Nyonyokyo swung her whip. The lightning bolts that had covered him scattered in all directions, ripping splinters from the wooden walls. One even flew past the window, but miraculously missed it, simply vanishing into thin air.
"Her weapon won't be able to break the barrier," Sogotoh thought. "That means she'll attack differently. I even know how. The main thing is to be quick."
Suddenly, Nyonyokyo threw her whip, which remained suspended in the air and scattered lightning bolts, then she appeared near the barrier. The doll attempted to pierce the energy wall with a sword enhanced by electrical aura, and soon succeeded.
The tip of the blade passed through the barrier, but then stopped. Nyonyokyo tried to pull the weapon out of the wall, but was unable to.
"The Stone Sheep Trap is still working," Sogotoh thought. "I used to think it was a useless mechanic. No one would stick something directly into the barrier except Imerii."
The energy hand approached the doll and then slammed hard onto the floor.
Nyonyokyo moved to the whip in the middle of the room and grabbed it. The sword remained stuck in the barrier wall, gradually losing its electrical charge.
"She doesn't have many ways to attack me anymore," Sogotoh thought. "The main thing is that she doesn't summon a Thunderstorm. It's her most powerful ability. If she uses it, I won't have a home anymore."
"Sis Toloruchan has already finished," Nyonyokyo said. "Now you don't have to give me my yellow sis."
At that moment, Sogotoh noticed that the pink-haired doll was no longer in the room.
"I agreed with sis Toloruchan that she would take my yellow sis. I have to ask you the most important thing. I just remembered it."
"Does she want to ask about it?" a heavy feeling formed inside Sogotoh.
"Sis Toloruchan can't speak, so I can ask you," Nyonyokyo continued. "And so I ask."
"Ask."
"Where is that thing?"
Nyonyokyo waved her whip in front of her. A screen appeared in front of the doll, displaying an image: the skull of a three-horned dinosaur, filled with blue energy, rotating above treeless, snow-covered seashore.
"I don't know, it's somewhere in the north," Sogotoh answered. "It's so cold there trees can't grow."
"We're in the north now," the doll shook its head. "Is it somewhere nearby?"
"If you want to know, ask the spirit of mushrooms on the Island of Energy Mushrooms. She knows everything."
"Does she know how many sisters I have?"
"No. Everything except that…"
"Okay."
The whip and the screen disappeared. Nyonyokyo turned to the wall. Sogotoh only had time to notice the shards of glass and the empty window frame.
"So they're looking for a secret server," Sogotoh thought, approaching the broken window. "But why… What do they want to know? Do they really think that if they hack this server, then…"
Sogotoh turned his gaze to the hole in the wall, from which neither the yellow hair, nor the doll's head, nor any other body parts were visible.
"...Then dolls can become not dolls?"
***
Yueret stood on the snow-covered seashore, where white ice floes were washed ashore. In the distance, on the horizon, the silhouette of a mountain was visible, hidden in the fog.
"Why am I here?" Yueret turned in the opposite direction and saw a mountainside, covered in bushes and piled high with snowdrifts.
"No, I couldn't have come here on my own, even with the signal. Someone brought me here and then abandoned me."
Yueret looked at the sea. Numerous thick ice floes floated on its surface, making it seem as if one could jump across these formations.
"Exactly, I'm in a game, and I can do some things you can't in real life. I'm sorry, Unana."
Yueret stepped onto the ice floe and then noticed that his boots were no longer black. Instead of human winter footwear, he wore blue-white slippers shaped like bear paws.
"Exactly, I'm a character now," Yueret smiled. "Now I can be a bear boy for a bit. Incidentally, there aren't any bear boys in any game."
Yueret looked at his hands and confirmed that they, too, were covered in white-blue fur paws with long black claws.
"I hope I don't look ridiculous."
Yueret stepped on an ice floe and soon reached a clear patch of water.
"Well, it's a little funny, but whatever. There's no one here anyway."
A bear boy in a round hood with small ears looked out at Yueret from the water.
"If I'm in a game, then I should have a map and an interface."
The "older bear cub" waved his "paw" through the air. A screen in a white ice frame with several ice-style buttons appeared in front of him.
"Map, abilities, settings, quests. There's nothing extra here. Why can't games do this?"
Yueret pressed the button that opened his skills. A second screen appeared on top of the first screen, with cells in two rows, top and bottom.
The top row contained slots with white and blue bear heads, but with different eye colors. The bottom row contained more familiar abilities, with icons of snowflakes, icicles, and something else entirely.
"So, that's what the spirit of the white-blue bear can do."
Yueret selected the snowflake slot. Nothing happened, but the oldest of the "bear cubs" knew what to do. He extended his hand forward, and a blue-white beam of light, surrounded by icy vapor, erupted from it.
"I thought right. A blue-white bear must be able to freeze. This is especially important for making ice floes. For them, they're like boats, only the ice floes float on their own."
Yueret glanced at the snowflake slot again and discovered that it hadn't turned gray like most normal skills on cooldown. Instead, it was emitting a white-blue glow. This meant the skill was still ready for use.
Yueret found this strange and looked at the palm from which the icy beam had erupted.
"What? Are they glowing?"
The pads on the "paw" were indeed glowing with a white-blue "icy" color. Yueret immediately guessed that was where the ice beam had come from, but decided to check it out. He pointed his hand at an ice-free patch of water and waited…
The glow intensified sharply. The next moment, that same white-blue beam shot out from the palm of the hand, slammed into the water, and turned it to ice.
"It really does freeze me. But why am I surprised by that? I'm not Unana. I'm not eighteen years old, and I've played a lot of games."
Yueret turned his palm toward himself and noticed the glow quickly fading. Soon, the pads on his glove turned gray, but only for a few moments.
"This skill has a very low cooldown. I thought it had no cooldown at all."
Yueret moved to the next ice floe, and then suddenly realized what this skill could be useful for.
"I can freeze the sea to get to that mountain. Of course, I can jump across the ice floes, but that would take too long."
Soon the available ice floes ran out. They still floated on the water, of course, but they were too far apart.
"I can do it like this," the "bear paw" pointed toward the water in front of Yueret.
The ice beam fired formed an ice floe, but it still wasn't enough. To quickly reach the mountain, partially hidden in fog, an ice bridge was needed.
Yueret looked at the screen, which moved with him. His gaze settled on the top row of slots with bear heads.
"Here you can summon a bear that will help in battle or heal. But I need one that can swim or slide on ice."
Yueret began moving his finger closer to the slots, but avoiding touching them to avoid accidentally activating them. Above each skill there appeared a description, which was not very clear for ordinary people.
But Yueret wasn't an ordinary person. He'd graduated from school and played a lot of games, so he knew a lot of symbols. Because of this, Yueret often couldn't remember what had happened a few days earlier, but he knew exactly what each symbol meant.
"These bears aren't fit for this. None of them can swim. There has to be another one who can."
Yueret scrolled to the very bottom of the skill pages and found another button, with a gray lock.
"This is a closed section. It's unlikely I can access it easily. I'll need to unlock the button first."
Yueret lowered his claw onto the lock button, but as expected, nothing happened. The button refused to click and appeared as just a graphic on the screen.
"So I'll have to jump," Yueret looked at the nearest ice floe floating toward him. "But how will I jump? I probably don't even have a purple aura in this world."
The ice floe approached to within a few steps. Yueret jumped onto it, but soon realized it was too awkward to move that way.
"If I freeze a lot of water, I can create an ice bridge. But that would require a very powerful skill."
Yueret turned his attention back to the bottom row of slots on the screen and noticed an incomprehensible image consisting of several elements. This was the only symbol that Yueret could not read.
"I don't know what this is, but if I press it, I don't think anything bad will happen. I wonder what Unana would do? But I'm not Unana, so it doesn't matter."
Yueret slowly moved his finger toward the button with the incomprehensible symbol, as if the result depended on how he pressed it.
"So I found a symbol I can't read. I thought I knew every symbol in the world. Forgive me, Unana."
His claw descended on the button, and it instantly activated with a white-blue glow...
... and then faded just as quickly. Yueret looked around, searching for any trace of the skill's effect, but found none.
"Didn't work?"
Luckily, Yueret knew from his gaming experience that there were skills that didn't function like regular skills. They do not fire balls or beams, or summon creatures. All they do is provide some positive effect, but at the same time they look like something useless.
"I need to look up the stats."
Yueret opened the skill icons window, but quickly realized he couldn't understand anything, having never looked at them before. So the older "bear cub" had to guess how a skill.
...or does it work? Yueret suddenly noticed how the ice floes, floating randomly on the water, lined up, forming that bridge.
"Isn't this a trap? No, it's just a skill I activated. Don't be like Unana."
Yueret walked across the ice bridge. His bear-paw-shaped slippers didn't slip at all on the ice, allowing him to walk as if he were on solid ground.
Yueret was happy. He didn't care that visibility was gradually deteriorating and the bridge was lost in the fog. He had solved the riddle of the "useless" skill and was even beginning to guess what that strange symbol on the slot meant...
Unfortunately, the happiness didn't last long. A low, drawn-out groan emanated from the fog, impossible to ignore.
"Bear... No, I won't go any further."
Yueret turned to retreat, but there was nowhere to retreat. All that remained of the ice bridge was gray-blue water.
"Once I step on the ice, it disappears."
Yueret took a step forward and saw a paw print form on the ice floe, then sink into the water.
"If I go forward, I'll meet a bear. But now I'm a bear too, even if it's not a real one. Okay, I'll go."
Yueret walked in the only possible direction. The bear's roar grew louder, though no silhouettes appeared in the fog.
"Maybe it's just a bear cub? Bear cubs aren't scary at all. Unana even wanted a bear cub when she was little, but I didn't let her. I knew it would grow up and kick us out of the home."
The "bridge" led Yueret to a large "island" of ice floes. The fog cleared slightly, allowing the mountain's outline to reappear in the distance.
The roar gave way to a groan, no less terrible, but at the same time plaintive. At the other end of the "island," Yueret saw a white-blue creature with a large head and small ears.
"It's the bear."
Yueret cautiously approached the opposite shore of the "island" and saw a human face looming over the edge of the hood.
"Are you roaring?" Yueret asked, starting a conversation.
The creature turned around. Yueret immediately recognized it as the blue-white bear girl, although he had only seen her from a distance before.
"No, it's Hotukachan," the animal girl looked at the visitor pitifully.
"There's no one here."
"Yup… Hotukachan is there."
The bear girl pointed at the silhouette of a mountain in the distance.
"Is she roaring from there?" Yueret asked.
"Yup... She's calling to me. But I can't get there."
"Why? You're a blue-white bearry."
"You too a blue-white bearry. But why… I'm the spirit of the blue-white bear, not you."
"I don't know. I was an ordinary person, but I ended up here and became like this."
The bear girl crawled on all fours toward Yueret and sniffed the sleeve of his blue-white jacket.
"The clothes are real, but you're not real. I probably won't freeze you. No, I definitely won't. I can't. The spirit of the white-blue bear cannot be frozen without its consent."
"I don't need to do anything," Yueret said. "I need to get out of here, and then I'll stop being a blue-white bear."
"It's not easy," the bear girl looked at the mountain in the distance. "There's a place there where there's a mirror. If you look in there, you can leave. But you can't. And I can't either."
"Why? Is there a barrier?"
"Yup, the non-living creatures erected a barrier to prevent me from entering the lake and interfering with their ritual."
"What ritual?"
"The assembling ritual…"
The bear girl looked at Yueret as seriously as she could before continuing:
"They once came to me and wanted to take my Hotukachan from me, but then I froze them. Now they lie in the lake, under the ice. But some non-living creatures remained unfrozen. I thought they were gone, so I went to the sea to fish, but when I returned, the barrier was already there. I couldn't get home. Now the non-living creatures are waiting for the ice to melt so they can assemble."
"Is she talking about dolls?" Yueret looked at the silhouette of a mountain, seemingly rising from the ice-covered sea. "They can reattach their body parts if they break them. Some dolls even have arms that move independently of their bodies. Yeah, they are definitely dolls. No need to even ask."
"Will you help me?" the bear girl asked. "I have lots of yum-yum at home. You're a bear, and bears love yum-yum. If you help me, I'll give you two boxes of ice cream and a box of cake."
"You should be offering this to Unana, not me," Yueret thought. "But I don't think she'll agree. It's too little for her."
"Don't you want something so yum-yum?" the bear girl licked her lips. "Then I'll give you ten boxes of ice cream and two boxes of cake and a chocolate figurine that looks like a blue-white bear. It's me."
"Unana might agree to this. It's a shame I can't give her this yum-yum."
"You want yum-yum?" the bear girl slapped the air with her paw. "That's a lot for such a little bear."
"Yup, but how can I help you? I don't have the skills to remove the barrier."
"Let's go. I'll show you, but it's not tasty."
***
Halankuo emerged from a tunnel on the mountainside. From there, a view opened up of a mist-filled intermountain valley, with the distant silhouettes of mountains visible beyond the tops of the coniferous trees.
"Kyotyoryon must be here," Halankuo began scanning the surrounding area and soon discovered a clearing in the forest. "I hope the dolls didn't catch her."
Halankuo approached the forest and saw a column of smoke rising above the treetops, visible even against the fog.
"Why does she always run away?"
Halankuo summoned the Mausoleum of Nature map. The character's mark was located on a green background, very close, almost merging with the creator's mark.
Halankuo closed the map and ran into the forest. She was in such a hurry that she almost tripped over a fallen tree trunk that someone had thoughtfully left on the path.
"Kyotyoryon, why..." Halankuo activated her purple aura and rose above the treetops.
...Smoke rose from smoldering tree trunks on the bank of a narrow river. Halankuo landed in a scorched clearing and discovered the silhouette of a creature with a large head and small ears on top...