Success

Curtis had expected it, after all, Xander had blatantly explained that the process was going to be painful.

However, knowing what was coming and actually experiencing it were two completely different things.

The process of making his mana particles cease movement was actually fairly simple. After all, it was of the ice affinity, so the transition from moving to not moving was simple enough to grasp. But simple did not mean easy.

The moment the first few particles started to cease their incessant movements, Curtis’s eyes nearly snapped open from the resulting sensation. A feeling of indescribable coldness bloomed inside of him, and he didn’t even know when his teeth started chattering.

This was... unprecedented, because as someone with the ice affinity, Curtis’s resistance to the cold was already far beyond that of normal people. Then include his status as a Lycan, which made his physique far more impressive than usual, and you get someone’s who natural resistance to cold temperatures was through the roof.

But not only was he feeling cold, he was feeling frigid. The sensation was new to him. Hell, Curtis couldn’t remember a time in his life where he felt truly cold.

But this cold was all-encompassing, and the more he ceased the particle activity, the worse it got.

He only managed to get a quarter of the particles to stop moving entirely before the cold turned into straight numbness, and he felt himself losing control of his body. He started to slump forward, his consciousness flickering.

He felt sleepy and tired, and the urge to rest was overwhelming.

He could try another day, another time. It wasn’t a must that he pulled it off today, no one would blame him if he decided to rest now. So he just had to...

’No!’ Curtis growled and straightened.

On pure instinct alone, he raised one finger and jammed its nail into the palm of his other hand where there was a high density of nerves.

The resulting pain slowly pulled him out of his drifting state.

’Not enough... Not nearly enough!’ Had his eyes been open, they would have been bloodshot.

Curtis wasn’t Xander, his willpower wasn’t so immense that he could receive a debilitating injury and treat it like a minor inconvenience. No, this numbness was maddening, and he wanted nothing more than to end it.

With every particle that seized motion, his body wanted to convulse, his brain screaming for him to stop and go into survival mode. Everything else had been filtered out.

But despite it all, Curtis did not stop, and that was for two reasons.

The first, he wasn’t super proud of, but he knew that no matter what, the people in the room would not allow him to die. So even if he failed in the end, no substantial harm would befall him.

As for the second reason...

As someone who’d spent most of his life hiding his true nature, the idea that there were a group of people who cared about him so much that they were willing to do things like this with him struck a chord within him.

It was a bit strange. Typically, people wouldn’t like to have expectations placed on them. But Curtis was the opposite. After isolating himself for so long, not only was the notion of having expectations placed on him not daunting. He actively looked forward to it. Because that meant that he’d finally found people who knew and trusted him well enough to actually expect something from him. Something he couldn’t remember the last time had happened.

In a way, it was a trauma response as a result of prolonged isolation. But right now, it gave Curtis the push he needed to make this work, and...

’Get it done!’ With one last internal shout, he completely stopped all movement from all the mana particles, dropping their motion to zero.

And since they stopped moving, that meant there was nothing stopping them from condensing and touching each other.

So Curtis did just that. With one last push, he condensed all the mana together, and there wasn’t the slightest sliver of space between any of them. As soon as this happened, it was as though something clicked into place.

Suddenly, the mana particles were no longer individual particles getting forced together. In that moment, they all became a uniform, singular entity within Curtis’s mana pool.

His body shuddered, and he couldn’t help but gasp.

It took him a few seconds to regain his bearing and register what had happened, and when he did, he realized that the numbing pain had vanished. Instead, he was keenly aware of the fact that his body temperature was now very, very low. Yet none of his bodily functions appeared to be at risk of failing or ceasing. In fact, while he was aware that his body was cold, he didn’t actually feel it, if that made sense.

What caught his attention the most, though, was his mana pool. Or rather, the thing that sat inside of it.

’... Wow.’ Reflected in his mind’s eye was a single shape.

Compared to the originally vast pool of mana, its size was barely even worth noting. But despite this, it was far more eye-catching. It appeared translucent and incredibly dense, resembling a tiny, impossibly dense, perfectly silent Ice Diamond.

For a moment, he just stared at it, completely enraptured by its shape and form, and only after a few minutes did he finally register that he’d actually succeeded.

’I... I did it!’ When the realization hit, the memory of the numbing pain was thrown to the back of his mind as he opened his eyes excitedly.

"Guys! I did... it?" However, his excitement came to a halt when he saw the scene before him.

Everyone had backed away from him, their expressions reflecting varying degrees of shock and concern. Only Mia seemed unperturbed, but her eyes were indeed open and observing.

He felt his heart enter his throat. Did something go wrong? What happened?

"Curtis, buddy. Are you conscious?" Xander asked tentatively.

"Y-Yeah, I think so?" Curtis replied nervously, still not quite grasping what caused the current scene.

Xander nodded slightly.

"... Observe your immediate surroundings." At this, Curtis looked around, and his pupils dilated at the scene.

’What the...?’ In a radius of a few meters around him, everything was frozen.

That was not an exaggeration.

The ground was covered in a layer of ice, his clothes were frozen solid, and the air had done that strange thing where it becomes a liquid if it gets too cold, the droplets floating around him.

Now, while this was unprecedented, it wasn’t super strange. After all, when Curtis was on the verge of transforming before, a similar scene played out.

The issue was, he wasn’t on the verge of transforming. In fact, he wasn’t even releasing any mana. All the mana in his mana pool was now condensed into its current shape, so nothing was leaking out. So what was causing this?

’It’s obviously coming from me. What’s... oh.’ His eyes widened in realization.

Cold was the absence of heat, and the colder something was, the more it drew heat away from the things near itself.

’Don’t tell me... the thing in my mana pool did this... by sucking out the heat from my surroundings?’ The idea was insane, yet the more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.

But that just made it even more insane! Because that would imply that the thing in his mana pool was affecting the surroundings... without actually leaving his mana pool.

But it also made sense because Falael’s artificial star did the exact same thing, in that its gravity pulled in the ambient mana outside of Falael’s body into his mana pool.

Having that thought, he suddenly checked out the surrounding mana, and he became even more startled.

That’s because, with him at the center, the surrounding ambient mana was being turned into ice affinity mana.

In that moment, Curtis was dazed.

"Interesting." Mary, who looked uncharacteristically interested, mumbled.

"Not only is the surrounding heat getting drained, with him as the source, the ambient mana is taking on the ice affinity. It’s so potent that where he to stay put for long enough, an ice affinity elemental spirit could be born naturally. I’ve never seen anything like this before." Her words snapped Curtis out of his daze.

"... That’s cool and all, but with him like this, how exactly do we approach him without getting frozen." Falael scratched their head, and Curtis’s head snapped in that direction. That was... a good concern.

"Curtis, do you think you can limit the cold exposure to just within your mana pool?" Xander spoke at that moment.

"I... I can try..." Curtis took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Gradually, the frigid cold around him retreated into his body. The floor was still frozen, and the air in the room was still cold as heck, but it was no longer encroaching on everything.

Granted, Curtis felt his body temperature reduce again as a result, but his bodily functions remained functional, which was a strange contrast, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It’s just that he looked unnaturally pale now.

"His body temperature is very low." Aubrey observed, using thermal vision to watch him, and in her vision, Curtis’s body shape was a deep purple, indicating just how cold his body was.

After a moment, Xander said tentatively.

"Success?" Curtis stared at his hands, then he looked up and beamed.

"Success!"