I landed on my back once again.

  My head smacked against snow once more.

  “Oof! Oh, holy SHIT, that’s cold as fuck!” Someone shouted.

  I agreed with the sentiment as I stood quickly. My coat and shoes were suitable for snow, but my pants could and would get soaked.

  The blonde dude was lying face-down in the snow.

  “Get up,” I suggested. “You’ll freeze, and your nose will be frostbitten.”

  “Oh my God, it’s cold,” He mumbled, trying to brush snow off his currently bare back.

  I contemplated offering him my coat, before remembering I didn’t have anything on underneath and he could buy his own.

  “Go to the Shop. There should be a coat in there. These boots temperature regulate.”

  He grinned at me, his head popping up. “Convenient! Shop.”

  I glanced around. The two of us were alone.

  I hoped Rounin wasn’t with a murderous psychopath or something. He was probably better at defending himself than I was, but I worried regardless.

  [Welcome to the 2nd Challenge!

  2nd Challenge

  Challenge Objective: Clear the area of all hostiles within the time limit.

  *In order to improve chances of survival, a partner with specialties suiting the Challenge terrain or objective will be provided.

  Time Left: 23h, 59m, 3s]

  Interesting. So this blonde man apparently had a ‘specialty’. Obviously, my specialty would probably be moving around on the icy lake next to us, if not for my currently injured ankle. I didn’t know anything about the stranger next to me, but I was relieved he was here. Despite my certainty that I’d never met him before, he was still eerily familiar.

  I glanced over him. He had what was either a blanket or a cloak from the Shop pulled tight around his shoulders, so it was hard to tell if he had a particular build or if he was just scrawny like Rounin.

  Rounin needed to eat more. I should have made him take more meat with him.

  “So, you, uh…got a specialty?” He asked. “Wait, name. I mean— I’m Icarus. You’re…?”

  Who names their child after the boy who fell out of the sky and drowned?

  “Yule. I ice skate.”

  Then again. I was named after a winter holiday. I wasn’t even born on said holiday.

  “Cool!” Icarus said with genuine enthusiasm. “Like, figure skating?”

  I shook my head. “I just know a few tricks. It’s casual. You?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’d just gotten into the Air Force when this whole thing started. So I like…planes.”

  I stared at him. “Okay.”

  What the fuck. I had military on my side?

  “So…we need to…kill everything here. Except each other.” Icarus looked around, squinting at the dazzlingly bright snow. “Well, this is miserable. My first challenge was absolute ass, don’t get me wrong, but I’m glad my first Challenge wasn’t here.”

  “Mine was.”

  “…damn, bro. That sucks.”

  “Status Window and Balance,” I ordered.

  The amount of coins I had took me off guard.

  [Balance: 2,260p]

  Perhaps I could give up on the math and just level the skills up until I didn’t have any more points.

  I evened out all of my skills and brought them up to Lv.5, leaving me with 700p. I could level up two more skills and be left with 60p.

  Belatedly, I realized I should have bought more health potion.

  Fuck.

  I sighed and leveled up magic and durability.

  [Challenger Yule

  HP: 32/50

  MP: 240/240

  Title: The Child of Winter

  Skills: Ice Manipulation Lv.0

  Strength: Lv. 5

  Stamina: Lv. 5

  Agility: Lv.5

  Durability: Lv.6

  Magic: Lv.6

  Perception: Lv.5]

  The prices were climbing higher, and there was no guarantee points would be as easy to acquire during later Challenges. I was still essentially in a ‘tutorial’ stage of this ‘game’, and I was already struggling.

  “Do you think we can level up our skills?” Icarus asked suddenly, squinting at his Status Window.

  “Might as well try.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  He nodded. “Level up, uh…Winged Flight.” His face lit up as he stared at where his window might be. “It works! Oh, hey, that’s cheap!”

  Winged Flight. Was that why there were holes in the back of his shirt?

  “Hm. Level up Ice Manipulation.”

  [Cost: 10p

  Are you sure you would like to level up ‘Ice Manipulation’?

  Remaining Balance: 50p]

  “Yes.”

  [Ice Manipulation Lv.0 —> Ice Manipulation Lv.1]

  The next level cost 20p, and the one after that was only 30p instead of doubling.

  “You done?” Icarus asked.

  I nodded.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, so, since this is your Challenge, what exactly did you have here?”

  I thought about it carefully, tallying what I had found in my three days here. “I found some scat that might have been bear. There did seem to be signs of human life, but I suspect they’re cannibalistic, so I didn’t go any closer. There’s something large moving beneath the ice sometimes. I don’t know if it’s peaceful. There’s wolves. That’s all I know.”

  Icarus nodded. “There were three kinds of hostiles when I was here as well, and one additional I didn’t want to engage. Okay, I think we go for the strongest enemy first. We’re probably going to both have to use a lot of…”

  He trailed off, eyes fixed on my chest.

  “Get down!”

  The pilot pushed me into the snow.

  Azure wings sprouted out of his back as we fell, like an angel.

  Now, I remembered why he seemed so familiar. Blurred images of my dream from before the first Challenge flashed through my mind again. The angel’s name was Icarus. So was this pilot’s.

  He had been older in my dream. His eyes had been different. And his wings had been a gleaming gold, not the soft azure they were now.

  A sound like a cannon firing split the air right before we hit the ground. The air was immediately knocked out of me as Icarus landed on top of me.

  “What the hell?” He panted, scrambling off of me to get a better view of the attacker. “Nothing you described had— oh, shit, those are—”

  “I’ve never seen them before,” I protested, staring at the sky.

  A circular drone-like machine around three feet in diameter floated in the air, made of technology I’d never seen anything similar to.

  [Drone Machine Lv.4]

  Dread filled Icarus’ voice. “I have. That, I fought during my Challenge.”

  “Well, how did you kill it?!” I asked impatiently, before having to leap out of the way of another blast. I was lucky the missile-like projectiles it fired at me were a bit slow.

  “I, uh, I didn’t? I just— oh, shit— I just ran!”

  Fuck. I couldn’t exactly blame him considering I didn’t kill most of the hostile things I’d encountered.

  “Okay, then we should run.”

  “Great idea!”

  Icarus turned to flee, his wings shielding his head. I did not have the good fortune of possessing wings, so I sprinted and hoped.

  We both faltered at the sight of another machine coming towards us, this one a monstrosity walking on insect-like legs.

  “Okay, that one’s easier to kill,” Icarus admitted, pointing at it.

  [Crawler Machine Lv.5]

  “That’s easier?” I choked, backing away. Was I just doomed to every cliche movie scene?

  “Uh, Yule?” Icarus said a tiny voice. “Over…Over th…there. There. That, the woods…?”

  I looked over there and saw the issue.

  [Mechanic Soldier Lv.2]

  [Mechanic Soldier Lv.1]

  “Oh, fuck.”

  There were more of the crawlers, and more drones joined the one already here.

  They all seemed to be holding their fire.

  “If you take out all the drones first, I can hold off the ground for a bit,” I offered.

  “How am I supposed to take out all the drones? They’re so high!” Icarus protested.

  “You can fly,” I reminded him.

  Icarus glanced at his wings as if he’d forgotten they functioned as more than very fancy shields. “Right! That I can! Are you going to be okay?”

  “Probably,” I lied. “As long as you hurry.”

  Icarus nodded and sprang into the air.

  Immediately, the firing began.

  Skating on the lake would have been a wonderful idea if I wasn’t facing bullets, but if the ice broke, I was going to be no help to Icarus, nor would I be able to get back to Rounin. That was not a gamble I was willing to take.

  I willed the snow in front of me to flurry, obstructing the machines’ vision and therefore aim. Snow still counted as ice, and was therefore under my control. Strangely, the bar showing my MP ticking down did not appear. I could investigate that further later.

  An earsplitting screeching noise rang from Icarus’ direction as he dragged the System-provided dagger along one of the arms of the drones, sparks flying as metal met metal, to no avail. It seemed our melee attacks would not work as well here.

  Spikes of ice grew from the ground at my will, impaling a row mechanical soldiers exactly the way I had intended. It was always nice when at least one thing was going according to plan.

  [MP: 237/240]

  I could most likely hold the line down until Icarus figured out how to fell his own adversaries at this rate…so long as the crawlers were as easy to take out as Icarus had promised.

  [MP: 233/240]

  The end of the mechanical creatures was visible, albeit far. I at least at something to shoot for and some form of hope that we could make it out alive. If Icarus held even a fraction of the power and grace the angel had possessed in my dream, we were both going to be fine.

  Of course, if I could mimic my own movements from that dream, we’d be done here by now.

  I took a gamble and paused my attacks to try forming one of the projectiles I had created just a few nights ago, but the ice wouldn’t form right. Perhaps the skill had not been unlocked yet.

  I paid for that gamble almost immediately.

  Pain sprouted in my leg and a secondary ache in my ankle began once again as I fell.

  [HP: 23/50]

  Half health once again. Wonderful. A tiny scratch to the leg wasn’t that bad, was it?

  I looked down and discovered there was a lovely bullet wound in my thigh, dripping blood onto the snow.

  Excellent.

  I willed the flurries of snow to accelerate as I attempted to get my bearings, hearing Rounin’s scolding despite him not currently being present.

  Don’t stand, you’re going to bleed out and die, He informed me.

  This was true. However, I did not have better options. I placed a hand on the ground and walls of ice crystallized around me, a temporary shield. Judging by the cracking barely audible under the sound of gunfire, I didn’t have long.

  [MP: 204/240

  [HP: 22/50]

  Fuck, I really needed to figure out how to treat injuries without Rounin around all the time. How was I supposed to protect him when I needed him every time I was even mildly injured?

  I grabbed one of the strips of fabric left over from my shirt out of the Inventory, trying clumsily to pull it tight enough. I didn’t want to heal the wound with a potion when there was still a bullet in my leg. I wasn’t sure if it would come out.

  [HP: 21/50]

  Snow blew in my face as the angel landed carefully in my temporary haven, a little bloodier and a lot more exhausted.

  “This isn’t working,” Icarus admitted with great frustration, taking deep breaths. “Oh, hey, you okay?”

  He knelt next to me and deftly bandaged the wound for me. “We’re not getting that bullet out any time soon, so for now we’d better hope the bleeding stops. Or the gunfire. Whichever comes first. Shit, down—”

  Icarus’ wing came up to shield us both as the temporary shield I’d created shattered. I quickly reconstructed it, this time making the walls thicker and placing a ceiling over us now that I also had to think of the drones.

  [MP: 199/240]

  “Your health doing okay?” Icarus worried, squinting nervously at the ice overhead.

  “I’m at half,” I admitted, staggering back onto my feet. “How are the drones going?”

  “Horrible. Your side?”

  “It was doable before this.” I gestured at my leg. “Not so sure now.”

  Icarus mumbled something exasperated under his breath. “How high can you get those spikes?”

  “Haven’t found a limit yet.”

  “Wanna try switching?”

  I considered his offer for a moment. “How many drones are up there?”

  Icarus looked up at the opaque ice ceiling, thinking. “Er…around a dozen, maybe?”

  “Okay. Let’s try. On three, I’ll shatter enough of the ice for you to charge out and for me to aim.”

  He nodded in affirmation.

  “One, two, three.”

  The wall he was facing shattered, and Icarus ran out, his wings angled so he could knock into as many of them as possible while deflecting any bullets, charging into the lines with incredible confidence. He sprang towards a crawler, aided by a single flap of his wings, and drove his dagger into what must have been a weak point.

  He was already far more efficient than I had been a moment earlier. His ability resulted in a lack of pure firepower, but the defense and agility it granted him made for a fair trade.

  I turned my eyes to the sky. There seemed to be eleven total, and one of them was stalling in the sky, its flight functions apparently impaired by Icarus’ attacks earlier.

  A single spike of ice shot from the earth at a diagonal angle, spearing the drone.

  [MP: 183/240]

  I allowed myself a small grin.

  Sun Tzu had once said that every battle is won before it is ever fought. This victory was already ours.