It’s nothing to brag about. Quit messing with my head...

Sis. Sis. I give up, okay? Just stop talking. Dad’s already gone. Anna pouted, palms clamped over her ears as she stared at Alice.

Tsk. You don’t get it. Dad’s definitely taking me. Alice blurted out like a spark catching dry grass.

Not really. I mean, I’ve tagged along with Dad for ages. Most of the time, I’m at home gaming, and Dad runs around putting out fires alone. You just sit tight and wait for him to come back. Don’t chase those wild thoughts; they’re bad for you. Anna sighed, then shrugged, like a leaf giving up to the wind.

Alice shot her sister a disdainful look, then poked Anna’s forehead. You—honestly. Clueless.

You got left here too, didn’t you? You didn’t go either. Same as me. What are you even proud of? Anna cocked her head, eyes rolling like marbles.

At least fight for it! Look at you—what state is this? Alice snapped, iron to water.

Give it time. You’ll end up just like me. Anna flopped onto the bed, propped her chin in both hands, lazy as a cat in a sunbeam.

She shook her head and flipped open her computer.

Alice paused, gave her little sister a once-over, then stepped up and patted Anna’s butt.

Hey... are you really not gonna consider helping Dad with me?

Anna shrugged, face blank as fresh snow. She sauntered back into the snow hut, booted the computer, and let her keys rattle like sleet on a tin roof.

Alice eyed the gadget she produced. Her mouth twitched, and she sighed. In a world ruled by arcane and mystery, you whip out tech? That’s a bad fit.

I’m home gaming. Who’s gonna know? Anna rolled her eyes, disdain as sharp as frost.

Alice exhaled and shook her head.

Then something lit in her memory. She turned, eyes narrowing. And where exactly did you get power?

Anna blinked, slid her gaze off to the side, blinked again, wiped sweat from her brow, and coughed. Uh. Magic. The all-purpose kind. Yeah...

Alice, mimicking Eli, rubbed her chin. How’d you deal with voltage spikes or drops? Where’s the source? I don’t see any spell running.

Uh. It’s just... pretty well hidden. Anna gave a weak chuckle.

Alice smiled sweetly. Anna~

Heh-heh. Sis, so, um—Dungeon Fighter just dropped a new class. Wanna try it?

Cut it out. Don’t change the subject. Where’d you get the power! Alice barked, voice like a whip crack.

Anna covered her ears, eyes watery with grievance. It’s... magic, okay? I’m not lying...

Mm?

I mean, magic. I used magic to tap the excess energy you shed when you transmigrated... then used Dad’s divinity orb as a converter... then pressed it with a spell to force the conversion... then plugged in a power strip and, uh, connected to Dad’s original world’s internet, and... it works. Anna hunched her neck down, face blank as a mask.

She already knew what kind of weather was about to roll in.

Well, well. Look at you. Playing with magic like a boss. Even Mom and Dad don’t run it that smooth. Alice smiled, voice velvety with thorns.

Anna looked up at the magic lamp hanging from the rafters, waited for the sentence to fall, didn’t catch a word Alice said, and nodded on instinct. Right.

Alice: ...

Anna: ... No, sis—let me explain.

Picked how you wanna die?

Uh. Could you not hit the face? And I wanna die standing. Anna sniffed, chin up, ready to meet the blade.

Alice drew a black wooden rod from the seam of space behind her, gentle as winter sunlight. What do you wanna hear before you go?

Whatever. Let me feel like I’m in a game. That’d be nice. Anna spread her arms and smiled.

Alice: ...

Anna: ...

Alice: Ryūjin no ken o kurae!

Ah!

...

Endless snow smothered all life here, a white shroud over a silent world.

The gale keened and clawed at Eli’s coat. He dragged his feet through the drifts, step by grinding step, like wading through broken glass.

His only lead lay in the sky: back when he roamed outer space, he’d set an observation point above the pole.

Find it on the planet. That was his single target, a lone star to steer by.

Outer space was latticed with seals, a net of runes meant to block beings from other planes and other worlds.

Can anything even live in this goddamn place? Eli had asked himself that more than once, the question a splinter under the nail.

If he forced himself into the air, a vast force slapped him back down like a hand swatting a fly.

And if he somehow hovered, the cold’s element would bite harder than ice magic and keep biting. It’d drink you dry.

He sighed, found a jutting rock, and built a simple igloo on the lee side, a snow cave cupped in the mountain’s palm.

He lay on the snow and stretched both hands out. He hadn’t felt cold in ages; large-scale damage barely touched him now.

But everything he used to excel at was gagged and bound.

Sword and magic, same fate. He couldn’t drive either with Stellar Power. Not an inch.

He’d thought coming back from death, walking the cosmos as free as wind over the sea, would make him unstoppable. Turns out...

He wasn’t even as good as when he was just a soul.

Back then, he’d slain lots of space monsters, stars for witnesses.

Now? He was the one eating hits.

For three years, between hunting the Snow Wraith clan, he’d probed for a breakthrough in his Star-God body.

No big progress. Not once.

He’d cobbled together a few ultimate moves, monstrous in cost, spun from his old power reworked.

His small tools? Just the same handful.

And now there was a nastier snag.

In this space, he couldn’t even commune with the elements.

The opposite of before, when a flick of his wrist called elements like bees to spring.

He sat up and sighed, breath a pale ribbon.

What’s the Star-God even worth?

Worse, the Arbiter Mode he’d just built—because stellar energy ran rough in this world—wasn’t even as good as the old Judge Mode.

Eli felt hollow, like a drum after the parade.

His wife was bound; three years without a glimpse.

He was weak now, hands tied when it came to helping.

Three years chasing the Snow Wraiths, and all he had were maps from so-called explorers, truth as thin as ice in spring.

Cultivation hit a bottleneck. Power refused to climb.

By the reckoning here, he didn’t even match a Transcender.

Birand was sealed by Ugillian. Eli couldn’t find him, couldn’t beat him.

Day after day he kept his head down and searched, barely spoke to anyone.

These three years—what kind of life was that?

Eli gave a wry smile, brittle as frost.

He even missed being a kid, sneaking into Ugillian’s room to steal his snacks and mooch his tea.

And really, it was just a few races far from human lands trading blows now.

Their apex powers held their tempers. Only the juniors scrapped, waves nipping at a cliff.

In human lands:

Four empires. Mit had been whisked away by the Demon Race and hidden.

Holy Paris sat on the continent’s heart, holding the throat of roads and waterways.

Draco kept to itself, a nation where mages gathered to trade sparks and notes.

Verlit lay in the south, suppressed on all fronts by Holy Paris. But it stayed steady. They knew contentment meant peace, like Draco, and stayed out of war.

Other small kingdoms lived well enough under Holy Paris’s broad glow.

Most humans hadn’t joined those border feuds at all.

Aside from Holy Paris and the Holy Court Church meddling in shadows to rake in wealth, humans weren’t trying to carve up land.

So what was the point of all he was doing?

Eli sighed, the sound swallowed by snow.

Birand, that supposed threat, had vanished without a trace.

From a distance, the whole world seemed largely at peace.

The Abyss slept. The old Fiends were nearly extinct. The Inferno was calm. Newborn fiends were leashed tight, few fit to fight.

The Celestial Gods slept too. Birand had slaughtered the Celestial Realm clean; though the gods restored them, their waking would take time. Heaven was as hushed as the Inferno. Ties to the humans’ Holy Sanctuary were long cut.

Ugillian had told him all this.

That left Eli with one goal: hatch his Demonic Lord.

But after three years, he had nothing to show.

The blow fell heavy as wet snow on his shoulders.

He was, at last, a little lost.