Two days journey (part 1)

Loki chopped up the female giant spider's long front legs and placed them at Roan's feet. The merchant looked in disgust at the green viscous liquid flowing down the legs.

"Now, what?" Loki asked.

"Now I store them in my backpack," Roan replied.

Loki scoffed at what he thought was a joke before remembering that in Gleymaheim, it wasn't so uncommon to see these kinds of bags with their own dimensional space. According to Adam's knowledge, these were usually crafted by the dwarves.

A species with blue skin, averaging 1.40 meters tall, and famous for being master craftsmen who liked to live underground. They were so reclusive that he had barely met any in Midgard.

However, they seemed to be more open to business in this world—with some of them living on the surface—which made spatial bags such as Roan's a commodity, at least for those who could afford them.

Humming some unknown tune to Loki, Roan place his backpack next to the spider legs and the amputated members were sucked inside the bag.

"Neat, right?" Roan said with a beaming smile. "Oh! If you're looking for the mana core, you should look into the beast's sternum or chest, or… you know the center of the thing. You'll have to do it. I'm no good with dirty stuff."

"Sure," Loki said before plunging his sword into the giant spider's sternum, avoiding the parts protected by the hard carapace. He then extracted a blue round crystal covered in green blood. Surprisingly, it was quite small for a creature this big. It was barely the size of a quarter of Loki's palm.

Then, a blue notification window popped up in front of his face.

BING!

[Would you like to absorb the mana core?]

Loki rose an eyebrow. Curious, he was about to mentally say "yes" when he remembered that he had promised Roan to sell it in Noor. Loki valued promises above many things.

To him, these were near sacred. If he gave his word to accomplish something, he would do it unless a moral reason was given to him to do otherwise. Moreover, he could find more mana cores by himself later on. There was no need to be in a rush.

"Catch," he said, throwing the mana core towards Roan. The merchant grabbed it on the flight and stored it inside his backpack. "Not let's get out of here."

"Wait, wait, wait, you aren't about to leave those egg sacks like that, right?" Roan asked, hinting at the possibility of new giant spiders populating this cave.

"Not my problem," Loki replied, preparing to leave. "I'm almost out of mana, so I can't use my spell to rapidly take care of those. Also, there is nothing to gain from destroying these egg sacks."

"Point taken," Roan said, "but they might become a problem later on."

Loki's step echoing in the tunnels was his only answer.

***

A few minutes later, the duo finally reached the cave's entrance, where they stopped to set up camp. It was still night outside, and traveling in the dark was generally a bad idea, even with glowing stones. Counting breaks, they had about two days of travel by foot before reaching the town of Noor.

Loki left his temporary traveling companion at the entrance and went out to gather some firewoods. The snow crackled under his feet as he chopped branches of the nearby pine trees. He soon noticed that even with the apparent low temperature, it felt to him like a lively summer. Even the chilly breezes were simply warm, pleasant to him thanks to his Frost Immunity.

After enjoying his stroll, he came back to the entrance with enough wood to make a fire camp. There, Roan waited for him, wrapped in a blanket he had taken out from his spatial bag. The merchant's teeth were rattling because of the cold as he hastened Loki to settle the wood on the ground in form of a cone.

Roan then infused his mana in a stone on which he had carved a rune and threw it in the pile of wood. The stone glowed red, emitting heat comparable to an actual flame. The heat spread, burning branches after branches to soon create a fire camp.

"Ahhh…," Roan said, pushing out a sigh of relief.

"Is it really that cold?" Loki asked, wondering if Roan was exaggerating.

"You seriously feel nothing?"

"I feel something, but not the coldness," Loki said, taking place next to the fire.

"Whaaaaat?" Roan asked, with a somewhat serious and fascinated expression. "Is that perhaps due to your butterfly transformation in the cave from which your ugly ass body became a perfect handsome man with blue hair?"

Roan had seen everything from his perch, so of course, he would know. Not that it bothered Loki. He wasn't particularly trying to keep it a secret, there was simply no point to it. It wasn't like somebody in Gleymaheim would hunt him down for it.

Even if the merchant ran around Noor shouting that Loki had transformed, nobody would believe him because Roan looked shady, and also such a phenomenon was uncommon or even nonexistent—at least according to his body previous owner's knowledge.

"More or less, but I don't want to talk about it," Loki said. They had both just met, and even if he wanted to stay polite, it didn't mean he had to reveal his secrets to a stranger.

"Alright, alright. I got it, mister mysterious blue-haired man." Roan said, before looking outside. "You're a real lucky guy, though. I would like to have your immunity too, even more so with this kind of temperature."

Loki wondered what the merchant meant. He couldn't feel the drop in temperature himself, so he had to rely on Roan to evaluate that.

Although, judging from how the red-haired man reacted differently inside and outside the cave, it could only mean either the cave was warm or that the temperature indeed changed in the meantime. He then thought about a possible explanation.

"Did a fissure opened nearby?" Loki asked.

"Uncertain, since the temperature hasn't dropped that low," Roan said, moving closer to the fire. "It looks more like a dimensional fissure is being opened. If it's a gate, the surroundings will freeze in a matter of minutes. If it's a portal, the coldness will be bearable and uncomfortable. But don't worry, only portals appeared recently and I might just be mistaken."

Portals and gates. Dimensional fissures that started to appear a few years ago at random locations from which foreign beings known as frostborns walked out. Their true purposes were still unknown, but one thing was certain: they would attack any living being on sight.

Nobody could predict when and where the dimensional fissures would pop up, however, there was one common known factor that announced the opening of one: the drop in temperature. Sometimes it could indeed be misunderstood as the coming of winter.

But after years of waging battles against frostborns, the inhabitants of Noor became near paranoid at the drop in temperature. Who could blame them? After all, it might mean the opening of a new portal or gate.

Through the knowledge he was currently digesting, Loki knew that those were categorized by their size. Portals being smaller dimensional fissures and gates bigger ones with obviously more threatening opponents.

Seeing Loki's worried expression, Roan asked, "Wanna set out now?"

Loki shook his head. "No, in this darkness, we might lose our way. Moreover, I need to rest. It will take some time for my mana reserve to replenish naturally. But we'll set out at first light."