All Hail the Air Conditioner
Klein had been charging in a straight line at the colossal ice spike when her face twisted and she jerked to a dead halt.
"Eek, it's freezing!"
She was still a good twenty paces from the ice, and already the moisture on her skin had begun to freeze. The whole area had gone bitterly cold. White frost lay thick on the trees, and birds that had frozen solid in mid-flight had fallen and shattered, their fragments scattered all around.
"I don't think I can get any closer."
"Wait and see."
Ekaterina hurled herself forward with fearless bravado. Klein flinched, then realized it was only a clone and quietly settled in to watch.
The clone tore ahead. Its arms and legs warped into something like grappling hooks, and with a rapid click-click-click it began scaling the sheer ice spike the way a climber would attack a cliff. But how far did it actually get? Just as it seemed to be moving well enough, the clone locked in place and could go neither up nor down.
A cold fierce enough to stop even aura.
Klein swallowed hard.
"So that's why His Majesty Cheonmyeong Jiwang... made that decision..."
If Frederica had run wild, Snohaim would have become a complete frozen hell. The Demon King subjugation of twenty years ago would plainly have been delayed, or collapsed into nothing at all.
"Lupin..."
High near the tip of that towering ice spike, Lupin was frozen stiff as a fossil. Was she even alive?
Even an Apostle of the Calamity Star, in a state like this...
In that instant, Klein entertained a wicked thought.
The music box was an object cursed by the Demon King. Cheonmyeong Jiwang himself had gone so far as to say that whoever set it working was certain to die.
...If she meant to run, wasn't now the time?
Nearly a month had passed since Klein was captured, and still there had been no word from the cult. Judging by that, they were short-handed over there as well and had more or less left her to her own devices. Or, more likely, they assumed Klein could break free on her own whenever she wished and was remaining captive on purpose.
If so, this was her only chance. Return to the cult, report everything to Cheonmyeong Jiwang, and tell him he could rest easy now that the Apostle of the Calamity Star was gone.
"........."
And yet, for some reason, her feet would not leave the ground. From the opposite side of the urge to flee, some unknowable inner instinct refused to let her.
Why am I like this? One month together and I've actually grown attached?
Klein was appalled, but her feet stayed glued to the earth. She couldn't so much as twitch.
That was when it happened.
— Coo. Coo-coo.
An ordinary birdcall drifted down from somewhere a little higher. She turned her head. Perched on a branch, a watcher's round eyes were boring straight through her.
A pigeon.
The one Lupin had stuck on her for surveillance was still moving around just fine. Which meant the contract with Lupin was still in effect.
"...If you're still watching Klein, then Lupin must be fine."
Klein took back the wicked thought she had briefly entertained. An Apostle of the Calamity Star was an Apostle of the Calamity Star for a reason. Even holding on to the hope of escape was meaningless.
It was absolutely not that she had failed to run because she wanted to stay at Lupin's side.
"So when are you coming out of the ice? Klein doesn't find this kind of prank very fun. Knock it off and come out."
The words had barely left her mouth when a chain of rupturing booms rolled through the air, as if some enormous building were coming down.
A tick. A split.
A long, grinding crack.
In an instant, a dense web of fractures covered the entire ice spike.
And then—KRAKOOM!
The colossal ice burst as if it had exploded, and shards poured down like a torrential rain of needles. Klein immediately swung her aura whip to shield her head. Through the countless fragments and the scattering light, she saw Lupin falling headfirst toward the ground.
"...Lupin!!"
Meanwhile, Lupin was still in the spirit realm. The judgment of Spirit King Frederica—who had insolently tried to gobble her up—was not yet finished.
Soon a white ball of fur appeared, hemmed in by a flock of pigeons. A short muzzle, pointed ears with rounded tips, that characteristic bushy tail. Round, gleaming eyes and a black nose.
"An arctic fox."
Another familiar face, which left Lupin awkwardly flustered. As she well knew, a spirit's form could not stray beyond her imagination. Among the various creatures that came to mind at the thought of a cold wave, the arctic fox must have been the only one both familiar to her and lovable.
Yip. Yip-yip.
Frederica had been barking in a pitch a notch higher than a dog's before she finally managed human speech, sounding thoroughly wronged.
"No wonder your whole body was hard as rock. I got completely scammed! Why in the world did an Apostle of the Star turn the music box?!"
"Uh... because I was hot...?"
"Because you were hot?!"
Would you look at that. An artist at seizing on the tail of someone's words.
Lupin grinned and reached out with both hands, petting the arctic fox this way and that.
"Ugh. Ack. Ugh."
The sensation was genuinely soft and fluffy. Fluffy enough that, had there been no treasure chests, she might have gotten addicted. Keep this up, though, and she'd end up in league with those suspicious, deep-pocketed types.
Uwah. Look at all this shed fur.
Lupin brushed off her hands, thick with white fur, and spoke.
"Anyway, would you be my cold-breeze generator?"
"Cold-breeze generator?"
Unlike the pigeons, who were growing steadily more polite, the arctic fox was still prickly. It felt as if every sentence came with about five question marks stapled to it. The curiosity itself, though, resolved courtesy of a Growth Value that barged in demanding to be raised.
A spirit's manners, she came to understand, depended heavily on spirit affinity—but they also shifted according to one's affinity with whatever animal group the spirit's form belonged to.
Having more or less arrived at that insight, Lupin stroked the arctic fox's head the way one might soothe a clueless child.
"Other people go around nice and cool, or warm, thanks to aura cultivation or whatever it is. I can't do that, you know. So I need help. Right now I feel like I'm about to die of heat."
The arctic fox heard that and hacked out a laugh.
"What an interesting human. The last humans who summoned me were desperate to kill their own kind. Ah—or is it because you aren't human?"
No, I am human, actually.
Lupin was perfectly clear on where she belonged, but she didn't bother saying it aloud. She saw no need, just then, to become one of those humans itching to kill their own kind.
"If I need it, sure, your power could be turned toward killing. But that isn't what I want. I want my body to feel cool. Something crisp and cool..."
In modern terms, an air conditioner. The kind where, back when her wallet was healthy, she could set it to sixty-four, pull the blanket up, and sleep with just her nose sticking out.
The fox tilted its head as if none of this made any sense, then, unable to withstand the pigeons' sharp glares, drew its forelegs together and lowered its body in a show of deference.
"If I keep the air around your body cool, will that do? How cool do you need it?"
"For now, roughly the pleasant chill of spring or autumn. We can fine-tune it later..."
The eager arctic fox brought up something else without even being asked. While, of course, still watching the pigeons.
"If you want, I can wrap your sword in cold, too!"
Wait. So it wasn't watching its step after all?
"The ones who contracted with you first are light, so a sparkle is the whole of what they can manage, right? This would be pretty useful. Want to test it?"
At those words, the eyes of the pigeons fixed on the arctic fox grew ferocious beyond measure. A truly suffocating tension hung over the spirit realm.
An ice sword. Kind of tempting.
But if I just grab it in this atmosphere, there'll be a war the moment I leave the spirit realm, won't there...?
After some thought, Lupin offered a compromise.
"Then, whenever I need it, Miss Fox can grant cold to my sword... and would you pigeons add an effect that makes it glitter like ice?"
The arctic fox muttered, oblivious to the mood.
"Even without going that far, the visual effect is plenty—"
What flashed next was the killing light lurking in Lupin's eyes.
The arctic fox clamped its mouth shut with a gulp and flattened its head low.
A moment later, Lupin popped out of the spirit realm.
Well—strictly speaking, only her consciousness had been trapped there, so it was more accurate to say she simply opened her eyes in her own body. And when she did, what was this?
Klein was supporting her back and her head, looking down with eyes full of worry. Ekaterina was banging her forehead against the ground in a panic. And there was the martial artist she had seen at the mountain stronghold before, plus a kid pouring sweat.
Hadn't some thoroughly incomprehensible combination just assembled itself?
"Lupin. You okay? Do you recognize Klein?"
Lupin giggled and fiddled with Klein's cheek.
"What's with that grumpy face? Something happen?"
She got up at once and, for starters, nudged the strangely behaving Ekaterina over with her toe, flipping her. The woman needed to stop, but Lupin was reluctant to touch her with her hands.
Lupin didn't know it, but the sight filled both Ekaterina and Klein with relief. At least she hadn't been eaten by the Spirit King.
In the meantime, Lupin addressed Dharma Protector Cheong.
"Fancy meeting you again like this. Did you happen to smash some bandit crew in the area?"
He set the music box he had been holding, and Izdi along with it, roughly against a tree. Then he came back before Lupin and prostrated himself flat upon the ground.
The only people present who understood the situation were Klein and Ekaterina. And both of them grasped exactly what Dharma Protector Cheong had just done.
Spirit King Frederica had descended to the earth through Lupin. Izdi, who was no longer even of Snohaim blood, had just been declared useless.
Ekaterina, still lying flipped on the ground, shot upright, and Klein too was radiating a murderous aura as she started toward Dharma Protector Cheong—when Lupin got there first, dashing to the child propped beneath the tree.
"The kid's having a really hard time."
She didn't really follow whatever Dharma Protector Cheong was saying, but Izdi, who had been suffering listlessly for a while now, had been nagging at her the whole time. Well, of course. Lupin had always lived being steamed alive by horrific heat and humidity. See someone suffering in a similar way, and she couldn't help but notice. All the more so when that someone was a child who called to mind the little ones from the orphanage.
It was a thoroughly selective empathy, and at the same time nothing more than showing off to flaunt her own ability—
"Hey, kid. You really hot? Want some cool wind?"
That single act turned one person into garbage, and handed the two crazy bitches watching a perfect justification for punishing said garbage.
Klein and Ekaterina exchanged a look. Then, as if they had promised it, they seized both arms of the kneeling Dharma Protector Cheong and slammed his shoulders into the ground.
"Ghk—!"
