Elara's eyes snapped open. Standing in the doorway, having torn the entire door off its hinges with nothing but her small fists, was Bryella.
Completely expressionless. In her soot-covered hands, she held a steaming pot of soup.
Her once flawless, doll-like face was now smudged with ash and splashes of sauce. Her long hair was tied into a messy, lopsided bun, strands sticking out in every direction. Her clothes were stained with oil and grime, and one corner of her shirt was literally on fire.
Elara's eye twitched. "…HOW. How did this even happen?!" She pointed toward what used to be the kitchen.
Smoke was pouring out like a chimney. A chunk of ice had frozen the entire pot mid-boil. The stove was buried under something blackened and gooey.
Tools were scattered like a tornado had passed through, knives, ladles, even the salt shaker stuck halfway into the wall. The floor was a battlefield.
The ceiling was scorched. The counter looked like it had been through a small war. Somehow, a dried fish was frozen into a blob of burnt flour, with a bun sticking out like a half-dug fossil.
Elara sucked in a sharp breath. "How. Did. You. Do. This?!"
She look at Bryella from head to toe. The girl avoided eye contact.
Strangely, Elara wasn't even mad. Not really.
It was like stumbling onto the scene of a car crash and finding out someone managed to parallel park into a tree upside down. Just… pure confusion.
She remembered teaching Bryella through the basics of cooking. Side by side. Step by step.
So how the hell had the kitchen turned into a frozen warzone over a single meal?
They didn't even use dangerous stuff, just regular meat, veggies, some dry goods. A basic wood stove.
The oil wasn't flammable. And yet, it looked like a mini-disaster movie in there.
Worse, Elara had been so deep in meditation, she hadn't noticed a thing until it was too late. She gave Bryella her most terrifying death glare, full of practiced irritation.
The girl's stomach growled loudly. "I'm hungry!"
Elara's glare froze. Her own stomach rumbled in response.
Gurgle~
"See?! You're hungry too!"
"I never said I wasn't! I'm just, why are you even hungry?!"
Bryella turned away, face flushing just slightly.
As an elemental lifeform, she technically didn't need to eat. She didn't even have a proper digestive system.
But judging by the wrecked kitchen, she'd already swallowed half the ingredients. Where the heck did it all go?
"…I don't know."
"…Ugh." Elara sighed. She gave up.
Thankfully, she still had some cash left over from selling that bottle of magical spit. Being a transmigrator was one thing, but she'd never signed up to play single mom to a walking natural disaster with a bottomless stomach.
"In any case, the food's ruined. Let's go eat outside."
She pulled out her wallet. Still enough for a couple decent meals, assuming Bryella didn't try to buy the whole menu.
"…Tch." Bryella sulked while Elara bundled her up in a fuzzy hat. She didn't feel cold at all. Why wear this dumb thing?
"Don't argue! If you want food, you're going to look presentable!"
It was actually the first time the two of them went out together. Usually, Elara did all the shopping while Bryella stayed in.
"Here, just in case you see something you like."
Elara slipped a few silver coins into Bryella's coat pocket. Always the pocket, never her bare hands, or the metal would freeze her fingers stiff.
As Elara locked the door behind them, Bryella suddenly paused, eyes drifting toward a certain direction in the city. Her expression shifted slightly. …That taste. That scent.
"Alright, let's go, hey?!" Elara turned around just in time to see Bryella bolt down the street at full speed.
"Wait, what?! Bryella!"
She chased after her. The girl was fast. Without enhancing her body with mana, Elara wouldn't have been able to keep up at all.
Then she saw it, Bryella was charging straight toward a noble estate, fists clenched, ready to punch straight through the thick metal gate.
"You can't go in there!!" Elara's heart jumped.
But it's Too late. A cold wind swept across the ground. An icy wall surged up beneath Elara's feet and flung her far away.
"Bryella!!"
CRACK!!
The moment Elara was safely clear, Bryella gave a small nod. She snapped her fingers, and summoned a mountain of solid ice that tore through the mansion like paper.
The building shattered into frozen shards with a deafening crash. With a flick of her hand, the skies turned white.
A howling blizzard erupted, swirling upward like a cyclone. Her eyes, colder than winter, locked onto the target ahead.
Behind her, a vortex of condensed frost coiled through the air, like a glacial halo. "…You vile insect, die."
Snow and wind roared together, swirling into a massive icy vortex that ripped apart the clouds above. Huge, six-petaled ice blades, shaped like snowflakes, lined up in the sky, glowing with an eerie, cold light.
Each one was dozens of meters long, descending like judgment from above. Behind them trailed rivers of frost, rolling through the air like a glacial avalanche, threatening to tear open the sky and crush everything underneath.
The freezing winds shrieked wildly, twisting into shapes that looked like beasts with jaws made of snow and claws of ice. They tore across the battlefield, turning anything they touched into frozen, distorted statues of death.
Blades and frost shards spun through the air in a blizzard of white, each one dragging behind it a bitter cold that felt like it could bite through bone.
Bryella, now completely fused with the storm, shot through the air. She had become the wind and snow. Her muscles moved like the gale, and frost surged through her like blood.
Everything frozen bent to her will. Ice and snow raced to her side, forming thousands of blades and spikes that spiraled around her and launched toward a single enemy.
The sky poured glacial torrents like stampeding cavalry, falling with a deafening roar.
"Kekeke…"
But from below came a soft, sickening laugh. The abomination wasn't dead. Even as its body was shredded again and again, it kept pulling itself back together.
Bits of flesh wriggled, mouths formed, and laughter rang out from each one, like broken bells clanging out of sync.
A glowing, twisted magic circle pulsed beneath it, forming a nightmarish stage. The magic didn't hum like normal spells, it screamed.
Each note was wrong, each pulse of light was like nails down a chalkboard. It wasn't just ugly, it made you feel sick just looking at it.