from the ground reentering the wound [Frozen Patchwork] was trying to close.

The fresh Ice wasn't enough to bear the strength of the attack even with my Law empowering it, shattering to pieces and allowing yet another wound upon my body.

"Ahh," A pained scream escaped me as I whipped my head around in search of the Demon responsible.

No matter where I looked, I couldn't find the one responsible, but with the pain came a touch of clarity.

Not much, but enough of my mind cleared to realize that I was still alone. My gut feeling of something being wrong led me to the other edge of the Valley, where the Demons were thickest and where I was supposed to meet Ashton.

We planned to pincer from both sides and meet in the middle to stand against the Demon's Leader, but he wasn't here.

I didn't have time to go in search of the man, hell, I didn't even know if he was still alive. The attacks launched at me weren't soft and if he didn't have the strength his level indicated, he could very well already be dead.

It was a miracle I was still standing, let alone someone else.

That knowledge only drove me harder. If he was off dead somewhere else on the battlefield, it fell to me to stop whatever the Demons were trying to do. And they were trying to do something, I knew that much at least. Call it a budding hunch.

The books and information packets were long forgotten in my head. They were nothing compared to the experience I was undergoing now. They talked of such things, but they didn't portray the details of experiencing it myself.

The books didn't portray the pain I felt, the weakening of my body as my blood leaked out of me.

They didn't say anything about glimpsing around and seeing Demons in every direction. They didn't write about the fear of Death that seeing such a scene caused instigated.

I was no stranger to the feeling, I had felt it before, but never had it been so strong.

Not even facing the waves alone in the tutorial prepared me to face such a feeling. Like staring up at a mountain you had no hope of climbing. One of gazing upon an unwinnable battle. Something I couldn't hope to overcome-

I threw mana into [Mental Freeze]. It was subtle, but I felt something pressing upon my mind. My feelings of hopelessness were being exaggerated by something.

Even with the skill activated, the feeling didn't go away. It was too subtle for my skill to defeat. The manipulation was deft and it wasn't trying to control my mind, only influencing what I was seeing.

It was a nasty piece of work.

On instinct, my eyes turned to where I felt the influence was originating and I saw it. Even acknowledging the reason behind the manipulation didn't make the feeling go away, if anything, it made it worse.

It made me realize I was out-ranked, out-leveled, and out-numbered.

[Goranth - Evolved Demon - Level 105]

It was a Named Demon. A D-ranked Named Demon.

It weaved between the various bodies charging at me, never exposing itself more then necessary. It was hard to get a solid look at its features but I managed enough glimpses to see enough.

Traces of the Lesser Demon it used to be shined through. The black and misshapen limbs that were only recently changed to look like hands. The fingers were still spiked and the wrist was too narrow, but the hints of what it was trying to accomplish with its evolution was there. It stood on two legs, trying its best to imitate a bipedal form.

Most of its body was covered in shadow. The fog distorting what little I could see of it, but the dry, grey skin of its face was left uncovered.

It wanted me to see its cruel smile.

Finally, it felt like I was shocked awake. I went over how I had gotten here to make sure I hadn't been influenced and found nothing that stood out.

There were no traces of manipulation in my mind that I could find and unless the Demon outclassed me, which was possible, I hadn't been controlled. After the 'Mindbreaker,' we went to great lengths to combat any form of mind control.

Not everyone had the points to buy protective measures, but I certainly did. The amulet I wore wasn't much, but it was said to detect any form of intrusion upon the mind.

It would light up if it did while also defending against it, yet the amulet stayed dull.

If it wasn't trying to mind control me, what was it trying to do?

Even as Demons came at me and I felled them with my Hammer, I searched for any clue I had missed. Something was wrong here and I couldn't figure out what.

The gut feeling I had hadn't gone away and only got worse. It didn't give off a definitive direction, but with the Named Demon revealed, it was clear it was involved somehow.

My brain whirled trying to come up with the reason yet it couldn't. My amulet didn't go off and [Mental Freeze] didn't do anything. Both would have at least noticed mental manipulation of some sort.

If it wasn't mental, it had to be something else.

Evaluating the scene as best I could mid-fight, I noticed that no matter where I moved while fighting, the Demon swayed with me. It was like it was trying to keep itself between me and whatever was behind it.

Looking deeper, it felt like it was trying to hide something. I wasn't sure how I knew, but once I thought it was hiding something, realization exploded in my head.

Like glass, the curated scene shattered apart with it. The Demon wasn't trying to mind control me. My amulet wasn't broken and [Mental Freeze] wasn't defunct.

It was an illusion.

Technically, illusions were a form of mental manipulation but the way they worked was entirely different. It didn't penetrate the mind in order to influence from within, tricking you internally. It worked externally, tricking the senses into telling your mind faulty information.

Similar, but different.

Since there was no intrusion upon my mind, nothing my skills did could stop it. The thing that broke the illusion was realizing there was one in the first place. That was the hardest part of breaking out of one. My intuition saved me.

As the illusion broke, the feelings that pressed on me faded. The hopelessness didn't go away completely, but it diminished from before. The illusion amplified what I had already felt, meaning the base feeling was something already there. Breaking the illusion wouldn't make it go away.

"Ah, so you broke out of it. Surprising, but it doesn't matter. You're too late anyway." A guttural voice claimed and its wide smile grew. It felt like a mental attack just to listen to the Demon speak.

Other than the feelings fading, I noticed what the Demon was hiding from me.

There, in the center of a blood drawn formation, was a portal. It wasn't yet complete and was still in the forming process, but the fact it was even there caused me fear. Stray bodies of humans were strewn about the newly revealed section of the battlefield, their corpses mummified from exsanguination.

A mass of mana and essence swirled in the center of the Ritual. Rivers of blood swirled with it, Demon and Human alike, painting the growing power a mix of red and black. The blood from the nearby Demons I killed was drawn in, adding to the gallons that were already there.

Our war council spoke about what the Demons could possibly be doing and while this possibility was brought up, no one thought it was possible. Our tutorials said that our planet was still protected from outside influence.

What I was seeing shouldn't be possible.

If I let that portal finish forming, our entire planet was doomed.

[User]
Write Chapter 194 - Grim Resolution
Target length: ~2600 words
Key events: combat-heavy

[Assistant]
I wasn't absolutely certain what I was looking at was what I feared, but even with the slightest off chance it was, I needed to stop it now.

When enough Demons got together and had sufficient power, they could force a convergence. Doing so would link our planet, where the Ritual took place, to a Demonic planet through a permanent portal, like I saw now.

It would let endless hordes of Demons through with virtually no way to stop them. It was like trying to swim upriver while also building a dam. To have any chance of closing the portal, you would need to fight through an endless tide of Demons to get there.

Which was virtually impossible without severely out-leveling them or out-numbering them.

Which we didn't on both accounts.

If we failed, the only recourse would be abandoning the continent. Demons could swim, but they wouldn't be taking over the world anytime soon with the amount of water we had. Still, everyone in North and South America were screwed.

The South Americans could maybe hold them off at Panama if they were warned and had sufficient time to prepare, but even then, with endless bodies of Demons to throw at the problem?

None of that mattered to me, though, as everyone I cared about was a month's travel away. They would be the first to fall if I let the portal finish. Who cared if it took the Demons years to take over the continent, everyone I cared for would already be dead.

There was no running from this fight.

Not that I could, either. With the wounds adding up and the blood leaking out of me, I wouldn't get very far if I turned tail and ran. Not that I would do that. Even thinking of doing that caused my body displeasure.

Like my Anchor would crack if I went through with running away.

As soon as my mind comprehended what was at stake, I threw everything I had at the Evolved Demon in charge of the Formation. I wasn't sure killing it would destabilize the portal but it was a good start.

[Ice Arrow] after [Ice Arrow] flew at the wretched thing but all they did was phase through its body in a puff of smoke. Somehow, the Demon was turning insubstantial and my Ice was flying straight through without doing any damage.

Immediately, I looked for any other signs of another illusion but I couldn't find any. Everything my senses were telling me was that the Evolved Demon was where my eyes saw him to be.

I had no wish to begin discourse with something like that and immediately switched to a new avenue of attack.

Since [Ice Arrows] didn't do anything, I dumped mana into [Sweeping Snow] and a deluge of white crashed down on where the Demon stood. A mixture of naturally made snow from the area along with conjured snow from the skill impacted the ground with a dull thud.

It was more snow than I had ever sent at one monster and it packed quite a bit of force. The collective weight could have staggered even Jonathan, let alone the Demon.

Still, when the white cleared and I stopped sending mana into the skill, the Demon remained unharmed in the same spot as before. Like the mountain of sharp snow I dropped on him did nothing.

During this time, the surrounding Demons weren't idle either, so as I was assaulting who the System claimed was Goranth, my hammer was used to fend them off.

Seeing that the Demon was again unharmed, I began to get desperate. None of my ranged magics were working and the Demons weren't letting me get any closer to the nascent portal, I was running out of options.

With nothing better, I began to throw anything I could think of. A giant [Icy Bastion] froze around the Demon followed by a massive [Shatter].

Forming a javelin of Ice and using [Throwing Proficiency]. Directing [Desolate Blizzard] and leaning on the hail portion to bombard the demon with falling slabs of ice.

I even used unstructured magic, leaning on my pure manipulation skills to sling Freezing Winds and chunks of Ice at the Demon.

Nothing I did worked.

The Demon flitted around, dodging the worst of my barrage and letting some of it phase through its body. As it moved around the platform the Formation was carved on, a black fog leaked out of its body that made it hard to see if I was actually doing anything.

Its speed far surpassed anything I could throw at it and it didn't even seem pressured under the weight of all I did.

Again, nothing I did worked.

Even with both my Laws saturating all my skills along with the meager energy I had left in my Spirit Anchor, all of it was ineffective.

Seeing that Plan A wasn't working, I turned to Plan B.

If I couldn't kill the Demon to destabilize the portal, I would destabilize the Portal and deal with the Demon after. A flash of indecision passed on my face but I buried it under resolution.

I knew destabilizing a portal holding that much power would have dire consequences. The amount of mana that was flowing into its creation had to go somewhere and it didn't just disappear.

If I was successful, it would most likely explode.

Even with [Momentum of the Avalanche] doubling my Fortitude and [Righteous Fury] pushing it further, I wasn't confident I would survive it. Sure, my Bloodline also boosted my Fortitude, but even so, the amount of mana glowed to the naked eye, let alone any kind of mana sense.

As soon as I thought it, my course was set. It didn't matter if it exploded, I couldn't let it form no matter what. Even if the worst were to occur, it would be worth it.

Changing targets, I took all the Wind and Ice I was throwing at the Demon and shifted it toward the budding portal.

The change in the Demon was instantaneous and visible. It stopped its flighty dodging and any sense of sinister pleasure at my helplessness was gone. It teleported in a flash of black fog in front of the portal before casting a massive inky-black shield in front of my target.

Where my skills phased through before, they clattered off now. The wall of black stopped everything I could throw at it. [Ice Arrows] crumpled and shattered on impact and nothing else could get through.

Even as everything failed, I kept up with my barrage for the Demon did one thing that gave me the advantage.

To block the portal from being hit, it stood still in one spot. It anchored itself in front of the portal and stood as its sturdy shield.

Taking advantage of the stationary demon, [Shatter] rippled through and exploded [Frost Armor] off my body, killing and incapacitating all the nearby Demons. With everything I was doing to empower [Frost Armor], its subsequent [Shatter] was equally empowered.

Even Demons over level 90 had shards of the durable Ice armor rip through them incapacitating them. The Demons close enough were were all cut down in one move, leaving my way toward the black wall blocking my path free.

Without hesitation, energy began to build up in my hammer.

Runes along its length began to light up and all my past worries were forgotten. My mana pool was bordering on empty as I shoved all the mana the skill could take into it.

I knew I would only have two shots at this and my mana wouldn't support any more. I wasn't sure my body could, either.

As the skill began activating, its groans and cracks were drowned out by the howling winds I was sending at the Demon. [Desolate Blizzard] was being true to its namesake, even as the skill ate up my dwindling mana.

The Winds it was sending forth were howling as they carried chunks of Ice, battering the Demon's shield.

Under the cover of Wind, [Shattering Hammer] was free to drink in all I could give it. Any sounds originating from my hammer were nothing.

I only spared a glance down to watch the cascade of energy reach the hammerhead. The skills effects were hard to turn away from, as there was something in the way it worked that called to me.

While going full offensive, [Frozen Patchwork] had enough time to work its way through my riddled body, patching me up. I wasn't in top shape, but enough of me was left to do what was required.

One harrowing step in front of the other, I ran toward the wall of black. My feet left deep impressions on the layer of snow that had built up around me as over two thousand points of strength propelled me forward. The blood-stained white was the perfect footing for what I required.

The lights and sounds of those fighting elsewhere were similarly forgotten and I was left alone.

One hand dragged my hammer behind me, the other out in front casting all I could. I couldn't afford the added distraction to cast the spells from elsewhere, using my left hand as an anchor.

I wasn't sure if the Demon noticed what I was doing, but by the time I neared the wall, it was too late. The Winds cut off as I reached back and both hands gripped frosty wood. Wood that I had come to love for its unyielding nature would soon be tested in that regard.

The time between cutting off the spells and my hammer coming down was a flash. It took less than a second to reach back and grab on. The fractured hammer face came screaming down with my full strength behind it.

CRACK

The sound resounded out like a thunderclap, bouncing off the Valley wall and echoing back. It exploded down the Valley's gulley and could be heard from miles away turning the environment into a natural amphitheater.

Everyone fighting heard the sound of the Demon's skill shattering to pieces. The once stalwart dreadful black wall crumbled in on itself. The shield unable to hold up against the force and shattering energy pushed into it. The energies contained in my hammer shot out and into the Demon's skill with nowhere else to go. I didn't partially miss it like I had with the Wolf before. My hammer hit square.

Like glass falling to pieces, the shield did the same.

After the mana used to power the shield was thoroughly destroyed, [Shattering Hammer] still had more left in the tank. It sought out something else to shatter and grind into pieces.

My eyes took everything in and saw the Demon's body get launched back from the impact. The force of my skill traveled through his and reached the source.

Either the Demons was physically touching its shield for reinforcement, or my skill somehow followed the mana back to its body.

I wasn't in a position to ruminate on it as I wasn't one to waste an open opportunity.

With the cover broken, the growing portal was revealed once more causing me to suck in a breath. The foulness in the air was pushed aside for a much more important problem. The moments it took me to come to a decision and charge the Demon let the portal power up that much more, growing from the mana the Formation was feeding it.

Injured or not, the Demon was displaced from its place guarding the portal, leaving me an open lane to do what I must.

The backlash of using the skill nearly staggered me as blood gushed from reopened wounds, but I pushed through and started the process a second time.

The last time.

Mana built, my stamina drained, and my Spirit and Law were infused into the skill. Everything I had into one last attack. I wouldn't be staggering away after the backlash of this one. I would have no more energy to stand.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Demon trying to put up a resistance but before it could, its skills failed. The structure collapsing in on itself.

"How?! What did you do to me!" It screamed in rage but I dismissed it like I had the rest of its words.

I paid no attention to the screaming Demon and marched forth toward the Portal. I knew my odds of survival were even worse with every step closer and statistically impossible within arm's length, but that didn't deter me.

The Demon's eyes went wide as it watched what I was doing. It saw my hammer change for the second time and it knew what was coming.

"No! Are you insane!" It clambered.

"Stop!"

I didn't. I only grunted.

My hammer went up, and for the briefest of seconds, glistened in the afternoon sun, before it came slamming down with resounding force.

My weapon descended like it was going through molasses to my eyes, even though I knew it was coming down at the same speed as before.

Lines of black shot out of the Demon's body and hit all the surrounding Demons, and as one, they turned to stop me. All the Demons hit by the black leash lost all reason and charged at me with reckless abandon but it was too late.

They wouldn't be able to stop my hammer from falling.

Nothing could.

The Demon, seeing that it could use skills again, shot spike after spike of shadowy black at me but it didn't deter me, nor could it stop me.

"STOP!!" It screamed again.

Its spikes broke through what was left of my metal plate, penetrating through my body but even the pain of being skewered didn't stop me. The Runes were already broken and the metal provided no more protection than normal.

Its first pierced through my leading leg, coming up from my shadow on the floor and clean through my thigh. Its second re-entered the wound in my gut from before, taking advantage of the missing armor.

The last was aimed at my head but it never got a chance to land. A wave of energy rippled out from the portal and blew it off course, cutting through my cheek instead.

Half my vision disappeared to black, but even with only seeing through one eye, I knew I had done it.

The initial wave was only my hammer impacting the mass of mana. Just the impact force was enough to send the Demon's skill off course.

Seeing that it failed, the Demon didn't even try to send any more spikes to kill me. Once it saw the waves of force rolling off the portal, it did something that had my newly narrowed field of vision had to do a double take.

It turned and ran.

It didn't get far.

The shattering energies coursing through the portal did its job.

The Formation feeding it mana went first, the stone that it was carved into shattered into pieces. The altar the portal was built upon went next, exploding similarly in a shower of shrapnel.

I wasn't able to perceive what came next.

All I saw was white and my body felt weightless. My grip on my hammer was lost and I flew through the air unfettered.

At least it was glorious.

[User]
Write Chapter 195 - Stream of Essence
Target length: ~3000 words

[Assistant]
Rachel

[Field of Flames] sucked mana out of her at an astonishing rate but there was nothing she could do about it. As the Warriors died or fell, the pressure on the ones who remained constantly increased.

She couldn't afford to play the long game anymore with her mana. If the rest got overwhelmed the Demons would be free to charge the backline. Not that the mages were helpless, but they were not suited for front-line fighting.

Using fire against Demons wasn't the most effective but she found ways to lay waste to as many as possible. The Hellhounds were the hardest to kill as their resistance to fire was mighty.

The Demonlings were nearly trivial to burn to death, just some extra oomph and they would soon be ashes. The Lesser Demons were the next hardest behind Hellhounds but for a different reason.

Where Hellhounds were straight-up resistant to her skills, the Lesser Demons were smart enough and had the magical abilities to fight back. They would rip and tear at her spells and some could even shield against her.

Her ability was greater in this regard, but the distance made it difficult to leverage it. She stood over a hundred feet back, making everything she did or tried to manipulate harder. Plus, with the battle of manipulation taking place closer to the Demons than it was to her, everything was that much harder.

While the Lesser Demons had less skill and finesse, they didn't have to work nearly as hard to defend themselves as she did to attack them.

She watched how the other mages around her dealt with the problem she was facing but none seemed to make any better headway than she did.

Most relied on brute force and increased the strength of the spells they threw.

The ones who did that were chugging down mana potions like there was no tomorrow to compensate for the increased costs. Conner and the other Alchemists were great, but they weren't able to make an infinite amount of the potions to be as liberal with mana as some were acting like. Not even mentioning the fact the number of potions a person could use was finite.

Rachel herself had already used a few. Not that she was close to running out, but to supplement her diminishing mana pool. One of the potions was a new creation that Connor said would boost her Acumen and increase the rate her mana would regenerate. Taking that at the beginning of the battle was likely the reason she could still launch spells.

While it wasn't a doubling of regeneration, or anywhere near it, any extra mana coming in was good.

The resource she had to monitor much closer was her Bloodline energy. It had dwindled much faster than her mana pool. The reason for it was obvious.

After Chris charged in without stopping, she was the next strongest on the battlefield.

Before, it might have been a argument between her, Austin, or Jonathan, but without either of them here, it was undisputedly her. Not even the other City's warriors or mages on their side came close.

Being the strongest meant she had to deal with the biggest threats. The combined Demonlings in their Giant amalgamations and the higher-leveled Lesser Demons were her biggest issue. The Giant constructs were easy enough to spot and prepare for, but high leveled Lesser Demons would just pop up anywhere along the front line. The Warriors were having a hard time dealing with the surprise difficulty.

Even using her stronger and more mana-intensive spells wasn't enough to take them down quickly. She could have burnt them to ash eventually, but she needed to kill them before they impacted the Warriors on the front line.

To do so, she had to lean on her Bloodline powers to boost her power. While the Bloodline Essence of the Fire Wyrm didn't sound all that powerful compared to its eventual evolution of Fire Dragon, it was more than the Demons could handle.

The 'Dragon Essence', as she was calling it, turned her fire into something even the Hellhounds, with their dark flames rolling off their bodies, recoiled away from.

Rachel wasn't sure what change her Bloodline caused her fires to undertake, but whatever it did made them insanely destructive.

She had heard a Dragon's Fire was different than regular fire and now she witnessed it first hand. Her Fire wasn't anywhere near as powerful as an actual Dragon's fire, or even a Fire Wyrm's her Bloodline was from, but they were more powerful than before she imbibed the Bloodline.

Even when she upgraded her Fire law to Lesser it didn't compare to what her bloodline did.

She spotted another powerful Lesser Demon coming into range and she had to pull on her Bloodline yet again. She felt the power rushing through her, like searing magma coursing through her veins.

She threw another [Field of Flames] into the fray and everyone could tell this one was different. While the area combusted like it had numerous times before, the flames were tinted blue at their base this time. The heat rolling off it was orders of magnitude hotter than before.

The Lesser Demon fought to protect itself but how could she let her precious mana and Bloodline energy go to waste? [Fire Manipulation] reached out and the field turned even deadlier. She even threw in a [Fire Lance] to take it down that much quicker.

She concentrated the flames all around the Lesser Demon leaving it no room to escape. With her Bloodline still active, it was nearly trivial to change the flames into whatever she desired.

The chime of the kill notification sounded in her head and she cut the mana feeding the flames and revealed what was left behind.

Ashes.

Flesh, muscle, and even the Demon's bones were burnt to ashes and dispersed in the wind.

She watched the essence transfer from where the Demon once stood and make its way toward her. Her skills related to sensing and manipulating mana were her pride, but it opened up her mind to something else.

Essence.

She wasn't nearly as well versed in sensing essence, let alone seeing it, compared to mana but she was able to pick up the stream coming toward her. Following the transfer from her kills back to her was much easier than sensing unclaimed essence.

Her focus was distracted for the brief second it took the essence to get to her and enter her body and before she could look up from watching the spectacle, a resounding shattering sound echoed through the entire valley.

CRACK

The wave of sound hit her multiple times as the initial soundwave washed over her followed by what echoed back from the Valley walls. It replicated the sound of a massive pickaxe hitting metal perfectly. A sharp and short clang that carried into the distance.

The way the Valley was shaped made it so everyone heard it. Even the Rogues stationed at either end or up on the opposing Valley wall heard the sound.

After the startling sound carried past her, Rachel's head shot up and pointed toward the Winter Storm. It wasn't hard to guess who was responsible but as she peered into the distance, something stood out.

Her mana sensing at the distance she was looking was minimal, at best, but no matter how hard she looked, she only saw one mana type.

There were supposed to be two.

A familiar Ice mana dominated the landscape, well, Arctic now but she still mistook it occasionally based on the fact she had spent months in its vicinity.

The Arctic mana was the only thing she could see, sense, or otherwise detect without a hint of the other leader's Light mana. And she was decent at sensing that, too, as Austin's Solar mana felt similar.

Somehow, Christopher was fighting in there alone.

Her worry shot up and she couldn't help but sneak a glance at Christopher's mother. She was close by where Rachel stood sending gales of sharp Winds down on the Demons. Giant cutting blades of Razor Wind shot down into the crowd as she spent what had to be the last of her mana.

Wind and Fire mixed well and weren't at risk of conflict, which put the Wind Mage close to where she stood. Christopher's brother, on the other hand, was on the complete other side of the battle line.

Rachel's worry only got worse as she recalled the last thing Christopher said to her.

"If something happens," Chris said deadly serious, "I want you to take them and run."

She fought being told to run but ultimately agreed under pressure. Anything that could kill the walking tank would be something she couldn't contend with.

Rachel shifted most of her focus to finding out what was happening at the center of the Valley but she still absentmindedly launched spells of her own.

She let out a breath when she noticed more Arctic mana being used.

That thought immediately died when she saw what happened next. Her eyes already trained on the area was the only warning she had.

First was the flash of light. Like a bomb going off, white light shot out and covered everything in a split-second flash.

Then came the Wind.

Air vacated the space closest to where the flash of light originated in tremendous force. It nearly blew her off her feet before she braced herself better. Some of the Warriors closer to the source weren't as lucky and did get pushed off their feet.

Luckily for them, the Demons didn't fare much better.

Worse, following the wave of forceful Wind, the tide of Demons tried to follow behind it. They all pushed and shoved, trying to get away from whatever was taking place at the center.

While the flash of light was instant and the Wind was quick, the Demons weren't.

Before they could so much as run 10 feet, it happened.

Rachel knew, instinctually, what was happening, but her mind denied coming to conclusions. If she did... then... then... no! He could've survived! Somehow...

The explosion she refused to label as an explosion rocked the ground. Tremors spread through the area and loose dirt rattled free and tumbled down the Valley walls.

The roaring sound of everything that happened came next. She couldn't pick up what it sounded like because not a moment after the sound came, her eardrums ruptured.

All she heard was ringing.

Following the Wind and tremors, a wall of force sent everybody off their feet. Some were sent flying back, having not prepared for the sudden wall of force, while others crumpled where they stood.

The copper taste of blood filled her mouth and the ringing in her ears continued to drown out the noise of everything else. Screams or cries of pain went unheard.

As she lay on the ground trying to get her spinning vision under control, clumps of dirt began to rain from the air. Little specs of earth or clumps of sod thumped into the ground around her and showered her in brown.

As soon as her mind cleared enough to function, a comforting warmth spread through her body courtesy of [Mending Hearth]. Her only self-healing skill tried its best to get her wounds under control. The warming fire of the skill worked its way through her pleasantly as the skill did what it could.

Blood flowed from her ears and nose with those only being the most visible injuries. After [Mending Hearth] started to right what was wrong, her mind flashed to where, or who, was at the center of the explosion.

No matter how much denial she could conjure up, there was no surviving that at literal ground zero. As much as she equated Christopher's resistance and fortitude to that of a walking tank, even tanks wouldn't survive that explosion.

Rachel and the rest of the Mages and Rangers took a second to pick themselves back up with groans and grunts. Those best off afterward restarted what they had been doing before.

The explosion impacted everyone equally and while they got back on their feet, so did the Demons.

The Demons, and the Warriors, were noticeably slower to their feet than those farther away, but they did stir.

Being in better shape than their opponents, arrows and spells rained down and killed any of the Demons that moved or attempted to rise. There were still plenty that were still alive but they either couldn't get up or were unconscious.

Even as Rachel observed the field of staggered humans and Demons alike, she couldn't help but keep picturing the moment of the explosion. The Arctic mana that flared right before it was overcome by what happened.

For some reason, her mind remembered a chill among the Winds before the explosion hit but she couldn't recall feeling it the first time.

"Healer!"

"I need a Healer!"

"Does anyone have a Health Potion?!"

Cries for Healing or potions rang out as [Mending Hearth] fixed her burst ear drums but that didn't shock her. Her eyes had picked up on the frantic way they moved their mouths and guessed the reason behind it.

Overlooking the swath of destruction, she was shell-shocked.

It was hard to function, let alone move, yet people ran this way and that carrying people away. Healers, with their red cross armbands, ran throughout the field using their various skills on the fallen.

Rachel stood and did nothing.

She had no Healing capabilities. She had no potions either. As one of the few with a self-healing skill, their limited supply was given to others. She only had Mana potions adorning her belt.

Almost unconsciously, she turned to where she last saw Elizabeth, Christopher's mother. She had already lost a husband, and now she had just lost a son. Rachel knew the pain that came with that.

Kyle had been her love and joy. Her youngest and her baby.

Seeing his lifeless body had nearly broken her and now she was about to watch it happen to another. Her heart ached at the idea.

Elizabeth was standing much the same as Rachel was. Completely still, she looked deeper into the Valley, where there once was snow falling from the sky like a vengeful Winter Storm, but now all she saw was a field of brown.

The white wall from before the battle was gone. The only thing left was the dull brown of dirt with specks of black.

Rachel was about to turn away and help how she could with recovery when her skills picked up on... something.

The field of black and brown, while nearly desolate, was full of what used to be Demons. The force mangled their bodies, but that didn't mean they disappeared.

And from those bodies, Rachel saw a river of essence arise.

Rachel usually couldn't detect the essence of other people's kills as she wasn't skilled enough to sense it, but with an entire Valley of dead bodies, it was nearly impossible to miss.

Others less skilled than her even turned to see what was happening.

As more and more essence rose into the air, it all began to concentrate. The essence from all the dead Demons was all going in the same direction.

Up.

The stream of essence from one Demon combined with the one next to it, which combined with more and all rushed high into the air.

Even without her practiced sensing skills, it was impossible to miss the spectacle of what was happening. Hell, the concentration was so high it was nearly visible to the naked eye!

"What's happening?"

"What is that?"

People questioned what they were seeing. But no one had the answers.

As the rush of essence went up, it began to change course. From nearly straight up, it started to come toward where they stood. Its angle still carried the river of power over their heads put everyone's heads tracked its arc.

It was when the deluge of essence began to come down that those with the best eyesight saw it.

Hal was with the rest of the Wind affinities bunch, which made her son's sudden sprint noticeable to her. His form blurred as he rushed to follow the line of essence, even though she still didn't have a clue what was going on. Seeing her son sprint off into the distance spurred her mind into action.

All she knew said that essence only transferred upon death to those responsible for killing whatever it was. That was what she was told, that was what she had witnessed.

Yet now, it was streaming through the air for some reason.

The only logical reason she could come up with was the essence was transferring to something, but that didn't make any sense.

Why would it arc through the air?

Not unless...

No.

That was impossible.

He was at the center of the explosion. There was no way he survived it!

Similar to Hal, she took off in a run. She kicked herself for taking so long to figure it out. Behind her, Elizabeth followed. She wasn't sure if she knew what was going on or just following her and Hal, but she was a step behind Rachel.

She wasn't sure Elizabeth would want to see what laid at the end of where they were going, but she wasn't going to stop the woman.

From the other side of the line, Rachel saw Gabriel break into a sprint as well. His new legs carrying him in the same direction as she.

Mitchell, Alice, Allison, and all of the Zalenski family followed behind her. The only Healer of the family who came was on their heels as well, thankfully.

If what her mind came up with was true, they would need a healer soon.

During their sprint, it wasn't long until even those without high perception noticed.

The stream of essence rushing through the air was following something and it didn't take a genius to figure out what.

Essence only went to the ones responsible for the kill.

And she could only think of one person the essence would be streaming toward.

[User]
Write Chapter 196 - Heart of Magic
Target length: ~2500 words
Key events: dungeon content

[Assistant]
Gabriel

He's alive. He had to be. There's no way that he died.

Gabriel's mind spun. Seeing the explosion nearly made his working thoughts crash. Like a short appeared causing all rational thought to shut down.

Watching Hal sprint off alerted him to something going on and watching Rachel and his mother follow behind, he couldn't stand there and be left behind.

As he ran the same things kept playing in his head. He even pulled up their faction on his status sheet to make sure leadership hadn't changed. Seeing Christopher's name still listed was his only rejoice, but even so, who was to say it would remain?

The time they were in the dungeon together. The time they had spent enchanting the castle. The hours spent designing defensive formations. The long talks about how they would set up the defensive Wards for the City. The memory that stuck out was the gruff and disheveled version that met them at their family home.

Gabe still remembered the rush of joy at seeing his brother again after returning.

All of the memories since played on repeat as his feet pounded the earth in the direction of everyone else. He noticed the wave of something flowing through the air, but he couldn't put his finger on what.

His best guess was that it was essence.

He wasn't familiar with the energy, not as much as mana, but that was the only thing his mind could come up with. Not that he had ever seen it before. Rachel talked about it once but he couldn't remember what she had said about it.

His focus was on the matrix behind skills rather than the ephemeral substance.

Hal had long run out of view with his insane speed, but he caught up soon enough.

What his vision picked up made his breath hitch.

Hal kneeled next to a smoldering form of what looked vaguely human. There wasn't any black blood or Demonic mana coming off the form so Gabriel's mind ruled out it being a Demon but worked to temper his rising hope.

Sure, the form had the right size to be who he suspected it to be, but there were also not a lot of identifiable features to confirm right away. And he certainly didn't want to proclaim it to be his brother only to find out it wasn't.

The fall afterward only hurt more than it already did.

Rachel and his mother reached where Hal knelt first, as they had taken off before he had. Rachel had the levels on him to be faster and his mother's affinity made it nearly impossible for him to catch up.

Gabriel skidded to a stop next to the previous two and he felt the rest of those running toward them nearing.

Everything heightened as he tried to process everything his senses were taking in as quickly as possible.

His gut clenched as he took in what was now in front of him. Who he hoped was his brother was splayed on his back, motionless as Hal, Rachel, and his mother did their best to treat the injuries.

There were just too many of them.

The largest, and most glaringly eye-catching, was the missing arm. The stump was cut off just after the shoulder and blood flowed freely from the missing appendage.

His face was black and blue from the fight while also having a massive gash adorning his left cheek reaching from just after his nose to the side of his head. All of his hair was missing, burnt off both his head and his beard.

Both legs were oddly angled, most likely from the fall, but even the remaining arm was proportioned wrong compared to Gabriel's memory. The last one he had of his brother whole where he watched the same body he was observing now charging off.

Along both legs and torso there were numerous lacerations of various sizes and depths along with puncture wounds abound. One such wound pierced clean through his leg and came out the other side. The only good thing was Gabriel confirmed it was his brother he was looking at but he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

What confirmed it was the lingering Ice in some of the wounds. While he didn't doubt most had blown off in the explosion, Gabe could feel the frozen water covering some of the wounds.

Taking in the... extensive injuries, he just stood there, his mouth agape. He didn't know what to do in the face of such a scene and froze.

* * *

Rachel

"You couldn't have caught him!" Rachel admonished while pressing her hands into the missing arm's stump.

"He was shooting down like a meteor, how exactly was I supposed to catch him?! I did my best to cushion the fall with my Wind!" Hal said frustratedly, as he worked over the body.

Hal was the first to get to the impact sight, but even with him here there was a sizable indent where the body landed.

Rachel wasn't exactly sure on what she was doing but did her best anyway. She had done generic first aid before during the waves and tried to do the same now. She wasn't even sure if there was still a pulse but the blood was still flowing and that was as good a sign as any.

If it had stopped...

Luckily, Ashley came running up next and immediately dove into action.

Mana flared and skills activated in quick succession. One after another was used and the amount of mana pouring in was enough for Rachel to be surprised. She couldn't help but watch the woman's mana work.

"Is he going to be alright?" Elizabeth asked breathlessly.

"I'm not sure," Ashley answered right away.

Even without a medical degree, Rachel didn't put much hope in what they were doing. It was just... too much. Even for who everyone in their family knew was the strongest.

There were some things you just couldn't come back from.

After Ashley's skills flared, she reached down to start doing what she could manually.

While holding on to the bleeding stump, Rachel felt the healing mana wash through the body and felt something thump. Not to get her hopes up, she waited for it to happen again.

Thump.

His heart was still beating! He was still alive!

"There's a pulse!" Rachel couldn't help but utter the words after she felt the thump.

How is he even alive?

She instantly began to question how. She had witnessed the explosion taking place and knew he was at the center of it. He was very likely the cause of it. Yet he was still alive somehow.

Was he in front of the shockwave of force and instead of being crushed got sent sky high instead? That still wouldn't explain how he was still alive but she couldn't focus on that right now.

She could feel the beating getting weaker.

The Healer chugged another mana potion as the mana continued to pour out of her but it was like pouring water into a rickety bucket. There were too many injuries to fix and not enough time or mana to fix them.

The crowd around them continued to build as they worked but the bystanders were forgotten.

Rachel tried to think of anything she could that would help. She knew Chris had a skill that worked better in the cold but she wasn't sure if that would boost his Vitality enough.

She also knew he had a [Meditation] skill that would do the same but he wasn't conscious to activate it.

She had to stop herself from setting her hands ablaze with fire to cauterize the wounds. That was how she usually applied first aid. To stop the bleeding, she normally just seared the wound shut but that wouldn't work on Chris.

Some of his wounds were still frozen over with ice and if she went in blazing, it would cause more harm than good.

A bell went off when she thought that.

If she couldn't cauterize the wounds, then they needed to freeze them shut.

"Gabriel, encase him in Ice!" She shouted.

It was a longshot, and completely untested, but it wouldn't hurt to get him into a colder environment. It was the only idea she could come up with to both stop the blood and help the overall situation.

Noticing that no mana flared or ice growing, she turned to see the man standing stock still with his mouth open motionless. It took everything in her to not smack him over the head but she couldn't pull her hands away from the stump.

"Gabriel!" She yelled.

That got his attention.

"Encase him in ice!"

Kicked into motion, he began to follow her orders and ice began to build over Chris's body.

It started frosting over the bleeding stump, allowing her to pull her hands away and it wasn't long until the entire thing was covered in a thick layer of the stuff. The only thing left uncovered was his face.

"Keep going!" She said, "Drop the temperature as much as possible!"

Frosty crystals continued building and Healing mana continued to cascade through his body before it suddenly cut off.

Everyone turned to Ashley accusingly and under the deadly glare of so many, the woman rushed to defend herself. "I've done all I can. His body can't take any more Healing."

"What about potions? Does anybody have any potions?!" Elizabeth shouted.

"Those won't help either." Ashley shot down, "His body physically can't take any more healing. If we push any harder he will reject it."

That poured cold water on everyone present.

To learn that they were all hopeless to do anything but watch. With Ashley sitting back on her knees with all she could accomplish finished, Gabriel was left as the only one doing anything.

His frosty mana continued to pour out of him and into the growing encasement. Rachel even picked up on the use of his Law.

"What about enchantments?" Gabriel broke the silence that had built, "If I can carve a Healing Rune into the ice, will that help?"

Ashley sputtered for a moment, "I... think so? I'm not sure how the Runes work exactly, but from what we've seen, they boost the natural healing of the body. Using them should be fine... I think."

Better than nothing.

The uncertainty didn't sound comforting but at this point, they would take anything they could get.

After her answer, the ice around the body began to shift. She could see Gabriel visibly struggling, but he pushed on nonetheless.

It shifted into loops and curves of what she knew to be a Rune. The growing sigil gradually turning into something she had seen before. What the exact Rune meant was beyond her and without being told, she wouldn't have known what it did.

Without anything to do, Rachel could only sit and watch as the changes took place. What started as normal ice shifted into artistic grooves and aesthetic curves.

It wasn't a quick process, but the ice shifted noticeably until the process was completed. The finished Rune flashed as it concluded taking form and she could feel the mana shift and take effect.

"Rachel, I need help powering it," Gabriel said as mana continued to pour out of him.

Wordlessly, she started doing the same.

Enchanting was still beyond her knowledge, but her senses could pick up what was happening to the mana. The Rune siphoned the provided mana through the carved grooves, changing it along the way into something she couldn't sense, before injecting it into the... encasement.

Her mind wanted to call it a coffin but she refused to do so. He wasn't dead yet, and she wasn't going to call it a coffin until she was forced to.

Rachel closed her eyes to watch the process and focused all her attention on the flowing mana.

Chris's body absorbed it naturally, as it was surrounded by it, and it coursed through his mana channels. This was usually where the body would filter it through the central mana pool they had to get rid of any unwanted affinities.

Instead, some of it was lost as it traveled through the body, seeping into various places. The Healing taking effect.

It didn't noticeably change anything, but it made her breaths come easier knowing there was at least some kind of healing taking place.

Other than noticing the mana break off and suffuse into his body, she saw the magic doing something else. Something she wasn't sure how to describe.

It was like his heart was taking in the Ice mana around it and using that for some reason. Why would his heart be sucking in Ice mana?

"He doesn't have a human heart!" She exclaimed aloud unintentionally.

She remembered watching him evolve but it was easy to forget the change he had made. It wasn't like she could see his changed heart for the continued reminder.

Rachel knew that certain creatures evolved in various ways and it was impossible to have knowledge of them all, but some were widely known facts and even their tutorial had information about them.

It was mostly the strong and powerful creatures that they used as examples. Mainly, Dragons. Dragons were known to be one of the fiercest creatures in the Universe and they were commonly used as examples in the information packets they had access to.

One of the main things they talked about was the value of a Dragon's Heart. The Heart of a Dragon was where all their magic originated and where most of it was stored. It was where they drew their strength from and where their famed Dragon Breath started.

The magic it contained was immense and the value of such an organ was astronomical. Rachel had to do a double take when she saw the prices of lesser Draconic species Hearts, let alone an actual Dragon's.

Still, Dragons weren't the only creatures whose magic resided in their Heart, other notable ones were Titans, Fire Titans along with all the other types, and most relevant, Giants.

While Chris didn't have the Heart of an actual Frost Giant, he had one with traces of the Frost Giant bloodline, which was enough to have at least some of that effect.

His Heart drew in the Ice mana and used it as fuel to pump out blood full of vitality. Honestly, Rachel was surprised his blood wasn't glowing blue from the effect but instead only tinted deep purple.

With his Heart's Vitality in addition to the Healing Rune, there was nothing more they could do but watch.

"Will he live?" Elizabeth asked again.

Everyone turned an ear to hear the answer.

"I'm not sure,"

[User]
Write Chapter 197 - Why this Valley?
Target length: ~2400 words
Key events: dungeon content

[Assistant]
Rachel

Everyone stood and observed the icy encasement for a while longer but no one said anything. There was nothing they could do and it somehow felt wrong to speak.

To break the tentative silence.

Some had tears welling up and falling, others looked downcast at who they thought would lead them for years to come. Rachel herself was upset.

Before the System, she and Christopher weren't the closest but they had spent a decent amount of time together since practicing their various skills. Other than watching him grow up, she got to watch him grow in a different way.

It was odd to have that pillar removed from her life. She hadn't even known the pillar had been there in the first place. The sturdy...strength he had that made nothing seem to be out of hand. Hell, he fought the waves alone! Having someone who did that just took the edge off as they explored their new circumstances. A fallback parachute she hadn't realized was there until it was gone.

Besides the silent but steady support being gone, she became that support for everybody else. Rachel wasn't sure if it was an unconscious thing, but it was like they looked toward the next powerful person to lean on.

She didn't hate doing so, but after the day she had, and standing over the near-dead body of her nephew, she wasn't prepared for this.

The people from their City arriving to ask for directions only made it worse.

She had to tear herself away and take care of matters, as Elizabeth and Gabriel were never going to be able to do it. Gabriel because his powers were needed to keep the ice frozen and Elizabeth because the world would sooner stop spinning than her leaving her son's side.

Oh, how she wished Abigail was here to take care of all this. Scratch that, she would honestly be worse with Chris in that condition.

"I need a count of how many healing potions we have left. Run triage on the most wounded and separate those who can't be healed anymore." She commanded to those of her City that were still standing.

Hesitating, she called one aside to talk privately, "I need to know how many survived."

The Rogue she called over looked surprised for a second before nodding grimly. Rogues were the Class that made it out of the fight the most unscathed. Well, the group of Rogues who weren't given the task of charging in.

The ones in the charge suffered losses equal to, if not greater, than the Warriors and Spellblades. The reason the other Rogues made it out better was their job was clean-up duty.

The Rogues more centered around stealth or assassination weren't told to charge in and waste their skills, instead, they were arranged in formation surrounding the Valley. They, along with the lower leveled participants, were tasked with not letting any of the Demons escape encirclement.

The... lowest level of their number weren't particularly... useful. Not that she said that aloud, but it was the truth. A few volunteers weren't even in the F-rank, let alone E-rank!

Rachel thought they were insane for even coming along but Chris wouldn't disparage their resolve. They were grouped up in teams to do the same as the Rogues in the hope that they would be able to pick off the Demons as they ran away.

She ended up being so busy directing everyone during the clean-up that the sun raced across the sky and reached the horizon before she even knew it.

She took care of everyone on their side of the Valley, regardless of whether they were from Frostheim or not. Before the battle, there were nearly 800 people to organize and plan around.

Half that remained standing. More were lying in beds, waiting for Healing to come.

When the Rogue she tasked with counting the casualties came back, she got the hard numbers. Of the 321 people who followed Christopher's charge, 187 were still alive.

The Rogues stationed along the perimeter lost some as well, nearly 20 of the hundred. Some of the lower leveled teams were decimated completely, but most of them still stood, not having to fight.

With their frontline being so small compared to the number of Demons, some had gotten through or around and reached the Mages and Rangers in the backline, causing their numbers to take a hit as well.

Not as many as the Warriors, but still enough to sting.

Nearly 100 Rangers and Mages fell. Not all of that was from Demons that got through and was instead because of a Demonic spells launched at them they couldn't defend.

Even the Healers weren't spared from the casualties. Most Healers had stayed behind to be of use after the fighting was over but some had joined the battle.

Not every healer was as passive as the others. Some had classes specific to being a Battle Medic while others had buffs they could use. Their losses were similar to the Rogues.

Even more than that were the wounded. Healers were scrambling this way and that trying to treat the people they could. Those with egregious injuries like Christopher had to be isolated so as to not be confused with the waiting.

The human body could only take so much healing at one time. It wasn't possible to drown the person in it and for them to be fine. They knew that from experience.

As soon as the body's limit was reached, instead of healing the body, it would be treated as a foreign object and rejected. Similar to how some patients would reject donated organs. Too much new tissue being seen as foreign or something. Rachel wasn't exact on the why.

To deal with those, Healers with medical knowledge from before were required. Not every healer was a previous doctor or nurse, meaning they didn't have the background knowledge on how to treat people other than letting their skills do the legwork.

Those who could, used mundane methods to do what they could and let their Spells go that much further before the limit was reached.

The... previous medical methods had changed, obviously, but they were still rooted in how things were done Before, only they were a touch more... barbaric.

If the Doctors were worried your body couldn't take the healing required, it was better to chop off the limb instead and grow it back later. Healing over a missing stump taxed the body a lot less than reconstituting a completely smashed leg. Letting them focus on life support rather than superfluous limbs.

A body didn't need an arm to survive but it did need a liver.

In some cases, multiple limbs were removed to focus the healing on the major organs. The process was extremely gruesome and bloody, leaving rivers of the stuff flowing long after the battle was over.

After the initial crazy of the aftermath, Rachel abruptly found herself without anything to do. She had been so busy that when the rush that demanded her attention stopped, it did so completely.

She went from rushing fire to fire, to standing there without anything to do.

She knew someone should reach out to the other side to see how they were doing but that could wait for later. It was already dark and everyone was drained.

If it was something important, they would come to her.

It stayed that way as those healthy enough to function hauled everyone back to their camp. Luckily, they had set it up before the battle started so all they had to do was haul everybody back.

They had to walk a bit, as they couldn't set up too close, but it was close enough that people could slump into bedroll at night rather than left on the ground.

When she walked in with the rest of their group, she found that Christopher had already been moved. His body placed in his tent while her family stood guard outside.

She didn't have the energy to deal with that, nor the ability to do anything helpful.

Instead, she found her bedroll and passed out.

* * *

The work began in the morning again. Not that Rachel hadn't expected it to, but to not even get to eat breakfast in peace was aggravating.

What she did get to look at were the numerous notifications that were blinking for her attention. There was so much work to do that she had delayed looking at them but waking up gave her the perfect chance to look them over.

And by god were there a lot.

She doubted that she singlehandedly killed the most out of everyone, a certain explosion could claim that, but she would wager she at least had a hand in the most deaths.

Her spells and Fire were used liberally and in extremely wide ranges, giving her a piece of nearly every Demon that was killed. Most of the time it was only a small piece, but even singeing a Demon's skin gave her a notification for participating in its death.

The number of partial kills was astronomical, the most she had ever received and she had the essence to back it up. Her level leaped up from the battle.

She was now level 87.

87! That was a massive jump, nearly 15 levels in one day! She had overtaken Chris in level a few months ago and this jump would take her way above him. Probably not. Her mind flashed and the river of essence she saw stream popped up.

The rarity of his Class made it take more essence to level but even so, there was a veritable river that gushed into him. Even with his legendary soaking it up, he would wake up with a lot more levels.

If he woke up.

No! She couldn't think like that.

After checking her status, she was taken into the throng of work. People still needed healing and other various things but that wasn't her focus. She tried to organize the mass of people and calm the chaos. To tame it the best she could.

This was usually Abigail's job, but without her here, it fell to Rachel.

That didn't take nearly as long as she expected and she was once again without anything to do. Chris still hadn't woken up and it wasn't like they were in any condition to leave. They didn't have the facilities to haul everyone back that couldn't walk.

She did receive a runner with the status of the other half of their army and it was much the same as theirs was. Recovering as best they could.

A thought poked at her that something went wrong with the plan on their side but she didn't know enough to come to any conclusions. The fact she only sensed one mana type stood out.

Other than that, another thought kept reappearing in her mind.

Why did the Demons stop here? Why this Valley of all places?

To find the Demons and get to the Valley, they followed the trail of taint for days. The Demons had trekked through plenty of areas just like this one but they decided to stop here for some reason and she didn't know why.

It bugged her.

The Valley at least used to be lush with plant life and the mana was still thick, but there wasn't anything that instantly stood out. The mana was a bit thicker here than in other areas but it wasn't outstandingly so.

Wait, is the mana thicker now than it was yesterday?

People generated mana, every living thing did, but there weren't that many of them to contribute to such an increase. Plus, while people did generate mana, they also used it at a commensurate rate most of the time.

Turning the ambient mana into healing mana through their Class Skills and then using that mana to stitch people back together was only just one of the ways it was being used. If anything, there should have been a drain on the surrounding mana yet it had increased instead.

It could be attributed to the Demons being gone but even that didn't account for the increase. While they did consume the mana, they usually emitted enough Demonic Mana to even it out.

This was something else.

To find out, she closed her eyes and searched out where the flow was coming from. If there was more mana, it had to come from somewhere. It was surprisingly easy to pick up on the mana flows in the area.

Because they were all emanating from one place. Usually it was similar to wind or water. It ebbed in flowed, swirling in some places while flowing in others. It was a hard skill to understand but when all the mana originated from one place, it was easy enough to follow it back to where it was coming from.

Mana was wafting out of the Valley, which meant the source was somewhere in the Valley. Rachel wasn't sure what the reason was, but the feeling was the opposite of a Dungeon. Where Dungeons pulled in mana from wide ranges, this seemed to supply massive amounts of mana that diffused into the surroundings instead.

It was small now, but she could tell it was growing.

Something they did during the battle caused it if she had to guess.

She followed her senses and they drew her deeper into the Valley. The terrain was still destroyed but at least the bodies were cleaned up. The Human ones. Demons still littered the area but she stepped over those.

She walked past where the front line used to be and continued further in. The ground got worse as she closed in on where the explosion originated. The withered grass and plants were torn out and only bare dirt was left to walk on.

As she got closer, the mana only rose.

It continued to thicken as she reached the heart of the Valley and what she saw took her breath away. Greed wasn't a strong emotion she usually felt but even she noticed it creeping up inside her.

The explosion had created a massive divot into the earth, leaving a massive area of underground exposed. This exposed ground was lined with glittering crystals and the mana was thicker than syrup inside the crater.

The blue gems were easy to identify as she had seen them before in the tutorial. Knowing what they were only made the feeling of greed worse because she knew how valuable they were.

They had stumbled onto a vein of Mana Crystals.

[User]
Write Chapter 198 - Crescendo
Target length: ~2400 words

[Assistant]
Gabriel

"Is he getting better?" His mother asked.

His cousin, Ashley, could only shake her head, "I honestly don't know. This is so far beyond regular medicine that I would be guessing. What I can say is it does seem to be doing something."

Gabriel once again cursed his inadequacies. If he had a stronger Law, then maybe his brother would wake up faster. If he knew better Healing enchantments. If he had stronger Ice mana.

Everything that he could have that would make this situation better popped into his mind and he cursed himself for not having it. He didn't even have a single healing skill.

Sure, he would still be limited by how much healing the body could take but maybe his would be more effective. If he had one that mixed healing and ice perhaps it would work that much better.

There was nothing he could do to change it. Even the new assortment of Class Skills to choose from didn't have anything that would help, and he had looked. His level, much like everyone else's, had shot up after the battle and he was able to pick up a new Class Skill.

None of those offered would help and he had shunted the notification to the side angrily. He didn't have time to deal with that.

He also didn't wish to make an important decision about his skills while running on so little sleep and filled with tension either.

The enchantment he had formed into the Ice couldn't power itself and required him to pour mana into it continuously to continue working. The Rune naturally absorbed any mana that came into contact with its lines, but that small amount was far from enough to power it.

In addition, he continued to supply his Ice mana and Law to keep it as cold as he could.

No one was sure how much of an effect it was having, but even if it was minuscule, he would pour everything he had for days if it meant the difference between life and death.

Christopher's condition had changed little since when they first found him. Wounds and injuries still covered his body, his arm was still missing, and many of his bones were still broken.

That wasn't where Ashley had directed most of her healing.

With so many wounds, she had done her best to become essentially Life Support. Whenever Chris's body recovered even a little bit and could take more Healing, she would come in and do so.

Even throughout the night, she didn't stop.

No one in the tent had gotten much sleep, which meant when shouting inside the camp started to come through the tent, it was most unwelcome.

The shouting and raised voices only got more intense and Gabe was starting to wonder where the rest of his family had gotten off to.

Rachel had taken charge of their remnant forces, but she wasn't out there to quell the shouting. Neither was Hal, as he would have gotten things to settle before letting it get this far.

Even some of his more quiet-spoken family members would have at least done something!

"Quiet down!" Hal's voice carried over everyone else's but it didn't seem to do anything.

So Hal is out there but it isn't enough to settle the commotion? Just what's going on out there?

He was loathe to do it, but he needed to make sure nothing was wrong. They couldn't very well travel fast with the state of things. Dumping a bit more mana than necessary into the Ice and the Rune, he turned to find out what was going on.

It must have been his hopeful imagination because after he did so, he swore he felt a shift inside the ice. When he turned to look, nothing was different though.

Odd.

* * *

Chris

The Demon. The battle. The Portal. The Explosion.

The moment my hammer filled with energy slamming down onto the mass of mana.

The Pain.

It kept replaying. Over and over. My last thoughts before what I assumed would be my death. Foolish thoughts of grim resolve. To face my death head on. Oh how fast that had crumbled. I had thought I would be fine when my death came and my time was up, but I was wrong.

I thought after the tutorial, and watching my family cut down one member at a time, I would be more accustomed when it happened to me. But I wasn't. I still wanted to live. I wanted to fight for as long as possible. It felt like my time wasn't up yet and it was wrong to go so soon.

Throughout the swing, up until my hammer impacted the portal and my world turned white, I was fine with the tradeoff. My family would live, and the Demon's plans would be crushed.

All until it was too late to do anything otherwise. It wasn't enough to feel regret, just a deep wish. A dear wish to be able to get back up and march on. I fought to do just that. Only nothing happened. I thrashed and bucked, strained and urged my body to get up, but it was for naught.

I was just too broken this time. Even my Anchor wasn't enough to power me through.

What I was left with instead was the pain. That and complete darkness. I wasn't even sure where I was. I didn't feel dead. I wasn't whisked off to Valhalla like the stories.

I had died in battle with my weapon in hand, by all the folklore I knew that qualified me, yet I saw no Valkyrie coming to get me. Only black. And the feeling of pain.

I had never truly believed in Valhalla before the System. I didn't believe in anything, really. I joked about it, using it in my arguments against my father whenever we had our religious talks, but I never believed it deep down.

That changed after the System came.

Not so much as I would go off preaching about it, just a silent hope. A hope that had unknowingly grown and blossomed.

It started with my Class. Champion of Niflheim had implications. It was drawn straight out of mythology. It was the first time I had looked at it and actually thought it might be real.

My Bloodline added another brick to the pile. Frost Giants and Jotuns. One more indication of it possibly being real. My next Class came next. Hammer of the Jotnar. Even the unchosen Classes held hints, like Chilling Death of Helheim

At every step, there was a reference, a clue, a small nugget of evidence. If that was real, why not more? It was a question I had asked myself many times. One I had even spoken with my father about before he passed.

Before the tutorial got hectic, and back when we were all in the same camp, the stars had always called to me and gazing up into the twinkling darkness was where I turned when feelings became... elevated. Or when the bottle I stuffed them in threatened to blow.

I had done it a lot in the tutorial. I wasn't sure what I saw up there that calmed me, but after the craziness imposed on me and my family by the System, it was a nice thing to fall back on.

It was also where my best thinking got done, and my dad knew that.

He would often find me on the wall staring up at the night sky and drop down next to me. Sometimes without saying a word, other times he would spark discussions.

It didn't matter what the discussions were about, just the act of talking helped. Somehow, we always came back to the philosophical questions the most. If God was real, if aliens were real, what we believed about the Universe.

Let me tell you, that discussion had a major change after the System.

It was in one of those times that I had voiced my nascent idea that Valhalla was real. I hadn't spoken about it to anyone else. Partially because I felt Austin would laugh at me, and partially because I wasn't sure I wanted to talk about it. Talking about it made it real.

What he said surprised me.

"I don't see why not. It isn't like if one is right, the other is wrong. Both can be true or neither could be true, but it isn't really about that. It's about if you believe it to be true."

The shock on my face was evident because he laughed when he looked at me. He hadn't tried to convert me with our discussions, but this was the first time I had taken a different stance than before. Usually, it was him trying to convince me at least something was real.

The last part of me that believed, was less based on any evidence, but on hope.

I hoped it was real.

My father had died fighting with weapon in hand. If, on even the smallest chance, that I got to see him again, that I got to fight with him again, I wanted it to be real. More than anything else, I hoped it to be real.

That, more than anything, was what crushed me the most.

Being left in nothingness, with no grand halls of warriors and my father, hurt more than any physical pain. Even when it felt like my body was actively trying to rip itself apart.

I wasn't sure how long I was left in this... void, but things started to change at one point. I felt cold, colder than before. I imagined my breath coming out in big clouds, even if I knew it wasn't real.

For some reason, the cold felt familiar, but I wasn't sure why.

After the cold, I started to feel... something. Well, I had felt overwhelming pain the entire time, but this was a different feeling. A nipping at my toes and fingertips. A brush against my arm as the breeze sucked away my body heat.

A slight chill pumping throughout my body.

I tried to shift, to see what was happening but I couldn't. It was similar to when I tried to get up, no matter what I did, nothing happened. I continued nonetheless. It wasn't like there was anything better to do. Even if it caused the pain to flare, I continued to try.

Something inside me wasn't done fighting. A deep feeling, a feeling of an unbreakable will to keep going, one that wouldn't be dismayed by anything.

It felt similar to my Anchor but it was different. I had used my Anchor many times since forming it and knew what it felt like. The feeling it had when coursing through me. This was different. Similar, but different.

With that fighting spirit, I did all I could to claw my way back to the living.

* * *

Elizabeth

"What's happening!" She shouted in alarm.

The first time she saw it, she thought it was her imagination. She had stared at her son's body for hours, if not a day by this point. Delirious and sleep-deprived, she swore she saw movement.

Ashley jumped up to look but she wasn't sure what was going on. She was checking him over when it happened again. A shift. A subtle movement of a finger.

When Ashley jumped in fright, Elizabeth knew it wasn't her imagination and a splitting grin formed.

She watched with bated breath as her son's shifting continued. Starting with a finger, then a clench of the hand. There wasn't much room to move inside the ice, but what little was available was being used.

After having what felt like her heart was ripped out, she nearly shouted for joy.

Her boy was waking up. All the other problems, the shouting and yelling fell away.

Her boy was waking up.

* * *

Rachel

A fire was building inside her but it wasn't one of magic. The flames weren't created from mana and they weren't fueled by her skills.

It was one of rage.

She wasn't the only one to notice the rising mana levels. While she was the first, she wasn't the only. Even she knew that keeping it a secret was impossible. There were too many people around and the feeling was too obvious.

The only reason no one had found it sooner was because they were still recovering or distracted with something else.

Now, a day later, people picked up on the mana thickening and there was nothing Rachel could have done to stop it. She couldn't keep the mana from gushing out from the vein just like she couldn't stop a river from flowing.

Any effort to do so was pointless.

She had just wished she had more time to come up with a plan. Maybe even enough for Chris to wake up, but that was just fantasy.

People came looking. They saw the pile of wealth. Their eyes lit up with greed and it didn't take long for the news to spread.

Her feeling of rage continued to be stoked as people argued. Asinine claims were thrown out that made her want to start slinging fire at people.

How they 'deserved' something. How it was 'rightfully theirs'.

Sure, she wasn't saying that the people here didn't deserve a piece of the pie for risking their lives, but some of them did next to nothing yet claimed they were the sole reason for their victory.

It made the fire inside her rage at the thought.

As more people from both sides gathered and the crescendo of yelling rose, the possibility of a fight rose with it.

One they were severely outnumbered in. They had only made up less than a third of the forces fighting the Demons and that portion hadn't changed after the fight.

If anything it seemed to be worse.

How the other city managed to have fewer casualties than Frostheim was a mystery and one she didn't have time to figure out.

There was only one way this was going to go and without Chris, it was up to her to make sure it didn't go poorly.