Chapter 17 - The Power Of Four Degrees (1/2)

A grain of rice can tip the scales...

Such was the perfect way to describe how delicate the struggle between

Will and the king was.

The king was all-powerful and dominant, baptized by constant battle and even Mother Nature herself.

Will was a human who had a sharp mind and a plethora of skills that were extremely dangerous given that they were used in the right situation.

The question in this situation was who would win? On which scale would the grain fall? Will did not want the answer to be within doubt. After gritting his teeth, he hurriedly mobilized all available parts in his brain in an attempt to come up with a solution. He was literally inside the jaws of death, and only a little bit of water was keeping him alive.

What can I do? How do I get out of this?

Will spread his awareness outside, in an attempt to understand his surroundings. The king had bitten onto the ball of water surrounding Will, and he was so desperate that he had even bitten through the soil to get to Will.

Will tried as much as he could to increase the volume of the water, or perhaps expand it, but the mighty jaws of the king were nothing to scoff at. Will felt as if he was trapped in between two mountains. There was nothing he could think of to improve the situation.

Will's awareness told him that the King's jaws were also at their limits. However, they would not budge. Suddenly, Will had a flash of inspiration! However, he needed to act fast, because he wasn't sure how long he could hold out...

For this plan to work, I need to be able to freeze the water. I haven't tried before so this will be a gamble!

Indeed, Will hadn't tried freezing something before, however, he did have a starting point.

In terms of states, ice is the opposite of vapor, so I just have to reverse the process I use when I convert water into vapor...

This was, however, easier said than done. Just because one can write from left to right, it doesn't mean they can do the opposite.

For this gamble, Will was depending on his ability to multi-task and his

increased wisdom. First, he attempted to freeze a small amount of water within the ball of water that had surrounded him. After a few momentary failures, he succeeded! It wasn't much because he had only frozen a small amount of water. However, Will was confident he could improve the extent of what he could achieve.

The next step was to freeze most of the water surrounding him whilst maintaining a thin membrane of warm water to protect him from the cold.

Okay, that's a success. It's now or never!

The king was confident that he would be able to get through Will's water defense any second now. However, the unexpected occurred. From the King's point of view, the water suddenly became cold and increased in volume, forcing his jaws to extend even further. The flesh on the side of the King's mouth... ripped! The King ignored the searing pain, refusing to give up. He was about to bite down, even more, when a burst of intense killing intent pervaded his senses.

It was the strongest killing intent the King had ever felt in its entire life. This killing intent was not only intense, it even slightly warped reality, making it denser, making the king feel as if his whole person was covered in jelly, thus slowing him down to the point he began resembling an insect trapped within tree sap, struggling to break free yet unable.

As Will grew more and more confident, he froze the entire sphere. Will's teacher, during the same 'water-boiling experiment' where Will had revealed his knowledge of the ability to cut with water, he had also revealed another interesting fact about water to will and his class.

This time Will had been surprised as well: 'Normally, things expand when heated and contract when cooled. This applies to almost everything in nature. However, water is one of the few exceptions. When water is being cooled, in between the range of four and zero degrees Celsius, it actually expands the colder it gets, due to something called hydrogen bonds, which