'Is that a liquid nitrogen river?' Ebony had managed to differentiate between common gases with Appraise or now Mana Discern years ago, but he didn't expect to find a gentle river of liquid nitrogen flowing down a valley between a small range of mountains.

The temperature outside his Domain should be under negative 200 degrees Celsius. It was survivable for both of them, but the unforgiving thing about natural environments was their endurance.

Xin would need constant consumption of mana to keep herself warm, as with all the creatures on board, except the Toddium brothers with their space suits. Air was another problem; even if she had the supply from her mask, she needed to have it in gas form for her body, so a constant warmth needed to be provided.

It was only a matter of time before any of them froze to death. After all, Ebony realised that his Will was being frozen and he had to replace the edges of his Domain with fresh Will consistently.

The rate of Will consumption was still lower than his regeneration, but it was steadily increasing as they made it closer to the Orca's destination.

"Sir…our apologies. Our suit can no longer keep up against the radiation. Neither of us has strengthened our slime's defensive or survivability properties enough against a Legendary Worldcore." Their connection through Hex was also cut off hours ago.

"I'll seal you two up." Ebony set their moving fort down.

It was about time to move without their base, riding the Orcas would require a smaller Domain and a lower consumption of Will.

"Oink!" Miss Wiggles insisted on coming along and sat comfortably with Xin.

The Orcas simultaneously clicked their tongues as they sped forward and left their camp behind. Their mana skin was in full force while Ebony already had Infernal Blood stamped on him.

Miss Wiggles was the only creature that continued to go around without any enhancements.

Mantle of Reservation was keeping the toxins and lightning zapped through all their bodies to keep them warm and mobile.

They took turns with the Orcas' attempts to cover them with their mana skin to allow them to rest and vice versa.

Miss Wiggles stepped up, taking on any threats that appeared with a single giant bite to erase a portion of the world into her belly.

He wasn't even able to see what kind of abilities the jellyfish-looking monster had before Miss Wiggles swallowed the entire biome of translucent jellyfish.

Thanks to that, Miss Wiggles was now struggling in her sleep with paralysis. Her predicament didn't even last half a day before she was happily snoring away.

Two days of non-stop travelling later.

"Vent's in there?" Their ride stopped a few kilometres away from a frozen plain.

Ebony saw a crystal dome the size of a small building, but couldn't see through the reflective surface to see within.

"I can't stay here much longer. They can't get any closer either." His wife warned him while giving their ride a pat and gentle rub.

Ebony snapped his fingers and summoned all 6 Numbers from their campsite through the Will Relay Buffers he left along the way.

Taking a moment to consider, he had them take 1 body together. Each Number in charge of a single limb and had one of them take the torso too. He further charged them with 200 points more Will before letting them venture towards the crystal dome.

The Numbers Flickered forward to the crystal dome and exploded into ice dust. He looked back at their campsite.

'They retreated in time. The changes to their body was fast but it was gradual; we need to move slowly for me to see what's happening.'

Landing on the floor with Miss Wiggles and Xin, quickly picked her up by the armpits when his feet froze to the ground.

She squirmed and jerked around in surprise. 'She gets surprised rather easily even though she should've expected and seen it coming.' Ebony put her back onto mana Orca but she pushed her butt off to land beside him with a blast of fire from her feet.

"Give me a warning next time." She glared at him.

"What?" He was utterly confused.

"Read the room better--I'll leave my complaints for our private time. Now let's go together."

Miss Wiggles was wide awake and trotted beside them.

Ebony plucked his feet out without much trouble, shattering the ice outside his boots with a vibrational shock.

He held her hand to get through her magic body with more ease for Mantle of Reservation. She gripped back so hard the bones in his hands scraped against each other. "Hey! Save the intimacy for some other time. I'm literally at my limits holding back here."

"..." He realised what was going on. "Not much longer, we'll go back home soon. I can clear my-"

"Don't you dare erase me or pack me up mentally! I can take it, my meditation is getting refined anyway. Ignore my complaints just now."

"Tell me if I'm too much." Ebony's external thoughts were not clear and transparent since he hadn't erased her from his mindspace or packed it to his mind's core.

If she was reading that all this time, she would have been sensing his desire.

"It's not too much…I'm sorry, I'm the one lacking control of myself."

Burning hot, they were forced to walk slowly towards the crystal dome. Every step took a heavy mental load to combat the Will present.

When they were less than 300 metres away, Xin's intent was broken through and she froze into a popsicle in an instant. They didn't even get to blink.

Ebony come to a stop and slowly swapped out the foreign ice mana with his, converting her frozen state into a sealed state with his mana and Will. After confirming she was mostly fine and was using this to train her resistance or refine her Physique, he continued moving forward.

Except his arm was frozen with Xin, so he had to move forward with her or retreat.

'Forward it is.' Her piercing glare was ever present and dared him to retreat.

Miss Wiggles trotted happily with him. When they 'safely' got to the crystal dome, she immediately took a sneaky bite but destroyed her teeth.

'Another unknown runic language.' Ebony sat on the floor to rest and receive support from Dusk on his lap, and his wife's blood and lightning magic coursing through his veins.

A liquid layer of mana vibrated over his Mantle of Reservation, he attempted to push his hand onto the crystal dome.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

'It's not just the cold or the Will, there is something else. Natural. Hmm, maybe these symbols aren't runes at all.'

"Hex, know what this is?"

"We don't believe we do…we are cut off from our source,e so I can't get information from our greater self either. However, we recognise this power."

"How much?" Ebony already knew that Hex wouldn't stop talking there for no reason, and if they did, there were very few reasons. Money was typically the answer.

"2 billion Sulpto."

"Put it on my tab."

"This is the power of a Natural Order. A *** hmm, a powerful rule."

"Like a law?"

"...Exactly a Law. At least you figured it out yourself. We suggest you stop forcing your way through before it takes you as a hostile. Death will be inevitable, we'll have to collect your debt in some other form." Hex was speechless for a moment

"What's the difference with Will?"

"Learning now would not be beneficial for you."

"Okay."

'More absolute than Will, supported by more than an individual's Will. But natural order huh…does that mean I can enter so long as I understand and follow the rules?'

Ebony dispersed his liquid heat and gravity layer to touch the crystal dome physically.

He was going to cut his arm holding Xin's hand off before he froze with this different ice, but she stunned his body momentarily with a targeted Intent within her sealed state. That moment was enough for them to both be affected.

'It's frigid. Dark. Relaxing. Resilient…reflection?' Ebony felt many things touching this dome.

"The End." His Wife's voice woke him up when she unfroze and walked through the crystal dome. Just a beat slower, he was freed and walked in with her.

"That was a barrier of Winter. Wasn't it?" Ebony clarified with her Intuition.

"I wouldn't know. Where did you get--reflection?" She asked about his mutterings.

"Did you not fall into a reflective trance? I didn't, but that was certainly what it tried to make me do."

"Not at all. I just saw it as it is. This 'thing' signifies the end. We're lucky it's not representing the end. We crossed when we accepted the End. Our End."

"Hmm, the Orcas couldn't get through this?" Ebony looked back to see that Miss Wiggles was shivering in fear outside.

"All living creatures don't accept their end unless faced with something worse than death."

"And us?"

"We fear insignificance and loss more than our End. And you feared being helpless, stuck outside if I entered and you couldn't."

"Oo, caught. I didn't even know that."

"You're welcome for having such an awesome near-telepathic wife."

"Mmm." Ebony leaned in for a light peck.

But he got a punch to the face instead.

"I told you! I'm lacking self-control now!"

"Is your hand alright? Come, let me seal-" Ebony wasn't injured despite her superior strength, and he heard her knuckle and wrist fracture.

"It's healed. This Domain-like place has immense healing properties. But…I'm--I'm getting really... Really slee--py." Ebony let her body fall into his arms. He took Xin's gloves off to double-check that her skin and bones were truly healed after punching him.

"Hibernation. Natural Order of Winter or whatever along those lines." Ebony was feeling the sensation, but he wasn't going to sleep any time soon.

He felt the sudden urge to sleep but it was extremely subtle, not even considered a mental attack.

There was nothing within the ice crystal dome except for a stack of fresh grass not far away. Vent, lying down in restful sleep atop the grass.

'No visible injuries. Should I wake him or drag him out like the Orcas wanted?' Vent might not be 'trapped', it seemed more like he was using this place to rest and recover.

And perhaps fell asleep for good, that's why the Orcas thought he was trapped.

He was only worried Vent had more than physical injuries and required this place healing properties.

"Could use your Intuition here, sleepyhead." He gave the peck he missed earlier.

Staying here for long wasn't a good idea. He didn't want to fall asleep and have them all trapped for who knows how long.

He rationalised that he might not be able to leave and re-enter so easily, and he was already here, so he might as well.

It was rather anticlimactic and easy. Nothing stopped him from touching Vent's body, and he wasn't frozen again from carrying the man.

'That's a fancy box.' Ebony saw something on the odd patch of green that the Frost Elven hunter was lying on top of.

The vibrations of mana kicked the box up into his hand without him bending to pick it up

An ice arm conjured explosively and covered his eyeball. His eyeball hurt so bad that his mind reflexively conjured an arm to cover it, but it wasn't facing an external attack.

"Erm." He tightened the grip on the box, but it was shaking furiously.

It didn't settle down till he set Dusk to lie over the box's cover.

Unable to freeze or cover the box with his mana, he had a balancing act and brought the fancy box out by juggling it using Dusk.

It was almost depressing how it took him over 2 minutes to figure out that the ice crystal dome was moving along with him. Or rather, the fancy box as the centre.

Dusk 'accidentally' whacked the box away from where Miss Wiggles and the Orcas were. The crystal dome shifted rapidly and popped the humanoids out without him taking a step.

'Pretty sure that's a precious item.' Ebony did nothing but watch since neither his Will nor mana could touch the fancy box. It dipped into the liquid nitrogen river and 'steam' exploded into the atmosphere.

Swallowing the snowy forest in mist and more snow thousands upon thousands of kilometres.

"Dusk, why did you do that?"

"Our Unfading Will was about to fall asleep, we panicked."

"Panic? My Will collectively panicked?"

"I fear the end more than you. I'm a collective of your self-preservation thoughts and Will."

"I see. Interesting. I'll dive into that memory later, it's been a while since I've trained with fear." Ebony understood the reason now. Dusk was a protective shell. Ebony built the Will around making his Domain protect him and everything he wanted to protect within his Domain. Dusk was stacked with Ebony's Will of self-preservation, accepting their End was not something it was proficient in.

"Why do I sense pain?" Dusk questioned.

"My eye has been hurting since I touched that box. Mana chassis and soul are damaged too. Yeah…frozen soul eyeball doesn't sound so good."

He was rather certain that the soul had the same shape and form as his physical body. Instead of healing to the shape of his mana chassis, his chassis heals to the shape of his soul, but the soul also heals to the shape of the body. It was a loop, and they healed till each conformed to the other.

This was not exactly common knowledge, but he had been studying just about anything, and the soul wasn't as much of a mystery or hidden topic like Will. He was cautious of soul attacks that cause irreparable damage to the soul, which usually meant that healing over time would have his body deform to the same shape, although his soul could also heal to the same shape as his body. That's a healer's territory to meddle with.

On the bright side, his soul was supposedly particularly hard to deform or be infected. A large portion of his baseline trait value should have gone into his soul, thanks to being born in a different Dimension that didn't allow him super strength or have exceeding mental processing abilities.

On the other hand, this frozen soul eyeball doesn't seem to be going away, and there was no ice elemental mana!

He couldn't thaw his soul.

'Some kind of soul ice? Troublesome, I don't know anything about this.' Ebony should've learned not to touch unknown objects from experience.

"Don't chase that Miss Wiggles. I doubt even you can eat the thing inside that box, and it's probably Vent's." Ebony grabbed the pig's hind leg with a conjured ice arm. Miss Wiggles was expanding fast, but his conjured arm expanded at the same pace.

'I hope that it didn't drift down the river. It's a gentle stream, but the box barely weighed anything.' As the one who tossed someone else's property away, he felt responsible for picking it back up.

"Ebony, most of me…" Dusk transmitted to his mindspace.

'Dusk's unfading Will is frozen too, even his new body. But isn't this made of materials higher ranked than Legendary? The seals shouldn't have weakened their physical properties.' Ebony didn't expect to see ice that they couldn't remove on Dusk's new body, made of materials equivalent to Demi-God ranked creatures, Mythical.'

"This looks bad." Ebony deciphered the loud chanting of the Worldcore.

The Soldier was near.

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