The synchronized explosion of more than 1000 statues was a beautiful spectacle. Although I protected myself with a barrier of wind and psyche, this was still overwhelming when thousands of pieces of ice were shot in all directions.
A high-voltage discharge had overloaded their energy cores, detonating them, and their bodies suffered a chain reaction from the inside out.
When all the noise, noise, and ice chunks stopped flying everywhere, the show was over. I levitated among the shattered bodies of the statues; barely recognizable pieces were everywhere...
"Congratulations to the player for being the only one to reach level 10 during the tutorial. "You can look for a teacher to teach you a trade."
Looking for a teacher? Well, now that there were more urgent things to attend to, there would be time for that...
There were no recoverable objects, or loot to take from all that chaos of broken ice... as I expected, at the back of the room, in a niche in the wall, was the medallion with the snowflake.
I know you will think that displaying such overwhelming power was exaggerated and that I could have safely passed through the rifts with my bullet time to dodge... I know that it may even be disappointing for lovers of fierce fights, but I say again that I was not a great warrior. Despite my improved statistics, despite my new skills, a thousand combats were a thousand chances of making a mistake...
Besides, why waste all the experience that the end of the statues would give me? Using overwhelming power was a good way for a cheater to do things.
When I arrived in the hallway, I sat down to meditate and replenish my energy. I did not want to reach my last stage in this sanctuary without being in my best shape. I was cold, but the tranquility that meditation gave me and the pleasant sensation of receiving mana in the body were helpful. However, with how empty my fire and lightning mana reserves had become, it would take a while... too long to be standing in the middle of a frozen tunnel.
I took out one of the flasks of flammable liquid and threw it against a corner near me. The small fire warmed the atmosphere for a minute... I was using flasks at intervals, without abuse, just to warm myself when the cold began to weaken my concentration and health.
When I finished meditating, I still had 110 bottles of flammable liquid left. I moved towards the next door that appeared shortly after.
Before entering, I took the cold immunity potion. All the tests tended to grow in difficulty exponentially...
One meter after passing through the door, it literally disappeared... in its place, there was only a wall. Far from being surprised by the strange phenomenon, I continued moving along an ascending hallway.
Shortly after, a large room opened, large, about 10 meters in diameter, although the most surprising thing was that in it, on the opposite wall, there was a creature frozen inside what I could describe as an ice coffin. I could not identify what race it was, nor could I see her features clearly, but there she was frozen.
It seemed as if she had been trapped in the room, and deep down, it was like a warning or a portent of what could happen in this test.
In the center of the room, there was a huge hourglass that as soon as I set foot in the room, began to work, the sand flowing from top to bottom.
Given the pace at which the sand fell, the margin would be about ten minutes.
The temperature of the room was already low, about minus 10 degrees, and it began to drop rapidly, dropping 20 degrees in just half a minute and it seemed with no intention of stopping the thermal drop...
Doing quick calculations, by the time the 10 minutes were up, the temperature would have dropped to absolute 0 or beyond if that was possible... It is impossible to survive without external resources, potions, or magic used intelligently...
Hold on for 10 minutes... without the potion, I would surely freeze to death sooner... The test was simple: hold on to the cold and survive...
A funny idea crossed my mind... and yes... I approached the frozen coffin and began to pile up the more than 110 jars of flammable liquid against it, while I deformed the stone on the ground to make a parapet where I could take refuge from What I would do next... I concentrated all my fire mana in the palm of my right hand; it shouldn't be a fireball; I had to shape it so that it wouldn't explode but would affect the ice coffin with maximum intensity... With my left hand, I focused a small air blade and aimed it at the jars.
Both magics were launched at the same time; the breaking of the flasks caused them to catch fire upon contact with the air; the wind magic fueled the flames as much as possible; and the fire magic was the catalyst for the Ice Coffin to be subjected to the temperature of a steelmaking blast furnace.
A small bubble of air reserved a margin of safety for me since, with the fire, the oxygen in the room disappeared rapidly...
By the time the fire was extinguished, there were only two minutes left on the clock... I looked behind the parapet and then I felt it... The body inside the coffin that was now melted, was alive... weak but alive... possibly not ok, but I could detect that small spark of life behind the ice wall... although between the burns that my fire had caused them and the time she had been frozen, she had little life left...
I ran towards the body, molding my air bubble so that it covered us both. I brushed the hair from its face and it was a woman, an elf woman, and perhaps the most beautiful creature I had ever seen... Not only was she delicate, she had beautiful copper hair, tied in a complicated braid behind her back, a firm but delicate body at the same time, voluptuous bust without breaking the harmony (all elves would be that pretty).
Don't laugh; it's not that I was having bad thoughts about the poor dying woman or anything like that; it was just mere curiosity... mere admiration...
I pushed these thoughts aside and began to concentrate all my life magic on her... The recovery was slow; she was very weak, terribly weak, although the superficial burns that I had given her were already healed, her body frozen for who knows how long. She was reluctant to heal... My life magic was exhausted and she had not yet recovered to the point that if she continued at this pace, her body would end up dying...
The time on the clock ran out and there on the wall where the ice coffin had been, in a niche, was the pendant of the test... The temperature of the room returned to a comfortable -20 degrees (note the irony).
I sat on the ground next to the elf's body and began to meditate. As soon as she had a little life and fire mana, I applied treatment and increased the surrounding temperature.
I repeated the process over and over again. I didn't know that elf; you could even say it was a waste of effort, but my instinct told me that I shouldn't abandon her.
When her body was recovered enough to be able to move her, I moved to the hallway, carrying her in my arms. It was -10 degrees in the hallway, so the energy expenditure would be much less, just as her frostbite treatment would be easier.
In this way, applying the treatment, meditating and carrying her in my arms, I got closer
To the scale room, I couldn't risk ending the ice energy, since I didn't know if I would be transported out of the sanctuary and I didn't want to let the captive die...
Luckily, the scale room was at a temperature of only 0 degrees, which only accelerated the process...
She was still unconscious, but her pulse had stabilized, and although she had not recovered all the color, her face no longer had the deathly paleness... soon she began to babble...
"The box… I have to get the box back," she stirred in her sleep…
It wasn't difficult to deduce that he was looking for the gnome's box when he must have entered the ice coffin room. Maybe that was the end if you failed the test: freeze to death, or stay in a suspended state inside a prison forever...
I took the precaution of removing the weapons she was carrying, the bow, the arrows, and the two short, curved swords he was carrying... I didn't know what reaction she would have when she woke up, so it was better not to risk a crazy elf attacking me at all. More, see me.
The process of meditating, recovering, and continuously expending energy was a heavy mental load. I ended up leaning on one of the walls of the scale room, while I left the elf leaning on the opposite wall.
She opened her eyes, beautiful green eyes like emeralds; her gaze, lost at first, immediately focused, and her eyes locked on me.
"You're finally waking up…" I said it in Spanish, although I didn't think she understood me…