My feet carried me forward across the soaked ground, the cold water and slippery stone biting against my bare soles. "I seriously need new shoes… when we reach the other side of the mountain, if I can't buy a pair, I'll just hunt something and make them myself… it's so cold…" I muttered under my breath, each step sending a small shiver through me.

The only thing guiding me now was the arrow pulsing gently ahead of me, my lone companion in this darkness, along with the tiny hamster sleeping quietly against my neck.

The cave narrowed slowly, the ceiling dipping lower, walls creeping closer. The sound of dripping water grew fainter, replaced by a different noise, a soft crackle that echoed faintly with every step I took.

[Exploration: 3%]

The mist around my ankles thickened, swirling like smoke, except it did not feel like smoke at all. It felt heavy, like liquid frost, wrapping around my legs and crawling slowly higher. I watched my breath leave my mouth in thin white threads that faded into the air.

"Maybe… it is getting a little chilly after all," I muttered to myself, feeling the cold finally catching up to me.

The stone under my feet no longer felt like normal rock. It turned smoother, harder, almost polished, and when I glanced down, I noticed the faint shine clinging to the floor. A fragile layer of ice spread beneath me, thin at first, like the skin on top of cold soup, then slowly thickening as I walked.

The walls sparkled in the dim glow of the arrow. Patches of frost clung to the stone, forming delicate patterns that branched out like tiny white forests. The deeper I went, the more the stone vanished under ice, until the cave no longer looked like rough rock, but like a frozen tunnel carved from glass.

[Exploration: 7%]

It was already getting cold, and I had only explored seven percent? I wondered how Elira was doing. She did not handle the cold very well, so I hoped her path was warmer.

It finally started to bite, even through my vampiric skin. I flexed my fingers and watched the faint red tint of my veins shimmer underneath, answering the chill with a slow burn. My body adapted faster than a human's, but it still did not make this pleasant.

Beelzebub shifted slightly against my neck, his tiny nose pressing into my collar as if trying to escape the cold. I lifted a hand and cupped him gently, shielding him as best I could.

"Sleep, my little troublemaker," I whispered.

The arrow pulsed again, brighter, tugging me further down the corridor. The path sloped gently downward, a slow descent into the hill's belly. I lost track of distance and time. Each step felt the same: cold, quiet, patient.

[Exploration: 11%]

The mist now reached my knees. I watched it twist around me, curling and clinging to my legs, leaving a thin line of frost wherever it touched bare skin. It should have hurt more. It did not. The chill sank into my bones, but it did not feel hostile. It felt like it was testing me, prodding me, checking if I truly belonged here.

I watched in awe from a medical perspective. If this had been me back in the world I lived in before, my legs would have been bitten by frost already. I would have lost them forever. This body was amazing, and the frost affinity likely played its part as well.

I brushed my fingers against the wall. Ice formed instantly under my touch, spreading outward in jagged shapes that resembled sharp petals. The frost reacted to me, growing faster, as if my affinity helped it bloom.

"So it likes me," I murmured quietly. "At least something does."

I lingered there a little longer, letting the frost move around me, watching how it reacted to my presence. It felt almost alive, as if it recognized me. The sensation was nothing like the system skills I had used before; it felt more like real magic, something born from the world itself rather than handed down by a window of text. How wondrous…

Could it be that I had completely misunderstood how skills worked here? Was it possible to shape a technique on my own, the same way others did? I had never tried. Part of me always believed I was the odd one out, a foreign mistake thrown into a world where everyone else fit naturally. But standing here, feeling the cold respond to me like a living thing, I found myself refusing that belief.

There was still so much I had to learn about this world.

The tunnel widened a little further ahead, the ceiling rising again. Icicles hung from above, long and thin, some reaching almost to my head. They chimed faintly whenever a drop of water hit them, a quiet, eerie music that danced in the silence.

[Exploration: 15%]

The arrow led me through a narrow passage, barely wide enough for two people. The ice here was thicker, smooth like a mirror, reflecting the arrow's light in stretched, distorted shapes. I caught glimpses of myself in those reflections, a pale figure moving through blue fog, eyes glowing faintly red in the cold light.

I looked like a ghost wandering through an ice grave.

"Beatrice really was beautiful… to think I possess this body now…" I whispered, fingertips brushing over my cheek as I studied the face in the shimmering ice. My crimson eyes glowed faintly back at me, drawing me in with an eerie charm. "I would have been a supermodel if I looked like this in my past life," I giggled softly.

The humor didn't quite chase away the unease settling in my chest. With every step forward, the cave felt less like stone shaped by time and more like something alive, a cold breathing thing. The walls curved around me with a strange softness, the frost shifting as if it were muscle under a frozen skin. It no longer felt like a path.

It felt like a throat, waiting to swallow me whole.

[Exploration: 18%]

The floor dipped without warning into a shallow slope, and my feet skidded helplessly across the slick ice. I landed hard on my back, the cold surface knocking the breath out of me as my head struck the ground. For a second, stars danced across my vision, and I prayed I hadn't cracked my skull open on a frozen rock.

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