Eve had to do a double-take; she stared at the flamingo, who appeared very… Desperate? Maybe the situation does call for it, though. The animals have claimed that the system warned them about their imminent disappearance. Something that Eve thoroughly hated to see. She had saved so many, yet they will just disappear? Then, not long after, Flam the Flamingo approached her and offered her his ‘piece of power’.

  Flam the Flamingo has offered you his Pure Mana.

  Accept/Decline.

  “So…” Flam continued. “Do you get it? I will transfer my mana that has reached absolute cleanse! It would be a waste if I just disappeared. So take it and heal much more,” The Flamingo finished.

  The stench of blood still wafted in the air. Every time she breathed, a metallic smell assaulted her. Keep healing? Will her future be filled with this? Blood.

  “I don’t know Flam, why don’t you offer it to Emily here?”

  “Me?” Emily perked up like she had been caught napping. “No, he wants you to have it because you’re a healer, Eve!”

  “Exactly!” Flam exclaimed, and he flapped one of his wings against Eve's head. “Smart Human, you, this one stupid!”

  Eve growled, considering taking a bite of the Flamingo wing. The insulting Flamingo seemed not to know any courtesy. “I don’t know…” She muttered.

  “Why not? With this pure mana, you will be able to break any Magic Vein blockage very easily!”

  “It will be wasted on me!” There, Eve said it. “I’m not powerful/ I would have died ten times over if I weren’t protected”

  “You're a healer, fool human!” Flan shrieked.

  Eve scowled down at the Flamingo. She noticed a snicker, especially from Rino and Yom, who both just lay against the trunk like there was no smell of blood all around them. She glared at them, and they let out a horrible whistle while averting their gaze. Eve then looked at Alquin, the old man just stayed seated near Yom for some reason.

  “Alquin, what did you think? Maybe I should have asked Paxwell, too,” Eve asked.

  “Why? There’s no guarantee we will be together for the next phase, girl, especially with all these announcements.”

  That made her sit up straight. She also noticed Yom tensed up; both he and Eve were probably the weakest within this group.

  “Take it, Eve, what will go wrong?” Emily said.

  Eve, still hesitating. She stared down at Flam, who peered at her curiously. “First things first.” She started. “I want an apology.”

  “Apology?” The Flamingo bent his head. “For what?”

  Eve mouth gaped open. “For all the time you insult me!”

  “I’m planning to give you the greatest resource in the entire universe, and you want me to apologize first? Stupi-“ Flan coughed.

  “Well?” Eve crossed her arms.

  “Fine!” Flam moved one of his wings like a butler's courtesy. “I apologize”

  “Accepted,” Eve grinned. “So, how do we do this? I just accept?”

  At once, the mana around Flan shimmers. They bend the surrounding atmosphere into a hot, brimming, invisible sheet. Eve could feel how it tried to burn the very sky itself. “Your hand”

  The mana transferred straight into her core the moment her hand touched Flan’s wings

  Pure Mana Acquired.

  Magic Vein (Stone) – Magic Vein (Steel).

  “Just like that?” Eve blinked. She had expected a world of pain.

  “Normally, this is not possible; most need to make a quest to make a class transfer. But, this is just my Mana, and with it gone… the costs are great, and I also had the skill to do the transfer, " Flan said. “I was planning to give it to one of my children.”

  “The cost?”

  “I could no longer use magic,” The Flamingo shrugged.

  Eve, about to protest, offered to try to give his Mana back. But Flan just shook his head, saying he would soon disappear anyway

  But, then. The Flamingo's head snapped up, his eye open wide. In a sudden turn of scenery, the earth beneath them freezes over. Eve looked down, her vision registering the ice before her body did. She yelped, falling chin-first to the ground.

  An instant cold enveloped her. She pushed herself up to see that Emily had also fallen, she panicked and shot herself toward Eve. Their head bumped together, and Eve could feel the blood inside her head spinning.

  “What the hell?” Emily said. Rubbing her head.

  Alquin, Rino, and Yom were in a sitting position, so they did not receive the sudden wrath of ice.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Is this Rue doing?” Alquin asked out loud.

  “I doubt it…” Rino responded as he let out a small laugh.

  “Flam?” Eve asked, suddenly worried at his expression. The Flamingo looked like his entire world had just shattered. “Are you okay?”

  The Flamingo then barks out a laugh; it sounds like a shrill of flapping. His wings covered his belly, and he hid his head and beak inside the wings' embrace. “Ah, this is ridiculous... and to answer your question, no, you can’t return it to me. And I don’t want you to”

  “I see you held your skill option… You’re waiting for your class upgrade, I assume? That's wise, but only Frost skill option and a general one that will get upgraded,” Cel said. He raised his arm, examining them, and then to his body, which looked like he was naked with a chest of ice.

  “Cel was it?” Benedict stared at the creature of Ice that suddenly appeared in front of them. Earning Cel's attention, he pointed down at their feet. The entire cave floor was covered in ice, and the ceiling too, somehow. The dark cave suddenly became some sort of glass reflection of everything around them. “What about the cubs? They can’t survive in this-“

  “Don’t worry, this ice has healing properties; surely you will notice your health climbing up.”

  Benedict's eyes went to his status, no doubt. And he hesitantly nodded.

  Healing from a cold… this is familiar.

  “Do you know this will happen, Cel?” Rue tried to stand, but he slipped immediately. What saved him from embarrassment was the sudden chair-like ice structure that appeared from the ice below. It fits Rue perfectly; there’s even an armrest. So this spell works better if there’s Ice to build from. Rue was briefly excited at the future possible use of it.

  Yuuki stared at him with his mouth in a circle from amazement. She thought Rue did that on purpose.

  Playing along, he stretched one of his legs and continued to speak to Cel. “What's happening to Rita and Yomi?” He clarified.

  Rue could see Cel’s eyes twitched slightly; that blank eye of ice did not have any retina or eyeball. They just looked like a big gaping hole of pure ice. “No, I tried to put the quest in line with the tutorial main quest. But it turns out, the system took advantage of it. I do apologize to you, Rue, and the rest of you.”

  Yuuki shook her head, like she had something to say, but drew her mouth into a thin purse. As cruel as it sounds, he was glad she did not confront Cel. Should that have happened, he did not know how to handle that situation.

  “We accept the quest,” Benedict simply said. He wrapped Rue’s tattered cloak around the cubs.

  Speaking of Cloak, the fur around his new cloak offered incredible warmth around his body, especially his neck. Rue’s sense is heightened, too, no doubt thanks to the extra hundred perception.

  “Does it work, Rita?” Cel turned toward the HuGoblin. Rita's shoulder was bare due to her earlier breakdown. Noticing this, Yuuki pulled her dress up and tied the spatial sash around her.

  Rita mumbled a thanks, and her eyes widened. “It just stopped and disappeared? What is this? The system… You changed it? How? What are you?”

  “I did change it… and resist it,” Cel said. He motioned to his body. Full of crack. “With a great cost. I was a friend to your past self.”

  “My past?”

  “Cel” Rue called him, cutting Rita's question. “What will happen to you? And what do you mean by resisting the system? Is such a thing possible?”

  “Ice stops even time, it's the nature of our power… something I'm sure you will find useful in the future,” Cel said. “I always knew it was possible, but never dared to try. That is, until the system did this quest, and after I confirmed that Rita here, along with many others, is a real being. Not the same as their past selves, they’re a completely different soul.” Then the creature smiled. “Maybe our power is the only thing that can resist the system…”

  “You resist it then? The reincarnation? That is why your body looked…”

  “Half-Human. You can say it.”

  “Yes, that,” Rue mumbled. He had expected Cel to sound more sorrowful. But he just seemed to accept this?

  “I'm supposed to go through the reincarnation the moment I have given you that quest, but I want to watch you. I knew I could afford to resist a bit. But then there comes a time when I truly needed to lend you a hand. The moment that I came, my reincarnation as a human has fastened, but I still resisted and probably now doomed that chance.”

  “Time of Obsidian Ice,” Rue muttered. Cel was there, offering him skills. That caused him his human reincarnation. “Why would you do that?” Rue demanded.

  “I believe I already answered that. This quest is not normal. It's unfair for you to go through it without any help. And the responsibility fell to mine,” Cel sighed, puffing cold vapor out from his thin mouth. “Don’t look that sad, my friend. I still felt the thread connecting me to the system. I still would go through reincarnation, but I doubt my next life will be pretty,” He hummed the last part.

  The sound of glasses shattering broke the silence that had held for a couple of seconds. Ice cracked from Cel’s chest. Cel fell to one knee, and sudden ice sprouted up, catching his body from falling completely.

  Rue stood and stepped toward him, but he fell again. And again, ice was there, as a strong pillar that suddenly manifested from the icy ground below. He kept going, and every step was magic. Ice pillars rose ground, Benedict and Yuuki slid back, carrying Rita and the cubs from the pure shaping of nature in front of them. They watched as two beings favored by the frost made their way to each other.

  By the time Rue had reached him, their surroundings were a walled pillar of blue, reflecting their body. Cel lifted his gaze, and his reflection drew a sharp intake of breath from him.

  As Cel tried to stand, Rue lent his hand, helping him up. Cel was still mesmerized by his reflection. His hand shot up, trying to touch a tower of ice. “I think I know the reason, Rue. Why did I do this? The reason I gave you the first time we met is false, but it's not a lie.”

  “I had my guess," Rue smiled thinly.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You were bored, all alone.”

  Cel lips moved, it tried to gap open, but too small for that, then he smiled, almost touching his ears. “Bored,” he muttered. “Yes, I am. Incredibly so,” Cel said. “Maybe, I went overboard with this…” he let out a small chuckle.

  His hand that slung across Rue’s neck cracked. Rue could feel the ice digging into his cheek. A thin blood was drawn, and Rue could already tell his wound had healed from this intense cold.

  “Ah, sorry about that,” Cel said, as his body relied more on Rue to prop him up. Another crack happened, this time across his shoulder. Rue turned and caught Cel, who had lost his left arm. “It's my time to go. From now on, your quest shouldn’t reflect my life anymore. You will still undergo plenty of trials to climb your way up, though. Let me tell you it's not easy.”

  “I never thought it would be,” Rue said. He then asked a question he had been thinking about, and the potential… It's terrifying, but still, this might be the best outcome. “You said your next life won’t be pretty. Why?”

  “It might be just a preamble of mine. But the system does give out punishment for rebelling against it. There’s a race that tried to take over the system, let's say their punishment is not kind…”

  “But, you’re just resisting it, no? You did nothing like take over or some crazy stuff.”

  “I would say resisting it, by freezing myself, is pretty crazy. But, yeah, that will be accurate. Is this your attempt to console me?”

  “If the system punished you… Then wouldn’t the chance of you being born into my world be huge?”

  Cel’s eyes widened, and he turned his face to see Rue.

  And in that blank eye of his. Rue could make out a myriad of emotions. Not from his sight, no. But from the mere understanding of him. Something he never thought possible before.

  “I see, yes, that might have happened. I suppose I will count on you then, Rue,” Cel smiled. “Make it back,” A great crash resounded through the Icen cave. Cel's upper body splintered like a falling glass.

  “I will,” Rue said as he watched his first friend in this world shattered into cold dust.