Aria had gotten a little bit more used to cities after visiting Vera City, but with the quest sheet in hand, she could do nothing but stare as the blizzard subsided and their destination came into view. Thankfully, they didn’t see any Higanbana flowers pop out of the snow. (See Princess Higanbana for more context.)

Instead, she peeked out the caravan’s flaps and towards Haven, the winter city that wrapped itself around a mountain. At first glance, she saw a mountain, but on closer inspection it was clearly something else — something man made. It was a giant white tower whose tip tore through the clouds, only to spew out a gentle green gas.

Aria sat and stared as their caravan came to a halt, and with it, her two servants popped out. The three of them had been hired to protect the caravans, and thankfully, no monster or highwayman ambushed them on their way there. It was almost a job that was too easy.

Isabelle, with their payment in hand, stepped out and stomped her boots into the snow. Breathing in the air, she couldn’t help but sigh.

“The mana in the air here… it’s so rich,” she let out. “I feel like, with one breath out, I could breathe fire.”

“That’s probably because of the winter reactor,” Troy stated, and the two turned to Troy who, to their shock, knew something about this strange place.

“Winter reactor?” Isabelle asked, and he pointed up towards the mountain.

“That’s no mountain. It’s a manmade structure, a giant reactor that takes in the endlessly falling snow and turns it into mana — mana that powers the city here. The mana in the air is a sort of ‘pollution’, the result of snow-to-mana fission.”

“Troy, I had no idea you knew so much about this city, Haven,” Aria said, and Isabelle froze — not literally — and shot an accusing finger at Troy.

“No! It can’t be!”

“Can’t be what?” he asked, and she let out a shout.

“You’re from here, aren’t you!?”

Troy put his hands up like he was being arrested. “You caught me.”

Isabelle, satisfied with her detective skills, crossed her arms with the pride of a demon. Aria, however, looked shocked.

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“Troy, I had no idea.”

“Well, you don’t reach level 16 sitting around in your home village. At some point, you’ve got to travel and fight new monsters, collecting EXP from different sources. It just so happened that I took a caravan to East Tide.”

And there, he came across a witch who transformed him into a slime, leaving him stranded, unable to return home. Of course, Aria was respectful enough to keep his secret hidden from everyone — including Isabelle.

That’s right. She had another goal to fulfill, and that was to return to East Tide and drag that witch out of her hut and force her to transform him back into a human, with force if necessary. It was something to take good note of. But! She had bigger fish to fry — and she meant that literally.

Their attention turned to the quest sheet in Aria’s hand. Marked on the front was a hand drawn image of a fish, a koi fish.

“I’ve been meaning to ask — just what is this monster?” Isabelle asked before reading off the quest sheet, reading, “Helping hands needed! A karmic koi has made its nest in the winter reactor! Need warriors to slay the beast! Fishers and trappers preferred! Magic weaponry not recommended!”

Troy saw that and let out a sigh.

“Karmic koi fish, they’re fickle creatures. They love to come and make their nests in the inside of the reactor. Their eggs are tiny, making them nearly impossible to fully clear away.”

“So these koi fish are pests?” Isabelle asked.

“Worse. They feed off the fissile fuel, growing to quite monstrous sizes. They like to swim inside the reactor, feeding off the half-snow half-mana mixture inside.”

Aria chimed in. “They’re like fish in a fish tank, but we don’t want the fish inside said fish tank, so we have to go in and fish them out.”

“Fish them out!?” Isabelle cried. “Are you seriously telling me to go fish inside of a mana reactor!?”

Aria smiled and nodded. She looked genuinely excited to… go fish. Aria marched on ahead to the city’s adventurer’s guild and there, to Isabelle’s shock, it was packed. Hundreds of people all wanted to go into the reactor and… go fish.

Warriors, mages, swordmasters and riflemen — everyone wanted in on the quest. At that time of year, the karmic koi fish began to hatch and grow in the ‘tank’. There, the officials managing the winter reactor needed the help of adventurers to ‘clear’ the tank, so that the fish wouldn't grow too big and cause trouble.

“It’s a tradition around here,” Troy exclaimed. “Here, at this time of year, all of the adventurers come and fish. We catch the fish and either sell them or kill them ourselves for quite a lot of EXP.”

“EXP…” Isabelle whispered, and it all made sense.

The koi fish spent their lives in the winter reactor’s chamber. There, they quickly grew, feeding off the mana energy. The bigger they grew, the stronger they became. The stronger they became… the more EXP they were worth.

In other words, it was a grinding festival — the night where hundreds of people would level up again and again, all while cleaning up the reactor.

“That EXP… we need that EXP,” Isabelle whispered, and with that, Troy went ahead and dumped a fishing rod into her arms.

“Let’s go fishing.”