"...and when I asked him for help, he just laughed! And said he's only the thirteenth prince and will never see the throne, so here he decided to use me! Me! Can you imagine?! Mmm, this is so tasty…" Anna took another bite of the cake I had bought in the Kaiju world. "He planned it from the very beginning, and once he helped me get to the palace when I was getting worse, he came up with the perfect plan to stay a hero in Arendelle's eyes and the one I entrusted the throne to, and Elsa… ugh, I'd hit him again!"
"So basically, it's obvious. A simple lust for power." I shrugged.
"Mhm." Elsa nodded, also eating her cake.
A couple of hours had passed since the "winter" ended, letting people breathe freely again and return to their daily lives. Merchant ships were still in a hurry to sell their goods and buy new ones before sailing back. The ships from the Southern Isles, where Prince Hans had come from, had already departed not long ago along with the injured prince… they had to let him go, otherwise the escalation could lead to serious consequences.
"You'd better tell us about yourself! You already know everything about us!" Anna pointed at me and quickly took another bite of cake without taking her eyes off me.
"My name is Victor, or just Vik. I'm twenty-one…"
"Same as Elsa!" Anna bounced in her seat.
"...yes, same as your sister." I continued. "Because of my abilities, I had to run from home, but now… there is no home anymore."
"...what happened?" Anna asked curiously, ignoring Elsa's look, who had sensed the shift in mood better and clearly wanted to shut her up.
"Uh… ha-ha, that's… no, so no. My home, my country, my planet, my reality… were destroyed. Completely." I said and took out some hot chocolate.
Yeah. Like that. It helps my nerves.
"How is that possible?" Elsa asked.
"Where I come from, meaning from a completely different world, there are so-called anomalous objects, or just anomalies. And there is an organization called S.C.P. that hunts them, collects them, contains them… or eliminates them. Sometimes people become anomalies… I'm one of them. And my abilities, not magic, note that, allow me to… how to put it… materialize objects from modern media into reality."
"So you're not a mage?" Anna asked again.
"Right now, you could call me that, I guess. But my main ability isn't magic, like Elsa's." I looked at the white-haired girl. "It's the materialization of such objects into reality. Those potions—I materialized them from a game in my world…"
"Games?! That's… hard to imagine." Anna frowned thoughtfully.
"Imagine a drawing with an apple in it. My ability lets me put my hand into the picture and take the apple out into reality. And it will be completely edible."
"That… could be a very powerful ability." Elsa nodded. "So… you don't have a home?"
"No. I travel from place to place using a portal gun that I obtained with my powers. That's how I ended up at your ice castle, just like I said before—completely by accident." I shrugged, as if I wasn't basically homeless on a universal scale.
"So you don't have a place to stay? Stay with me!" Anna suddenly exclaimed, then quickly corrected herself: "I mean with us! In the palace! We have plenty of space, right, Elsa?" she looked at her sister.
"Ahem, we do have enough space. And you did, in a way, save us…" Elsa smiled softly.
"The queen's gratitude." I smirked. "I don't mind staying for a while. I'm curious to see what else this world has."
"You want to travel?" Anna clasped her hands together and rose on her toes as if she had heard something amazing.
"I can travel between worlds, but… I want to try exploring this one. So yeah, traveling. By the way, where is that… snowman?"
"Oh, Olaf is out walking. He got curious about meeting people… hopefully there won't be too many problems." Anna waved her hand carelessly.
Soon, a slightly plump older maid approached me and showed me to my chambers. I felt like I was in a resort hotel. The kingdom was still lively, since not even a full day had passed since the "winter" ended by the queen's will.
And I… sat down to play games. Just like that.
"Oh, so that's how it works… can I try?" Anna asked when she saw me playing Terraria and watched for a while. Her eyes were practically begging, and throughout the day she had… clearly been trying to stay closer to me. She even volunteered to show me the kingdom, sang a song about how beautiful everything was… even in winter, yeah.
And what's funny is that Elsa noticed it too and also tried to stay closer to her sister. Apparently, now that she had more or less accepted herself and her powers, she wasn't afraid to be near Anna anymore.
And now it was the next morning. After breakfast together at a large table, I sat on a beautifully patterned sofa… and that's when Anna found me and sat down beside me.
So I just let her play on my old laptop, the one I hadn't materialized. She quickly got the hang of it and started playing. I think that'll keep her busy for a while… maybe a day…
"Ugh, stupid slime!" she shouted, pouting.
Maybe longer…
I, meanwhile, started playing another game—Mass Effect. I had already started a playthrough, but now I wanted to approach it more seriously and also run another experiment. I began with the first game, and when I saw the Normandy—the protagonist's ship given by the Council—I pulled it out and stored it in my inventory. After any save, I could no longer retrieve that ship…
The difficulty in choosing the right game is that I haven't played that many with useful things. So far, nothing has beaten Terraria and The Sims in terms of usefulness, but maybe there's another… Minecraft. I'm not sure it has anything overpowered, but I know there are plenty of potions, golden apples, and so on.
In any case, having those items won't hurt and—
"Damn…" creative mode doesn't let me take items, even though I wasn't really expecting it, already understanding how my powers work. Still, it was worth a try.
Arendelle, as I had already noticed more than once, is a small kingdom, but even it had enemies. Elsa's grandfather, Runeard, was killed in cold blood by the Northuldra tribe, who live in the Enchanted Forest to the north of Arendelle. That's what led to the war with them, though it happened more than thirty years ago.
Now the kingdom had no enemies and was prospering peacefully. It's still a great place where ships from different kingdoms can meet, trade, and buy goods.
"Interesting… so you have a world map?" I asked Queen Elsa.
"A world map? We have maps of nearby kingdoms and island states, and we know the mainland fairly well from merchants and travelers." she nodded, and soon I was able to examine the map, noticing some familiar names.
For example, on the mainland there is a "Kingdom"—literally just that, no special name. Nearby there's also something called the "Enchanted Forest." Far to the south there's a city called Agrabah, as well as Magraba, Bangladesh, and others… my eyes also caught an island kingdom called "Corona," and many more names.
"Heh, so this is a Disney world…" I realized.
No, I knew I was in the world of Frozen, that was obvious even for the slowest person. But the fact that other kingdoms from different fairy tales and movies exist here too—that was a surprise. Though… not that shocking, to be honest. My reality had been destroyed recently, that was far more mind-breaking…
Minecraft had a lot of different items to test how they worked in reality. But I decided to test something rather unusual—bone meal. In the game, using it on plants instantly accelerates their growth. Here, I had to ask Elsa again, though she didn't seem bothered by it. In fact, she was interested.
In the royal gardens, they grow some kind of grains for certain dishes. They usually buy them, but these crops are hardy and grow well in this climate. When I pulled bone meal from the game… it looked like ordinary flour, just slightly gray. As soon as I sprinkled it on the crops, they instantly grew. Some reached full maturity, others looked as if a month had passed.
"Amazing…"
"Your powers are more amazing." I looked at the white-haired girl, who was examining the crops grown in seconds with interest.
"My power is cold, it freezes…"
"But it also gives life, just not the kind humans are used to." I recalled Olaf. "Your powers are beautiful."
"T-thank you…" she said and coughed lightly into her fist. "Do you have anything else to test?"
"Hmm, apples. I want to see if an apple tree will grow here…"
The experiments were just beginning. Even if agriculture didn't interest me that much, it was still… fascinating.