"That's weird, Von isn't coming here to call us back," Fily said while prepping Lei's tool for cutting the ice.
"He's probably just being stubborn," Lei said and looked back in the cabin's direction where Von looked very obvious that he was ignoring Venedette.
Gem, on the other hand, was too cold to even utter a sound. All she could do was shiver while waiting for Fily and Lei to do their thing and finally get her to eat the ice from the lake.
"W-Wait… A-Are you sure this is s-safe?" Gem asked after remembering the fact that this ice had been in this lake for more than a thousand years already. They didn't even ask the elders if it was an edible element.
What if the element just so happens to be something toxic that only Gyu and Iba's kind, aside from the salamanders, could survive from the effects of it?
"Well, we're not yet sure about that," Fily said and pouted before finally standing up and giving Lei the ice cutter that she had been burning with a makeshift fire from her basic camping skills since earlier.
After that, she even pulled Gem closer to her just so she could also make use of the fire that was melting some centimeters off of the ice that they were standing on but still not enough to collapse their floor.
"This lake is weird, frozen bodies of water usually only have an inch to two feet thick ice from the surface but this seems to be the sturdiest of them all. Do you think it's ice up until the bottom?" Fily said and looked at both of her companions who seemed to have no clue of what she was talking about.
"But then again, Gyu and Iba were said to have been preserved on the bottom of this lake in a frozen state which means that there could possibly still ice down there, right?" Fily asked again and got the same response from the two who were either too busy cutting up the firm ice floor or just too cold to say anything anymore.
After a few minutes of watching Lei do all the hard work for them, Fily finally spoke again, this time regarding the thing about her theory and how it works.
"You see, I really think you belong to Gyu and Iba's bloodline. Not just because of your unknown bloodline but also because of the fact that you could effortlessly use the Salamandite just like that. I mean Venedette had been dealing with her Salamandite ever since she found out that it was magical and still has no luck activating it, but you… aside from it wouldn't let you die, it looks like it forced itself to activate because it didn't want you to die."
"U-Uhuh," Gem muttered while nodding against the cold wind.
"So if my theory is correct and you're indeed a kin of Gyu and Iba, then you must also have the power of being able to convert the Phyxies into Energy slimes?!" Fily exclaimed enthusiastically.
"That's right, but do we even have any idea of how Gyu, Iba, and the Salamanders do it?" Lei suddenly said after pausing for a minute from his stressful task.
"Hmm, you're right. I don't have any idea how they do it," Fily said and got into thinking in her mind palace while squatting down after a long time of standing up.
She even cursed in her mind for always being in the dark of these important history secrets that she wouldn't get access to if she won't go to the source herself.
Not that her kind even knows about what was going on here anyway. Because other than they can't move from one place to another so effortlessly just like any other superhuman being on this planet, they also didn't have the right to process rumors and stories that aren't published by the real author themselves on the internet.
"Okay, I have decided, we should just go ask the elders about this thing first and see if it is edible and before you could go and try to eat it, Gem, but for the meantime, let's get you out of this lake now before your whole body turns into frostbite."
"Wait, you're going to leave me here?" Lei suddenly complained after just finishing the third line of the cube that seemed more difficult than it really is from the outside.
Since the ice was too thick, cutting it became even harder. Unlike the thin strips of ice in the winter coasts where you just need to cut a square in order to get a perfectly cut ice cube, here Lei even had to find a way to cut the bottom part of it without wasting the shape that he had already outlined earlier.
This means he had to be extra careful while cutting the bottom part of the cube with a mere ice cutter or else he would need to start over from the top again, and hearing about Fily wanting to leave already, Lei knew he couldn't afford to do that.
"I have no choice, or else Gem would freeze to death in here."
'But she won't die, remember?' Lei wanted to say out loud but just kept his mouth shut because what if, what if she had already reached the limit of her immortality, starting from that arrow that almost killed her yesterday?
"Okay, but can you warm this again for the last time?" Lei said and handed the ice cutter back to Fily who immediately placed it in the fire just so they could be done with it already.
"You can do this, even just a tiny cube will do. We're just here to test it after all," Fily said and then carried Gem away slowly with her minus stamina points.
"Ah, I should have drawn a smaller cube instead," Lei muttered to himself while looking at the bottom of the lake through the clear ice water beneath his feet as if he was flying above frozen earth.