The words fell upon Cecillia’s ears like heavy layers of hail. It was true though, she wasn’t able to utilize her class’ abilities in the slightest until after the seal’s duration. And honestly, even if it was totally regrettable, there was just a little tinge of amusement behind the irony of it all.

“A mage without mana,” Cecillia echoed with an odd sort of cheerfulness.

“You’re not mad? Laen asked, sounding shocked.

“Nah, not really… Well maybe a little, it kinda sucks not being able to use any magic,” she shrugged. “But I can’t really do anything about it for the next two weeks so why should I care?”

Usually, her pessimism would seep through, but in this situation her pragmatic side was mostly present. After ten long years standing on the front-lines of Earth’s collective army, Cecillia had learned a ton of things and part of that was dealing with shit. Bad shit, good shit, it didn’t really matter, she would just throw it forward to her future self to deal with. It probably wasn’t the best way to go through with things, but it was one of the reasons why she was able to survive the war.

“A great mindset,” Doran said, the first positive thing he had said about her. “You’d have done well as a slave.”

His next words, not very much so and Cecillia eyed the man, squinting as he acted as if nothing happened. She then placed her hands on her hip, a playful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Wow, I didn’t know that the Great Red Lion, Captain Doran, was such a comedian,” she said, innocently. “You heard that right, Laen? Your father thinks he’s a real funny guy.”

It was a resolute success. She heard the boy’s giggling from the side, and a smile of her own almost cracked onto her face. Though, she didn’t go too far or else this grumpy hunter of a person may just take things a little too seriously.

“We’ve wasted too much time, the evening will fall in four hours,” Doran said with a glare.

His figure swept past them, but instead of heading towards the forest, he walked right up to one of the wolf’s she had killed. The man knelt down and drew a small knife from a strap on the side of his shin before carving into the animal’s corpse.

“What’s he doing?” Cecillia asked.

She assumed that he wanted to harvest the creature, but didn’t understand why. Their pelts were scratchy with some being scruffy as well, while their luster was dull unlike that of her Blackie who had a perfect sleek, shiny coat. Perhaps Doran wanted their flesh, but she could clearly remember when killing them that the meat itself was tough to cut through. And that could only mean that if she wanted to make a meal out of it the texture would be stringy, chewy and overall wouldn’t make for a pleasant experience.

“Oh, he just wants their mana cores,” Laen replied. “We should help him gather them. They belong to you after all.”

Cecillia’s head tilted very so slightly and the boy glanced at her with a strange expression.

“Why what’s wrong?” He asked, but in the next moment, a lightbulb seemed to light up in his head.

“Right, sorry you lost your memories,” Laen said quickly. “Basically, mana cores are like a human’s heart, well… that’s what my father said anyways. But he always sells them for a little bit of extra money.”

“I see,” Cecillia sagely nodded. “You think these cores can power things?”

“Well that’s what they’re used for. These wolves should only have low rank cores because they’re low level and aren’t very strong so they’ll probably only be used for lamps,” he explained then pointed at Blackie. “But your Twin-Tailed Wolf should have a much higher grade core.”

Hearing his explanation, Cecillia looked at her companion up and down as the wolf’s tail happily wagged beneath her gaze. She guessed it makes sense, seeing that the wolf was able to stand on even ground against multiple creatures of the same level. Though, she hadn’t really considered just what kind of wolf Blackie was, whether she was strong, rare, and generally things like that. ‘Maybe Laen would have some kind of an idea,’ she thought, following as the boy walked to the nearest slain wolf.

Like his father, he knelt down and began creating several small incisions around where the creature’s heart would be. Cecillia noted that the disgust a child like him should have wasn’t there at all. Rather, he went about it like it was just an everyday thing. The squelching flesh and tissues being torn coupled with the blood didn’t even cause him to flinch. So she figured that it would be best to just watch and learn how he extracted the core before trying on her own.

“You said your name was Cecillia right?” Laen asked, not bothering to look up from his work. The question snapped her out of a daze as she rapidly blinked.

“Huh, yeah it’s Cecillia,” she replied. “What about it?”

“Well, it's kind of a weird name,” he said bluntly and reached an arm into the wolf. “Your lineage’s name is weird too, and the color of your hair is really rare, no offense.”

“None taken.”

Cecillia didn’t mind the boy’s statement, he was probably only curious after all. It was strange though, having black hair was really common back on Earth.

“You know, I’ve never seen a person with black hair before so it’s kind of cool meeting a person with it,” Laen said, pausing to look up at her. His face then scrunched up and he narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure you’re not from another world?”

Cecillia’s breath hitched in her throat, and her expression froze over. Thankfully, the boy didn’t notice as the squelching resumed as he dug around inside the corpse, almost elbow deep at this point.

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“Well I guess you wouldn’t remember if you were,” Laen said as he pulled his arm out. Blood covered every inch of the skin on his forearm, but a brilliant twinkle from within his closed fist drew Cecillia’s attention.

“Is that…”

“Yup,” he grinned and opened up his palm in front of her. “This is a mana core, pretty coll right?”

Cecillia’s eyes widened instantly as the core entered her sights. It reminded her of the stars, an explosion of radiance captured within a semi-translucent murky red and imperfect sphere. The object itself had the luster of those synthesized gems back on Earth, but the main difference was that the mana core seemed to be alive. The faint pulsating light emitted appeared as if it were breathing, while the splattered red particles floating around within rippled like a pond with every pulse.

“It’s beautiful…” she said breathlessly.

Laen smiled softly, “It really is, but I’ve seen better. Wanna hold it?”

“Eh? Really?”

“I mean why not,” he said. “It can’t hurt right?”

“Right,” Cecillia nodded and held out her hand. Laen dropped the core into the cusp of her palm and she brought it up to her eyes.

‘I see why so many women wore jewelry,’ she thought, twirling the core around, inspecting every angle. ‘If there’s stuff like this, maybe I should get something too.’

The thought brought a smile to her lips, but her visage soon faded with a pang of melancholy. Cecillia remembered how Alice used to love wearing jewelry and dressing herself in beautiful clothing. With her also occupying her sister’s body, it didn’t sound so much like a good idea anymore.

“Do you feel anything from the core?” Laen asked, “I heard that some mages were able to use the cores directly.”

“Feel what? The mana?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “How am I supposed to know, you’re the mage, not me.”

“Now aren’t you a big help,” Cecillia grumbled.

However, she didn’t brush off the kid’s words. Based on what Doran had said earlier, she had the running theory that humans essentially acted as a battery with the wisdom stat increasing the maximum amount that could be held at a time. But what would happen if when one’s mana was sealed away…

Closing her eyes, she slightly tightened her hold around the core and imagined herself absorbing the energy from within. Then, she was trudging through darkness.

Cecillia released a gasp as she felt a hollow ache from deep down within herself, but she pushed down the feeling and turned her awareness inward. Colour sprang into fruition as tides of red energy started to roar into existence within the blackness. Like an upcoming wave, she found it difficult to find where it started but she was soon able to grasp a small tendril of light. There it was, the control.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but she could tell that there was an ever-so faint drop in temperature. Slowly, she imagined tugging on the string, drawing just a little more power from the chaos.

“It’s working!” Laen exclaimed. “I don’t know what the heck you did, but there’s snow!”

Cecillia opened her eyes, to her she hadn’t really noticed the change in temperature—likely a side effect of having the attunement of ice. But the fact that there were miniature snowflakes falling around her body meant that she was doing something right.

“It’s really working,” she whispered. She glanced at the boy who was previously trying to catch the flakes on his tongue, but now he had his arms wrapped around his shoulders, shivering.

“Oh, sorry. Is it too cold?” she said, concerned.

Laen nodded. “Yeah, you do have my cloak after all.”

“Okay. I’ll stop it.”

Cecillia once again closed her eyes and tried to find the tendril from earlier, the control panel if she would. But as she tried to reverse what she had done earlier, she realized that it was stuck, completely unmoving. The red waves also seemed to be closer too, and much more chaotic than earlier.

“Cecillia, it's not getting any warmer,” he said, his voice a shivering chatter. The boy even had to take a step back as the air around her body dropped below freezing.

Cecillia frowned, nothing she was doing was affecting the waves at all. She tried willing it to slow down, but no, they continued to crash towards her in torrents.

“Cecillia,” Laen said, panickedly. “It’s too cold.”

“I’m trying,” she scowled. “I just… I can’t control this at all.”

Her expression soon turned to one of worry and instead of trying to control the tides, she shoved it back as quickly as she could. Almost instantly, the frigid tightness surrounding them was released and the red chaos started to recede.

“Holy fu—I mean frick,” Laen coughed. “Why did you make it so cold?”

The skin on his ears and nose had turned pale and his face appeared flushed. He rubbed his hands together, generating as much warmth as he could before pressing them against his cheeks in an attempt to warm up.

Although, Cecillia didn’t respond. Her attention was focused entirely on the darkness. Sure, the waves had receded, but now they had increased in size considerably and were coming back. No, they were coming back too fast. It was a fcking tsunami.

Suddenly, a warning erupted from her throat. “Laen! Get back now!”

The boy heard her and scrambled away as fast as he could, instantly creating several meters between them. Cecillia grimaced as the core shattered within her hand, the energy captured within detonated outwards before surging directly into her body. Her eyes went wide and the ring around her pupils shone with a blinding, azure white. A writhing pain permeated through her stomach and a blast of pressure exploded from her being.

“Cecillia!” Laen shouted.

The boy attempted to rush towards her, but the swirling atmosphere surrounding her body pressed back against him, rendering him useless. She also overheard Blackie’s barking, but she too suffered the same predicament.

“I told you, stay back!”

Groaning, Cecillia spat out a mouthful of blood as she fell to a knee. The pain felt like her insides were being shredded and her veins were turning into ice. She hadn’t expected the energy to rush into her body all at once, but since it had, she knew that she was experiencing one and only one thing. Infusion overload.

Cecillia gritted her teeth as she tried to suppress the raging energy within herself, while white lines started to spread across her skin. She knew that if her body couldn’t contain the mana, there was only one way it could go. Out. However, at the rate of where this was going she was going to implode.

“Fck…”

Cursing, she slammed her open palm into the ground for stability and started to direct the vortex of mana into her arm. The essence of ice burned as frost covered her skin, her eyebrows turning white as the cold spread further. She could no longer feel anything in her arm, it was completely numb.

As for her blood, the red liquid refused to pump as the effects of deep frostbite left her limb stiff and lifeless.

The magnitude of the vortex of mana threatened to throw her consciousness under, but Cecillia knew that she had to succeed. And as she started to see her vision slip, she brought her other hand to her mouth, biting hard and using the pain-brought adrenaline to keep her awake.

“...Shit,” she barely managed to whisper. The muscles in her arm screaming while her bones created crackling noises from the extreme cold. The pressure continued to build until another crack sent a further explosion of agony rippling through her frame.

Her breath was heavy, and the look in her eyes manic. A shaky laughter left her lips and she whipped her arm up to the skies, fingers outstretched as her world turned to ice.