With Uchronia’s words of encouragement pulling Niwla's mind slightly out of the gutter, he could finally begin on preparing for his final exams—the right kind of preparation. Not the kind where he attempted to make everything that required constant analyzing and deliberating just to make a final decision. That meant, actually hearing out Alwin and Winal's suggestions even if he was the one driving the main body at the moment.

  Inside of his mind, a conference was being held.

  "I'm sure you're all aware of everything that has happened?" asked mind Niwla.

  "You mean how you got your butt kicked by Bion and added more holes to the main body in the process?" Alwin mocked. "I told you to use the Spirit Hands to dodge, but nooo—you decided to jump and spend like a million years choosing your next move."

  "Pain," was all Winal said. Both mind Alwin and Niwla choosing to ignore him.

  "You don't have to rub it in, you know?" Niwla said.

  "Of course, I do. It hurt so much. I can't believe we nearly lost to him too. See if I were in charge—"

  "Enough!" Niwla interrupted. "If you were in charge, maybe we would've had an easier time winning, but knowing both of you, you would've come up with some crazy idea to fix this whole mess only for it to blow up in our faces again. And then Uchronia would be even more disappointed in us."

  "And yet," Niwla sighed. "with me in charge, we struggle to even win a fight."

  "Dude, the solution is easy," Alwin said. "Just keep changing forms and let us have some fun whenever we fight. All this 'seriousness' nonsense is so boring, seriously."

  "I know, but—"

  "I'm going to pull a Uchronia and say ‘no buts’," Alwin interrupted. "Like you keep going on about how you're going to prepare for the exams, or how you need to get used to your body, or something lame. The only problem is, you take so long to actually do something. I can feel myself growing older. Don't think just do. Like even now, we're wasting time with this boring meeting when we could be doing something else."

  "Something else? Like what? We need a proper plan to optimize what little time we have left, we also need to come up with a proper system about who's in charge and when. I'm starting to have my doubts about the one form, one person in-charge rule I proposed."

  Alwin shrugged. "By the time you're done planning, it'll be exam time before you know it. Just give me the controls and I'll show you what we need to do."

  Niwla sighed, "Fine, but when it doesn't work out or blows up in our face, I told you so."

  "Devolution!" The Niwla in the real world yelled. The feathers on his body receded, being replaced with a black-and-white jelly-like substance.

  "Alwin the Yin-Yang Slime is back!" he shouted, bouncing on the bed like a trampoline, the wounds on his Cold Turkey form completely gone.

  He couldn't believe that he was actually doing this. But when it came to proving a point, Alwin would do anything.

  Leaping off the bed and rolling across the floor, avoiding the blood droplets like the plague. Alwin rushed out of the dorms. His destination—believe it or not—back to the Training Grounds Classroom.

  Alwin burst through the door, beelining for a vacant wooden dummy. He ignored the stares of his fellow classmates and even the fervent string of vulgarities that Bion laced the room with. Instead, he honed in on his Core.

  His consciousness popped into existence over the swirling pool of mana. But, he wasn't alone. Alwin had dragged in both mind Winal and mind Niwla along with him.

  "What are you doing?" Niwla asked.

  "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm training and so are you."

  "Training what exactly?"

  "We're going to register Ice Arrow into our System, now go summon the mental hands while I whip out a snowstorm, and Winal... you go do something."

  Winal's consciousness stared blankly at him, nodding before floating off to do... something.

  "Hey! Only I can use Ice Elemental attacks," Niwla said.

  "Yeah, and I don't care. This is the easiest thing I can think of to show that we're actually making some progress. Either that or I muck around trying to Mix spells again, and even I know that's not going to help my case."

  "We do have to increase our mastery over Ice Arrow..." Niwla trailed off, evaluating Alwin’s proposition. "Fine. But we do it my way."

  Under Alwin's directions, a giant snow storm began to form over the pool of mana. Snow and hail dropped down from the heavens while the temperature plummeted. Soon, the whole area became freezing cold as tiny ice islands began to form in the expansive ocean of mana.

  While Alwin focused on maintaining the snowstorm, Niwla did what he did best—think.

  "Are you going to help out or what?" Alwin shouted at Niwla who just floated there, lost in thought.

  "I am helping. In fact, I think I know what to do."

  "Well, I know what you should do. Go summon the Mental Hands, Ice Drill, and Ice Saw, so that we can get this show on the road once I'm done creating the Ice Mana."

  "That's not it. In fact, cancel the snowstorm," Niwla said.

  "What? But what about the Ice Mana? It's almost done freezing."

  "I know, but my way, remember? Now cancel it."

  "Fine." Alwin pouted. Just like that the snowstorm dissipated. The snow and chunks of hail that had made their home within the liquid mana were evicted, unable to withstand the rising temperatures, until all traces of their existence had been erased.

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  "This better be good or I'm going to throw a tantrum," Alwin said.

  "If everything goes according to plan, it'll be more than good," Niwla said.

  "It better be. So, let's hear this amazing plan of yours then."

  "I wouldn't call it amazing, more like efficient. You see, each time we create Ice Mana we have to jump through so many hoops like creating a literal snowstorm inside of our Core. Frankly, it takes too long and is such a huge waste in energy. We don't even need our whole Core to be filled with Ice Mana, just a small amount."

  "Well, how else are we going to make Ice Mana? An ice storm? Because I don't know how to summon that."

  "An icestorm is just a hailstorm, which you have already summoned before. It's also another big waste of energy. Now, tell me something, Alwin. Have you ever heard of something called a freezer?

  "Maybe." Alwin looked away, refusing to make eye contact while still pouting.

  "I know you know what a freezer is. We're essentially the same person. But never mind that. Instead of making an Ice Age each time we want some Ice Mana, we just get a bucket of mana, shove it into a freezer and wait."

  "I guess," Alwin mocked, drawing out the words..

  Niwla followed through with his plan, summoning a bucket and with the help of some mental hands, scooped up some mana from below them. But when he tried to summon a freezer…

  Nothing happened.

  "Cold feet?" Alwin teased.

  "Not exactly, it's just that whenever I try to materialize a mental freezer, it just doesn't want to pop out. Can you try?"

  "Me? I don't know how to summon a freezer," Alwin replied.

  "You can summon a snowstorm out of nowhere and yet you can't even summon a freezer? I bet you didn't even try."

  "Hey, I did try. Freezers are too complicated, snowstorms are easy. It's like you said, they just suddenly appear out of nowhere and poof we got a snowstorm."

  Just as Alwin finished his sentence, dark clouds flew in all of a sudden and snow began to fall once again.

  "See? Just like that."

  "How the?" Niwla said, struggling to comprehend what he had just witnessed. They may be the same person, but their unique personalities gave them different strengths and weaknesses.

  "I think I know what's happening," Niwla said. "We both don't have a clear enough understanding of freezers to have a proper mental visualization such that it can manifest within our Core to assist in crafting spells. While you, on the other hand, have such little understanding about the real world that you're able to conjure phenomena such as that snowstorm, because you think that’s how it works."

  "So what I'm hearing is that I'm better than you."

  "That's not... never mind. I need some time to come up with another solution," Niwla muttered, his consciousness pacing up and down.

  "Nah, we don't need to. We can still do your plan, but we just have to make our own freezer. Easy-peasy."

  "What are you even talking about?"

  "Just watch and learn," Alwin said. "Also, do you know how to summon a box? Preferably about two buckets tall."

  "Again… what? I mean, I can, but I don't understand what you're trying to do. You know what? I’ll humor you," Niwla said, as a white rectangular box popped into existence right next to him.

  "Oh, it's simple. A freezer is just a really cold box. I have the cold, you have the box, and tadah we got ourselves a freezer."

  "That's not how any of it works!" Niwla shouted.

  "Don't knock it till you try it," Alwin said, as a snowstorm began to brew overhead. "Now there's one tiny problem."

  "Which is?"

  "Compressing the clouds is going to take a lot of effort, especially if we want it to fit inside our DIY freezer. We're going to need a lot of mental hands."

  "I don't think just hands are enough to shrink a snowstorm, I think we need—"

  Niwla's words were cut short as he noticed an army of mental hands floating toward them. They were clustered together in the shape of a throne, with Winal's consciousness sitting on top of it.

  "Hands..." Winal trailed off.

  "That's a crazy amount of mental hands, Winal,” Alwin said, eyeing the display. “Do you mind helping us compress the snowstorm so it can fit inside the freezer?"

  "Hands..." Winal nodded.

  The moment he got off his throne, the mental hands shot to the sky. Even more mental hands materialized out of thin air, swarming upward and blotting out the sky. They surrounded the edges of the clouds and pressed inward. The snowstorm began to shrink, but still maintained the same amount of power, now over a smaller area.

  When it was just the right size. The mental hands floated down with their prize, offering it to their king—Winal.

  "Hands..." Winal said.

  The mental hands seemed to understand his commands as they proceeded to slot the miniature snowstorm into the white box that was Alwin's DIY freezer. Once their task was complete, they interlocked with each other, reforming a throne for Winal to sit on once again.

  "How did he control so many mental hands..." Niwla muttered. "It should be impossible."

  "Beats me," Alwin said, using his own mental hands to grab a bucket of mana and shove it inside the completed cooler. "I don't even know how there are three of us inside of here working together to create spells. Normally, it's just me."

  "You're right..." Niwla said. "Yet another thing we don't fully understand. Most people don't have multiple personalities fighting for control."

  "I prefer to just go with the flow, it makes things easier, you know. Also here you go." Alwin commanded his mental hands to give Niwla the bucket of Ice Mana. "Wow, this thing really works fast. Was not expecting that."

  "At least that's one thing going right for me, but I do have another idea..."

  "You do?" Alwin groaned. "It's not going to take ten years for you to actually do something about it, is it?"

  "Nope. It should be relatively fast."

  Niwla summoned his own set of mental hands and busied himself in his own little corner of the Core. Meanwhile, Alwin was fascinated with Winal's throne. It was really handy. And it looked so comfortable too.

  Without warning, Alwin plopped his consciousness onto the chair, right next to Winal. The next moment, he was being slapped silly by the multitude of mental hands which made up the throne.

  "Ouch! I get it! I get it! I'm sorry!" Alwin yelped, flailing as hands rained down on him.

  As if accepting his apology, the mental hands ceased their slapping. Only to grab his behind, and toss him out of the throne.

  Alwin's consciousness was sent flying, crashing into the only object in the vicinity—his DIY freezer. It collapsed, the mini snowstorm nearly being knocked free. However, using his body he nudged it back into the box and slammed it shut. Talk about a workout.

  "Sorry, that took so long," Niwla said, approaching Alwin with a mental hand in tow.

  "You better be sorry. So what's this big plan of yours?" Alwin asked.

  "This!" Niwla's mental hand rushed forward, presenting something in its palm.

  An ice tray.

  Alwin looked up, then down, then back up again.

  "Really? You spent all this time on that?" Alwin asked, offended that all Niwla had to show for was an ice tray of all things. Here he thought it'd be a huge laser or something.

  "Not just any ice tray. Look closer."

  Alwin looked down once again, wondering what was so special about this ice tray. Instead of the normal arrangement of empty rows of squares, there was only one hole. And it wasn't square shaped—not even close. It was in the shape of an Ice Arrow.

  Alwin's eyes widened.

  "See where I'm going with this?" Niwla asked.

  "See it? I can feel it! I'm literally getting chills. Let's go try it out!" Alwin exclaimed, hopping up and down in excitement.