Ronan shivered as the gate opened further and the temperature started to drop. The wind outside was a howling gale and there was an active blizzard happening right outside the bunker. It seemed a bit over the top and too coincidental, but it was the tutorial, after all.

At that moment the temperature wasn't too cold for him to handle, but he suspected that it was only the beginning. At the very least I might gain some new resistances by dying to a nuclear winter. He was trying to see the silver lining.

Despite knowing that this was the tutorial and the people inside the bunker were likely just conjurations of the system, Ronan wondered if he should try to warn them about their impending doom. Then he decided against it. Going back through the airlock would likely only hasten their deaths and he had no desire to see anyone else suffering from the effects of the biting cold. He would face it alone and see what he could gain.

The temperature dropped at an accelerating rate as the gate continued to open. By that point it was two thirds of the way to the cavern walls. The first of his health points also vanished, the cold finally overcoming his increased stats and resistances.

The all-damage resistance had done some heavy lifting, no doubt, but even that wasn't infallible. The tips of Ronan's fingers started to turn pale and the skin on his face stung worse with every fresh scream of the wind.

He realised that he could still attempt to complete the tutorial stage. There were likely a few more gorzerks inside the bunker and killing them could have been the necessary requirement to end stage 3. However, finding them all before the entire bunker froze would be a herculean task.

Not to mention that with how stressful and confusing that particular scenario had been, Ronan had little desire to go into an even more complex or challenging one. His hope was that he could get a different iteration of the nightmare tutorial that was more reminiscent of that with the frost giants or the sentient flames. That Great Purifier thing was overpowered as hell, but at least I could figure out how to complete that tutorial far quicker.

A third of his health points were gone by then. The cold was biting to the bone. All ten of his fingers were a dark purple now and he suspected his face looked the same. It certainly felt numb, the stinging pain having long since been replaced. His health dropped faster and faster.

Moving was difficult. Ronan had been pacing up and down the gap between the two gates in an attempt to stay warm, but his muscles protested that. The cold made them stiff, each movement a battle against the cold that seeped into his flesh and bones.

This is intense. Like being in the snow but a hundred times more painful. Even his thoughts were slowing. His mental stats meant his mind was far more powerful than the average human's, but even that had a limit that was being fast approached. He knew his death was imminent, but that didn't mean he couldn't squeeze out some more gains.

While on the brink of death, Ronan started some sorcery practice. Nothing too complex, just going back to his original spell—a mana bolt. He played with its structure, twisting and moulding it into new shapes. A bullet was his standard fare, but he formed some basic geometric shapes such as pyramids and spheres, before moving onto more complex ones like animals from Earth.

It took him by surprise when even his mana started to flow slower inside his body. His heart, the source of mana, was pumping lethargically, and even the rate at which he could draw mana from it was slower than usual. The cold of the winter beyond the bunker was more than just physical.

Ronan closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sensations. The way the cold interfered with his heart. At first he couldn't figure out how it was doing so, but little by little his ability to sense its microscopic manipulations grew keener.

There was something in that natural disaster. An insight that might help push Ronan's understanding of mana and sorcery further; that might give him a way of improving his ability to manipulate magic in ways he hadn't previously considered.

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He heard a snapping sound. His eyes snapped open and peered downward, toward the direction of the noise. One of his fingers had snapped and fallen off. The frostbite stopped him from feeling it, but that didn't make it any less gruesome. As horrible as it was to lose a finger, Ronan had been through worse. I think focusing on the storm instead of my agonisingly slow death is a better use of my time and attention. Death is only temporary, but I might not get another chance to feel a 'natural' source of mana this powerful in the near future. He resumed his focused observation of the blizzard that tore at him from inside and out.

It was difficult to know what exactly he was sensing. Mana originated in his heart, but the storm that raged around him had a similar sensation. Where did that mana come from, then? Was it different to his own mana, which seemed to be created within his heart, or was it the same form of energy, just in different flavours?

All he could feel at that point was that there was some form of energy present within the whipping winds and shards of biting ice that tore at him and battered the inner gate of the bunker. Whether it was mana just like his, or some more primal form of power, Ronan couldn't tell. My focus is too wide. I need to narrow it down if I want to gain anything meaningful from this experience.

Ronan narrowed his focus. He completely ignored anything happening outside his body. His entire right hand had fallen off by that point and most of the fingers on his left were gone too. Something struck his lap. Some bile crept into his throat as he realised it was his nose. No, focus, Ronan. Death and pain are temporary, but sorcery is forever, he reminded himself.

Turning his slowing thoughts and focus inwards, he felt for any of the creeping motes of cold that were slowing his mana flow. He continued to cycle it, as slow as it was, because it forced the cold into conflict with the flow, thereby giving him a way to feel what it was doing to his mana.

At first it was difficult to tell. It just looked as though the cold was going beyond the physical and halting the flow of his mana. It could even simply be a byproduct of his body shutting down as the cold claimed it. But Ronan felt that wasn't the case.

The reason he thought that was that his mana cycling was only being slowed in random areas of his body. It also wasn't a constant slowing effect, but an occasional blockage that would slow his mana flow in parts of his body for a brief time, until the force of his cycling mana overcame the blockage and kept pushing forwards.

That told him two things. Whatever was interfering with his mana wasn't present in all parts of the blizzard, and it wasn't that powerful, as his own relatively weak mana could erode it in a brief period of time.

Ronan suddenly jolted. He'd lost a few seconds of memory. Ah, I blacked out. The cold is wearing on my mind. Despite knowing he was on the verge of death, Ronan didn't even bother opening his eyes or letting his focus waver. He was on the edge of a realisation that would push his sorcery further and he refused to let something as meaningless as a single death get in the way of that.

He blacked out twice more before he finally understood what was happening. Ronan let out a whoop of excitement—or at least, tried to, before discovering his throat was frozen shut. By narrowing his focus to the extreme and only observing a single interaction between the cold and his own mana at a time, he was able to get a detailed picture of what occurred between them.

When a mote of cold hit his mana, his own mana seemed to be 'infected' by it. That is, his mana started to become something more reminiscent of the cold mana. However, it also slipped from his control as it did so. He'd attempted to pull the cold mana back into his grasp, but that had only sped up the conversion. He didn't repeat that mistake again. However, he learnt much from it.

What happened when he didn't interfere was similar, except that instead of the conversion taking hold, his mana would simply destroy all the 'infected' mana the moment it realised it was being usurped by the outside force. In this case, that was the cold energy within the blizzard.

In any case, the way it interacted with his mana confirmed Ronan's initial belief. The energy within the blizzard was mana, but it was… He struggled to find an accurate word. Attuned sounded the closest. Yeah, mana that was attuned to the cold or something like that. Then, skills like firestorm should rely on fire attuned mana, but the conversion is handled by the system and not the person with the skill. That would explain why I've struggled to replicate firestorm, fissure, and pressure cutter with my sorcery, despite having far better mana control than when I first chose the class.

Ronan was extremely satisfied with this new knowledge. So satisfied that he simply slipped into death as the last of his flesh died under the onslaught of ice and wind, without much pain or complaint.

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