So, It's like really good at controlling the snow.

  I pursed my lips.

  I guess I'll just have to get control of a snowflake one at a time... and then like hide it from the blizzard or something before I shape everything into a snowman.

  Snow whipped around me, keeping my hair from touching my back and making it fly left and right. My clothes were also doing their best impression of waves during a sea storm. The Blizzard was getting worse and worse by the moment. Gradual, but steady.

  And I have to get every one of these snowflakes to connect to my energy signature without being dominated by the blizzard...

  I grimaced and looked down at the ground.

  This is going to take forever.

  I put my hand out and caught a few snowflakes before brushing most of them off of my hand. After that, I closed my hands around the remaining snowflakes and worked on dominating the boss with my own energy signature -- only a little bit at a time though. There was no way I could overpower the boss outright.

  The snowflakes in my hand sounded strange, it was snow, to be sure, but it wasn't like the snow I was used to handling. Normally it'd sound free, floaty, a little chaotic. But this sounded like it was angry, focused, and suffocating. Both of those were aspects of snow, but...

  Oh wait, okay, so that's how I'll overpower the boss. There's different ways of understanding the snow, so... I can probably either take control of the snowflake by like taking control of the snowflakes aspect that the boss is ignoring... probably.

  I reached out and poked around the snowflake to figure out what exactly the boss hadn't tried to take control of as of yet. It looked like it had left the center alone, so I shoved my own energy in there where it connected to some of the remaining notes singing there. I was able to connect pretty handily, but as soon as I was connected to the snowflake (at least where I had decided to connect to it) the corrupt energy twitched inward and stabbed my own energy driving it out of the snowflake completely.

  Shoot. So, that doesn't work. Uhm. It just shoved me out. Could I overpower the corrupt energy in the snowflake?

  I wasn't sure, but I'd give it a shot anyway.

  I grabbed a big swath of my own energy and surrounded the boss's snowflake.

  This aught to do it, right?

  Like I had done before when I was converting the corrupt energy outside of the System forcefieled, I surrounded the boss's energy and the energy started mellowing out, but once I thought I was golden, energy just from around the air (probably taken from other snowflakes) started surrounding my energy.

  I could tell that my energy was about to be completely overwhelmed and destroyed so I shaped it into a spike and broke through the bosses energy. I saved what I could from the attack, but I probably only got about a third of it out of there.

  Alright... so, something different again, at least there's only so many options, right?

  I went to try something different that I had made up on the spot but I stopped myself. I was letting the pressure get to me.

  I should probably think about this more. So, like...

  I clapped my hands together and let out a breath.

  It probably has something to do with how you level up your magic, right? If it's leveled up, then it's going to do better.

  I took a moment to brows through my status to find it. It said that to level up my soul stat I needed more understanding or a higher soul stat

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  alright... so maybe we can make it though this alright. So long as I understand the snow--I feel kind of stupid saying this-- better than the boss does, I should be able to convert it all to my side. Then I can make the snowman.

  Yeah, that might work.

  That decided, I tried to figure out what the boss's understanding of the snow was compared to myself. From what I could tell the boss was, like I had thought earlier, was leaning to more of the aggressive aspects of the snow--which I didn't usually associate with meanness--so I could try matching the rhythm with the snowflake, at least what it should be, before connecting it to the snowflake.

  I guess I can try being fancy.

  I pursed my lips and went forward with the plan.

  I matched the rhythm of my own energy to to what it should be for the snow: Light, happy, beautiful.

  By the time I was done matching the song of my energy (which wasn't too much different compared to what it usually was) it was completely different from the boss's song for the snow.

  Alright, the moment of truth.

  I brought my energy over to the snowflake and wrapped it all around the cold little thing. Nothing happened at first and the corrupt energy all around and inside the snow tried to push back but I didn't let it. I shaped my energy into a spike again and stabbed it right into the snowflake, which gladly accepted it. The corrupt energy tried to stay, and it tried really hard, but my own energy just slipped into the snowflake seamlessly leaving it no room.

  It worked, and it worked far better than I could've hoped, but It took a large chunk of time and personal energy to do it at all. When I had kicked the corrupt energy out it had eaten up all of my loose energy that wasn't already inside of the snowflake.

  Alright, I've got to do something about that. But at least I've got one now.

  ***

  ISMUND

  I hit another monster out of the air with the pommel of my sword.

  "You're supposed to use the sharp end ya dimwit!" Abs shouted out from the side.

  I ignored him and carried on.

  I still wasn't too sure what these things I was fighting were but they seemed to jump like toads. I didn't like toads and the last fight I had wasn't helping with that.

  I had killed five of the monsters already without having been hurt all that much and Drifa had killed one too. Six total kills. There seemed to be another toad-thing spawning every minute, sometimes it was a bit longer.

  Abs had done absolutely nothing to help. So far, all he'd done was sit next to the motionless tall brown thing to the right of the room and try to make fun of me. I was pointedly ignoring him and working on keeping us alive.

  I was the only one doing anything at the moment, even if Drifa was probably doing something or at least trying she was just standing still in the middle of the blizzard with a concentrated face.

  Abs made a quip when I glanced at her "She looks like someones telling her to eat a rotting possum that's covered in it's own mess. So, a step up from your resting face."

  I thought having Abs here would at least make things a bit easier, but I guess not.

  I wasn't able to see great right now, but I was able to see well enough.

  I kicked a black blob that got too close to me and almost cut another one in half when it jumped at me. I kept hitting these things, sometimes killing, as worked out the logistics of our situation.

  There's a big orange monster, the snow itself, these things in front of me, and I'm guessing the thing Abs is sitting next too doesn't really do anything.

  Realistically, Drifa probably won't move at all, Abs won't do anything either. So, it'll probably just be me managing all of this.

  Alright.

  I killed another thing, they were pretty weak all things considered. They did more damage than the rabbits when they did hit, but there was less of them and they were slower.

  I'll thin out the jumping black things over here so I just worry about new ones spawning and the orange triangle thing after that. I'll ignore the new ones spawning to deal with the orange monster. That one seems to be getting closer, even if it's not too fast.

  I spent the next while attacking the creatures. After a while, I figured that the best strategy was to make them chase me for a bit, no more than a few paces, and then I'd step forward and slice whichever one was closest to me when they landed. It worked for the most part, but I occasionally miss-timed it and one of them would headbutt me.

  This strategy went on for a few minutes until I was only fighting things when they spawned - just like I had planned. As time had gone on, the weather had became more miserable. The snow was fast and powerful enough that I was losing feeling in my exposed skin. The flakes also seemed to become more dense and I imagined they might start cutting us eventually; but that wasn't quite yet. On top of my already bad vision, the snow becoming denser. It was all a haze.

  I ran towards the bits of orange I could still see.

  "Oi, lad! Why are you running away from the Bufonidae - the toad-" Abs was saying

  So they are toads.

  "it doesn't make sense unless... ah this must be it: your an insufferable, irresponsible, buffoon. Get it?" He barked out a laugh.

  I was just a few feet away from the orange thing.

  "Ahhh, I see now. A carrot for the eyes." Abs said with an overdone sage-like voice.

  Is that a thing?

  "After you eat it you will see the truth, that you care-rot expect to have a good life under my watch." Abs started cracking up from what he was saying again.