Gaius’ bag was stuffed with what apparently was the latest in cloth armour, which had taken a good dent in his Exchange points, when he finally left the wooden building. It’d taken some convincing, but the old man’s words that getting killed because he didn’t protect his stomach adequately would be a sad way to go ultimately made him buy it.

After all, he’d managed to strengthen every part of his body except for what the cultivation mantra was supposed to fortify. After conversing with the old man, and learning that any other mantra was under the lock and key of Senators and other influential people in Ark City, Gaius decisively gave up on the option of changing to a different mantra.

A few sentences alone were able to serve as a treasure, an object to be jealously guarded and handed down only to a select few. Gaius had little doubt that even if he handed over ninety thousand Exchange points on the spot, no one would sell it. Only a wastrel or a desperate family would consider selling or even exchanging them for valuable resources.

Which meant that the chances of them popping up in the auction would be zilch. Any that did either had a problem, like the excruciating pain of the General Formula that Gaius and the under-privileged practiced, or were fake in the later stages, since no Lord or Paragon was going to show up and act like a sideshow for an audience of Harvesters.

Gaius trudged down the snowy path towards his tent. The Harvesters he met on the way gave him a slightly larger berth than usual — it would seem that rumours of what had just happened were beginning to spread amongst the populace. Even the sentries posted around the camp saluted on sight, even that new rabbit-eared soldier.

The tent entrance flapped open as Gaius pushed through it, revealing an empty tent. As expected, Nakama was still undergoing treatment, although it did seem to him that she was being increasingly proactive about doing so.

Throw a bone to those with nothing, and they’ll make a living out of it. Gaius had the feeling that the little girl was beginning to feel the effects of the unsealing, to the point that she had hope enough to recover and therefore avoid freeloading off him. It was contradictory, in a sense, that those who had spent much of their life struggling were the most innocent.

Gaius exhaled slowly and left the empty tent again. He looked at what amounted to probably a battalion of snowmen guarding the tents and smiled. Perhaps Nakama had built a snowman everytime she missed Gaius, which would explain why so many of them were standing sentry over the tent. Most of them had the same stature and build as him, which lent even more credence to his conjecture. Some of them were somehow squatting down; others their hand stretched out to pat an imaginary person.

And yet, despite the attempt at making the place look lively, Gaius could feel a profound loneliness from these snowmen. As the time he spent away from her grew, the snowmen she created grew more and more lifelike. Her latest creations were obvious — a cloak flowed from them, and the head was beginning to remind Gaius of his own. A gentle smile he only reserved for her was on them, and Gaius could help but tremble as he continued to draw more and more conclusions.

He’d spent far too much time on his own, and far too less on hers.

Gaius began to roll some snowballs. He’d wanted to do some cultivation, initially, but that desire had vanished from him the moment he felt the melancholy from these snowmen. His mind was emptied of thoughts, and all he did was to push and push, until it reached his height.

A few Harvesters had walked past him in the process, but he didn’t pay them any heed. Perhaps they called out to him. Perhaps it didn’t. But it didn’t matter. As he scourged up another snowball, qi began to erupt from his body, escaping through his sleeves and neck, before reforming at his neck, where the Stellar Core lay quietly under Gaius’ clothes.

Wind swirled around him, and the qi escaping from his body grew with every push of the snowball in front of Gaius. He hadn’t felt anything — his ability to block pain had been running passively ever since he started pushing the snowball, and even if he didn’t, sorrow was overwhelming all his senses.

All the boy knew now was to push and push.

Over, and over. Only a distant part of his mind, the instinct that remained aloof from all other sensations, remained aware of the surroundings. Danger to him would be dealt with, and it had no idea what it meant to hold back. It didn’t care about anything else, since the boy’s madness was one induced by himself.

Harvesters all over Heritage Basestation were beginning to grow uneasy. A formless pressure had descended throughout the camp, and important characters from all levels of the camp were beginning to turn out in full force to investigate the unusual phenomenon.

Gaius, in his madness, could only feel a faint pain around his heart, augmented by a slight scorching sensation. But even his nerve signals were drowned out by the snow he was pushing. He’d built five to six snowmen by now, each of them made with a simple design — a small snowball placed onto a big one. All of them were around the height of Nakama, and the completed ones were placed alongside the snowmen she herself had made.

No one now spared the little boy a second glance, with those having their wits around them relegated to only staring at the skies. Squads of Knights were taking towards the skies, but none of them had made it past a hundred metres.

To Gaius, they looked like birds caged in an invisible wall, but he dismissed this sight as swiftly as it came. A literal heart-wrenching pain had overtaken his entire body, and as the sorrow reached a crescendo, the young boy let out an anguished wail, unable to bear the weight of his rampaging emotions any longer.

Lightning streaked across the dim sky of the Intersection, the rumbling that followed masking Gaius’ howl. The men hovering in mid-air shuddered and dropped to the ground like stones as an unfathomable power swept through the place, the shaft of its power barely brushing by the gathered Lords and Knights. The sky turned gold for a single second, as the scorching heat within Gaius’ chest vanished, leaving his mind clear once more.

And as his clouded vision turned clear once more, Nakama’s figure appeared at the path towards the tent. Gaius’ breathing turned ragged, and the snowball he was pushing broke apart as he pushed himself into a standing position.

“I’m back.”

A clear tinkling voice broke the raging silence in Gaius’ head, and a smile emerged on his face.

“Welcome back.”

The little girl grunted slightly as Gaius rubbed her head intensely, and instead of going back into the tent to cultivate, the boy bent down and formed a little snowball. Nakama broke into a smile, and then took it from him.

Pairs of snowmen sprinkled the path leading to the tent, growing more and more numerous as time passed, as Lords and Knights scattered into the environment, intent on finding the source of the anomaly.

Only when the sky truly turned dark did they return to the tent.