The second Eli landed in the water, he noticed something was different, his first reaction was that his magic or stats were being suppressed, but after hitting the bottom of the pond he noticed it more clearly that gravity was higher. He wasn’t sure how much higher, but it was more than triple if he had to guess, which wasn’t enough to slow him down much, but it did make the prospect of throwing the stone into the center a bit more challenging. Throwing the stone out of the pond then crawling out himself, he readied himself for a quick grab and throw. Steadying himself, he grabbed the stone, stood up and threw it with triple the strength he had last time, which turns out was close to all of his strength. With the gravity pulling on his body and the stone weighing 3 times what the last one did, it didn’t fall right in, but it did roll into the center pit with all the water.
So there was good news and bad news, the good news was he was able to throw it, the bad news was the stones curse effect had also been three times as harsh and fast. He was going to need to wait several minutes between throws to make sure he didn’t get more than one effect. Even this boosted effect would take a while before it was a threat to him, he wasn’t going to risk it while he was out here by himself. One of the effects could make him pass out, and if he still had the stone in his hand, it would kill him, so being a little cautious seemed like a good idea. Magic was still a big mystery and not any of his people had heard of magical afflictions like poison toxin and disease being cast by a person yet.
However, now that he was thinking about it, he probably wouldn’t tell anyone he could do that kind of ability if he had it. He went on to ponder what other people could do with the magic the world had now, how people would have the power to be real heroes that could ensure the fate of millions. And how people could become villains and cause suffering on a scale that had never been seen in the old world. Again his thoughts drifted to his system labelled destiny and how he needed to not let his power go to his head, which was partly why he didn’t really like the idea of being in charge of his group. He needed a check on himself, and since he hadn’t met anyone that could match his power, he needed there to be people he cared about and respected enough to listen to them.
As he continued to go from pond to pond, he got to the stone that he wasn’t sure what kind of affliction it had. There was poison, toxin, hex, disease, and what he had thought was some kind of neurological dampener or something, but it turns out it was simple sleep magic. He had to get hit with a stronger dose of it before it could really tell what it was, it didn’t put you to sleep like a sleeping pill though. It was more like it dampened your senses until you lost consciousness, or at least he assumed it would do that with a strong enough dose. He got all of them thrown in and prepared himself to climb down to the next level, he decided that jumping was a bad idea since the gravity probably increased again.
Climbing turned out to be just as bad with loose rocks in some places and smooth surfaces in others, but he made it down about half way before he gave up and just jumped down. This time he hadn’t landed in a pond so when he hit the ground his knees buckled and the ground cracked as this layer had nine times normal gravity. He was pretty sure his bones were cracked and his muscles partly torn from that landing, but it was the closest thing to an old-school super hero landing that he would ever get. Which is why he was smiling despite the sharp stabs of pain he was experiencing. Eli moved from having one knee down, to both knees, then to sitting, then he just laid down entirely, it was going to take time for his legs to heal enough for him to feel comfortable moving around.
While lying on the ground in a small crater that he made from his jump down, Eli focused on just meditating and feeling his magic. There were so many different aspects to his magic that he still didn’t fully understand that he could spend days focusing on them and still have more questions than answers. However, this time, he was focusing on how the ambient magic was affecting his magic. The first thing that had popped into his head was to see if he could mimic the gravity effect, the magic felt pretty similar to what his smash skill used. He took this to mean that that is how his smash skill worked, it increased the gravity at the point of contact during a swing or hit, thus making it stronger without having to swing something that was heavier.
The current solution that he was working on was to hopefully be able to flood his body with gravity magic, or maybe even someone else's body, preventing them from fighting back or even just slowing them down. After an hour, he was all healed up, but was only able to affect the gravity of one of his limbs at a time, maintaining the right mixture and flavors of magic just took too much focus to do more without a skill helping, at least not without way more practice. And oh boy did he have plans on practicing this, Stevens and Cody had called this free-range magic or something similar and it was massively more difficult than using a skill effect rune inside a node. The benefit of all that effort wasn’t even a more powerful spell, the skill runes helped so much in terms of efficiency and power that casting magic without them just seemed like a waste of time.
However, the benefit of free-range magic was that it was vastly more flexible in its use and application. The way they had explained it to Eli was that a skill like fireball was strong, efficient, and easy to learn, but it was also not very good for lighting up a dark room or welding metal together. What a skill it was, it did it very well, but it only did that thing, and the more nodes someone had the more flexibility they would have with mixing different magic types and even different flavors of the same type. Eli and Tara both used high-end-rarity Chaos skills but they were very different, affecting different aspects of chaos, hers being time and his being space. From the magic he was feeling that was affecting the gravity, it was a third aspect of chaos, and there may be more, but it felt like his node had its own. He could probably change it if he really focused, alter it in some way, but he was pretty sure it would be weaker and even less reliable since it wasn’t his ‘natural’ chaos magic flavor.
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He was learning a lot, but it was time to get back to work on this dungeon floor. The gravity was making walking annoying since it took extra focus to determine how much strength to put into each step. The short answer was about half of his total strength, which worried him a bit if he ran into a monster, he wouldn’t last long if a monster could move freely through this much and he was at half strength. Luckily he hadn’t seen a single monster yet, he guessed that the boss would have minions with it but he wasn’t sure, it could also be that the dungeon sees the afflictions as a monster in a way. He wasn’t sure but so he just got back to work, walking over to a pond and with a slight hop, plunging into the water.
The water felt thin somehow, like it wouldn’t provide enough resistance for him to swim out. Since he now weighed something close to 3000lbs due to the gravity, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to float up to the surface. He managed to get to the stone and pick it up but quickly realized that climbing out of the pond with its steep walls and only one available hand was going to be its own special challenge. He slipped three times and dropped the stone twice before he finally made it high enough to throw the stone out of the water. It took all his strength to get it to come out of the water about two feet and land on the rocks right next to the water. After a bit more effort, Eli managed to pull himself out of the water and he sat next to the stone and caught his breath.
Normally, no matter how hard he strained himself, Eli wouldn’t be out of breath, his magic regeneration was high enough that when it pulled magic in through his skin, it brought enough oxygen that he didn’t need to breath much at all. But after spending all that time underwater while being strained by the gravity and the climbing, he needed a moment. He felt like this gravity was humbling him somewhat, he imagined that if a group entered and none of them were at least half as strong as him, it would take buff spells and items and potions to get them through this level. And then he paused just before he picked up the stone in front of him and he spoke out loud to himself.
“Am I doing this puzzle wrong?” he said softly with some obvious strain in his voice from working his lungs to speak under the intense gravity. “If it takes half my strength just to walk, then what would it take an uncommon class at my level?” His mind was working as fast as he could manage it, how would someone or someones weaker than him manage this last level? The only answer that made sense was that they wouldn’t, it wasn’t that he thought highly of his own abilities, he just had a pretty good idea of common and uncommon class strength at his level. Well, maybe not a good idea, but a general one, at least he thought so anyway.
So, if he was doing the puzzle wrong and this third layer is not really supposed to be entered, Eli sat and pondered on how the puzzle was supposed to work. He started talking the problem out out-loud in an attempt to help his mind process what information he had. “So if the stones down here aren't meant to be moved, maybe they were a marker, like ‘put this type here’ kind of thing. Although, you can’t tell what type they are until you get it out of the water, so how would they know if they didn’t come down here?” Eli tapped his chin in thought, but had no idea how this was supposed to work, every plan he came up with revolved around someone coming down to this level and at minimum checking the stone outside of the water. He needed his friends to help, he just hoped he hadn’t scared them too much with all his talk of how dangerous this floor was.
Before he went to get help though, he wanted to see what would happen when he finished it the way he was doing it. Again, he braced himself to throw the stone, reducing the gravity in his arm and getting himself into a sturdy stance. The goal was to touch the stone for as little time as possible since the effects would most likely be stronger just like the gravity and he didn’t want to have to wait an hour for the effect to wear off. Splitting his focus between reversing the gravity effect and enhancing the right parts of his body, while making sure the weight of this stone doesn't throw him off balance was tough.
When he made the throw, it almost made it into the center but it rolled and fell in, just as he was about to fist pump in celebration, the effect of the stone hit him like a truck. This stone was a hex stone and the hex effect was pain, a lot of pain. The increased effect from this layer was no joke and it pushed through his resistance and upgrades like they weren’t there. The pain was blinding, unlike anything he has experienced, it hurt more than having his legs eaten, more than fire magic burning his soul, this was something new. The magic was designed to cause pain, it wasn’t even damaging him so there was nothing to heal. After a few minutes of writhing on the ground, it abated enough that he could stand and he could regain his focus, he was still twitching, but he could now move on to the next pond and do it again.
