Dried meat was quick and easy to eat, but this was his fourth day here and he’d grown tired of it, so he had a hankering for something else. What about properly grilled meat?!
He scanned the contents of the silo and saw various frozen animal and monster meats neatly arranged. Whole carcasses of rabbit, wild boar, what seemed like poultry, and more... There was even butchered meat from each species.
“I bet Fake Michael set it up like this for me, both ways, so I know which parts of the whole carcasses are edible when I cut them up. He really is an amazing man.”
Deeply grateful for the extent of Fake Michael’s foresight, Ryo picked up two pieces of meat that looked like rabbit thighs.
“These are frozen rock hard. I hope I can thaw them. Let’s see what happens when I take them outside... Fingers crossed they start defrosting.”
He exited the silo holding meat in each hand, then he placed the pieces in the bucket—the all-purpose, super handy bucket! The sun, beginning its ascent into the sky, illuminated the meat, but the rabbit thighs remained frozen.
“Does this mean I have to thaw them myself since I’m a water magician...?”
He lifted his right hand over one of the pieces and crafted a mental image in which he removed the bonds between the water molecules in the ice covering the meat.
“Huh? It’s not working. I feel like I’m being repelled.”
The bonds between water molecules weren’t dissipating, and the fact that they weren’t created a feedback loop in Ryo’s mind.
“Maybe it’s because I wasn’t the one who created this ice? Is it rejecting me because Fake Michael made it?”
He couldn’t give up though. He needed to eat to survive.
Since Fake Michael was the one who’d prepared it for him, it was highly unlikely he meant for Ryo to eat it frozen. After all, Fake Michael was an extremely talented and capable man, which meant the meat could be melted! Ryo’s trust in Fake Michael was enormous.
“Let me try this calmly. No need to rush.”
Instead of defrosting the whole thigh, he decided to focus on a single section. He visualized directing his magic to that area and undoing the molecular bonds, then he dissolved the bonds in the neighboring section of meat. As he moved slowly from one section to another, removing the molecular bonds, the ice melted.
After fifteen long minutes, one whole rabbit thigh was fully thawed. The other one still showed no signs whatsoever of doing the same despite the time that had passed.
“Michael, your magic is incredible! I’ll leave the frozen thigh as is so I can experiment on it. I want to see what will happen if I grill it with Michael’s ice still covering it.”
Ryo prepared the firewood and black hemp palm bark in the yard, then he went to the kitchen for some seasoning. Incidentally, the only seasoning Fake Michael had arranged was a massive quantity of salt. Ryo went back outside and skewered the defrosted rabbit thigh on a branch and sprinkled salt on it.
He went to work on his usual ice lens. Countless practice attempts meant his skills had improved tremendously. While it had first taken him fifteen minutes or more just to freeze water, now he could make an ice lens right from the air in less than two minutes.
“I’m getting pretty good at this.”
It made him happy to see how much he had improved.
Using the ice lens, Ryo focused the sun’s rays on the black hemp palm bark, setting it on fire. He breathed on the ember to stoke it and transferred the flame to the firewood to get a proper blaze going. Once it was ready, he stabbed the skewer of rabbit thigh into the ground by the fire, then he picked up the frozen one and held it over the flames. There wasn’t a trace of melting ice on any part of the meat.
“This feels really surreal...”
Conclusion: the meat Fake Michael froze wouldn’t thaw even when exposed to fire.
While he conducted his experiment, the defrosted rabbit thigh cooked nicely.
“Time to dig in!”
His first real meal in four days tasted so delicious it almost brought tears to his eyes. Then, it did, and Ryo actually ate while crying for the first time in his life.
Ryo thawed the other piece of frozen thigh meat the same way, then grilled and ate it. Relaxing, he thought about what he needed to do today. First thing on the list was to understand why he couldn’t use his magic to propel his Icicle Lance.
He still felt that he hadn’t arrived at a solution because of incomplete information. No matter how long or hard he considered the problem, an answer still didn’t present itself. In this case, he’d have to continue trying new things and hope to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. He had an endless amount of time, after all.
As far as generating ice went, he’d become quite adept at it. However, if someone asked him if he could use his skill in a battle against monsters, he would say that still posed a difficult challenge. It took him an entire minute to create an Icicle Lance and then throw it, and even then it still refused to fly from his hand as Ryo hoped. Meanwhile, it took him two minutes to craft an Ice Lens. Still, in both cases, he had shortened the time for creation considerably since his first attempts.
But it wasn’t enough. Because his life would be at stake in a battle against a monster, there was no room for delay. He had to master his skills to the point it took only a second to form the ice into what he needed.
When he realized this, Ryo immediately decided to try his hand at creating other shapes with his ice: an ice spear two meters long, maybe a plank, a pillar, or even a wall...
As he thought, he realized something else: the ice needed to be hard. He remembered that rock-solid ice, which wouldn’t melt, existed even on Earth. Ice is less likely to melt if all the air contained in the water is removed. One way to accomplish this, for example, was to boil the water before freezing it.
Now, if Ryo wanted to generate relatively hard ice, how would he go about doing it? To ensure no air got into the ice as it froze, he decided to try freezing ice from the center outward.
Normally, water freezes from the outside in, which is how air becomes trapped in pockets within the ice. However, Ryo could use his magic to start at the center! That was all there was to it. With this method, he could make ice harder than the ice he had been making previously.
Ryo believed in his theory. While munching on his usual dried meat for lunch, he concentrated intently on making ice. From his right hand, left, his feet... He imagined all possible scenarios.
He was so completely absorbed in his work that he jolted when he suddenly realized it was already evening.
“Shoot, I need to take a bath.”
He ate dinner, took a bath, then returned to his magical training. What a cultured life he led. Ryo couldn’t be happier.
On his fifth day in Phi, Ryo wanted to review everything he’d learned so far. For breakfast, he repeated what he’d done yesterday: fetch a rabbit thigh from the silo, defrost it, light the fire, grill, eat... A very smooth process.
Just like yesterday, he worked on his ice generation skill. Thanks to his efforts so far, it now took him twenty seconds to produce both an Icicle Lance and an Ice Lens—but this was still nowhere near useful for combat. Moreover, he still couldn’t make the Icicle Lance fly, making it useless in battle. He also had no knowledge of any real self-defense techniques or where to acquire them.
Ryo did know, at least, that he would need his ice generation skill for the rest of his life, which was exactly why he needed to improve it to the point where it became as natural as breathing.
Thoughts of ice spears, ice planks and pillars, walls, and more churned inside Ryo’s mind as he ate his dried meat. Create and melt, melt and create. He repeated the cycle again and again. When he was finished eating, he spent the rest of the afternoon generating ice. Ryo remained absorbed in his training until something landed on his cheek, making him look up at the sky.
“Rain...?”
It was the first time it rained since he had been reborn in this world.
“Ha, this is a good place to stop. Might as well take a bath then.”
Ryo had definitely been talking to himself a lot more since his reincarnation...
Since there were no glass panes in the holes that functioned as windows in the house Fake Michael prepared for him, Ryo covered them with wooden boards to prevent the rain from leaking in. There were no lamps, lanterns, or fires in any of the rooms, making it pitch-black inside.
Until yesterday, he hadn’t really thought of it as a problem because after his bath, he simply went outside to practice his magic until his magical energy ran out. Then, he would go back to his bed and pass out. The open windows allowed moonlight to illuminate the rooms at night, but he never had the headspace to notice.
Today was different though. Because of the rain and the shuttered windows, no moonlight made it into the home.
“This doesn’t change anything for my magical practice.”
Once he finished his bath, he stretched out in his bed and returned to his training. After he produced ice, instead of letting it melt, he sublimated the water into gas, which was absorbed into the air around him. That way, he could avoid soaking the bed. Based on his combined efforts yesterday and today, it now took him less than five seconds to make ice, depending on the shape.
Right around the time he realized his progress, Ryo’s magical reserves ran out tonight too. He dispelled the Icicle Lance he’d just made and allowed sleep to take him. Then, for a week after, he continued to immerse himself single-mindedly in ice generation.