She wanted to scream out of fear, she wanted to scream out of anger, but mostly she just wanted to scream in frustration that she was once again not strong enough to handle the situation. Despite her internal urge to scream, Bethany kept her cool and refocused on the spider so she could dodge or counter. They stared at each other for a few seconds waiting for the other to make the first move, but then the spider's head fell off and along with a large amount of greenish blackish blood fell directly onto where Bethany had been standing. She dodged it of course but it splashed on her a bit and it was corrosive enough to visibly wear on her armor, and when she looked up to see who had done it, Lucy was standing on its back, sword in hand, with a very determined look on her face.
The spider fell to the ground and just kind of twitched a bit before going completely limp, everyone just looked at Lucy waiting for her to loot it but she looked hesitant.
“I just did the finishing blow, you all fought it, I just swung my sword after it was softened up.” Lucy said.
“That’s not true,” Bethany blurted out without thinking, “Eli did nothing! Like literally nothing!” Suddenly realizing what she had said and blushed a little as he looked at her with an eyebrow raised with a little smirk. She liked that look and always blushed when he did it to her, something she was beginning to suspect he knew and was doing on purpose. She vowed to get back at him with any of the number of things that she did that made him blush.
“Nothing?” Eli asked, “I was testing something.” Eli paused before continuing, “It didn’t work out, plus I saw Lucy working her way around from the start and knew you guys would be alright.”
“Sure you did,” Bethany argued, she clearly didn’t believe him but she moved on anyway. “What do we do now? Go down a level and repeat?”
“Yes, but gravity is higher down there and the effects of touching the stones are higher too.” Eli explained.
The group rested for a bit then moved to the top of a waterfall that fell down to the second layer of the basin. Eli took one long glance over to the Frog and the Hexer, just to be sure they hadn’t moved or anything, then he jumped into the pond below. The gravity change was just as abrupt as it was last time, but it didn’t feel as heavy as before. He wasn’t sure if this was because he was getting used to using gravity magic or if it was actually less intense. So, after helping everyone get out of the water, he asked them how much of an increase they thought it was and they all replied that it was double normal gravity. This led him to the conclusion that after clearing the first layer properly, the next layer was easier, which would explain how lower levels and lower rarity classes were able to do the third layer.
They started the process for the level right away with Eli throwing the stones out and then trying them in the next pond and they got the next stone. It wasn’t like they were in a hurry, but Eli was getting tired of this floor and wanted to get moving to the next one, so he at least, was moving with purpose. The first time a stone dissolved was at the third pond and a similar monster appeared, it was the same snake as the level above, only a little bigger and with more venom magic. While they were on this level they had discussed how to fight the monsters on this level and had agreed amongst each other, not including Eli in the discussion, that they would pair up and take turns. The first pair was Bethany and Cody, the fight only took more than a few seconds because Bethany was letting Cody get used to his new shield.
The next pair was Lucy and Beau against a komodo dragon looking thing that was spitting horrid-smelling spit at everyone. It smelled even worse when it hit Beau’s molten rock armor and sizzled. This second layer version of this monster was far more brutal and angry, like it remembered the first layer one’s death and was not happy about it. Bethany’s spear and speed were plenty enough to take it on and beau seemed to just be there to be a glowy distraction. They continued on like this, clearing out the monsters of the second layer until the layer was complete and they all moved on to the next, and final layer. Again the gravity was nowhere near as harsh as the first time Eli had been down here, it was around three times normal gravity.
Eli felt that with his new awareness of gravity magic and some of its very basic concepts and uses, he could move almost as fast as he could in normal gravity while burning his magic at about 8 to 10% his total a minute. This was very inefficient so he decided to just let himself be slower at first and he would lighten his body if he felt it was needed. They started with the stone again but this time just getting close to them was having an effect on the others. The first one he threw out of the water was a toxin stone and everyone started getting a rash just by being close to it. He let everyone vote on if he did this part by himself, reminding them that their end reward would most likely be better the more they contributed.
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Unsurprisingly, everyone voted to not get rashes, or have exploding boils on their skin. They all knew there was an almost 100% chance that they would fully heal by the time they left this floor, but they all were reminded of Tara’s scars from magic and it made them cautious. Eli had almost no effect from the stone except even through some leather, his palms would be affected by the stones. So much so that he actually passed out for a second from the neural stone. It was only a second and he was mostly sure that no one had seen him, so he adjusted his grip on the stone and kept moving. No monsters came out from the stones vanishing, at least not until the last one was placed in the water and disappeared. The next 2 hours for the group were filled with mind numbing pain.
Just as the final 15th stone vanished in the correct pond, a loud chittering came from everywhere at once. From behind the stone cliffs of each layer, seven foot long, four foot tall fire ants came bursting out sending rocks and dust into the air filling the basin with debris. These fire ants were all moving towards them at once, at least a hundred of them all clacking their mouth pinchers together in anticipation of a meal. However, their group was no stranger to ambushes and being outnumbered, at least the ones who had been with them for the last monster horde event. For them, this was just another day out with Eli.
The problem was there were still a lot of enemies and they would take some hits, and those hits were full of pain inducing neuro-toxin. The ants weren’t even that strong, even with their toxin just being on your skin it caused mind numbing pain, and when they got lucky and got it into the bloodstream it got so bad Cody blacked out. Lucy was wildly swinging her sword while screaming in hysterics, Beau seemed fine, the ants couldn't get it through his molten rock armor. Eli let one of them bite him and immediately regretted it, he started burning through his magic to kill as many as possible, but they just kept coming. It wasn’t until Beau had finally been bit and was now the one screaming after 15 minutes of fighting, that new ants stopped coming and they were able to start thinning them out.
After over an hour of fighting there had to be well over a hundred ant corpses laying around them, most of which were just piles of chunky goop since Eli went a bit overboard after he had been bit the third time. They rested in the center of the basin, it was now just the same kind of ground as everywhere else and there was a stone pillar in the middle of it covered in runes similar to the end of the last floors. The center felt safe and it wasn’t covered in ant guts so it was a nice place for a nap, not that they could sleep until the toxin was out of their system and the pain subsided. The increased gravity had slowly faded over the course of a few hours and Eli stayed away so that he could hopefully get a better feel for that application of chaos, earth, and shadow magic.
It wasn’t until he felt the effect slowly fading that he felt what his magic had been missing, the shadow magic component of gravity magic. Eli was absolutely fascinated by its inclusion, and during that time his mind was racing trying to figure out why shadow was involved in the magic recipe. He started to think about everything he knew about gravity, every science book and documentary he had seen or read on the topic. His mind got stuck on the image of the warping of space-time by a black hole he had seen growing up. Was the shadow included because gravity was an effect of mass and not its own thing, like you couldn’t say i have a bucket of gravity, but you could say this bucket has so much mass it has its own gravity, Eli thought to himself.
Despite his best efforts he couldn’t figure out why, but he did figure out how to improve his own gravity magic. It was better now, but even more inefficient than it had been. It was expensive magic, but he just had this picture in his mind of him casting a zero gravity spell on a monster and him punching it into the sun. It was a very childish and impractical thought, he knew it was, but it still seemed fun and brought a smile to his face. Everyone else was waking from a quick nap and they saw Eli standing in the middle of them, smiling like he had put a whoopie cushion on someone's chair and they were about to sit down. Bethany thought it was adorable and attractive that he could still enjoy himself despite all they were going through. The other three thought it was a bit creepy and were a little worried for a bit until he seemed to snap out of it and had a more relaxed look on his face.
They all gathered near the stone in the center, “I’m going to guess that the next floor will be hot,” Eli said. “The floors are going from cold to hot so just a fair warning.”
“So, should we change into clothes/armor for hotter weather now, or wait till we get there?” Cody asked.
“Now is probably best,” Bethany said to the group and motioned for them to spread out so they could change and not be in each other's way. Cody and Beau were blushing even though they were facing away from each other while changing. They weren’t wearing cold weather stuff but they still probably had too much on for a hotter climate than where they were in now. They pretty much stripped down to underwear and put minimal armor on over it, boots, leg coverings, and leather chest pieces.
“Ok, let's do this next floor quicker and together, I have a feeling me and Beau might be the only ones that can handle the last floor’s heat.” Eli said, as they all grabbed hands and touched the stone pillar and vanished to the next floor of the dungeon.
