The timer on the door barrier for the floor reset had five minutes left, they were all geared up and ready to head out right away. They went over the plan again, and got the same kind of stones into the pond on the third level, the only problem was that the stones were identical until you touched them. A problem Lucy said she could help with after she got a look at one of them, so the plan was solid, at least as solid as a plan can be from one person's description of what had happened last time. Eli knew he had a blind spot to obvious things when people weren’t involved, he could catch every detail of a person's actions, but would completely miss a glowing warning sign until it hit him in the face. Hopefully, the others would help him figure this puzzle out, he was really feeling like he needed a few hours of sleep.
When they all got outside, the four that had not seen it before were awestruck at how beautiful this floor was, from the tropical plants and flowers to the waterfalls and crystal clear ponds. It truly was beautiful so Eli gave them about a minute before he forced them back on task and had them huddle up. He showed them the waterfall caves and how deep the ponds were as well as how the water just kept going into the center then started above the first level all over again. He took his cloak off and dove into the water to get the nearest stone, and a few moments later a stone came flying out of the water landing near them. Eli climbed out shortly after, making sure to toss a wink to Bethany, and to her own surprise, she blushed like a teenager.
Intentionally not noticing the flirting, Beau asked, “How do we know which affliction it is?”
Lucy knelt down and leaned over it, getting her hands and face close to the stone. Eli almost stopped her, afraid she would touch it, but he stopped himself and decided to trust her, especially since Bethany looked like she would murder him if he interfered with her chance to pull her own weight. After a while, she pulled back from the stone, pointed a finger at it and pushed magic into it. The stone briefly glowed a sickly yellowish color and then it turned back to its normal white.
“Well, that was useful…” Bethany said with absolutely no confidence.
“Each stone will be a different color when I do that, we can use that to line them up.” Lucy said.
Everyone looked skeptical, but didn’t challenge her, Eli didn’t really notice it but they all would glance at him to see his reaction before making their own feelings known. From Bethany’s perspective, it wasn’t that his reaction would stop them from speaking up, but that it would affect their confidence when they spoke up. She didn’t really care much since having her destiny pretty much sealed her relationship with Eli, so she could afford to disagree with him whenever, just as long as she didn’t take it so far that he didn’t want to bring her along anymore.
“Ok, so the stones on this level barely hurt me so should I bring them all here then we try to figure out which one goes in this pond, then move to the next and repeat?” Eli said in a half giving orders, half asking a question kind of way. He really didn’t like how unsure he sounded but he also didn’t like giving orders either so it was a difficult position to balance.
“I think we should see what effects happen after we get a correct one before doing more.” Cody said.
“I agree,” said Bethany, “So why don’t you go get them while I take a little swim.” She said to Eli while taking off her boots, she wasn’t going to get naked in front of the other boys but she did want to be a bit more comfortable.
Eli went and collected the other stones with Beau and Cody following him around asking questions about how stones react in the water and about how he thinks the gravity magic works. He did his best to answer them except when it had something to do with his heart node stuff, he still wasn’t sure how all of that worked but he knew it was a secret he needed to keep for now. As far as he could tell, gravity magic added, or subtracted weight, depending on the flavor and the amount of magic. At first it seemed like the magic itself had weight to it, but it was more like the magic could increase mass, he was putting things together a bit in his head while discussing it with them. This was a bit how his smash skill worked, it added mass, but not in a physical sense.
The only way Eli was able to describe it to them was that the gravity magic made the mass of something mean more to gravity. It wasn’t a good explanation, but it was the only way he could put into words how it felt to his magic sense. That is what made it so hard for him to describe things to others, it was all feelings and impressions, and sometimes he doesn’t even know what his magic sense is telling him except from instincts. His magic sense may give him the instinct to dodge left, but he doesn’t know why. This is also why he can’t just copy any magic he sees, he doesn’t understand it, the only reason he could copy the gravity magic is his planet level chaos node and apparent predilection for chaos magic.
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Lucy had explained magic predilections before and Eli understood parts of it, basically everyone had a type of magic from one of their nodes that they are drawn to. This type of magic will be the easiest to use, easiest to level, and become a piece of every skill they have. His smash, cudgel and detonation skills were examples of this as they all had chaos magic in them. Lucy had not said anything about free-range casting magic, but in Eli’s mind, it made sense that this would be easier too. The three of them didn’t rush in gathering the stones, they found out that as long as your skin doesn't touch the stone, you can hold it without getting hurt. Sadly, they were not able to be put into inventory. Cody mumbled something about instinctual rejection since it would hurt people to let it be stored in the inventory, but Eli turned him out as they rejoined the others.
They waited for Bethany to get out of the water, she had been rinsing her hair out in the waterfall when they had returned, then Eli placed one in the water at a time to see if anything happened. On the first one, nothing happened, on the second one, nothing happened, the third one vanished when it was fully under water, it didn’t turn invisible, it literally vanished into nothing. Eli was about to jump in and see if it had fallen to the bottom when they heard a croak from a frog, a single loud croak that slightly shook the ground. All five of them froze and stood perfectly still, except Eli, he smiled and turned toward where he thought the sound had come from. The others hadn’t seen it leap, from above the first layer's cliff and the start of the top of the highest waterfall, but when it landed, they knew they were in trouble.
The giant frog had landed about 30 feet away from them, it was almost 9 feet tall and covered in bright colors. It was skinny like a tree frog, with slime on its skin and its oversized eyes were large even with how large the rest of the frog was. At first, all five of them and the frog were completely still, no one was even breathing, then several things happened in what seemed like the same instant. The frog opened its mouth and shot out its tongue faster than most of them could see, the instant eli felt the frog’s magic charge up he knew it was going to shoot its tongue out so he had conjured a cudgel. He swung the cudgel down before the tongue had even made it to him, the frog was aiming for Lucy, so it was going right by his right side. Just as the tongue hit Lucy, it stopped dead since Eli had smashed it into the ground preventing it from getting further.
The tongue had hit Lucy however and she went flying into the pond, even though the tongue was sticky, its abrupt stop tore her off of it and backwards into the water. From Cody and Beau’s perspective, Lucy had vanished and was replaced by a large tongue, Bethany was heavily invested in reaction so she had seen it coming like Eli. However, she had not been expecting it, her mind still adjusting to the fact that a giant frog was there, much less that it could attack. Despite her hesitation, she would have been fast enough to block if she had been the target, but since she wasn’t, she couldn’t get to it fast enough. Lucy was unconscious before she even hit the water and was covered in sticky frog spit, Bethany felt bad for her and was glad she was knocked out. The poor girl would have died from embarrassment.
Eli's attack had happened so quickly that the frog didn’t even realize that its attack hadn’t landed, it was trying to pull back in its tongue and was met with resistance. It was clear from the look on the frog’s face that this had never even been considered a possibility, its brain was shorting out so hard that it yanked back hard enough on its tongue to rip it off. It tore where Eli was standing on it with a multibladed cudgel that looked more like an Aztec sword/club, than his usual cudgel. The frog let out a loud and low tone croak noise that was shaking the ground, and even without humanoid features, it still looked so surprised and panicked that Eli didn’t feel right attacking it. It finally gained some mental clarity and noticed him standing on the missing part of its tongue, fear flashed in its eyes and it slowly started to back away.
The group raised their weapons, it had only been a few seconds but even getting blindsided was not enough to stop them from putting up a fight. Eli motioned for them to back off and walked toward the monstrous frog, after he took two steps, it ran back to where it spawned from. They all looked at it, looked at Eli, looked back at it, remembering the speed that both of them had shown, they all sighed. They had yet again been shown how far they are from the level of power that the man they followed had, and how far away they were from it. There were only two reactions from witnessing such a display, you get stronger or you give up and everyone who followed Eli was in it to get stronger.
“Can someone help Lucy please,” Eli said with his face in his hands. He was upset that she kept getting knocked down when he was trying to build her up, if it wasn’t so comical sometimes, he would let his mind wander to the possibility that the system didn’t want her to be independent, it wanted her to stay subservient to him. He would worry about that later, there was no need to punch the system just yet.
“I’ll help,” Beau and Cody said at the same time.
Now it was Bethany’s turn to have her face in her hands, “Just be gentle with her, bring her to the waterfall, I’ll clean her off when she wakes up.” Bethany was getting protective of people and Eli was enjoying her more caring side, Bethany, however, was very conflicted about it.
