As soon as the fire is going I remove most of my clothes so that the heat can reach my skin. Thawing myself out is kind of painful but at the same time a huge relief. If I didn't already have some cold resist I would probably already have frostbite, but when I check my fingers and toes I am fine.

After rubbing my feet to restore some feeling I notice Kechara is watching me and she seems to be laughing at me. Thinking about how I must look to her right now I guess I can't really blame her. To distract her from laughing at me I start cooking some nice big boar stakes.

As expected, as soon as I place them over the fire Kechara's attention is glued to them. While they are cooking I pull out the boar's core and examine it, but as expected it doesn't give me an option to absorb it. It really seems like normal beasts do absolutely nothing for me now, this is going to make getting stronger a lot harder.

Taking out the heart I start eating it, but I soon notice Kechara's head is right next to mine and she is watching me intently. Not wanting to lose the buff I put the heart away until the food is done cooking. Once I have given Kechara her share I take the heart back out and resume eating it.

Devour Activated! Endurance +10 Fire Resist +5!

Since I have only eaten about half the heart when devour triggers I toss the rest to Kechara and eat my boar steak instead. Once we are done eating I climb over Kechara to take a look outside, if anything the storm has only gotten worse. So I return to my nice warm spot and take out the history book to read.

Now that I am confident in my ability with the language I figure it is time to learn more about the city and the temple. So it turns out that Alzfein is the name of the city I found, the race calls itself the Dezgarin but based on how they look I am still going to think of them as elves. It doesn't say much about the race that built the temple, it only refers to them as the 'First Ones' which I find rather annoying.

Apparently the temple is only one of many ruins the elves found that were built by the first ones. I wonder if the goddesses know anything about the first ones, or am I just destroying the temple blindly? While the book doesn't say much about the first ones it does say that the elves built the city to guard the temple.

However, it doesn't say what they are supposed to guard the temple from or why it needed to be guarded. It does say that any mages with wind attributed magic would journey to the temple and if they returned their magic would be a lot stronger. It is the 'if they returned' part that has me kind of worried, but the book doesn't mention what is inside the temple.

Even though it isn't giving me much useful information I keep reading, I am wondering if it will mention the driders at some point. I am reading out loud so Kechara can follow along, but at one point she stops me to point out a mistake. It seems she has gotten even better than me at reading the elven language.

Seeing where I made a mistake I correct it and continue reading, but before long Kechara interrupts again, this time by growling. When I look over at her she is staring towards the cave entrance and as she is growling lightning is playing over her teeth. Looks like I may not need to teach her about her breath weapon after all.

Trusting her senses I stand up and draw Blitz, when Kechara moves her body out of the way I can see a creature in the cave entrance. As soon as I see it I relax, no way is that thing a threat, it is tiny and fairly cute. It is pure white and looks like a cross between a bunny and a fox with a single tiny horn growing out of its forehead.

It looks to be a baby or at least very young and I am about to see if I can make friends with it when Kechara pushes me aside. She moves her head right up to the little thing and gives out a snort of statically charged air. The poor little thing gets shocked and runs away, it vanishes into the storm instantly but I can still hear its cries.

The cries fade away quickly but Kechara is still growling and soon I can hear a responding growl from outside. After a minute another figure can be seen in the storm, a much bigger one. As soon as it comes close enough to be seen I can tell it is an adult version of the little one, maybe a parent.

Almost instantly I notice something strange, as the beast walks closer it is not leaving a single mark on the snow, also the snow is not sticking to its fur. Like the little one it is pure white with ice blue eyes and a horn on its head, although it looks more like an icicle than a horn. When I notice its tails is when I get worried, unlike the little one that only had one tail the big one has six.

It looks enough like a fox that the multiple tails worries me, in most manga series if a beast has more tails it is a bad thing. The fact that it is staring at Kechara and still advancing also worries me, after all she isn't a weak looking beast. The other thing that worries me is the fox is now in the cave entrance, and inside the cave with Kechara there is very little room to move around.

If it comes to a fight the cramped space is going to be a problem, but even if we manage to push it back then we will have to deal with the storm. Something tells me that fighting this thing inside the storm would be an even worse situation. The way it is advancing and only looking at Kechara makes me think it either hasn't noticed me or is ignoring me.

Not really wanting to fight the thing I decide to get its attention, I step forward and activate my lightning aura. The fox instantly stops moving and looks at me finally, now it knows it is facing two opponents. I only take a single step forward, I am waiting to see if it still wants to fight.

It looks back and forth between me and Kechara, then it takes a single step backwards. If it is retreating I am more than willing to let it go, but just as I am thinking it is going to give up it opens its mouth. A huge blast of snow and ice comes roaring out of its mouth, easily enough to fill the cave, and we have nowhere to move.