They started working their way up the mountain, the path they chose was about thirty feet down the path from the cave that held the safe room door. It was a spot that was between two larger rocks that didn’t require a lot of adjustments to start. Repeating actions from when he went down the mountain, he stacked some stones and melded them together as a marker for the path. They worked their way up, clearing stones and making stairs. They were steep stairs but they were easier to travel up than free climbing. It wasn’t until they were about to make their third marker around 100 feet up that the first monster appeared, and it wasn’t at all what they expected.

  They both hear rocks falling down the mountain to their left and they froze looking over expecting to see a bird or something else with wings, but they saw the head of a goat poking out of a small cave that they couldn’t see. It seemed to be chewing on something and it wasn’t even looking at them. Neither of them were moving and they had ducked down trying to not be noticed. The goat looked around and came out a bit more, and surprisingly, it was just a goat, it was almost 5 feet tall and 7 feet long, with white fur and proportionally large hooves.

  Eli picked up a rock and threw it in a long arc so that it landed on the other side of the goat, but it turned towards them and it opened its mouth and let out a scream that shook them to their bones. This noise seemed to induce fear and Lucy grabbed onto Eli tightly wrapping her arms around his waist. He shook off the fear pretty quickly and was watching the goat, the noise didn’t come from the goat, but from a shadow snake or eel that came out of its mouth. It didn’t seem to be corporeal since he could partially see through it but it was definitely the source of the fear effect. Not wanting to take a chance that it attacked them more directly, he cast an air detonation right next to it away from the rocks of the mountain.

  He was hoping that it would pull the monster out of the cave it was in and have it fall down the mountainside. However the shadow eel’s tail stuck out the back of the goat and grabbed the rocks preventing it from being pulled away, then when it detonated, it smashed it back into the mountain, hurting the goat and shaking rocks down the mountain in a wide area from the shockwave. Despite getting hit by a lot of rocks while shielding Lucy from them, Eli felt like it had worked out until the goat got back up. Its fur turned black and its dislocated lower jaw fell off as the shadow eel was more visible now, and it looked more corporeal as well. As the eel got more solid the goat started to fall apart, first looking like it was drained of all liquids like a mummy, then it just fell apart and just the eel was there.

  The eel was hovering in the air, flicking its tail back and forth while staring them down, letting out a low growl that was making his hair stand on end. Still keeping Lucy behind him, Eli stood up straight and gave the eel a passive look as if it was beneath him. No change in the eels behavior, he had been trying to goad it into attacking, but it didn’t seem to affect it. Maybe its only attack was the fear and they were supposed to fall down the mountain or something, without being sure, he didn’t want to charge it. Especially since it could probably just go incorporeal and anything they did would miss, the only thing he could think of was his will skill. Eli turned around and held Lucy close and flickered his will skill on and off, leaving it on for only a second.

  The rockslide that followed could have easily killed them, but Eli spent a ludicrous amount of magic molding the surrounding stones together in a flash and using his body to cover Lucy. She came away from it with only some cuts on her arms and legs, but he was missing about a quarter of the skin from his back and arms. It would seem that the likelihood of rockslides was much higher than he had thought and was probably part of the environmental challenge of this floor, just like the cold and snow was for the last floor. He needed a new plan, and time to rest and heal, his back was covered in shards of rock, but not wanting to alarm Lucy he kept her in front of him as they walked back to the safe room.

  Eli sent Lucy inside and told her to send Bethany out while having Beau and Cody help with her wounds, she didn’t want to at first but the pain in his eyes behind his smile made her feel like this wasn’t something she should argue with. He crouched down and laid his chest flat on the rock that would have made a good seat, but now was being used as support to keep him from passing out before giving Bethany instructions. It took another thirty seconds but she came ready to tear into him for letting Lucy get hurt, but when she saw how hurt he was, she realized immediately that he had protected her. And it looked like he almost killed himself doing it, but then she remembered all those other times he had been this hurt and they were all because of something he did to himself, and just like that, she was angry again.

  Bethany sat down next to him and inspected the mangled flesh of his back, spotting at least two dozen rock shards stuck in his back. They ranged from the size of an arrow head, about an inch long, to the size of a spear head, about 4 inches long. Blood was freely pouring out of his wounds and pooling on the floor of the cave, but Bethany was not one to wait to speak her mind and she started in on him right away.

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  “So, you put our lives at risk again trying something stupid, I hope you weren’t hoping for me to be gentle,” She said as she reached for one of the larger pieces lodged in his spine and yanked it out. To her surprise, he didn’t make a sound or even move, she looked at his face again which was turned towards the door and his eyes were open but they were hollow, he was unconscious. She felt his back and could feel his heartbeat so she relaxed and went about the grisly business of removing all of the rock fragments.

  Ten minutes into her work on him she was having to use the bigger rock fragments she had removed to cut out some of the smaller pieces. The whole time she was struggling with how these rocks could cut him so easily, when they sparred her razor sharp rare quality spear was not able to break his skin this easily, leaving only shallow cuts. Then she heard a gasp and looked toward the door at Lucy’s ghost white face, tears were running down her face and she was shaking. Bethany then realized that he had hid his injuries from her and that's why he wanted to be helped outside of the safe room. Cody came out next and then Beau, all getting a good look at how hurt he was and the fear and worry was on all their faces.

  Bethany told them to go back inside and that he would be fine in time. They went in, but they had to drag Lucy in as she was frozen in place, she was scared about how hurt she could have gotten or she was upset that the person she felt she was supposed to protect got hurt instead of her. Either way, she was taking it hard and the boys would help her while she tended to Eli, and it was getting harder for her to feel like everything was ok because he was not healing like he should after this much time passing. It took another twenty minutes before she was certain that all the rock was removed, she had checked the whole time that his heart was still beating, and after the last rock was removed, he had healed enough for the bleeding to stop.

  Not knowing what else to do, she sat next to him and put his face down head in her lap and stroked his hair, humming softly to herself. She couldn’t see magic or really have a feel for it outside of her body but over the next hour she felt her magic flow into him and his flow into her as he healed. She watched every second of it in morbid fascination, feeling how she was helping, she just didn’t know how she was helping or if she could speed it up somehow. He finally woke up, but he didn’t expect to wrap his right arm around her waist and his left around her left, not tightly but more of a hug of gratitude. His breathing was getting erratic as the regeneration continued and he managed to wheeze out a soft ‘thank you’ to her as his hold on her tightened slightly.

  After another hour, he was able to sit up and breathe mostly regularly, Bethany deemed him healed enough to talk so she started the conversation off as softly as she could manage.

  “Jackass!” she said as she slapped him. “You need to stop being so reckless, Lucy could have been hurt, or you could have died, then all of us would die.”

  “Easy,” he said while rubbing his cheek, “I’m injured here.” his attempt at being serious failed as he was smirking while he said that.

  “You think this is funny?” Bethany yelled and stood up, “not only are all of our lives in your hands, but you are the only man I have ever truly felt like I could love. You need to take your survival more seriously.”

  Eli stood and wrapped an arm around her while pushing away a tear with his other hand, “I’m not going anywhere, I only got hurt because of something I wasn’t aware of, a new magic rule I discovered.”

  Bethany gave him a quick kiss since she couldn’t help herself, then pushed herself away, she didn’t want to let him change the subject but her curiosity got the better of her. “What new magic rule?”

  Eli smirked even more, “If you use all of your magic, your stats diminish down to your body level, which even at level 3 is only 30%. When my will skill started a rock slide I was afraid we would fall so I panicked trying to save Lucy and dumped all my magic into securing the rock around us into the core of the mountain. I just hope it killed that goat eel monster.”

  “Goat eel?” Bethany asked with a confused expression.

  Eli smirked again, he knew bringing the monster up like that would help him steer the conversation, it was a little manipulative, but he didn’t like having her mad at him and dwelling on it wouldn’t help them right now. “Yes, it was a mountain goat, with a shadow eel inside, I managed to kill the goat, but the eel drained its magic and went from a ghost to being solid.”

  Bethany stopped herself from her first response, then stopped her second response, she could tell he was trying to steer the conversation away from his mistake. She didn’t mind this but he was being so obvious about it that she actually was less mad at him, he was being obvious about it so it didn’t affect the trust between them and she could appreciate that. “Ok so lets get the others and talk about options then, we don't want this floor to take too long.”