The Snow Woman I Created
What would come to mind first when one thinks of the Snow Woman?
Each person would have their own image, but most would probably picture a landscape blanketed in a blizzard, a cold-faced woman in white mourning robes, and so on. If one has any interest in the Snow Woman legend, they could even sketch in specific anecdotes.
In the stories of travelers trapped in blizzards, the Snow Woman appears to steal life with her freezing breath—or, on the contrary, she deliberately leads them astray so they freeze to death on their own. One might wonder if this is unfairly portraying the Snow Woman as a villain. Yet in many tales, she is indeed depicted as a malevolent being.
In popular media, the Snow Woman has only recently been portrayed as beautiful and benevolent. It is reasonable to guess that this is the result of various refinements made to make her more palatable to the audience. I, too, took the basic framework from the legend but added various appealing elements, so I suppose everyone’s thoughts of her are much the same.
Still, if I were to pick the most beautiful Snow Woman, I would definitely choose the one I created: Quillere. My subjective criteria were heavily infused, but she was undeniably the finest Snow Woman.
“Well, there’s no one to compare her to anyway.”
There is no Snow Woman race in the Sa-gye War. Therefore, in this world, I truly was the ultimate Snow Woman. It was an empty honor with no meaning, but it was nothing more than self-satisfaction in comforting my own situation of suddenly becoming a Snow Woman.
I stretched out my arms and traced the sleeve and the overall shape of the garment. It was exactly as I had designed the white sobok. The dress was simple, with no intricate patterns, yet perfectly suited to the Snow Woman in a way no other attire could match.
“Indeed, the fundamentals are the best…”
I raised my head and carefully surveyed the dressing room. The precious costumes I had painstakingly obtained or personally created. Since the base was the sobok, there were numerous variations in colors and patterns, but there were also quite a few entirely different garments.
As I looked at them, my heart began to race slowly. Though I showed no outward sign, my hands felt as if they were trembling faintly. There was an oppressive pressure that made me want to immediately dive into analyzing the variety of costumes and try them on. The feeling I used to get when playing games had become reality, and it hit even harder.
Logically, spending time here was not a particularly wise choice. Even if there was no immediate danger, there was always the “what if.” Even without that, the castle was vast and there were many places to investigate. It was foolish to be looking at costumes here that would be of no help to me at all.
But, but.
“…How am I supposed to endure looking at all these high-class outfits.”
This was a primal instinct. Even if there were no avatars or if I had become the avatar to wear these garments, I would still have pulled out the nearby clothes with a flushed face.
I closed my eyes and stepped out of the dressing room. It was quite a pleasant experience. No, it was the most enjoyable time since I had come to this world. Of course, but the reality of the world differed in dimension from what one sees on a screen.
I had tried on various clothes, yet none of them looked out of place, making it even more fun. Of course, it was because I had only kept the costumes I had carefully selected. The hanger was so good that even what I wore looked convincing.
“Do women really pick clothes this way?”
A sudden thought crossed my mind. Even though I was now a woman, I had been a man until just moments ago, so I knew absolutely nothing about women’s ordinary behavior patterns. Still, as the aesthetic side of grooming seemed more active for women than men, my thoughts naturally leaned that way.
Well-groomed women are said to have dozens of outfits even if they don’t leave home. My mind was still that of a man, so I couldn’t understand the reason, but when I recalled the moment I had been rummaging through the clothes, I suspected I had done something similar.
“…No, no. I was just treating it like a game.”
I shook my head to deny the suspicion. Yes, it was nothing different from a game. Quillere was my character, and customizing new costumes and weapons onto her and enjoying the view was a hobby of most gamers. The only minor difference was that I had possessed her.
It was not about dressing me up but about the mindset of customizing characters, which was far from what women do. Since I had memories of a modern man living his whole life, my identity remained male. Even though my body changed, my way of thinking would never change.
*Sigh.* If I had to be possessed, I wish they had made me a man. A black knight would have gladly wielded a double sword.
With a sigh of regret, I gazed out the window. I had no idea how much time had passed, but outside it was already dim. Even though it was dark, the Snowfield didn’t receive much sunlight in the first place, so it was hard to guess the time. Still, I tried to calculate it for a moment but soon gave up.
This was no longer the world I knew. Since the environment around me had changed completely, there was no need to worry about time as before.
“If it were normal, I should be despairing over that fact.”
For some reason, I felt no despair at all. Instead of frustration, I only felt a slight sense of relief that I no longer had to chase the hour hand and minute hand, and that was all. Had I finally gone mad? Or had the Snow Woman’s settings influenced my sanity as well?
I didn’t need to find out. For now, accepting it was good for me.
“So this is the time period a thousand years before the Sa-gye War…”
‘Sa-gye War II: The Dawn of Catastrophe.’ From the moment the game news announced the release was confirmed, I had waited for this work. What a way to play it. The world truly is full of surprises.
Even I, who belonged to the high-rank in the Sa-gye War, would be a complete amateur when it came to Sa-gye War II. Of course, that didn’t mean my playtime had vanished; gathering past information from various sources would certainly amount to quite a lot. But if asked whether that was enough, my answer would be no. So what I wanted to say was.
“What should I do now.”
In isekai novels, a writer or a god-like being usually gives the possessed character a goal. Why was there nothing for me? In works without a director, there were devices where the protagonist, knowing the original ending was doom, intervened in the plot to survive.
Doom ending. Of course, the Sa-gye War also had a final boss or villain called the Black Demon. That extremely powerful disaster spread darkness across the world and triggered countless events; if players failed to stop it, the world would face destruction.
“But that’s a thousand years from now anyway.”
Exactly. The original timeline was a thousand years from now. Moreover, even in the original, unless the player was utterly defeated, it would not lead directly to extinction. So rolling forward a thousand years meant the world would still be fine.
“I feel absolutely no sense of crisis.”
There is a movie called Tomorrow. The original English title of this disaster film was actually ‘Tomorrow,’ but in Korea it underwent deliberate mistranslation. The reason was that Koreans would not see Earth’s destruction as urgent if it meant ‘tomorrow.’
Of course, it was quite exaggerated. But what if Earth’s destruction came not tomorrow but a full thousand years later? I can assure you that Koreans’ lives would change not at all. That is why my mood was just peaceful.
“Well, I should go outside first.”
I hadn’t yet explored the entire castle, but that could be done slowly. Right now, I wanted to look outside the castle walls. There was no rush, so I should do as I pleased. Walking slowly down the stairs, I headed to the lower floors.
Even though the castle was wide and tall, moving down the stairs didn’t take long. I reached the first floor and left the main gate. Away from the Snow Castle, a breathtaking snowscape unfolded. The sun had already set, yet the blizzard was almost the same as before.
“Truly, there’s nothing here.”
Whether it snowed or the wind blew, I was unfazed and looked around casually. Not a single blade of grass. No trees, no bugs, no people. Just endless snowfields stretching into the empty wasteland. I had expected it, but seeing it with my own eyes made my mouth dry up.
“I really don’t think I could have endured it with a normal mind.”
At this moment, I was grateful for the endless snowfall and the fact that I had become the Snow Woman. In a land with no bugs, climate change was the only sound, and the loneliness that ordinary humans could not endure was easily handled by the Snow Woman’s cold rationality. Anyway, with the outside like this, I had no appetite for appreciating the scenery.
“I find it strange that there exists a being who lives in such a place.”
There were beings who lived in this scenic area. Not really living, but close to being the master of this place. Even though it was not a human, there should be emotions. How had they endured such a long time alone? There must have been some hidden setting I didn’t know about.
Actually, I didn’t know much about that being either. I was a madman who played the Sa-gye War, and I had read every single one of the developer’s short setting texts without missing a single one. Among them were characters who didn’t appear in the original timeline, and the Guardian of the Snowfield had appeared as well.
Therefore, I knew she was not a villain. So, even though I was in the same Snowfield, I wasn’t particularly worried. A strong warrior of that caliber probably wouldn’t notice my existence. Since she hadn’t come looking yet, it seemed she had no interest.
“I’d rather she didn’t.”
I hoped she would keep her distance as much as possible. Getting entangled in troublesome matters was exactly what I disliked. A castle had suddenly been built here, but the Snowfield was vast, so I hoped she wouldn’t mind one person living here. That was what I believed, and I decided to put thoughts about her on the back burner.
“Well, let’s see… like this should work?”
I erased my random thoughts and tried the content that had just come to mind. As in any fantasy, there was magic and mana in this world, and according to the setting, the Snow Woman could use it as well. Magic and mana were few in number and both weapons and defensive tools, so I immediately verified it.
Whoosh—
“Oops… ah!”
Mana existed in the air, and every living thing possessed it. That was why, instinctively, I succeeded in generating magic through the mana within my body. But immediately, something abnormal happened.
In an instant, a blizzard raged, the swelling fog obscured my vision, and a stronger wind swirled through the room. Panicked, I quickly withdrew my magic.
“What the heck is this.”
I had only intended to make a simple snowman as a test, but suddenly it felt like something inside me was burning and exploding. My hands, when I looked down, had become translucent like flickering lanterns and repeated the cycle of fading and returning.
Seeing that phenomenon and my wildly beating heart, I soon understood the situation.
“Mana overload… no, not that much… overload?”
Anyone with mana would experience this kind of phenomenon, so it was probably correct. The setting I had created for the Snow Woman also had that when mana was used too much, the body became transparent. Rapid mana usage had caused overload on the body, and therefore the reaction of the heart beating wildly made sense.
But why had overload occurred even though I hadn’t used much mana? I understood that part too.
“Thinking about it, it makes sense.”
Magic was heavily influenced by talent and was a difficult field to train with normal methods. Even those born with talent needed a heavy effort to handle magic properly. Since I had just come to this world, it was only natural that I could not use it.
In short, it was in an uncontrolled state. I hadn’t even taken my first steps in terms of mana quantity and mana rotation rate.
“Practice will be necessary.”
There was nothing to do, and this turned out to be fortunate. For the time being, I would have to train mana and spend the time. Unlike studying at a desk, using mana directly as in a game was quite fun. As the mana that had gone out of control subsided, the blizzard gradually died down as well.
It was said that when mana went out of control, magic would activate on its own. Had I created a blizzard because I was a Snow Woman? If it had an impact, fine, but compared to other aggressive magic, it didn’t seem very threatening. Thanks to that, I had less worry about injury, so I should be happy.
“Hmm?”
Just before the blizzard disappeared, my eyes caught something strange. Blue fragments shaped like a cluster of ice crystals. Instinctively, I knew my mana was infused in it.
“…Spirit?”
The word that suddenly came to mind was that. Spirits formed from pure mana gathered together, so they appeared in actual games. But strictly speaking, they weren’t spirits. It would be more accurate to see them as fragments of spirits or debris that hadn’t become spirits.
The evidence was that the crystal, which had been sparkling for a moment, immediately dispersed like melting snow. Watching that strange scene, I confirmed a possibility.
“How did a spirit come into being?”
Spirit remains from the gods are extremely rare. In a world where the gods had disappeared, spirits had gradually decreased in number, and in the original timeline they were nearly extinct. Everyone knew that, but there was no way to increase their numbers.
Spirits were mental entities made of pure mana, and only gods or the Spirit King could manipulate that pure mana. No land creature could create spirits artificially.
“Then I…”
I needed to revisit the settings. There were settings I hadn’t considered earlier, and among them was clearly something related.
‘The Snow Woman is neither a living being nor a mental entity but a single phenomenon,’ and ‘She possesses purely unadulterated mana without any impurities.’ Upon looking back, there had been such settings. It must have been… to portray the Snow Woman as the snow and winter itself rather than limiting her to a particular race.
It was just to create atmosphere, and since it lacked substance like other settings, I had forgotten it.
“So it turns out like this.”
I had just used mana for the first time and had not done any tricks. Yet fragments of the spirit had appeared. ‘Pure unadulterated mana without any impurities’ could create a spirit just by clumping mana together.
Creating spirits. Even I, a high-rank player, was experiencing a content I had never heard of in this world. Who knew what would happen in the world?
“Spirit…”
Even if it was moving, it wouldn’t be lonely. It seemed there would be more things to do for the time being.