It turns out that there is something worse than the subjectively never ending pain that I was used to from modifying my body. The pain itself was as all-consuming as usual, but it went from the pain to a blank whiteness and then back to the pain. Instead of a single eternity of pain I had to endure dozens and then hundreds of eternities of pain.

The pain wasn't the worst part, the worst part was the absences of pain when I knew the pain would be coming back. When the last cycle of pain stopped and instead of blank whiteness I returned to receiving inputs I counted the number of cycles I had gone through. Three hundred and forty three. I didn't know why that number specifically. I would need to rewrite the program that modified living things so that it had a non-parallel option. Later. Right now I wanted to kill something, preferably something that was responsible for freezing me.

My eyes are open and touching the ice that is around me, but I can't see through. It isn't painful, just a bit annoying, and I can't blink. Or breathe. I was using the trick of refreshing the oxygen in my lungs, and my heart was beating to transport heat and oxygen around my body.

I soaked my power into the ice around me just as a new wave started through it. As soon as the wave had passed I was pushing my power back into the ice. Once the wave was finished another wave started immediately.

There was a gap before and after the second wave so I started converting ice to air. It was going to take several seconds to clear enough ice to make a difference, and the pressure around my body was increasing from the air not having anywhere to go. I dropped my perception of time and brought up a model of the ice around me.

Converting the ice to air was too slow, but it was much simpler to cut the ice into pieces that would push through the bars. That would get rid of a majority of the ice and I could convert the remaining amount to air without bursting my ears from the pressure.

If I cut the ice into long rectangles I would only need to push them halfway out of the cage, their own weight would then pull them the rest of the way out. I started making the cuts in the ice, progressing extremely slowly to my increased time perception.

I reached the second wave when it was halfway down the ice, at hip-height to my body. As it moved down over the cut I was making my power was pushed out so I moved above it and started on the next cut. When it had moved on far enough that I could soak my power back into where the first cut should have been partially done the ice was fused back together.

At the speed that the waves were going through the ice I would be able to cut through a third of the cuts I wanted to do before the next wave came. And if they changed to a permanent effect I would be locked out. I abandoned the cuts I was making in the middle of the ice and started the ones from the top of the ice down.

With the first layer of cuts done I moved on to the second layer while pushing the first layer of cubes out of the cage in all directions. Each layer was ten centimeters tall and there was a gap of two centimeters for the bars that were laid out in a grid. My Matter Manipulation couldn't move things very fast, they would only get halfway out before the wave finished passing through the ice.

The wave finished when I was just starting to move the layer at my shoulder height. The solid grid of ice that was still in the cage was only covering one of my eyes, leaving one of my eyes free and able to see through the two meter long tunnel in the ice.

I couldn't see much, a stone building. More useful was that both of my ears were clear of ice. The model I was getting from my sound sense was a bit confused, there was a lot of noise happening out there and it was reflecting against the ice that was around me. I could hear chanting from four different groups from all four directions, twelve in each group.

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The wave of power I was expecting to come through the ice to halt my progress never came and I was able to finish cutting out and pushing the ice out of the cage. For the remainder of the ice that still had me locked in place I converted it to air, pushing heat into it so that it turned into a warm gust. Purely for the intimidation factor. The only ice I left I converted into a staff of ice that I could convert into energy.

I looked around now that there wasn't any ice blocking me. I was in a metal cage built into a wagon, and the wagon was on a wide dark cobblestone road that was running between tall stone buildings on either side. The buildings were four stories high, but they didn't overcrowd the road that was ten meters wide. A main road in a city. It was busy with traffic, although there was a large gap around the wagon I was in that extended several meters past the priests that surrounded me.

The priests were all higher ranked with gold trim on their robes, and they were all scrambling around the wagon chanting. On two sides, the front and to my left, they were raising a thick ice wall. On the remaining two sides, the back and to my right, they were casting their ice needle wall spell. People along the road were abandoning their wagons and running away on foot heading to the crossroads that were spaced every one hundred meters.

The only ones not running away were the priests and what looked to be ice golems. There were a dozen of the two and a half meter tall humanoids that were made of a cloudy blue ice that were forming a group to the front left of the wagon.

It would take the priests making the ice walls at least another thirty seconds to raise their wall the rest of the six meters it would require to cover the height of the ice needle spell.

I took a few moments to assess my position. I'd been stripped of my robe, staff, sword, and throwing knives, though they had left me my underwear. I still had my sharpened fingernails, and my newly formed ice staff. I was locked in an enchanted metal cage that didn't have a door and I was about to be skewered by hundreds of needles of ice.

I stepped over to the bars at the back of the cage and gripped a vertical bar with my left hand. It was ten centimeters long, joining with a horizontal bar above and below it. Using the nails of my right hand I jabbed forward and sheared the bar off at the bottom, and then again at the top. The priests that were chanting at the back of the wagon casting the ice needle spell were standing behind the ice needles that were two meters long and in a grid with spaces five centimeters apart. The priests had settled into a formation four across and three deep.

Looking to my right the twelve priests there were doing the same. As I cut out seven more bars some of the priests, the ones that were chanting with their eyes open, looked increasingly nervous, the rest were oblivious.

I had the two centimeter wide bars stacked in my left hand and settled down to calculate my throws. Eight lines, and the ice needles should be sturdy enough while they're chanting to be able to bounce off of. From the angle I had there would be two priests that I couldn't hit. If I had another four bars I could get them, but the ice walls were nearing the point where they would be able to fire.

I calculated exactly an eighth of the energy in the muscles of my right arm for each throw and then started. Each throw, four for each group, was executed perfectly. The chants stopped after the first priest in each group was hit, which caused the last throws at each group that needed to ricochet off the ice needles to miss as they shattered through them instead.

Still, sixteen of the twenty four priests were dead or dying on the road and the needle spell fell apart and shattered on the stones. I replenished the energy in my exhausted right arm.

The eight priests that were left were frozen in shock. I started pulling out more bars, cutting them into their ten centimeter long lengths and forming a hole in the side of the cage that I would be able to walk through. I was unsure if I would kill them even if they surrendered or were running away... With my slowed perception of time I had the time to think. I wanted to kill them all. Not because I saw them as a threat, I didn't, but because they were part of the group that caused me so much pain.

The threats were the head priest of winter and the winter god. Do I act out of vengeance or only as a protector. I was just coming down on the side of the protector when the eight priests formed up and started chanting again. That made things simpler.

They all died one after another from a bar of metal passing through their heads.

I stepped out of the cage and turned to find the ice golems marching towards me. I stretched and settled into a fighting stance, grinning. It would be nice to kill some things in close combat, throwing things just didn't give the same sense of satisfaction.