Winter

Winter had finally arrived to the valley, covering the hill with thick fluffy snow. It made snowfall unusually fast. Kaalsuo expected for the snow to slowly accumulate due to the fact the valley was usually fairly hot.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the snowfall was quite perhaps a bit too heavy judging by the fact the house was now entirely buried under countless tons of snow.

It was truly a miracle that house hadn't collapsed under the weight of the snow as the seconds passed by. Kaalsuo expected the house to collapse judging by how bad these houses were. The walls were basically made from straw, some pieces of wood and other kinds of poor materials.

Kaalsuo had a presumption that magic might be the reason as to why the house hadn't collapsed yet. He had a thought that if there was magic specifically for cleaning, there must've been magic preventing structures from collapsing.

There was also a problem inside the house. The house was in complete darkness due to the snow blocking any sunlight inside. The only reason Kaalsuo could even vaguely perceive the snow was with touch alone.

He clumsily tripped over multiple objects inside the house at least ten times before he had even reached the walls of the house. In addition to that, the house wasn't even that big. Thankfully, his eyes adjusted to the pitch black condition of the house. Albeit rather vaguely and fuzzy.

Kaalsuo did know that the sun had already risen because of the rays of sunlight peaking from the tiny gaps of the roof. However, the rays of light weren't enough to illuminate the entirety of the house interior thus he was forced to rely on caution and his trainwreck of a vision to avoid tripping over objects.

"Oh good morning, Kaalsuo.." Zweschez greeted Kaalsuo in a drowsy manner. It seemed that Zweschez had just woken up judging by his outstandingly untidy hair and lazy behaviour.

"How did you see me in the dark so easily?" Kaalsuo asked Zweschez. It took Kaalsuo some 5 minutes to adjust to the darkness and even so, his vision was still terrible due to his young age. Moreover, he couldn't even see Zweschez at that moment.

Kaalsuo did glance on Zweschez's eyes in which he saw a purplish aura around his pupils, creating a somewhat menacing look that made Kaalsuo sweat slightly. Kaalsuo hypothesised that the strange phenomenon on his brother's eyes would be the reason to his "night vision."

However, Kaalsuo had already suspected that it was magic since Zweschez was already the student of an extremely talented musician Schiessemann. Thus he couldn't be surprised if it was indeed magic.

"One answer, magic." Zweschez proudly boasted in a not too exaggerated manner. He didn't intend to show off his magic in front of Kaalsuo since he knew that would make him a jerk in Kaalsuo's eyes.

Kaalsuo noticed that his brother was slightly showing off his magic in front of him but he didn't mind. He himself believed that he too would flex his magic in front of others if it weren't for his incapability in learning magic.

"Is it me or is it more dark than usual?" Zweschez pondered. He usually woke up in the later hours of the morning and almost never in the early morning. According to his usual routine; by the time he was awake, it would've been day already so why was it still dark?

Kaalsuo pointed his finger to the huge wall of snow blocking the entrance and quite possibly the only exit from the house.

"So that's why the house felt bit chilly!" Zweschez said, creating a burst of fire and smoke to melt the wall of snow blocking the entrance.

However, Kaalsuo was preoccupied with some random thoughts to be mesmerised by his brother's magic.

"Wait. Isn't the oxygen here going to deplete? And what about the house?" Kaalsuo pondered, considering he might die suffocating from the smoke and lack of oxygen rather than logically dying from hypothermia and other causes related to the winter.

Though, Kaalsuo couldn't be sure if Earth's laws of physics could even be applied in this world bearing in mind that magic literally existed.

"Oh hey! It's melting!" Zweschez shouted to Kaalsuo as sunlight slowly peeked through the widening gap. However, Zweschez did notice that melting the snow would've flooded the entire house therefore he simply took the waste and flung it outside.

Kaalsuo simply clapped and sat back on the wall to watch as Zweschez slowly but surely melt their way out to freedom.

* * *

"So. What do we do now?" Zweschez slightly floated above the snow, pretending as if he was sitting on the cold snow. He floated in such close distance to the snow that it looked as if he was sitting on the snow.

"I dunno." Kaalsuo shrugged his shoulders. He actually didn't know what to do after he got out of the house. He did want to play around with the snow but his mood for it had nearly vanished making it nothing but boring.

"Well. Let's go to the woods and grab some food." Zweschez casually said without any hesitation. He figured that since the food stock of the household was slowly dwindling, he might as well just head to the woods, hunt some deers and replenish the stock.

"Huh? Do you have a food stash somewhere in the woods?" Kaalsuo exclaimed in confusion. Out of anything that Zweschez could've possibly said, he said something Kaalsuo had not even expected for him to say. Even so, he immediately thought that Zweschez might've had a food stash due to unclear language.

"Nah, I mean as in hunting for food you know?" Zweschez quickly corrected himself.

At that moment, Kaalsuo would be lying if he wasn't overjoyed at that moment. He could finally use his Mauser C96 that was lying under his bed like a corpse.

"It's okay if you don't wanna come. Besides, there's some pretty scary animals out there." Zweschez assured Kaalsuo. However, Kaalsuo insisted that he follow Zweschez into the woods regardless of the dangers of the woods.

Kaalsuo wasn't an expert at hunting random animals in the woods. However, he was confident that he could probably land a hit or two on a deer and kill it. Besides, how hard could it possibly be to hunt a single deer?

"So let's go then." Zweschez said, showing Kaalsuo a trail heading to the woods right by the back of the house. The trail was nothing too special as it only utilised bright colours to indicate where to go.

Kaalsuo quickly grabbed a pouch large enough for his Mauser C96 to fit in and some rounds and hurriedly rushed to Zweschez's side. He knew that using a pistol for hunting would be rather bad but for sake of fun, he brought it with him anyways.

"Since when did you go hunting?" Kaalsuo asked Zweschez. Not once in his time on this world did he suspect Zweschez had knack for hunting.

"Well, the magic man used hunting as an excuse for me to practice magic. Besides, the food stock at home is kinda low and this'll make a good practice."

"Fair enough. What kinds of animals do you usually hunt?" Kaalsuo responded before shortly realising that his question was obviously stupid considering the only animals around this area would just be deer and deer. However, he didn't attempt to correct himself as that would ruin the mood.

"Obviously, the eatable ones. Sometimes, the predators cuz practice and fun." Zweschez answered the question while staring off to the distance as if he was pondering about something.

By the time the two had finished their little conversation, they had finally reached their destination which was a small stream which was unfortunately filled to the brim with leaves, sticks and other stuff. The surrounding forest was also covered with minimal snow and an abundance of yellow fallen leaves.

"This is it?"

"Yeah, this is it."

Sadly, the place at this time was utter garbage as there was absolutely no deers or living creature around to be hunted. The creatures around the place must've been a master of stealth as no signs whatsoever could inspected to know if anything was in the vicinity.

Kaalsuo glanced on Zweschez's expression to see that Zweschez seemed to be slightly disappointed at the region. However, there didn't seem to be any hint of him giving up on the place thus Kaalsuo's mood was slightly lifted up.

"Um hey, should we go back?" Kaalsuo suggested, seeing as there was absolutely nothing to do here except standing there in the snow rather pathetically.

"No, let's go further in the forest." Zweschez responded, insisting that they go further in the forest in hopes of finding at least one god damn deer.

As they went further, the overall vegetation of the forest began to become more and more thicker. So thick that Zweschez had to commit arson at the surrounding plants and bushes just to make way.

However, Kaalsuo was worried that the consistent burning of the forest would end up biting them back in the ass as the fire magic would likely cause a forest fire. He didn't really care about the whole forest burning but was instead worried that it would make things harder for them later.

Thankfully, it wouldn't take them long to find an open patch of land with an abundance of deers just sitting around in the shade of several trees.

"How do you hunt these?" Kaalsuo whispered to Zweschez. He had actually never seen Zweschez fight in action with his magic. Now that he was with his brother whose currently hunting, Kaalsuo wished that popcorn was available.

"Magic of course. More specifically, vicinity magic. It's nothing special, it just attacks a general region simultaneously or something." Zweschez quietly and roughly explained while quickly moving his hands to different hand gestures repeatedly.

'So basically it's an AoE attack.' Kaalsuo concluded. To be honest, he wasn't too surprised at Zweschez response as he too suspected it might just be an AoE attack and nothing else. Besides, all the deers were grouped up and usually in winter, the deers are already weaker.

"Well, here goes nothing." Zweschez said, clenching both his hands to a fist in which releasing the spell. The spell came in a huge fireball in the sky that dispersed throughout the whole ground and decimated the entire ground alongside the deers and tree. Fortunately, the deers were kindly spared of decimation and was instead turned in a crispy hot version of themselves.

In addition to that, even the snow outside the vicinity of the attack was cleanly evaporated out of existence.

'Amazing. I didn't get the chance to use my gun though.' Kaalsuo thought, expressing his keenness of the attack whilst also being slightly disappointed that he couldn't really use his pistol due to the unexpectedly strong attack by Zweschez.

"So how'd I do?" Zweschez said, expecting Kaalsuo to comment on his attack of the deers.

Kaalsuo responded by simply giving him a thumbs up.

"Nice. Well, let's get on with it and take this stuff home." Zweschez said, pointing on the already cooked deer at the background. He did know that a 2 year old probably wouldn't be able to lift an entire deer up with all their strength thus he secretly put a reduced weight enchant on one of the deers.

"Uh, alright." Kaalsuo said, lifting the reduced weighted deer. He was surprised on how light the deer was but he didn't question it as he knew that Zweschez had to be the reason to this.

Even so, Zweschez didn't actually lift all the remaining deers. He simply just casted a spell in which would levitate all the deers along the way back home.

However, he didn't realise that he had to carefully levitate the already roasted deers due to relative thickness of the forest. Otherwise, the spell on the levitating deers would quickly wear off due to interference.

Additionally, the spell wasn't meant to levitate the deers higher than a mere three meters thus he also either had to carve a path for the deers or carefully positioning the deers down to perfection.

"Damn, this is exhausting." Zweschez complained to himself. Surprisingly, the journey back home was more exhausting and tiring than the initial journey to the forest as he needed to use 100% of mental capacity to calculate how precise he needed to levitate the deers.

Unlike earlier where he committed arson on the forest, his mana reserves were running significantly low by the fact his region attack. The truth was that the spell he had casted was the strongest in his arsenal and he had initially intended to use the spell to impress Kaalsuo. It was actually his first time using the spell which led to him believing that it wouldn't likely deplete a lot of mana reserves.

By the time the two brothers had arrived back home, it was almost nearing sunset and a large bonfire was set up by the side of the house. There were also some people that were present there which Kaalsuo didn't seem to recognise. Also present was the great magician Schiessemann with his usual wizard robe.

"Oh, hey!" Chrysea glanced behind her to see that her children were back and greeted them by waving them.

* * *

Some time passed and it was now night-time. The aforementioned people in which Kaalsuo didn't recognise was just friends of his family. Such people were friends of Zweschez which just threw snowballs with eachother for laughs.

The people was situated at logs formed in a circle and the bonfire in the middle of the circular formation. Torches were also placed on a pole which stuck from the ground. Additionally, there were also gadgets from Schiessemann that perfectly replicated the functions of the grill on Earth which made cooking a bit more tastier.

However, Zweschez had already brought already roasted and crispy deer from the forest which led to the grill not being used.

'Man, this is delicious.' Kaalsuo commented on the crispy deer. Although there were no spices on the deer meat, he still ate it as he wasn't really a picky eater. Though, the mana residue from the AoE attack did somehow make the meat more savoury.

Kaalsuo did have a subtle but lingering discomfort in him which was the outstandingly chilly air brought from the winter. Although there was a huge bonfire right in front of him, the heat wasn't enough to prevent him from feeling cold.

'At least I'm not freezing to death, I guess." Kaalsuo was at least thankful that he didn't freeze to death.

"Hey kid." Alsram said to Kaalsuo. The moment he said those certain words to him, all of the people including Zweschez's friends immediately stopped what they were doing and became silent rivalling even a corpse.

'What the hell?' Kaalsuo thought. Judging by the sudden behaviour of everyone around him, he either screwed up in something or he's about to be informed about something extremely serious and concerning. As a result, Kaalsuo began to subtly sweat and became anxious.

"Well, congratulations." Alsram said in an unexpectedly professional tone in which made Kaalsuo even more anxious. His mind began to wander into oblivion as numerous thoughts began to flood his mind. 'Was I about to get enslaved?' 'Am I dying?' was one of the thoughts that emerged from his mind.

Kaalsuo braced for impact and clenched his fist in preparation for an all-out mental battle.

"You're now safe from Zarfir!" Alsram announced and most of the people around the bonfire loudly clapped shortly afterwards.

'Wait, what?' At that point, Kaalsuo was incredibly confused as to what just happened. He went on a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions which led him back to being confused.

Most importantly, he had no idea what the hell was Zarfir. The only thought that came up his mind was that it kinda sounded like Garfield as in a certain orange cat.

He spent the night awake from some time, trying to figure what the hell was Zarfir and why was he safe from it before eventually giving up and going straight to his slumber.