Face-changing is an excellent traditional art form worth learning.

One you have to learn.

And Zog was a very good student.

Taking the fall for something was no big deal.

Besides, what did something Zog’s main account did have to do with him, Zog’s alt account?

In an igloo within the Ice and Snow Paradise, Zog, Furin, and El sat around a table made of ice.

The chairs had roe deer skin cushions to prevent the pure ice from being cold and hard to sit on.

Roe deer skin was a very common fur in the Northern Domain. Not only were the deer plentiful, but they were also ridiculously easy to catch.

It was hard to say if it was due to foolishness or excessive curiosity, but after a roe deer luckily escaped a Hunter’s attack, it would return to the same spot after a little while.

It just wanted to see what had hit it.

Once the population expanded a bit more, it wasn’t hard to predict that becoming a protected species would be the roe deers’ future.

Besides the table and chairs, the cups were also carved from ice blocks, carrying the ice-and-snow theme through to the end.

The cola on ice here would never get diluted from melting ice cubes. If anything, drinking too slowly might turn it into a solid block of frozen cola.

El held a wooden bowl of hot tea, curiously observing this large house made entirely of ice.

The Frost Elves of the past used to build igloos like this too. They lived off seafood, and because they lacked fruits and vegetables, the Frost Elves who lived year-round in the polar regions had a slightly shorter average lifespan than other Elves.

But they had no choice. The Frost Elves were once hunted by treasure-seeking Hunting Corps because their eyes were an excellent ritual component, forcing them to flee to the polar regions.

The Human King claimed to protect the Frost Elves, but secretly supported the Hunting Corps.

He wanted both international prestige and the ritual components.

That’s why Elves generally looked down on Humans, considering them a race that doesn’t keep its promises.

The Frost Elves’ situation only improved after a cheaper substitute was found for the ritual use of their eyes.

After their lives improved, they stopped living in these pure ice houses, which offered no comfort to speak of, and started building wooden or stone houses instead.

"What did you build this kind of house for?" El asked, confused.

"To attract people to spend money to come here and have fun," Zog replied.

"Spend money... to come here... and have fun?"

El felt that even though the words were familiar, when put together, the sentence was incomprehensible.

"Tourism is when you leave a place you’re sick of living in to go to a place someone else is sick of living in. You spend money to suffer, and when you get back home, you filter out the bad parts from your memory and let the good parts move you to tears."

’That actually seems to make a lot of sense.’

’It’s just a little grating.’

Old El felt that his lifestyle—traveling far and wide to witness the myriad facets of the world for so many years—had been sullied.

’This really is the real Zog. It’d be hard to find another Dragon with such a sharp tongue.’

"So, in order to attract more people to the Northern Domain to be ’moved,’ your magical support is indispensable."

Zog steered the conversation back on topic.

"What’s the general idea for your plan?"

Ideas were one thing, but Zog needed to know if it was actually feasible.

"Can I see in what form your recorded content is stored?" El asked.

He had already come to a rough conclusion during his debate with Furin. To achieve that kind of effect, he couldn’t rely on Illusion Technique alone; he had to modify the recorded illusionary images.

The Elves had mastered a type of magic for precisely modifying memories, which was similar to this method.

Conventional Memory Magic could only clear, implant, blur, or uncontrollably distort memories.

But as a long-lived species, Elves had more experiences and thus a need for more precise memory adjustment. This led to the birth of a magic that was akin to adjusting the details of a memory on a canvas.

It belonged to the Transformation School.

"Of course." The Zog Group had plenty of unused footage. They hadn’t deleted it precisely because they were saving it for various experiments.

"Uh, could we use the Shadow of Evil of a few Zor just messing around on their instruments?"

Old El still hadn’t forgiven the Zor Band he’d heard at the milk tea shop and refused to call what they did "singing."

Assistant Zor quickly delivered the Magic Crystal Stone.

Old El gripped the Magic Crystal Stone, and several sets of Inscriptions and Micro Magic Arrays appeared on his palm and forearm.

Zog stared, completely stunned. He’d never seen any of that stuff when they used to play cards.

’Did he tattoo a bunch of diagnostic Inscriptions directly onto his skin for convenience?’

’So he’s Yakuza, huh? An old-timer Elf gangster.’

Holding the Magic Crystal Stone, El fell into a long silence, completely motionless. He didn’t even blink.

It was quite terrifying for a Dragon.

If something really happened to Eldron here, it would be something of a diplomatic incident.

"What’s wrong with him? He’s not going to die here, is he?" Zog whispered to Furin.

After all, Furin had studied under him formally for several years, so she definitely knew more than Zog, his card-playing buddy.

"It’s nothing serious. He’s simulating the magic’s composition in his head. He’s always like this," Furin replied.

"Huh?" Zog couldn’t comprehend it. ’Are all you Legendary Mages this abstract? Don’t tell me you have a simulation system in your brain.’

It couldn’t help but remind him of those handsome science guys who solved physics problems just by staring at them, without using scratch paper or drawing free-body diagrams.

This was far more exaggerated than them.

To accommodate the old and frail El, a fire was lit in the igloo’s stove.

Since the outside temperature was twenty degrees below zero, the melting caused by the rising indoor temperature would immediately refreeze upon contact with the extreme cold, forming a shell of ice.

This ultimately made the igloo even sturdier.

Meanwhile, the indoor temperature could rise to around four or five degrees. Because it was dry enough, it didn’t feel cold.

About an hour later, Old El finally moved.

He chanted a Spell, unfolding a small but extremely complex Magic Array on the Magic Crystal Stone. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

After a few maneuvers that Zog couldn’t comprehend, Old El reactivated the Magic Crystal Stone.

The song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" began to play. Unlike the original music video, the Zor in the video all had spider legs drawn on them.

’How old are you?’

Zog really wanted to ask Old El.

’You’re an eight-hundred-year-old Elf, and this is what you do for fun?’

It was an ancestral grudge between the Zor and other Elves. One side mocked the other for having spider legs, while the other retorted that their true forms were just tree leaves.

But he indeed hadn’t used an Illusion Technique. Instead, he had directly modified the content on the Magic Crystal Stone.

"Let me give a simple explanation. This adds a layer on top of the original image and allows you to draw on the new layer. The Elves call this..."

"A layer! No, wait, for video it should be called a track!" Zog blurted out.

"No, we call it ’Image Stacking.’ And then here."

The parts of the image that were the Zor’s skin tone all disappeared, turning into a blank silhouette.

"To remove the content of a selected color... the Elves call this..."

"Chroma keying!" Zog interrupted again.

"No, we call it ’Extraction.’ And this."

From a certain point in time, the image began to scale, pan, change color, and distort.

"We can also start performing these kinds of operations on the image from a specific point in time..."

"Keyframe animation!" Zog yelled out before El could even say "call this."

"Did you secretly learn the Elf Memory Spell?" Old El finally couldn’t help but ask.

"No, how could I? We really need this magic. What do you want as payment?"

"I don’t need payment."

"Great!" Zog pulled a Contract out of nowhere, slapped it on the table, and reached out with his claw to grab El’s hand and press it down.

"No, I need you to introduce the products of this new magic to the Elven communities."

"Just ’introduce,’ not ’teach,’ right?" Zog precisely latched onto the wording.

"Yes. It’s best if they become interested and learn it on their own."

El still couldn’t let go of his kin.

Zog pouted. ’What a bunch of Elven babies. They’ll only learn advanced technology if it piques their interest.’

’But that’s fine. The Elven market was something I was going to capture sooner or later anyway.’

"Deal."

The Elves might be making a killing, but Zog would never take a loss.