Eli arrived back to the safe room, but didn't want to go inside since it might trigger a reset, so he stood in the doorway and looked at his group bundled up and shivering. They didn't seem in very high spirits so he just had Bethany join him outside with her spear still holding the door open. She was all bundled up and looked ridiculous, Eli wanted to tell her about how to use her fire node to warm herself but he couldn’t help himself and filled her in on the dungeon floor instead. He explained the bear, or bears, he wasn’t sure, the frozen lake, the cliff walls and how he trapped the monsters under the ice. At first he was hoping she would pick up on the use of a fire node to keep warm but she was just looking at him.

  “You know you could use your fire node to move fire magic through your body to stay warm.” Eli said while rubbing his neck in embarrassment.

  “I’m aware, I have mine dialed to keep me at the perfect temperature.” She said with a smirk.

  “This first floor is going to be a bit rough, but I think it will be good training for everyone,” Eli said.

  “Good training, or you haven’t figured out how to summon the boss yet?” Bethany asked with a chuckle.

  Eli scratched the back of his neck, “Probably both, get everyone out here please, lets get working on this together.”

  When everyone was outside, Eli looked at all of them and inwardly winced. Bethany was barely wearing anything besides her leather armor, Lucy was wearing the extras from Bethany now having 3 or 4 layers, Beau was in his molten golem armor, and Cody was wearing Beau's extra clothes. They looked ridiculous but survival was important and he wanted everyone together as much as possible for this run, besides, he was in an ice cave in his underwear and a white clay mask, he also looked ridiculous. Maybe he should set a better example for how to look, Ghost and some of his guys dressed pretty nice, but they weren’t very strong. Eli decided to remain eccentric for now, it was more fun anyways.

  He explained what the floor was like and what he has done so far, being sure to make it sound like it had all been part of his plan. However, the way Bethany was smirking at him during the explanation, she knew it had just been a series of luck and flying by the seat of his pants guess work.

  “So the problem is fighting the monsters on the ice, their claws allow them to walk and run as if it was solid ground. I slipped around a lot trying to position myself for a fight. Any ideas?” Eli asked.

  After an extended silence, Cody spoke up, “I saw a movie once where people tied themselves together with a bit of rope. We could push or pull to help get momentum.”

  “If we had time to practice it could work,” Bethany said.

  “Does anyone have any tar or glue, we could crush some rock and glue it to our boots,” Beau suggested, but started to trail off when he looked down and saw Eli was barefoot. Everyone, including Eli was looking at his feet now.

  “Just so everyone is clear, the point of this dungeon is to clear it, but if that's all I wanted from this trip I would have gone alone. I want all of you to get stronger with me, I don’t want to go on adventures in this new world alone.” Eli was doing his best to let everyone know how he felt without making it obvious how lonely he felt when they weren’t around. “So plans should be for what helps you guys succeed, don’t worry about me, I seem to stumble my way through just fine.”

  “Ok, so let's try melting the soles of our boots and embedding rocks,” Bethany said.

  They got to work on the boots, at first they didn’t really know how to use fire magic without a spell but Stevens and Cody had worked that out previously and Cody taught all of them how to use magic without a spell. It was a simple process once you know how to do it. The use of will and focus to push the right kind of magic out of your body at your hand and shape it with intent. This was very powerful but could be used for smaller things. Bethany picked it up quickly and was making progress while Beau was using the same process to shape the small stones into spikes. It took almost three hours since those who could warm themselves had to take breaks and stand near Eli while he pushed heat out of his body to help them warm up. The end result was boots with something resembling golf shoe spikes on the bottom.

  Next was the plan, they had discussed different options but the one they landed on was to stay together. The limited visibility meant that they would have too much trouble coming to each other's aid and away from the cliff walls it was difficult to tell which direction you were facing. They decided to move in a group along the cliff wall, so they left the small cave that held the safe room door and turned right. So as not to be trapped by the cliff they were walking with it in sight but a few yards away, it took about thirty minutes before they came to a small fist sized crystal in the cliff wall. It was a dull orange and shaped like a ball of fire with flame shapes coming out of the top of it. The only reason they found it at all was because it was pulling in the fire magic that they were using to stay warm.

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  Eli pushed more fire magic into it and it started to glow and the magic started to swirl inside the crystal, the light pulsed a few times right when he felt that it was full, then all the glow moved to one half of the crystal. He moved it around and the one half was always on a side pointing in the same direction. This could be an easy clue to the next crystal or to the boss, but Eli didn’t think so and from the look on Bethany’s face, she didn’t either. He handed it over to Lucy and they continued their trek on the ice, through the snow, along the cliff face. After another 30 minutes or so, while being more mindful of anything unusual along the cliff walls, they found another crystal. This one was brown and was pulling on Beau’s armor’s magic, leading them to conclude that it was earth magic based. It was the same size but more cube shaped, and when he filled it with earth magic the same thing happened.

  Another ninety minutes of walking and they had 4 crystals, fire, earth, air, and order. Beau had been the one to fill the order crystal and upon sensing that magic Eli knew right away that it would be the most difficult node for him to unlock. Order magic was so opposite of chaos magic it was staggering and with his affinity for chaos that he got from his mother, at least he assumed that's where he got it, he was going to have trouble with his order node. The problem was, the crystals pointed to the same direction but not exactly, they were all slightly off from one another. Generally they all pointed to what was probably the middle of the lake, but to be sure Eli had each person in his group, besides himself carry one and follow it as long as it didn't take them out of sight of everyone else.

  As they walked toward the center of the lake, doing their best to stay in sight of each other, the crystal's directions started to split more and more. To avoid having one person just disappear on them, they changed the plan and followed each crystal individually, first fire, then earth, keeping with the order they found them in. it turns out that each one had a spot on the lake where it would point straight down. They collectively decided that they were supposed to stay in that spot, however, whether out of paranoia or caution, Eli wanted more information. The spots were designed to be so far apart that you would not be able to see the others, even with Eli standing in the middle, the snow storm was just too much. The frost magic in the storm was also messing with Eli’s ability to use magic sense.

  They regrouped in the middle, they were getting tired, except Eli, even those that could keep warm on their own were straining their magic keeping it going this long. They decided to take a break and they headed back to the safe room, using Bethany’s spear again to hold the door open, Eli and the crystals stayed on the outside. He was starting to get a better feel for how his planet level fire node regulated output so it was more manageable, being able to keep it low kept him from using too much but if he lost his focus on it it would slowly turn off leaving him in the cold weather in nothing but fuzzy ape underwear and a mask. His cloak didn’t seem to like the frost magic and was degrading slowly while in it so he put it away to save on durability.

  Spinning possible solutions through his head while everyone else rested, Eli was sitting on a rock just inside the cave with his hand on his chin and he was fully spaced out. He didn’t know how long he had been stressing about this but he snapped out of it when Bethany came and sat next to him.

  She bumped her shoulder into his and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m walking a fine line between protection and growth. I had like three ideas while we were out there earlier, but all of them kept everyone safe except me. I’m not saying I mind that, but I want all of you to grow, which means you have to be in danger too.”

  “The arrogance of that is a little surprising coming from you,” Bethany said, in a mildly shocked tone.

  “Arrogance?”

  “I know, coming from its odd, you always seemed to me like you were rather, a very humble person, or you just didn’t know how significant you are. Arrogance is a new look on you and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

  Eli quirk a little smile, “So that's all it takes to turn you off huh?”

  “I’d take you right here, right now, regardless… But I'm being serious right now, you have more power and influence in this new world than you realize and I can’t tell if you are just naive or some part of you doesn't want to realize it. However,” She stressed, “You are not responsible for me, or the others. You aren’t forcing anyone to be here, you are something special and we are choosing to follow you, chasing the dream of catching up to you.”

  “If I am the impetus for reaching further than someone is capable of grasping, do I not share the blame for that failure?”

  Bethany sighed and let out a slow breath, “There was a song line I used to really like, I would listen to the song whenever I was contemplating life. It went ‘the stars aren’t far enough for you to grab them, right out of the sky, you ain’t no child trying to drive a fast car, you ain’t no friend of mine’. I interpret it as you should dream bigger than you can see, bigger than what your world contains. We are all dreaming that big or we wouldn’t be here with you and we are willing to die for that dream. Everyone on the planet got a fresh start at life, and we want ours to mean something, so you don’t get to cheapen our dreams by taking responsibility for them.”

  Eli listened intently and when she was done was just staring off into space, lost in his thoughts. Was it really that simple? Could he just let one of his group die? Did he really not play a part in whether they lived or died? He thought about everything she had said and then went back through the questions he was asking himself and he agreed that he was sounding arrogant. But did that make him wrong was the real question, being arrogant doesn’t mean you're wrong. He couldn’t make up his mind and he could hear the others getting their things together so, for now, he decided to trust Bethany and try to stop himself from only coming up with plans where he is the only one in danger.