A clear frown formed on Kairos’ face.
“…Is it true that the room will collapse if we try to remove the roof?”
Tiana blinked a few times.
“I believe so. At least, that’s what I was told.”
Kairos narrowed his eyes.
“So you don’t understand the mechanism behind it?”
Tiana shook her head.
“No idea.”
Kairos bit his thumbnail. Tiana really wasn’t lying when she said that there was a backup food supply, as the amount here really was large. The room was dark and dreary, with stone walls. However, it was also huge. With how it was now, it was essentially a warehouse and there were all kinds of foods stacked up on pallets inside.
Though Kairos wasn’t that good at judging numbers from a glance, he could still tell that this really could last them for several months if they weren’t reckless with how they used it.
Unfortunately, the trap door itself was incredibly small. If they couldn’t destroy the roof, then the amount they could actually save would be far too small compared to how much was here.
Kairos was just about to say that they should cut their losses and get what they could before heading up. It was at the very tip of his tongue.
But what then?
All of the potatoes they had been working hard to grow were probably all ruined now, meaning if even this food storage was ruined they would have to abandon the city and everyone in it.
There simply wasn’t enough to support everyone.
Kairos’ bite on his thumbnail got harder. He closed his eyes for one second, deliberating over it. The red light… it seemed quite different from the red sun, because it was more of a glow. Though the energy behind it was probably the same, the heat was enough to begin burning the soles of his shoes.
While the red sun was also hot, it was not nearly enough to begin burning things like that.
Kairos decided to take a gamble.
He pulled on his thumbnail hard, biting half of it off.
Tiana looked at him strangely.
“What are you doing?”
Kairos sighed.
“If I start running out of mana, then give me some. Also, don’t go down.”
Tiana blinked a few times.
“…Alright.”
Kairos leaped off, completely ignoring the ladder under the trapdoor.
Right after landing, he held both his hands out as though he was reaching out to grab something. Then, he closed his eyes as he began casting the frost spell.
Although he had also gotten documents on how to cast other spells, this one was still his main focus. It was still quite rough, but now, he only needed roughly forty-five seconds to cast it. On top of that, he was fairly confident in channeling it, so long as he didn’t go too crazy with it.
During those forty-five seconds, Tiana was quite confused as to what Kairos was trying to do, but decided that since she trusted him before, she would trust him now.
And so, that time passed by slowly. Kairos felt a little annoyed, but didn’t lose his composure. Eventually, came the time for channeling.
The mana began building up near his palm, in the form of a pure white crystal, slowly growing in size almost like it was a plant.
After channeling for roughly twenty seconds, that white crystal spread out covering his entire palm and even began crawling up his hand.
Kairos felt the chill from it was incredibly cold, to the point it was painful. He found it strange considering even his own massive fireballs hadn’t hurt him before. But now, he gradually realized that the strange protection that came from the spell wasn’t activating as much as it should be.
While he worked on refining the spell itself, he didn’t account for the aspect of the spell that protected the user.
A frown formed on Kairos’ face. Though he believed he could channel a bit longer, he wasn’t sure if there would be any problems if he decided to continue. With those thoughts in mind, he released the frost spell and shot out a dense white mist.
Almost everything in the room was blanketed in a sheet of ice immediately, and the thickness of that ice was rapidly increasing. While that was happening, Kairos leaped upwards and climbed up the ladder, so that he wasn’t frozen along with them.
Tiana’s eyes widened considerably when she saw this.
“Is that part of the water spell?”
Kairos shook his head.
“Not exactly. It’s a little complicated.”
He looked down as all of the white mist gradually settled. The scene below looked as though the ice age had settled, with everything covered in an extremely thick layer of ice. However, Kairos felt it still wasn’t enough. Although the ice from the frost spell seemed stronger than normal ice, that red light was no joke either. He held his hands out and began casting the frost spell once more.
Tiana looked at him with a bit of shock.
“Eh? You’re doing it again? But it’s all thoroughly covered already!”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Just making sure. It’s not like being frozen will cause it to spoil.”
Tiana hesitated, but slowly nodded after a moment.
“I’ll just trust you then.”
Kairos slowly did the whole process over again. After a while, the white crystals in his hand expanded and began spreading onto his hands again. He released it at this point once more, sending another blanket of white mist to cover the place.
The ice thickened several times over, to the point that it was getting quite close to the trapdoor.
Tiana looked at him.
“Is that enough now?”
Kairos sucked in a cold breath.
“I’m not sure, but casting again wouldn’t help much. The entire thing is essentially filled with ice anyway.”
Tiana nodded.
“Then what now?”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Actually, you should just go up to the roof now and raise the walls so everyone will be safe. I’m going to double-check just to be sure.”
Tiana shook her head.
“I can raise the walls from anywhere, and I’m able to generally tell where they all are. I’ll go when you do.”
Kairos sighed.
“This is no time for arguing. Using your eyes will help you tell as well, it’s best that nobody gets screwed over by this, alright?”
Tiana let out a soft sigh.
“Ok, fine.”
She then left the room, leaving only Kairos. After waiting for a second, he pulled the red prism out of his pocket.
He definitely planned on getting it charged by whatever was going on, but a thought suddenly occurred to him. Last time, he charged it up by using the red rain that had come down, and in that process of charging, the red prism caused the redness of the water to reduce by a considerable amount, like it was diluting it.
In other words, if he set the red prism down with the food, then it could absorb some of that red energy in order to further protect it.
Now that it was dead empty, this was as good of a time as ever.
Kairos climbed into the room once more and stepped onto the solid ice. He set it somewhere out of line of sight, so that if the ice did melt, the red prism should end up behind one of the stacks of food. He then actually double-checked to make sure the whole place was covered before going back up.
And with that, he got out and began going up the stairs.
Once he reached the hallway, he saw that Tiana was at the stairs. She looked over her shoulder with her eyebrow raised.
“If it was going to be that short, there was no reason to shoo me away.”
Kairos sighed.
“It was double-checking. If there was a problem, it would’ve taken far longer, but because there wasn’t it was fine.”
Tiana pressed her lips together.
“Fine, fine, whatever you say.”
She waited for Kairos to get there, then the two of them began rushing up the stairs. After going up several flights and were near reaching the top, they met someone else.
It was Quinn.
He was taking in heavy breaths one after another as he went up.
Kairos called out to him.
“You’re winded just from a little running?”
Quinn clicked his tongue.
“I still haven’t recovered most of the muscle I lost while starving, alright!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Well, there’s no rush now, because you should be more or less safe.”
Quinn raised his eyebrows.
“Huh? But I was told I had to make it to the roof quick if I didn’t want to die.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“Who told you that?”
Quinn was silent for a moment.
“…Chase.”
Kairos waved his hand dismissively.
“Ah, he must’ve just misunderstood when I told him. You need to be a bit above ground, but it’s an exaggeration to say you need to make it up to the roof.
Quinn’s panting gradually slowed down.
“…Ah.”
Kairos cracked his neck.
“Well, I’m going to the top anyway. You might as well come to.”
Quinn nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll be walking though.”
Tiana and Kairos then continued up to the roof. Once they got there, they met up with Chase, who glanced at them the moment they got up.
“Hey, where’s everyone else?”
Kairos massaged his temple with the tip of his finger.
“They should be fine.”
Chase slowly nodded.
“Alright. Anyways, what is the danger anyway?”
Kairos sucked in a cold breath.
“I’m not exactly sure, but I’m fairly certain that staying near the ground will kill us.”
Chase turned to Tiana, who shook her head.
“Don’t look at me like I would know. I just went with whatever he was saying.”
This made Chase even more confused.
“What makes you so sure?”
Kairos rolled his eyes and walked close to the edge of the roof.
“Let’s just wait and see then.”
Chase followed him with a small frown.
“It’s not as though I don’t believe you, I’m just quite curious, is all.”
The corner of Kairos’ lip turned up.
“Then let’s just say it’s magic.”
Tiana raised her hands up like she was trying to lift the world.
Along with that, countless farmers near the edge of the wall were brought up onto it, though about half were still left behind. Tiana made the part she rose shake slightly to prompt those that were on to get off, then lowered the walls once more.
Most of the people were quite hesitant to step onto the metal platform once more, but Nicole, Tori, and Sydney were both loud and encouraging enough to get almost all of them up.
For a few, they ended up using force to drag them up, but that still left one person down on the ground.
Tiana decided not to wait for that one person and lifted everyone up once more.
She let out a small sigh.
“One of them is being a stubborn fool. I really don’t want to go back for him.”
Chase scoffed.
“Let him die then. He was definitely given ample warning.”
Kairos looked at the tiny dot that was still on the ground with his eyes narrowed.
“I can’t help but wonder what’s going through his mind right now.”
Chase smiled.
“He’s probably justifying his actions right now, while being afraid by the fact that he’s all alone down there.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Huh. I was thinking that he’s probably complaining about how he wanted to work on his farm at this time.”
Tiana tilted her head to the side.
“I actually remember something like that. There was a guy in one of our rival companies that died from a fire because he refused to leave his post despite the alarm.”
Chase looked at her with bewilderment.
“…So he thought it was a drill?”
Tiana shrugged her shoulders.
“Guess so.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“But don’t they mention that it’s not a drill over the intercom?”
Tiana tapped her chin with a finger.
“…I wouldn’t know.”
Chase leaned over a bit and narrowed his eyes.
“Ah wait, looks like it’s starting.”