White fire danced around me in frantic patterns, displaying what could only be described as the world's worst choreography. With it came an appreciable wave of heat — a welcome change considering the ball-freezing cold of this ice cavern.

'I don't even have to worry about frostbite!'

In fact, my coat was starting to feel less like protection and more like a sauna suit. But I kept it on anyway. The immolating holy fire wasn't going to stay active all the time — even if it could, I couldn't afford the essence cost. Sure, my spirit essence had grown by a whopping 1,200 points just from having sex with Kassie, but it wasn't bottomless. The well could still run dry.

Times like this, I had to mind my essence expenditure. It was basic finance, really. When your hustle finally starts paying off and you're pulling in more cash, that's not the time to go on a spending spree — you save more, spend less, build up that cushion.

'Not that I buy any of that bullshit. Why make more money if I can't spend more?'

I hissed in annoyance as I casually watched the Glacial Patriarch consumed by white flames, its movements grinding to a halt. Its massive hands ceased their grasping motions as it collapsed to the ground, still desperately trying to crawl toward me. The desperation was almost sad.

Almost.

[You have killed a Primal Elite (Tier 4+) Spirit Beast: Glacial Patriarch]

[You have gained Patriarch's Ice Crown]

Just then, Kassie's sword flashed in a clean arc, and the head of another Glacial Patriarch went flying across the cavern floor, trailing dark-blue blood across pristine ice.

[You have killed a Primal Elite (Tier 4+) Spirit Beast: Glacial Patriarch]

[You have gained Patriarch's Ice Crown]

'Kassie and her decapitation fetish.'

I shook my head, treating our battle like a casual Tuesday afternoon when just a few hours — or was it days? — ago, I'd been struggling not to die every thirty seconds. But white flames changed everything. You just couldn't resist the urge to aura farm when you had this kind of firepower literally at your fingertips.

"This is a sign, right?" I muttered, watching the scattered corpses of charred and decapitated Glacial Patriarchs. "More of them are popping up."

Kassie cleaned her heavily bloodied sword on the white fur of the fallen spirit beast, dragging the blade slowly across the Spirit Beast's white pelt. She cast me an indifferent look, her expression as readable as a brick wall.

"Yes. It would be important to rest before continuing forward."

I looked at her with what I hoped was a cool smile, my hands finding my pockets. "It's alright. I don't want to rest — I've barely been moving around since I got the hang of this thing."

She looked at me plainly. It was difficult to read what was going on in her head since her face was like a blank sheet of paper, completely devoid of tells. But knowing Kassie, she was probably cursing me out for my pathetic attempt to look cool.

Still...

'Can't have you farming all the aura around here by yourself.'

"Are you sure?" Her voice carried the slightest edge of something. "It's been a while since we last rested."

I raised a brow.

'Is that concern I hear?'

"Kassie, you wouldn't happen to be concerned about me... right?"

She frowned, just slightly. "You're my summoner. If you die, that'll be troublesome for me."

'Oh, wonderful. You're just realizing this after cumming your brains out, like what... two? Three days ago?'

Kassie and I had been moving for a while now, putting distance between us and the incident. I hadn't just gotten good at controlling the Sanctified flames overnight — it had taken genuine effort and help from Kassie. Turns out, being immune to burning didn't automatically make me good at directing fire. I could still mess up the trajectory, send flames careening off course, leaving myself wide open for Spirit Beasts to rip me apart.

It had happened more than a few times. I'd lived thanks only to Kassie's interventions.

Controlling flames was way more difficult than they made it look in animes. It required a strong mind, precise spatial awareness — you had to be able to mentally map your surroundings and know exactly where you were directing the fire. Since I hadn't figured out how to make the flames distinguish friend from foe automatically, this was especially critical. And difficult.

So Kassie had simplified it for me: focus on visualizing a circle around the target, make it as thin as possible, then ignite. That way, the area the white flames would spread to stayed controlled. Even if things went sideways, the fire wouldn't spread too far before I could snuff it out.

It was working smoothly so far.

Aside from the mental exhaustion of constantly focusing and burning through essence, I wasn't particularly tired physically. All I'd been doing was walking around and pointing at things to burn.

'Still feels weird, though.'

I was the kind of guy who preferred being both swordsman and mage rather than just standing back and flinging spells. Maybe that was childish, but I didn't care.

Kassie tore out a chunk of Spirit Beast meat from one of the corpses, and we used my white flames to set up a cooking fire. The meat roasted slowly, fat sizzling and popping in the heat, while we enjoyed the automatic warmth radiating from the flames.

Afterwards, we skinned the Glacial Patriarch she'd killed, using its thick fur as bedding. We exchanged brief goodnights and settled in to sleep.

It didn't matter if there wasn't night in the Spirit Gate. Down here, it was night when we said it was.

After a few hours of rest, we woke, packed up, and continued deeper into the cave.

As we walked, we encountered more Blizzard Maulers and Glacial Patriarchs. An endless stream of them.

'It's like a damn respawn point.'

I was half-expecting to see the gate guardian at this rate.

The scenery changed as we progressed. The ice at this depth had transformed into something else entirely — glassy, almost crystalline. The ceiling of the cave stretched impossibly high above us, and I realized we weren't in a simple tunnel anymore. This was a network, a maze of glass-like ice passages branching off in multiple directions. We were just in one corridor of many.

Which meant spirit beasts could swing down from the high ceiling of any connecting tunnel and drop on us without warning.

'Great. Death from above. My favorite.'

And in rare cases — the really fun ones — there were Glacial Patriarchs hibernating in the frozen ground beneath our feet. They'd suddenly erupt from below in explosions of ice and fury, all teeth and claws and pissed-off prehistoric rage.

In those moments, my white flames always saved our asses. The burst of holy fire gave us just enough breathing room to reposition, to not get immediately torn apart.

But more often than not, it was Kassie's danger sense that kept us alive. She'd tense a split second before an attack, her body already moving before my brain even registered the threat. Without her early warning system, I'd have been ambushed and killed a dozen times over by now.

'Note to self: never piss off Kassie. She's literally the only reason I'm not a frozen corpse.'

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