Chapter 6

  There’s sNOw Rabbit?

  Black turned to white as the snow-filled world began to form around Elijah. Again, distant mountains formed first, and that was it. The rest of the Trial was filled with empty white tundra, nothing but snow as far as the eye could see.

  The Trial of Evolution 1: Snow Rabbit

  You have reached Lv 25 as a Snow Rabbit! Welcome to The Trial of Evolution: beat the Evolved Snow Rabbit to prove your right to undergo the first Evolution. A better performance in this trial will lead to a more powerful Evolution with stronger monster Skills and Traits.

  Elijah looked around. A Snow Rabbit, huh? he thought, keeping a wary eye on the white powder. He saw nothing… absolutely nothing… anywhere. As the wind whipped across the empty plains, biting at his mucus-covered flesh, the teen was grateful for what little protection his clothes provided.

  He wanted to check some things, his new apparent ability for mana for one, but the cold was already getting to him; he was shivering. He knew about the three threes of survival: three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Except, the young man didn’t feel like he could last three minutes out in this weather.

  As if agreeing with him, the System chimed in.

  Status Effect:

  You have been afflicted by the Status Effect: Cold. Find somewhere warm, or else this Status Effect will worsen. Movement Speed -10%.

  This was not good. There was only one thing for it. He wished he had taken the logs from the castle with him; then he could have made a fire, but now Elijah had to resort to the only other thing he could think of, digging.

  The soft, icy snow bit at his hands as he started excavating the never-ending white stuff. He had only made a hole half as deep as he was tall, when his hands turned bright red and began to sting. It was so cold that the teen could hear his breath turning to ice right in front of him.

  He was thankful that the slime that coated him didn’t seem to want to freeze. If it had, he would have been turned into a human popsicle. That said, his Slimy Trait didn’t do anything to insulate the young man, so he still would have preferred not to have been burdened with it.

  Status Effect: Cold has progressed to Very Cold. Movement Speed -20%, and Maximum Health -10%.

  This was not good. He needed to work faster, but already he could feel the effects of Very Cold. It felt like moving through molasses. Every few seconds he would forget what he was doing and just sorta crouch there.

  “You’re building an igloo,” the young man reminded himself, forcing his hands to return to the task. When he thought he had dug deep enough, he stood up, his eyes barely peeking over the edge of the hole.

  You have DIED

  Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.

  “What just happened?” Elijah asked aloud in the void. It took him a moment to realise that he had died. The teen just felt… confused. He hadn’t seen anything. Wasn’t this Trial supposed to test some kind of rabbit monster? What? Are rabbits assassins in this world?

  “Oh great!” Elijah exclaimed aloud, realising something. All his progress would be reset; he had learned this in the Slime Trial. The pumice pathways were covered in acid each time he entered the second phase but were uncovered when he died and came back.

  Just as he was preparing himself for another freezing slog, the teen spawned in. And fell nearly six feet. Maybe the different Trials had different rules? It didn’t really matter; this was perhaps the best possible outcome. His death had been instant and painless; the Cold status had been reset, but his progress on the shelter had not.

  With renewed speed, the young man continued his construction project. He dug a tube with an arched roof so that it wouldn’t collapse. Then, he excavated more snow, giving himself more space. Even just having a small cubby, fully insulated by snow, made a huge difference.

  The next time he was killed by the invisible creature, still with no idea what had happened, he was only suffering from Cold, rather than Very Cold. It took three more deaths for Elijah to figure out a pattern.

  Roughly the same amount of time passed between when the young man died and when he spawned in. This likely meant his enemy started a distance away and had to get to him. Also, he only ever died when he surfaced to remove the snow from his growing base. The predator either preferred striking above the snow or saw it as a good opportunity to ambush him.

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  Before too long, he had a completely sealed, under-snow den. The warmth was actually decent when he blocked off the entrance. Still, he had to equip his other clothes in addition to the green smock to stop from incurring the Cold debuff. The reds and yellows at least increased the feeling of warmth in his dark hole.

  Even in his desperate state, he still refused to use the fine clothes he had gained from the castle. They were just too good to waste. Now that he was finally settled in and relatively warm, Elijah had a chance to assess his new gains, or try to.

  Despite his best efforts, the System would not provide a tutorial on how to use his new Mana Heart. He was on his own. The first thing he did was use the Skill he had revived from gaining Nimueh’s Successor: S, Mana Manipulation: A.

  Instantly, the shadowy snow cave came to life with dancing colours. There was lots of blue, which he instinctively knew was the colour of water. It was held in suspension by its white warden, which he suspected was cold, or ice mana, though this one didn’t feel so obvious to the lad.

  Elijah looked down at his swaddled body and saw, through the layers of fabric, a rich, blue network of pathways that pumped something powerful throughout his body. Unlike the water or ice mana, this stuff didn’t have any unique feeling to it. This was just energy, pure and simple.

  At the centre of the network, which glowed under the effects of Mana Manipulation, was a beating, pulsating heart, slightly too thin to be normal. His regular heart still pumped on the left of his chest, but this new one beat on the right. It seemed to suck in mana from around him, concentrate it, then send it around his body, in his blood.

  It was simultaneously cool and gross to look inside himself like this. Elijah checked his pulse, just to make sure he understood this right. Sure enough, when he placed two fingers to the side of his neck as his science teacher had taught him, the teen could feel not one but two heartbeats. It was thoroughly surreal.

  The whole experience was surreal in truth. Before he could get bogged down in the wonder of it all, he reminded himself of the words that had become his motto.

  “Focus on what’s in front of you.”

  In this case, that meant getting out of this frozen hell! Elijah wasn’t opposed to spending some time resting in one of the Trial worlds, but this wasn’t it.

  To achieve his goal, he would need to defeat a Snow Rabbit. That sounded easy enough if they weren’t apparently undetectable. He hadn’t seen, heard, or smelt hide nor hair of the hare. The question was, how could he use these gifts the Lady of the Lake had given him to track down the creature?

  The first thing to do was learn how to use them. There was power in his blood; he could feel it, but that didn’t mean Elijah knew how to access it. He started by chanting random words in Pig Latin.

  “Firius Warmacus,” nothing happened, “Findian Rabbicus,” still nothing, “Hocus Pocus,” nothing. His face beet red, Elijah stopped striking poses and reciting nonsense. This clearly wasn’t how it was done.

  Next, he tried to force the glowing blue energy out of his veins and arteries. At first, nothing happened. However, after pushing with all his willpower, his veins bulging and his eyes bloodshot, Elijah saw some of the glowing liquid break free from its confinement and begin to leak out into the environment.

  He was ecstatic. He had actually controlled mana. He had done magic!

  Then, he realised the error of his ways. He had been pushing so hard that the glowing liquid was not only leaking from where he had intended but was now spilling out from a hundred tiny holes throughout his body.

  When he began to rapidly bruise all over, the young man remembered that the glowing, ethereal mana was being carried by his still very real blood. When an intense headache struck him, only getting worse by the second, he fully comprehended how badly he had messed up.

  You have DIED

  Potential rewards will suffer as a result of dying whilst undergoing the Trial.

  When Elijah plopped back into his hole, he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face. He had created a spell! Sure, it was useless to most people as it gave you an aneurysm and expelled all of your mana at once, but that didn’t matter to the sixteen-year-old. This was what he had dreamt of!

  Besides, it could actually be of some use to him if he became trapped somewhere and needed a quick way out. Sadly, the System didn’t award him with a Skill for his momentous feat, despite his pleading.

  Still giddy with excitement, Elijah crawled back into his hole for warmth and set about refining his method. Clearly, what he had attempted was not right, but he had learnt something.

  He tried forcing the mana all around him to bend to his will, but he couldn’t interact with it directly. Focusing on only a tiny bit of mana in the tip of his finger so that he wouldn’t have another accident, Elijah began trying to change its shape.

  When the power was still inside his body, his Mana Manipulation Skill worked wonders, and he was able to shape the tiny speck with ease. It did make his digit feel like it had pins and needles, but that was a small price to pay.

  With care, he focused on a tiny mote of water mana in the snow walls, then tried to imitate it. First was the colour, a clear, water-like blue. That was easy to match, but it didn’t do anything.

  Next, he tried to emulate its movements. This was considerably harder. It was engaged in a constant, random dance. Only, the motions weren’t random. Though Elijah couldn’t see any pattern to the routine, each movement held the quintessential essence of water. It flowed like a river, crashed like a waterfall, all the while upheld by the strength of an ocean. It was mesmerising.

  He hadn’t realised it, but that’s why he had, at first glance, identified it as water mana. Now that the teen understood the trick to it. He tried to get his own mana to move, not copying the water mana mote, but dancing it’s own dance inspired by Elijah’s own understanding of water.

  It worked! Small beads of water mana began gathering around his finger, seemingly curious. As the sixteen-year-old moved his hand back and forth, the little living balls of watery light followed. Water began condensating in the air in their presence.

  This was actually useful! If he could do this on a larger scale and with more control, Elijah thought he had a way to clear this level.

  Then he remembered he had Xp sitting in what was essentially a savings account. There were three Classes he could put it into, but there was only one that had a chance of helping him here. He dumped all his Xp into Nimueh’s Successor, raising it to level 9, and immediately regretted it.

  Only one stat point every 3 levels! It was supposed to be a rank S Class, but it only raised his mental stats each by 1. Cerberus Slasher gave three points on its first level and one on every subsequent one, and that was supposed to be rank F!

  Elijah was forced to let go of his frustrations. After all, he had gotten exactly what he needed when Nimueh’s Successor reached level 8.

  New Class Skill Unlocked!

  New Class Skill unlocked:

  Water Manipulation: B

  This Skill allows you to manipulate water using your own mana. With this Skill, the process becomes a part of you, and you no longer have to think to use basic water magics.

  patrons: