Eli went around to the other ponds and got three more stones in, although it was highly unpleasant. The poison stone made him vomit and dry heave for about fifteen minutes, the disease stone gave him some kind of fast acting leprosy where some flesh and fingers fell off. The toxin stone was like breathing mustard gas so he coughed blood and was blind for half an hour. The last stone was the neuro-affective stone, which he still wasn’t sure what it did and just like the other ones, he prepared himself to toss it, but as soon as he touched it, he fell unconscious. He wasn’t sure for how long but after he woke up he couldn’t focus enough to stand or have anything close to a cogent thought.
It took another hour after he could get his mind to focus enough to remember what he was doing, then he looked at the stone and kicked it out of anger. The stone rolled a few feet and he passed out again. Another hour passed and this time as he came to his senses he walked over to the cliff wall separating the levels and he punched it. It hurt, but he felt a little better, and he reassured himself that the second time he passed out he was still under the effects of the first time. Also, no one was here to see it so no one would know, at least he hoped. As he watched several rocks fall and bump into each other pushing them further down the slope towards the middle, he got an idea.
He started throwing rocks at the stone, it was working but it was slow going. Another hour and he finally got the stone into the center, and now that he was standing close to it, the center wasn’t a bottomless pit, the water fell into portals that probably sent it right back up to the top. In the actual center, beneath the portals was a marble floor with a pillar that was ten feet tall and had writing on it. He couldn’t make out the writing at this distance but he really wanted to know what it said. The problem was that there wasn’t a way down as the entire center was smooth marble and with the gravity the two hundred foot fall would probably break some bones or it might even kill him.
With all the will he could muster, he walked away from the center and picked a spot on the next level and tried to blink to it, but it didn’t work. He got closer and it still didn’t work, it must be the gravity magic since it was based in chaos magic interfering with his own ability. It had been about three minutes since the last stone had been tossed into the center, when water exploded out of the center like a geyser. It wasn’t until then that he realized that the first layer waterfalls were no longer running and even the ones near him were slowing. He ran to the cliff edge and started climbing, it was not easy but if he could get out of the third level gravity and into the second level, he may be able to blink.
He was just about to reach the half way mark when he took a look back and saw that the water coming down was a mist and not rain, and it was getting closer. He tried to hurry but rocks kept falling off and he had to side step parts where the stone was too smooth and there wasn’t a place to grip. He could feel the mist burning him slightly but it wasn’t enough yet for him to feel pain, just worrying that the mist might be acidic and which could kill him if he let enough of it touch him. After he climbed past the half way mark he felt the gravity lessen to the amount of the second level and he immediately jumped straight up using most of his strength. He was able to get high enough to clear the edge of the cliff and he could see the second level and he blinked to it.
His blink spell mostly worked, he was standing on the edge of the cliff that led down to third level and not where he had aimed which was the middle of the second. However, with the exception of the mist burning his skin on the back of his legs, he was safe. At least for the moment, the acidic mist was rising and he noticed that the pond nearest him was empty despite it not having a clear drainage path. There was more to this mist than just the water spraying up out of the center, Eli realized, and so he started running. When he got close to this next cliff he just jumped, the triple gravity of the second level not being much for his body to push past. Or at least that is what he thought, the jump only took him about half way up the cliff.
Holding on the rock wall, he took another look at his legs and the acid was still melting them and they were in rough shape. Surprisingly there wasn’t much pain, he guessed that there was some kind of numbing effect so that people wouldn't realize how screwed they were. With his height on the cliff he was in the first layer’s normal gravity so he was able to climb the rest of the way using only his hands with little difficulty. After reaching the top he saw that the mist was just now reaching the second level so he felt he had time to take stock. Eli was laying on his back and catching his breath, it was mostly adrenaline that was making him breath hard, but he wanted to rest a second. He only let himself catch his breath for a few seconds then he stood, or at least attempted to stand, it was more of a hunched over posture and he couldn’t straighten his legs out without using magic to force the issues.
The next problem was that he wasn’t sure which first level waterfall had the safe room, from where he was standing he had one close by that wasn’t the right one, and from what he could see of the others, they all had small caves behind them. The water wasn’t there so he could see behind them easily, but it was not possible to see far enough in to see which one he needed except for the one nearest him. He decided to guess left, a common answer for him for this kind of quick solution thing, and he started walking, or at least the best he could do. The first one after the one he could see at first was not the safe room cave, and neither was the next one, and neither was the third one. This meant that if he had gone right he would have made it to the correct one first try, the mist was on the first level now and getting closer to the cliff wall.
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Eli started running or what would better be described as hobbling toward the last one, he made it inside the cave right as the mist made it inside as well. He threw himself towards the door and began knocking on it. In case of intelligent monsters, they had agreed upon a safe knocking rhythm, but Eli had forgotten it so he just did the ‘Shave and a haircut’ thing as fast as he could. It was wrong, but they opened the door anyway and he crawled inside on his hands and knees collapsing to the ground after pushing the door shut. When the reset didn’t start he grew worried and all of them could hear a slight sizzling noise outside the door.
“Reset Dungeon Floor!” Eli shouted with a bit more desperation in his voice than he wanted the others to hear, but it worked.
A barrier covered the inside of the door with a timer on it and they couldn’t hear the sizzling anymore. Eli sighed loudly and lay on the ground breathing heavily. The other four in the room were staring at him with mixes of horror and utter confusion, what could have hurt him so badly, this was Eli, the unstoppable man, and he was hurt and tired. They had seen him hurt, or maybe the better term was damaged, but not tired like this, and not with desperation in his voice. They all took a step towards him except Bethany, who took a step back, not because she was scared but because she recognized the dangers.
“Stay back,” Eli said, “I have acid on me.” His voice was getting pained but not so much that it would scare the others further.
Then, with a stroke of what he thought was genius, Eli took out his cloak and activated its daily ability, only a small portion of the floor was used but all of the acid on his body was used to refill his magic. With that part solved, he flooded his body with life magic, sat up against the wall of the room and covered his legs with his cloak. The good news was he was no longer slowly melting, the bad news was that he was getting feeling back in the damaged parts of his skin. He was able to manage this level of pain while keeping a straight face, but he was sweating and Bethany seemed to notice, or at least have an idea about it. He motioned for all of them to sit closer and he told them what had happened and his thoughts on the puzzle.
After his tale of heroics and ingenious actions that he definitely didn't exaggerate, they all started going over possibilities on how to solve the puzzle, almost all of them anyways. Bethany was giving Eli a flat look that clearly communicated the thought of ‘there is no way it happened the way you said’. But Eli ignored her and chatted with the others on possibilities they could try for a solution. After an hour or so of discussion, they decided that their first attempt to solve the problem should be to put all the same stones into the pond together on the third level. Everyone got ready, but the timer on the barrier over the door said eight hours and forty nine minutes.
“I thought you said it only took an hour to reset?” Cody asked.
“That's what I heard,” Bethany chimed in with a smirk.
“Well, that was for a normal dungeon in a cave, a raid dungeon must take longer.” Eli explained in a tone that clearly sounded like he was guessing. “Now that we have time, I would like to discuss something I recently learned.”
“Oh?” Bethany said with a raised eyebrow.
“I managed to achieve free-casting,” Eli said.
“We called it free-range casting,” Cody corrected.
“Unless you are talking about summoning a horde of magic free-range chickens, mine is better,” Eli said, getting nods of agreement from the group.
Eli proceeded to explain what he had managed and how he had managed it. The short version is, outside of your nodes, you can change the flavor of your magic a bit, and more importantly, you can mix them to achieve the desired result. The gravity magic had been mostly chaos magic with a flavor of mass, or weight, mixed with a bit of earth magic for solidity. When you get the mixture and flavor right, you can remove or increase gravity, which is kind of what his smash spell did, but more advanced since its improved version could pass through things like projecting a gravity wave. He told them everything, every thought, theory, and flat-out guess that he had about how to best make it work and they all got to practicing simple magical tricks, but each one of them had ideas of making grand spells that would baffle everyone.
After four hours of practice, with four more hours of waiting to go, Eli managed to fly, or hover a bit. He wasn’t able to aim himself and the slightest wind pushed him away, but he was able to do it. Cody had managed something truly impressive with his barrier he cast on his shield, he managed to alter the node rune spell so that a letter “C” was raised in the middle. It wasn’t at all what Eli had been thinking would be a useful thing, but he could see the application, a focused center would do more damage. Lucy was able to control a fireball like a yo-yo, tossing it out and moving it around then pulling it back in. Bethany had managed to use water magic with a touch of death magic to make her body even more flexible, and not just in bending, she could extend limbs and bend bones. She was far too pleased with the way Eli was looking at her as she pulled one of her legs up to her head while standing.
They continued to work hard on their own magic, testing and adjusting how they used it and trying different options. For what seemed like an hour, Eli and Bethany could not keep their eyes off each other. Bethany was working on using her new, and frankly comic book-esque, stretching and flexibility to make her spear do things people wouldn’t expect, while intentionally pausing in what she hoped were seductive poses. Eli was messing with gravity and the mass of his body, making parts heavier and lighter, causing him to flex in what he hoped was an attractive way while Bethany watched. Beau watched from the side, he was not having any luck so he was watching others hoping for inspiration, but when he saw how Eli and Bethany were acting, he cringed inwardly. They looked like two monkeys trying to coerce the other into mating behind a tree.
