Sitting around a campfire with skewers of meat slowly roasting over it, Sera’s party rested near the stairs to the second floor.
Camping, a common sight according to the fiction of her old world, yet quite out of place in the Realms. Neither would one need the fire for light or warmth, nor would one cook during a delve, if someone would eat in the first place. The omnipresent glow and enchanted clothing made the first irrelevant and the mana in the environment was enough to survive without requiring expensive rations. Also if one wanted the latter and wasn’t willing to compromise, putting ready-made meals into one’s storage was an option.
However Sera didn’t let herself be bothered by those facts. Being as hyperactive as she was, she used the break to try to cook the meat of a lizard species they encountered on their way.
It took her a few attempts to prevent the flesh from dissipating while cooking, though in the end her efforts were rewarded with a palatable seeming skewer. Providing the meat with her mana and fighting off the greedy flames of the dismembered body of a fire elemental she was using as a heat source had taken a toll on her mana, yet it was still more efficient than creating the fire herself without anything burnable nearby. Her mental attributes weren’t good enough for that.
Though it had caused a small argument with Nia over the use of the still living body of a defeated foe as an oven. Especially so as elementals had weaknesses more similar to organic beings and no core like golems, even though they were both beings made from an element.
Seeing that one of the skewers seemed to be ready for consumption, she picked it up and took a generous bite from it. However an extremely bitter and sour taste spread throughout her mouth the moment the meat touched her tongue. Her face distorted. Unable to keep it inside, she had to spit it out. A reaction quickly followed by the laughter of Nia, who had attentively observed everything.
“Hey! If you knew this would happen, you could have warned me!” The cook complained tear-eyed due to the bad taste and definitely not since her efforts in preparing the meal were in the end meaningless.
Stifling her laughter, though still out of breath, Nia forced herself to answer. “Sorry, sorry. I hadn’t quite expected you to really eat it. That you were just training your whatever-class with disposable material? Yes. But eating something from a creature with the name poison flame lizard…”
“But it looked so good…” Sera continued, while tossing the rest of the skewer into the flames of the half-dead elemental with a sad expression.
“Sure, but even the most beautiful fruit can be poisonous. As if a creature covered completely in poisonous flames and smoke wouldn’t have inedible flesh!” Nia explained.
“But the lizards also aren’t burning themselves with their own flames…” Sera grumbled in an attempt to justify her actions.
“Just because magic is involved, doesn’t mean it can’t have some biological toxicity. Well, if it had been a dangerous poison which wouldn’t just cause discomfort, i would have stopped you.” Nia continued, still trying to prevent herself from starting to laugh again.
Suddenly, now much more serious, the girl turned towards the entrance of the next floor. “Looks like the next ones are coming up… Who wants to go this time?”
“Yes, yes.” Sera answered the rhetorical question. She was the only party member with defensive capabilities. Standing up and killing the flames with a strike of the shaft of her scythe to release some of her anger and disappointment, she took position.
As usual Sarah was sitting on the side and was working on her own projects. The amount and strength of the enemies had forced her to assist her sister and Nia more often than she had wanted on their way to their current resting spot, but it couldn’t be helped, if she wished to get through the encounters as quickly as possible with little injuries.
Her water was somewhat effective against the creatures of the dungeon, though by far not as effective as one could assume. The magical flames of her enemies were only somewhat affected by the mage’s element. Though it could still weaken them and their attacks enough for her teammates to finish off the aggressors.
Sadly all those fights didn’t help the scientist much in regard to her class. More research was probably in order to gain some levels.
Without the need to use her souls as weapons, she did manage to collect more of them, yet even there she started to run into diminishing returns. More souls would allow her to increase the size of her self-created spell-skill, however in return it would require more mana to keep it active. Also going from ten to twenty souls for ammunition was in percent the same as going from one hundred to two hundred. Not that she minded that it got harder to notice improvements, if it was just that. Though she was pretty sure that there was a limit to how many souls she could push into her body.
But enough theory-crafting for the moment. They would be staying here for a while, so Sarah wanted to use the time for some of her experiments she couldn’t try while moving.
Though before that, she made sure that her sister wouldn’t have any issues with her current enemies.
The obsidian golems Sera was fighting were pitch black and about one and a half meter high beings mimicking wolves, just with sharp spikes and edges all over their body. Unfortunately they were one of the creatures the mage could do little against with her water. Their weaknesses were their cores hidden in their skulls. Even a small scratch would be enough to stop them. Though unless one had the power to smash the magically enhanced volcanic glass or enough precision to strike the eyes of the surprisingly fast moving foe, it would be hard to inflict lasting damage. Their quick regeneration in the obsidian rich environment, made any strategy relying on dismemberment useless.
So unfortunately Sarah had to scrap any thoughts of getting a still living one to study. Or at least until she could easily overpower them and not risk her life while she was examining them.
Refocusing on her current project, she decided to block off the two other entrances to their current room first. It hadn’t happened so far, but sooner or later enemies would probably also appear from there. So it was time to use earth magic and reduce the diameter of the paths.
Though as she was about to form the spell with her mana, she came across an issue. What is earth? Water magic controls water, a substance. Fire is a reaction using two components and energy. Light was photons and darkness their absence. Air magic was affecting a gas… or was it? Thinking back to the bats in their first dungeon, they did just move the element around them. A weird spell which seemed to affect the air as a whole…
On one hand Sarah doubted that a spell could affect a mix of unspecified composition that efficiently, on the other she had witnessed it. Earth magic was most likely similar.
If she could get her hands on a golem… They seemed to be running on earth magic, yet didn’t openly use it, so no spell circle appeared the mage could copy and investigate. Similarly the dungeon kept the spells for its traps hidden. Without a way to acquire someone proficient in the element, she put it on her mental list of items they had to obtain for the moment.
If they were still in their old world, it would have been much easier. Once one was rich and influential enough, one could get anything. She didn’t quite like the methods employed, as she had been on the wrong end a few too many times, but she also couldn’t ignore such a practical system.
With earth magic being out, she had to find some other way to close off the two entrances. Excavating rocks and throwing them in the way was an option, though moving the rocks would be annoying. She could try to affect the silica in it, but aside from some of the more interesting chemical elements and unexpected results of experiments she had never tried to synthesize or affect more complex or less common molecules. Sera and Nia could help, but at that point they could also just defend the entrances instead of building a wall.
So going through the elements she had access to with her magic, she quickly came to the conclusion that tungsten would be a good choice. Harder than steel and the pure metal with the highest melting point. Without affinity it would require mana and time to create, yet its advantages over ice were apparent.
Her decision made, she created the spell, incorporated it into her soul orrery for the time being and assigned a soul to keep it active. Reworking it for the new scale did take a bit of work, but nothing groundbreaking. In the end it was just a simple element creation spell and not one which would reshape a realm.
Six fights, more failed cooking experiments from her sister and fortunately no uninvited guests from the two other paths later, they were sealed up with only the down still open. It wasn’t a strategy which could work in her old world. The lack of fresh air and any way out aside from the other end of the dungeon could easily lead to an early death there. Though with the mana of the dungeon no such issues arose here. However the load on Sarah’s mana had been surprisingly noticeable.
So after a short rest it was time for experiments!
