Rather than wasting the instant scroll, Mel and Heath gathered up enough deadfall to use as firewood and made a camp in the middle of the clearing where the snow had melted from the portal.

As soon as Mel sat on a log rolled up to the fire, a notification popped up in her vision.

Quest Complete: Frozen Beneath

Objective: Endure the cold and escape (1/1).

Reward: [Frostbite Scorpion Carapace Bracers]

Mel let them sit in her inventory while she ate.

They had found some [Sizzle Berries] and [Sour Shrooms] hiding amongst the deadfall and beneath the hollow of a boulder. Despite Mel’s urge to scarf them down immediately, they roasted them over the fire.

She figured the berries would just turn to mush, but Heath assured her that they’d turn into something better if given time.

He was right.

Some things about this world didn’t work the way she would have thought, but it had its own internal logic that Heath was quick to understand.

With food other than dried fish filling her belly, Mel felt more at ease than she had in a long time. Part of it was from the comforting sense of being beside another capable individual.

She had hoped that Sabrina and the others would eventually embrace this new reality, but she knew that was a foolish wish. For once, she was out on her own adventure and not worried about protecting somebody else.

If Heath got in trouble, he could get himself out. Mel being there just made it easier for them both to survive.

“I’ll take the first watch,” Mel said. The warmth of the fire was comforting. The smell of burning wood filled her with a sense of nostalgia. “We can move out at first light.”

Heath looked at her. “You want to camp here?”

“Why not?”

“I figured you’d want to get somewhere more defensible first.”

Mel shrugged. “I didn’t expect to fight after the dragon. I didn’t exactly get there with a full tank of gas, if you get my drift. A little R&R sounds good right about now.”

Heath was notably unsure. She couldn’t really blame him after what he told her, and she guessed that was the least of the horrors he’d seen.

What must it look like to a person used to driving to school or work and nothing terrible happening other than a traffic jam? Mel wondered to herself.

The more of her memories that came back, the more she realized this was her normal. It was little wonder that most things didn’t shake her to her core. Even when she didn’t remember, some part of her still knew it was just a regular Tuesday.

“That…actually sounds like a good plan.” Heath stared into the fire. “I could take first watch instead. I wasn’t the one that got poisoned by a giant scorpion after all.”

Mel shrugged and didn’t argue. She immediately flopped to the side and curled up by the fire. “Your loss. First watch always sucks. No takebacksies!”

Heath tried to say something, but Mel was out like a light the moment her head hit her pillowed arm.

She awoke several hours later to the bright light of morning and the low smolder of the fire. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised that Heath hadn’t woken her up.

As Mel came further awake, she realized that Heath wasn’t there. Her first thought was that he had fallen asleep, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Looking around, she couldn’t see any sign of him. Mel shrugged, feeling a little sad that he had left without a goodbye, but she soldiered on.

Her friends were still waiting for her.

As Mel stretched all the kinks out of her cold body, she kept a lookout for any monsters or animals nearby. She needed another supply of blood to summon another [Sanguine Coat].

Anything that a creature in this area could give her would likely be a lot more resistant to the cold than her own blood. But, in a pinch, her own health would serve just fine.

Just as she was kicking snow over the embers to douse them, she heard quiet cursing and the scraping sound of something heavy moving through the trees.

Mel summoned her twinblade and shifted her gaze to heat vision. She glanced around first, making sure that the noise wasn’t a ploy to focus her attention.

Then she saw the truth.

Mel dropped [Gaze of the Serpent], watching with great interest as Heath dragged a large animal carcass through the trees. Its horns got caught on a trunk as the young man struggled mightily with the beast’s body, eventually giving up and breaking the horns with the pommel of his knife.

When he finally dragged the shaggy body into the clearing, he started at Mel’s appearance. “I thought…” He motioned to the animal, dropping it to the ground.

It was the size of a bull, but shaggy and with several growths of gnarled horns all over its body and head.

“You brought me a source of blood.”

“Your coat went away as soon as you started snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

“I heard–”

“Nothing,” Mel said, stepping up and jabbing a finger into his scrawny chest. “You heard nothing.”

“I heard nothing,” Heath repeated obediently.

Mel nodded, looked at the monster, then back at Heath. “This was nice of you.”

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“I try.”

She reached a hand out, summoning its blood to form into her coat once more. Beads of blood joined together into ruby rivers that turned into flowing sheets that rolled down her shoulders. The still-fresh blood steamed in the frigid air.

Aspect Skill: [Sanguine Coat]

Once her [Sanguine Coat] was around her shoulders once more, Mel looked to the recently snuffed out fire.

Heath smiled. “That will never not be cool.”

She turned to him. “You still should’ve woken me up for my turn.”

He shrugged. “I was fine.”

Mel shook her head. “That’s not how this works. If it’s not equitable, people get hurt. You’re going to be more tired than me now.”

“Yeah, well…” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. There was a long, pregnant pause as he mustered up some nerve. “I was afraid you would leave me.”

“I might leave you if you can’t keep up, ever thought about that?”

Heath’s tired brain took a while to process that. “Oh.”

“Not so chivalric now, are you?” Mel saw his face drop and couldn’t keep badgering him. It really was like kicking a puppy. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she went on in a calmer tone, “I appreciate the gesture, but there’s no room for unnecessary kindness when it comes to survival. If we get ambushed, I won’t be able to count on you being at a hundred percent, and that means we’ll both be in greater danger.”

“I could take a nap,” he offered nervously. “I think one of my aspects is kind of affecting my sleep. That, or all the horrors I’ve witnessed.”

Mel folded her arms. “Probably the horrors.” She wanted to get back to her friends, but she didn’t feel right abandoning Heath.

“I am sorry, though. Just…don’t leave without at least saying goodbye, please?”

Mel rolled her eyes. Less because of annoyance, and more so because she didn’t want to look at that vulnerable boyish face. “Fine.”

He lit up like that was a promise.

At least any advice or training I might give him would be actually heeded, Mel thought as Heath bedded down beside the spent coals. He didn’t complain about the cold or anything. He just went straight to sleep.

Dude must’ve been exhausted, Mel thought, working to relight the fire amid all the damp wood from the melted snow.

Once she got it going again, she went over to the desiccated husk and tried to loot it. Just like the other times that she drained a creature then looted, it didn’t give anything that relied on blood.

Despite its size, it gave no steaks or any cut of meat. It did give a few horn growths, which were small enough to fit in Mel’s inventory.

With nothing else to do, Mel took out her quest reward and looked them over.

[Frostbite Scorpion Carapace Bracers]

(Copper Rank, Armor)

(Uncommon)

Insectile bracers made from durable carapace plates lightly worked with serpentine motifs. The terrible numbing cold of a Frostbite Scorpion saturates these bracers, granting protection against even direct contact with lava.

Imprint: Greatly raises heat insulation against dangerous weather. Increases blunt defense. Raises pain tolerance slightly.

Screw you, Mel thought. What sort of karak shit is this? You give me heat resistance in the frigid cold? Eat an entire wagon of dicks, system.

She already had gloves, and her [Heathen’s Cuirass] went down to her wrists. On top of that, her [Sanguine Coat] covered her entire upper body. It seemed the system here didn’t have any specific limitations on armor beyond what a person could physically put on themselves.

Better than Aldim, Mel thought to herself.

At the mention of the Worldshard, she saw the faces of her friends–her family–once again. She couldn’t help but wonder what happened to them or what brought her here. Were the others here too?

Mel didn’t think so. Earth and Lormar had been specifically mentioned. There was nothing about Aldim. Heath had made an off-handed remark about the world being stitched together, which didn’t align with what she remembered about Earth.

So what happened?

Mel drew a blank. As hard as she tried to remember, she couldn’t. Even the memories she had were filled with holes.

Never the type to dwell, Mel turned her attention back to her bracers. Naturally, they added extra insulation, and they looked like they’d turn aside a variety of weapons, not just blunt ones.

“Maybe there’s something about carapace that’s not like other types of armor,” Mel mused aloud. Usually strong plate-like armor was weak to blunt attacks.

She slipped them onto her forearms, glad that they weren’t hairy like the scorpion was. In fact, they were a rather fetching shade of blue. With their snake motif, Mel could even believe that they didn’t come from a monster at all.

Still, she thought to herself, wearing the bones of your enemies is pretty sick.

What was a monster’s carapace but bones worn on the outside?

After an hour of waiting, Mel got to her feet and slipped through the trees to take a look at her surroundings in the bright morning light. There were a fair number of monsters about, all of them difficult for her human eyes to see. The glare off the snow was blinding, and most creatures she saw only because they hadn’t noticed her and were moving across the snowy drifts.

Slipping into her infravision, Mel let out a soft sigh of relief. Her eyes were no longer stinging from the brilliance of the reflected sunlight.

Instead, the sunlight warmed the bodies of the creatures faster than the snow reflecting it back, providing a suitable contrast for Mel’s eyes. Not only was this less harsh on her eyes, but she could easily pick out every creature, no matter how well they were hiding.

Wow, didn’t even see that one, Mel thought of the strange yeti-like creature that she had first mistaken for a snowdrift. It looked like it was sleeping, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t wake up at a moment’s notice.

Moving quietly back through the trees, Mel found Heath still fast asleep. She went out the other side of the trees, intent on plotting a route off this plateau and back toward her friends.

It took Mel a lot longer than she would have admitted. She had to climb half a dozen trees to get the right vantage point, and even then her infravision’s range left a lot to be desired.

By the time Mel plotted a course, her eyes ached and her head pounded. Switching back and forth between [Gaze of the Serpent] and her normal vision drained more mana than simply keeping it on.

Not to mention it was disorienting when she was halfway through the switch. She could see both visible and heat at the same time, while one bled away into the other. It made for some disturbing shapes. Luckily, it seemed shorter than the times she used it as a Mundane, but it was still long enough that swapping in the middle of battle was a bad idea.

As she shinned down the last tree, Mel found Heath already up and looking for her.

His dark brown eyes fastened on her. “You didn’t leave.”

Mel lifted a blonde brow. “No shit. Get up, we’re moving out. I already got a course charted.”