When Daniel woke up the next day, he was excited. He was finally leaving the stinking goblin fortress. He wouldn’t be unhappy, if he’d never see another goblin in his life. When he looked around, most of the awoken other travelers looked the same as him. The only notable exception was Fedor. The Russian looked sad. In Daniel’s opinion, he would've probably been happy to stay here and slaughter goblins for the rest of his life. He had to grin at the thought of the Russian, dressed like a caveman living in the dungeon on a diet of goblin meat, doing boss runs all day, every day.

When he stood up, he saw that Anna, who was lying next to him, was still asleep. He had never taken back his air mattress, after seeing how happy she’d been on her first night using it. With his attributes focused more on his body, lying on the ground in a sleeping bag wasn’t that bad.

When Azza distributed the goblin fur clothes and asked him if he needed some, Daniel declined. With his high toughness, he had no problem enduring the cold in his normal street clothes. In the night before, he didn’t manage to reach a severe hypothermia even after four hours buried in the snow. In the future, he would probably need to find a colder place if he wanted to keep that kind of training going.

He was just putting on his improvised snow shoes, when Anna woke up.

“Good morning” Daniel greeted her.

“Good morning.” She responded and then examined him. “Seems like we are really leaving. Some part of me expected that something would come up, forcing us to stay here.” She continued and Daniel had to chuckle.

“Yes, I know what you mean. It feels like we were here, slaying goblins for months.” He paused a moment and then continued. “If we find some form of civilization, would you be interested in a date?” He asked and Anna showed a huge grin on her face.

“Yes, I would be interested. I was starting to think that you are made out of stone.” She joked.

Daniel grinned and responded.

“Maybe not stone. But, I think you’ve noticed that I’m probably not the best when it comes to talking about one’s feelings.” Daniel conceded and Anna started to laugh.

“Ok, I need to get dressed for the travel. Let’s leave it at that. I don’t want to embarrass you.” She responded.

With a smile on his face, Daniel went over to Fedor. The Russian was looking down the mountain valley. He was still wearing his heavy plate armor, ignoring the cold. Daniel didn’t know how high Fedor’s toughness was, but he was sure that it was way above his own.

“Morning, so what do you think? Just go for the small river?” Daniel asked pointing to river in the distance.

“Yes, not much of a choice. We can only hope it doesn’t end in a water fall.” Fedor answered.

“So, probably a good idea to let someone scout ahead?” Daniel asked.

“Haha, are you volunteering?” Fedor asked and Daniel only shrugged. “You are right someone needs to scout ahead. While we leveled them up a bit, the others are mostly still weaklings and a lot slower than we are. So, there aren't a lot people to choose from.”

The other travelers nearby didn’t seem very happy with Fedor’s assessment of them, but they kept quiet and Fedor went on.

“You are probably the best suited for scout. I saw your training in the snow. Even I’m not that crazy. Did you talk with Anna about her ice magic? Would she be able to harden the top of the snow that you won’t sink in?” Fedor asked.

“Maybe, but she would run out of mana very fast.” Daniel answered.

“Doesn’t really matter. If you can move on top of the snow, you’ll be more than ten times faster than we are. I talked with John, he had some training in arctic weather. In his opinion we might make one or two kilometers in one hour if we are lucky.” Fedor explained.

“Shit, maybe we melt the snow with fire magic?” Daniel suggested and Fedor only shook his head.

“No way we have enough mana for that and if we don’t melt it all, we only worsen the situation. Believe me, you can better move through snow than through snow slush. The way I see it, it will be the strongest persons going ahead to create a path for the rest. The snowshoes will help a bit so the following people won’t sink in very deep in the already compressed snow.” Fedor suggested.

“Ok, I’ll talk to Anna.” Daniel answered and left.

When he arrived back at the Irish redhead, she had already finished putting on the goblin fur clothes.

"I'm ready to go. What is the plan?" Anna asked.

"Can you try if you are able to use your ice magic to make the top layer of the snow strong enough so that we can walk on it?" Daniel asked and Anna looked thoughtful for a moment.

Then, she moved out into the snow. When she arrived at the border of the cleared area, she stopped for a moment. Stairs were starting to form in front of her. She used them to get on top of the 0.5 meter high snow and turned to Daniel with a smile. He had to shake his head. It seemed like, while in the days he had been mainly focused on training his attributes and killing goblins in the dungeon, Anna had worked on her control of magic.

"Ok everybody, listen up! Anna and I will scout ahead to find a way from this mountains. We will be a lot faster using magic to stay on top of the snow. We will mark our path, just follow it. If the way was wrong, we will turn back and inform you." Daniel explained.

With that said, he followed Anna and they started to make their way towards the river. At first, they were walking, but as Anna started to get used to hardening the snow, they increased their speed to a fast jog.

"How is your mana consumption?" Daniel asked a few minutes later.

"I'll manage for now. It is a huge plus that I don't need to create the ice and just need to influence it." Anna responded.

They were able to hold a good speed. While Anna's agility wasn't nearly as high as his own, she was still at the superhuman level. When they needed to have a break to regenerate mana, they already managed to put five kilometers between themselves and the dungeon. Daniel just wanted to say something, when he heard a growl. Deciding that using a saber in a surprise attack wasn't the best idea, he removed his long dagger from his inventory.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

When he turned around, he saw two white wolves jumping at him.

Ice wolf - Level 9

He immediately activated Lightning Edge and Lightning Armor. Then, he cast an Arc Lightning at one of the wolves while he attacked the other. While he didn't know how low on mana Anna was, but it was probably better to be safe than sorry. While casting his spell, he evaded the other wolfs attack.

Anna seemed to have noticed his worry, at least she spoke up.

"Don't worry about me, I still have my axe."

Daniel was a bit surprised when she buried it in the skull of the wolf he'd shocked. Without having to concentrate on the second enemy, he was able to ram his own dagger right through the wolfs eye in to its brain when it attacked again.

"Well, that seems far better than goblin meat." Anna said with a smile looking at the dead wolves.

He had to agree, but that wasn't all.

"Yes, but it also means we need to fortify our camp at night. I'm no expert with wolves, but I think their packs can be pretty big." Daniel assessed and Anna started to laugh.

"Maybe in areas where there is a lot of prey. But, look around. There is nothing here that can feed a large wolf pack. I think a few guards should be more than enough at night. Well, at least against wolves." She explained.

They decided to take the wolves with them in their inventory. In the evening, when they made camp, they would make a fine meal. Daniel paused a moment and then cursed.

"What?" Anna asked.

"I just thought about that we need to roast the wolves over a fire of burning goblin corpses." Daniel explained.

"Well, shit." Anna cursed herself, but continued her meditation.

When Anna was finished 15 minutes later, Daniel was surprised.

"You managed to fill up your mana this fast?" He asked.

"Yes, with the class bonus to mana regeneration, I switched from normal regeneration to mana regeneration. Hopefully, later there will be spells to regenerate stamina with mana." Anna explained.

"Seems like a big risk to take. If you can't regenerate stamina, you can basically forget about training attributes." Daniel responded and Anna looked at him in a weird way.

"You know what Daniel, sometimes in life you need to take a gamble, even if you don't know the odds. Otherwise, what's the point of living? It would only be boring." Anna explained and Daniel was quiet for the next minutes. Intellectually he knew she had a point. Often it was hard to know the odds of something being successful. Some people had bet it all on one idea and created something amazing. But, something inside him was very reluctant about taking uncalculated risks. Maybe, he thought, he was just a control freak.

They went on in silence for the next minutes and Daniel was thinking deeply about what Anna had said. He concluded that he would still try to make the best decision with the information available and otherwise try to keep cautious. When they first attacked the goblin boss, they had seriously underestimated the challenge. If there had been a few more enemies, his party may have been wiped out.

Two rests later, they arrived at the small river. As far as they could see, it went on for kilometers, steadily moving further down the valley. For now, it looked good and Daniel thought that he was able to see some green in the distance. In his estimation, they were around one kilometer lower in altitude than the dungeon entrance was. The temperature was a bit warmer, too, maybe even barely below zero. When he looked back, Daniel saw that the other travelers had only been able to make around 20 percent of the way, they had. It was still in the morning, but in Daniel's estimation, it would already be close to getting dark when the others reached the river. He talked to Anna about it, and they decided to clear the area from snow, to make a basic camp for the night.

After finishing the campsite, it was around lunchtime. They decided to keep exploring and to follow the river to scout ahead the route for tomorrow and if they would be able to find some animals, it would be a bonus.

A few kilometers further down the river, Daniel saw that he'd been right. There was really green land ahead of them. He smiled and they keep moving ahead with new motivation.

It took them two more hours to reach the end of the snow covered land. The sight in front of them, gave them hope. To the sides of the valley they were in, the mountains slowly started to get smaller and maybe twenty kilometers in front of them, they saw the start of a lush forest. Deciding that this would be enough information for now, they made their way back to the base camp.

On their way back, they hadn't spotted animal tracks once. When they arrived, the others had already created a large goblin pyre. Some ramshackle goblin fur tents had been erected, and most of the other travelers seemed to be asleep already. After spotting Fedor, who was on guard duty, Daniel went over.

"How was the march?" Daniel asked.

"It sucked. After an hour, I would have sold my child for some skis, if I had any children. Seeing you two ahead, walking on top of the snow was even more infuriating than sinking in with every step. While the snow shoes helped a bit, it was very tough to go ahead on the front of the group, even for people with superhuman bodies." Fedor explained.

Daniel wanted to respond, but they were interrupted by loud noises. While he had no experience in that area, it sounded like someone was torturing a dog.

"We should check it, we encountered wolves and if there is something out there that is strong enough to hunt them, we need to know." Daniel suggested.

Anna, who was standing next to him and Fedor agreed. They didn't need to follow the noise for long and they witnessed a bizarre sight. Ahead of them were three wolves in a desperate fight for their life against something that didn't make sense.

Snow Rabbit Level 1

"Fuck me!" Fedor cursed.

Daniel had to agree. There were more than 50 of the little creatures pilling up on the wolves, slowly biting them to death. While the wolves had been able to kill some of their attackers, the little fur balls just kept coming. Deciding that he didn't want to experience what it would feel like to share the wolves fate, Daniel started to create an Air Bomb and threw it at the furious fur balls. Anna and Fedor seemed confused by his attack for a moment, but then they started to understand the threats the rabbits posed.

When the first Air Bomb hit, the surviving rabbits turned around like one person. Their bright red eyes focused on Daniel. Then, they started to run at Daniel and his friends. Fedor moved towards them with his shield and mace. Daniel fired another bomb and then activated his close combat spells. He was swarmed by ten of the little creatures. Each of his saber swings, cut one rabbit apart, but with the high snow hindering his movements, he wasn't fast enough to evade all of them. Soon, he had four crazy rabbits biting at his arms and legs.

Luckily, the rabbits weren't able to penetrate his or Fedor's defensive spells, so Daniel ignored the ones biting him and thereby electrocuting themselves. Instead, he concentrated on killing as many rabbits as possible, before they were able to move passed him. Anna didn't have the luxury of an earth spell protecting her skin and could receive real wounds from the bites. But, despite the rabbits numbers, the fight was over pretty quickly.

When Daniel looked around, he saw was a gory mess. The rabbits hit by his spell or Fedors mace had just exploded. Wide areas of the snow were colored red in wolf and rabbit blood. Rabbit parts were laying everywhere.

"We should probably check tomorrow morning where they came from. Either rabbits are crazy animals in this world or there is something different that caused this. But, let's wait until we have enough sunlight again. Even with my spell armor, I wouldn't want to get swarmed by 50 of the beasts." Daniel suggested.

"At least, we don't need to eat goblins for the next days." Anna paused, looked around and then continued. "We should probably only take the most intact ones."

When they collected their food, they saw that the wolves had died, too. They were covered over and over in small bite wounds and it looked like they just bled out.

Daniel shuddered. That would not be a nice way to die, he concluded for himself.