Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-One - Mittens Needed

  Okay, yeah, I definitely needed winter gear.

  The moment I jumped through the portal, I found myself in a cavern filled with white walls covered in rime and ice. The cavern glowed, and it took me a moment to realize that there were a few small holes poking through the ceiling.

  I think that, under normal circumstances, that wouldn't have been enough light to see by, but the room was so white that even a little bit of light illuminated the whole place. It was... pretty. The walls glittered, there was fresh, clean snow on much of the ground, and the air felt pure and clean to my lungs.

  It was also cold as tits.

  I immediately crossed my arms, shoving my hands into my armpits to keep them from freezing. Every breath I exhaled came with a plume of white fog, and I could instantly tell that my nose was going to start leaking soon.

  I was pulled out of my mental complaining when I noticed a pillar moving for a moment before an ice elemental peeled itself out from the back of it.

  "Dammit," I muttered. I picked up the axe where I'd laid it down and started to move, then I proceeded to almost lose my footing. The ground was covered in ice, so it wasn't entirely surprising that my bog-standard boots didn't have perfect grip.

  It was September, dammit, I wasn't dressed for this kind of cold. It was probably too late to turn around and head back home to grab some thights and mittens, though. I'd have to make note of the temperature and figure something out.

  Maybe that hardware store had some amount of cold-weather clothing? Long-johns or something? They definitely had thicker gloves.

  Licking my lips, I shifted my grip on my axe and started to stalk around the perimeter of the room, doing what I could to spot the enemies lingering around in here with me. There were three, that I saw.

  Not very many, and they didn't seem too concerned about anything. They were mostly wandering around, or simply standing still, which made them surprisingly difficult to make out against the backdrop of a cavern made of the same materials as them.

  Nearly non-aggressive enemies... that was maybe an opportunity. You didn't need to kill everything in a dungeon in order to make it out of the dungeon, just the boss.

  But first, to confirm a few things.

  I bent down and picked up a chunk of ice off the floor, or I tried. I had to get back up and kick it a few times to loosen it, then I tugged the sleeve of my coat over my hand to protect it from the cold.

  Flinging a bit of ice across the room and at the far wall, I watched as the elementals reacted to the crack and small explosion of ice smashing apart. They barely did anything. At best the nearest of them turned slowly to face the direction of the hit then it wandered a few feet closer before losing interest.

  Okay, so very low-int on these guys. Nothing I didn't know, but it was nice to confirm it.

  That, and it seemed like for all that this portal had breached, its denizens weren't all that ready for a full-scale invasion, or smart enough to carry one out.

  Kind of made me feel a teensy-bit bad about killing them, but I was pretty sure that they were instantly aggressive towards anything that came too close, and if the E-rank portal wasn't closed, it might well turn into a D-rank one eventually.

  I wasn't sure if the D-rank equivalent of an ice elemental was that much smarter, but it was probably a step up in danger. That was justification enough to excuse the violence I was going to carry out.

  Slipping around the edge of the room--sometimes literally--I kept myself behind pillars and cover as much as I could until I was near the sole exit from the room. It looked like a pretty normal cave tunnel with a slight bend in it that hid whatever was on the other side.

  Unfortunately, it was blocked by an ice elemental.

  Unfortunately for it, I had an axe.

  I grabbed a piece of rock laying on the ground and flung it across the room, trying to distract the other two. When they moved to investigate a little, I moved as well. I grunted a little as I raised the axe high above my head, then stepped in and put as much of my weight into the downswing as I could on such slippery ground.

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  The axehead cleaved into the top of the ice elemental with enough force that it twelve little legs splayed out and its bottom crunched into the ground. Its top half fared a lot worse, what with having an axe jammed into it.

  I planted a foot into the elemental's front, then yoinked my axe out and free, then I darted back and behind cover, waiting for the inevitable counter-strike.

  It came, and didn't do much. The spray of icy wind was diffused and sputtery. I think my blow had damaged the elemental enough that it wasn't able to keep its own attack going.

  I glanced around for the other elementals and discovered them just kind of chilling (heh) on the far end of the room. So, I came around the pillar swinging, this time with a hard horizontal attack that chopped into the elemental not too far below the line of my first attack. That chop ripped a chunk of ice the size of my head off the elemental.

  A few more quick blows and it was done, the elemental was dead. I looked around for any trouble, and seeing none, backed up into the tunnel.

  Time to see how far this portal went.

  As it turned out, not very.

  The portal was E-rank, but I suspected that it was even on the lower end of that. The layout wasn't even anything special. The entrance room led down a corridor with a pretty lax bend through it, which in turn opened up into a large room split on two levels.

  The lower level had a tunnel entrance on it, and some ramps leading down towards the ground floor. Nice and slippery, so I had to slid down on my ass. The two ice elementals down there noticed me, and so did some on the upper area.

  That meant a fight, but it was a relatively quick one. I bashed the nearest elemental a few times, then dove aside to avoid its icy breath attack. From the ground, I rolled over, grabbed my revolver, and put two rounds into each of the elementals on the same level as me, then fired at two of those above who were spitting icy wind down.

  They were too far for their attacks to land properly, but fuck, my fingertips were pale already and getting cold wind blasted down my back wasn't helping.

  I stood back up, picked up my axe, and finished off the two on my level as quickly as I could. The exercise was actually helping keep me warm, so that was a nice plus.

  The tunnel down there ran a long, circuitous path that had me pulling out a flashlight for illumination because it was dark as hell. It was also colder, I noticed. Or maybe that was just me? I'd spent enough time down here that it was very possible that I was just cooling off too much.

  In any case, the tunnel led to a final room, one that was kind of tight and compact, and which held, in its centre, an elemental that looked like it was a bit bigger than the rest.

  So I plugged it full of holes from my revolver before moving back before its ice attack washed over me. Six holes punched into it didn't kill it, but it did leave a bunch of cracks and weakened sections on its surface.

  I almost lost my axe when I charged in. The reverberation and chilled fingers combined made it impossible to hold on tight. It was probably only a bit of luck and quick thinking that saved me as I let loose a few Shadow Bolts into the holes I'd managed to make so far, and that opened the monster up enough to weaken it.

  It went down to a hard kick in the middle, then I stood over it and wailed down with my axe.

  By the time I was done, my whole body was shivering.

  Behind that room was a door. Or more like a sheet of thinner ice over a pathway out. The boss room, I figured. And hoped. I was half-tempted to leave, only I wasn't sure I wanted to fight my way out again.

  Cursing under my breath, I started to do squats and rubbing my hands together. I'd reload my revolver, then kill the boss, then go back and start a fire or something because damn was I ever cold.

  ***