The training facility was usually kept at a comfortable room temperature.
By Saturday evening, it felt like the inside of an industrial meat freezer.
Liam stood exactly in the center of the reinforced combat mat.
He had already discarded the custom spidersilk jacket and the compression shirt beneath it, leaving him bare-chested in the freezing air. His new body lacked the map of jagged scars he had acquired in his past life, but his musculature was lean, defined, and completely devoid of wasted motion.
Liora stood a few yards away behind the safety partition.
She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, a thick woolen blanket draped over her shoulders, and a medical kit sitting on the bench beside her.
She was glaring incredibly hard at the floor, occasionally sneaking glances at Liam before quickly looking away with a furiously red face.
Vespera Nocturne stood directly in front of him.
She had tied her dark hair back into a severe ponytail and stripped down to a lightweight athletic top and tactical trousers to allow for maximum freedom of movement.
Her icy blue eyes were locked onto Liam’s chest, though her gaze kept flickering nervously up to his face. For all her aristocratic poise and lethal combat experience, she was still a twenty-year-old girl who had never deliberately engaged in prolonged, skin-to-skin intimacy with a boy.
Especially not a boy who looked at her with such unnerving, absolute trust.
"I need you to understand the exact biological risks of what we are about to do," Vespera said, her voice completely devoid of its usual haughty edge. She sounded like a surgeon preparing for a highly experimental procedure.
"I will be lowering the temperature of your epidermis and muscle tissue to negative forty degrees. If your shadow mana fails to cycle the heat back to your vital organs, your heart will stop in exactly three minutes."
"My mana control is good enough," Liam replied calmly. He rolled his shoulders backward, loosening his joints. "Do not hold back, Vespera. If you give me a gentle frost, the cellular fibers will not break down properly. I need you to freeze me until I crack."
Vespera let out a slow, slightly shaky breath. Her hands began to glow with a brilliant, terrifyingly cold blue light.
"Whenever you are ready," Liam said.
Vespera stepped directly into his personal space.
The sheer proximity forced her to look up slightly to meet his eyes. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before placing both of her glowing palms flat against the center of his bare chest.
The reaction was instantaneous and violently agonizing.
Liam clenched his jaw so hard his teeth audibly ground together.
The absolute zero magic ripped through his skin, instantly turning the moisture on his chest into a layer of jagged white frost. It felt like someone had driven two spikes of solid ice directly through his ribs.
His lungs seized, completely robbing him of oxygen as the cold desperately tried to completely freeze his bloodstream.
He immediately ignited his shadow core.
Thick, ink-black mist erupted from his pores, swirling aggressively around Vespera’s hands.
The abyssal energy acted as a dark furnace, viciously fighting back against the invading ice. The clash of S-Rank frost and super-dense shadow magic created a hissing cloud of steam that completely enveloped the two of them.
"Keep cycling," Vespera commanded, her voice strained as she focused entirely on maintaining a perfect, steady flow of lethal cold. "Do not let the frost reach your spine."
Liam could not speak.
The pain was beyond anything a normal human could endure without completely losing consciousness. But Liam had spent a decade being ripped apart by extradimensional horrors.
Pain was just an electrical signal. It was a biological suggestion that he simply chose to ignore.
He forced his muscles to relax under her hands, leaning slightly into her touch to deepen the magical circuit.
Vespera felt a sudden jolt travel straight up her arms.
Because they were establishing a direct loop of elemental energy, she could feel exactly what he was feeling. She felt the agonizing bite of her own ice tearing his muscle fibers apart, but she also felt the terrifying, overwhelming density of his willpower.
His shadow magic was not wild, it was an ancient, completely unyielding force. It felt like standing at the bottom of a freezing ocean, crushed by the weight of a million tons of dark water, yet somehow feeling entirely safe.
[Ding!]
[Extreme Thermal Conditioning initiated. Physical stats are currently experiencing catastrophic breakdown and rapid reconstruction.]
[System Advice: The Ice Queen’s heart rate is currently sitting at one hundred and thirty beats per minute.
She is deeply affected by your pain tolerance and your exposed abdominal muscles. Try to groan a little bit. Make her feel essential.]
Liam actively suppressed the urge to mentally strangle the System. He focused entirely on the agonizing rhythm of destruction and healing taking place beneath his skin.
"Your core is holding," Vespera whispered, her face inches from his as she pushed more mana into his chest. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple despite the freezing temperature. "I am going to shift to your shoulders. Brace yourself."
She slid her hands upward, her smooth palms dragging agonizingly slowly over his collarbones.
The trail she left behind was instantly coated in solid ice, which Liam’s dark magic rushed to melt and reconstruct into denser, stronger tissue.
Over by the glass partition, Liora was practically vibrating with nervous energy.
She could see the veins on Liam’s neck bulging from the strain, and the sheer volume of steam rising off their connected bodies made it look like they were standing in the middle of a boiling geyser.
She wanted to run out there and wrap him in starlight, but she knew interrupting the tempering process would cause permanent muscular damage.
"You are doing incredibly well," Vespera murmured softly, entirely dropping her Ice Queen persona. She moved her hands to grip his bare shoulders, marveling at the sheer density of the muscle forming beneath her fingers. "Just two more minutes, Liam. Keep pulling my mana."
Liam finally opened his eyes.
They were glowing with a fierce, brilliant crimson light that pierced right through the white steam. He looked directly into Vespera’s wide blue eyes, entirely ignoring the searing pain radiating through his entire upper body.
"Push harder," Liam rasped, his voice vibrating with raw, unfiltered power. "You are holding back. Freeze me, Vespera."
A strange thrill shot straight down Vespera’s spine. No one had ever asked her for more power -- people only ever begged her to stop.
She let out a sharp breath, completely dropping the mental limiters on her S-Rank core.
The entire training room instantly frosted over. The glass partition cracked loudly, causing Liora to jump backward. A localized blizzard erupted directly from Vespera’s hands, sinking deep into Liam’s bones.
Liam let out a low, guttural growl as the sheer force of the magic forced him down to one knee.
He caught himself, grabbing Vespera’s waist with his hands to anchor himself against the overwhelming storm. His fingers dug into the fabric of her combat shirt, pulling her flush against him so he could siphon every single drop of her excess cold into his shadow furnace.
They stayed locked together in the center of the artificial blizzard for exactly sixty seconds, a perfect, violently intimate cycle of destruction and rebirth.
When Vespera finally severed the connection, the sudden absence of her magic caused the steam to instantly dissipate.
Liam collapsed forward, his reinforced muscles completely giving out.
Vespera caught him, stumbling backward under his heavy weight. They hit the padded mat together in a tangle of limbs, Liam’s head resting heavily against her collarbone while his breathing came in ragged, exhausted gasps.
The room was completely silent except for the sound of melting ice.