Coppelia's consciousness gradually returned. She could feel her mechanical body running; its depleted energy had been fully replenished.
She opened her eyes. The Cryo Regisvine lay collapsed beside her, motionless. It probably wasn't sleeping.
Rustle, rustle. The petals of the Cryo Regisvine trembled slightly.
Startled, Coppelia immediately shot up and retreated, lowering her stance and raising her hands in a fighting pose.
After observing it carefully for a moment, she saw the Cryo Regisvine only twitched occasionally. There were no signs of Cryo element flowing through it. The light blue of its stem and petals had deepened, and some parts were already turning black.
"It must be dead for good." Coppelia walked towards the Cryo Regisvine's head and saw Columbina crouching by its corolla, fiddling with something.
The Cryo Regisvine's core, made of pure Cryo element, had vanished. It might have been consumed in a reaction or simply dissipated naturally.
Columbina scooped out a ball of blue slush from the Cryo Regisvine's now-hollow corolla, popped it into her mouth, and revealed a satisfied expression. Seeing Coppelia approach, she took out another ball of blue slush and handed it to her.
Coppelia took the slush and tried a bite. Countless tiny ice crystals provided a cool texture, while thick droplets released a fresh sweetness. It tasted like ice cream.
...
Coppelia tore off a piece of the Cryo Regisvine's bark to use as a plate and scooped out all the slush from its head. She also discovered some transparent, gelatinous substance clinging to the inner wall. It looked like jelly. She tasted it; the slush's sweetness seemed to come from this. She put it in the 'bowl' as well.
She had Columbina move to the side to eat slowly, preparing to dismantle the tree and take all the edible parts with her.
But after a thorough check, she found that apart from the gelatinous substance and slush around the core, the rest of the corolla was filled with tough fibers, none of which were edible.
She peeled back the skin of the stem, revealing soft, muscle-like structures. She tore off a piece and took a bite. It was slightly salty but difficult to chew through, also inedible.
Coppelia stopped what she was doing. She had tried every part she could; nothing else was edible.
"Time to go." She called to Columbina, who had finished her slush, and prepared to leave.
It was the first time Columbina had eaten something sweet. She gazed at the Cryo Regisvine, looking a little reluctant to leave, but she quickly followed.
The two arrived at the edge of a cliff on the opposite side of the woodland. A much larger valley came into view; the cliff was on its eastern side.
The valley was a vast expanse of white, with ice and snow covering every corner.
The east, south, and north sides were enclosed by completely vertical cliffs. The terrain sloped down from the edges toward the center, like a meteor crater. At the bottom of the valley was a lake that took up about a tenth of the valley's radius, and within the lake, there was a small island.
To the north and south stood towering, snow-capped mountains that trapped the wind within the valley and blocked out the sun.
To the west of the valley lay a wide body of water, whether a river or a lake, she couldn't tell. Further west was another large mountain, shrouded in thick clouds and mist.
...
After getting a general sense of the valley's topography, Coppelia took a few steps forward to the cliff's edge and looked down.
She roughly estimated the distance to the valley floor to be about three hundred meters. A gust of wind blew up along the cliff face, gradually chilling her exposed skin.
"How do we get down?" Columbina asked.
If the cliff weren't so high, she could have just jumped. Coppelia was quite confident in her body's durability; at worst, her legs would hurt for a few minutes upon landing.
But from a height of three hundred meters, she wasn't sure if the fall would damage her mechanical body.
"Let's use the Anemo element," Coppelia replied. "After jumping, we can create an upward wind current around our bodies to hold ourselves up in the air and reduce our speed. That way, we can lessen or even eliminate the impact damage."
She led Columbina away from the cliff to try using the Anemo element.
She remembered that the orange-gold energy inside her body could be broken down into seven different colored energies. Red corresponded to Pyro elemental force. By that logic, cyan must correspond to the Anemo element.
She gathered the energy into her palm, imagining it turning cyan.
The airflow in her palm grew turbulent. A cyan force spread out from her hand, and the currents immediately converged into a cyclone. She crushed the cyclone, and a gentle breeze expanded from her palm, rustling her clothes and hair.
The first attempt was a success. She then dispersed the energy throughout her torso, converting it into Anemo elemental force to try and lift her entire body.
However, the energy was too thin and scattered, and her control over the element was still imprecise. She couldn't form a stable wind current, only managing to stir up chaotic rings of air that expanded outwards, causing her skirt to flap and snap and kicking up gusts of dust.
This attempt was a failure.
She recalled her experience fighting the Cryo Regisvine with the Pyro element and decided to apply the same method of concentrating Pyro to the Anemo element.
This time, she gathered the Anemo element only in her chest and abdomen.
The concentrated Anemo element flowed around her body, forming a ring-shaped wind current that enveloped her like a swim ring, lifting her up.
Coppelia felt her feet leave the ground, rising slowly. But this lasted for only about thirty seconds before her body's supply of elemental energy was suddenly cut off. The wind current weakened, unable to provide lift, and she slowly descended back to the ground.
She dispersed the Anemo element and landed steadily.
"About thirty seconds. That should be enough to slow down during the fall and reduce my speed to a safe level before landing."
She tried to convert more Anemo element, but there was no response. It seemed the energy for conversion was depleted.
"Come look at this." Columbina's soft voice called out. Coppelia followed the sound and saw Columbina standing on a rocky outcrop on the cliff face, four or five meters above the ground.
"How did you get up there?" Coppelia was alarmed, afraid she might fall and get hurt. She rushed over, stood below Columbina, and held out her arms to catch her. "Get down, quickly!"
The ginger-red highlights in Columbina's hair gave off a faint red glow. She leaped down, but instead of accelerating, she floated gently to the ground like a feather.
Columbina retracted her power, and the red glow in her hair vanished. She turned her head and asked:
"When you said 'slow down,' did you mean like this?"
"I guess so..."
Columbina's body was already light, and by using her power to slow her descent, she didn't need to worry about getting injured upon landing at all.
Coppelia pointed to her own glowing red eyes and said sheepishly, "I seem to be out of energy again."
But Columbina lowered her head in thought for a moment, then looked up and walked straight to the edge of the cliff, stopping there. Coppelia followed and stood beside her.
"You've helped me so much during this time," Columbina said, touching her stomach. She turned to face Coppelia. "I want to help you for once, too."
"You've already helped me a lot just by recharging me." Coppelia scratched her head and pointed down the cliff. "Just charge me up first. I need this to get down."
Columbina didn't speak. Instead, she embraced Coppelia from the front. The highlights in her hair began to glow red again, even brighter than before.
Then, she gave a hard push, sending them both plunging off the cliff together.
___
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