Let’s collect our loot.

The first thing we do is take a short break. We have earned it after a fight like that. Later, when searching for loot, we discover that one of the dark elementals had a decently sized block of obsidian inside it. Merlara explains that obsidian is most commonly used in jewerly, so the crafters guild will likely pay a good price for it. When Shalia breaks apart the large earth elemental, we notice it has a large amount of white, near translucent crystals inside.

“Quartz.” Merlara informs us. “These can be molded into glass. Again, something the crafters guild will want to buy from us.”

Both the quartz and obsidian disappear into our backpacks. But as we prepare to leave, I have a feeling like we are missing something. Throughout the mine, we never saw anything that could resemble anything the elementals were coming from. I know elementals are spirits that use the elements around them to form a body and therefore don’t follow the same rules as biological creatures like us do. But they must have a reason for their behavior, right? After all, why regularly infest this mine and leave other mines alone?

I tell the rest of my party about my hunch and Shalia quickly brings up that hidden cave from a while ago when Kiara brought us to our first dungeon. So, we wait until Shalia has fully replenished her mana and then she goes around the edges of the walls and ‘feels’ for any irregularities.

After a while she stops and says, “I think I feel something over here. It is still a bit away, and downward, but I think I can get us there.”

For the next ten minutes, Shalia uses her earth magic to pull the rocks aside. She digs in a downward angle and we patiently follow after her. Eventually, the tunnel opens up to an underground cave. As we enter, we are stunned. This cave has … buildings inside it. Houses with walls made of the same color as the rocks as this cave. It looks like an estate belonging to some wealthy guy but hidden inside a cave. The air here smells fresh too.

“Dude, it’s like some rich guy built a resort in here. You think it could have been made by dwarves?” Ryul asks as we walk between the houses.

“Not a chance.” Merlara replies. “The doorways in these buildings are too tall for dwarves. The windows are all too high as well. Any dwarf would have to stand on his toes to look through. My bet is on dark elves.”

“I have my doubts on that Merlara.” Shalia buts in. “The walls show signs of age and I’m not talking about a few decades. It’s more like this place has been here for several centuries.”

“What bugs me the most is that so far we have seen no trace of anyone. If people live here, then where are they? And if they used to life here, where are their remains? It may sound macabre of me, but I would actually feel comforted if I see a few bones. At least then I will know someone lived here once. Without that, it feels like this place is inhabited by ghosts.” I tell them.

After a few more turns, when Ryul is about to round a corner, he suddenly jumps back and takes cover behind it.

“What’s wrong?” Shalia asks. But Ryul quickly shushes her.

“Three elementals.” He whispers. “Big ones too.”

I head up to the corner and peak around it. A little further up I see what resembles a small public square. On the ceiling above is a large crystal orb which radiates a bright light. It seems like that orb is the main source of light in this place. Below, in the center of the square, are three elementals. They are surrounding a dried-out fountain with a statue on top. Two of them are as big as the large earth elemental we fought in our last battle. One made of earth, the other of water. The last one is a fire elemental who is even taller. She seems twice as tall as a regular human and looks quite fierce.

I have Merlara take a look and ask, “You think that’s the origin of the elemental attacks?”

“Not sure. But the quest is to get rid of all of them.” She says. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Imris, I wish Wendy was here now.” Ryul interrupts. “This would have been a lot simpler with her [Null Field] skill.”

“Ryul, complaining about skills we don’t have is not going to help us.” I tell him.

We first head back to the edge of this estate so we are clear from the elementals, then start to devise a plan. All ideas we come up with revolve around us separating the elementals, as we won’t be able to take them on when they are together. Shalia comes up with a good idea to take on the water elemental. She is suggesting to throw dirt on her. That will either suck the water out of her so she can’t maintain her body or put too much mud into her that her body no longer counts as water but mud. We have to move back quite a bit to find enough soil to use on a water elemental that big though. But eventually we manage to set up this trap. Once everything is ready, Shalia drinks the last of the mana potions so she is on full power.

Then we start our attack.

Shalia lifts a large piece of rock with her magic and runs with it to the elementals.

“Hey, bitch!” She yells at them, and then tosses the rock.

It lands on the earth elemental and at best takes a chip off of it. Then all three of them look at Shalia and start their approach.

Shalia quickly runs back towards us, where we have set up our ambush. As we expected, the water elemental is close behind her. Shalia rounds the corner where we are hiding. The water elemental rounds the corner shortly after her, is surprised to suddenly see Merlara there instead of our pink haired druid, and even more surprised when suddenly her feet are frozen. Then Ryul jumps off the low hanging roof above us and punches the elemental’s face. It will reassemble itself fast, but that is fine. We are merely buying time for Shalia.

As soon as our Asian mage is behind us, she uses her earth magic to lift the dirt we have collected and dumps it onto the water elemental. As we suspected, the dirt absorbs the water that makes up the elemental’s body and turns it into mud. What remains gets another [Freeze] spell from Merlara and that is one down. Unfortunately, we can’t celebrate long, because the fire elemental is already rounding the corner to face us.

The fire elemental starts by waving an arm at us and from it, a [Flame Wave] appears. The fire looks like an arc which heads towards us. Merlara and I duck behind our shields. Shalia is safe because she stood a bit behind me. Ryul isn’t fast enough and some of his clothes catch on fire. By combining her earth and water magic, Shalia lifts some mud and throws it on the flames that are on Ryul’s clothes. The flames extinguish and Ryul makes sure he gets behind Merlara. The fire elemental then creates large balls of fire in her hand and throws these [Fireball] at me and Merlara. We block them with our shields, but we can feel the temperature rising quickly. That is when Shalia grabs the rest of the mud and throws it on the fire elemental. It manages to dodge most of it, but her left arm got hit. The mud has the water evaporated out of it, but it also extinguishes the fiery arm. Merlara also casts another [Freeze] on the elemental’s chest, but that part is apparently so hot it just dimmed the flames a little. She casts yet another [Freeze], this time on its right arm and extinguishes it.

The fire elemental decides to fall back and at first Merlara and I chase after her. But when we turn the corner, it is our turn to be surprised. The earth elemental has caught up and takes a swing at us. Merlara takes the hit on her shield. The impact is so hard that Merlara gets thrown aside and her shield now has a big dent in it. I quickly grab the dark knight and help her run towards Shalia.

Before Shalia can look over Merlara’s injuries, helmet face looks back at the approaching earth elemental. She looks at the ceiling, back to the elemental, then aims her right hand at the elemental. Suddenly, a crack opens up in the ground under the earth elemental’s feet, causing her to lose her balance and fall. What? Earth magic now? How is Merlara capable of breaking all the rules?

Before I can question her about it, she looks at Shalia and says, “The stalactite above it. Drop it.”

We all look up and see there’s a pretty big stalactite right above the earth elemental. Shalia raises her arms to it and causes it to disconnect from the ceiling. We then see it crash onto the earth elemental and break its head and shoulders to pieces. We are quick to celebrate, but shortly after, the fire elemental is back. With both of its arms grown back and its size still the same.

This is bad. Ryul can’t fight that thing. He would only burn himself by punching it. Shalia may have water magic, but there is barely any water left to use. I don’t think her chucking rocks at it will do a lot of good and the vines she can grow will only serve as fuel. Merlara might have a broken left arm from that last hit she took. If that thing is going to fight like before, we should expect it to start throwing spells at us again. When I see her point both her hands at us, I know a spell is coming.

I get up in front of my friends and quickly cast a spell. One I learned way back in the castle. It’s called [Royal Guard] and creates a magic dome of white light behind me. It protects the people inside from receiving damage. That is when the fire elemental unleashes her spell on us. A continuous sea of flames which I can only describe as an [Inferno] speeds towards us. For me that’s my chance to finally activate my [Divine Blessing] skill. It is one of those rare skills that I can only activate once per day, so I have to use it sparingly. The skill does not cancel, but mitigates magical damage done to me for a while. The oncoming inferno washes over me and towards my friends. My party is kept safe because of the [Royal Guard] spell. While this fire would normally give me serious burns, I now only get off with some 1st degree burn wounds and singed hair.

But I’m not staying here to receive more damage. I rush the fire elemental and surprise it by slashing my sword through its hands. The metal of my sword interferes with its body enough that its hands extinguish and stops casting the [Inferno] spell. Now my friends are safe, but my armor starts feeling hot and so does my sword. The fire elemental quickly turns away from my party, regrows both one of her arms and aims her hand to me. Then she casts [Fire Stream] in my direction. It is just a single stream of fire, not a sea of it like before. I block it with my shield, which quickly starts heating up. Bad idea. Fortunately, Merlara interrupts the elemental by casting another [Freeze] spell, this time on the elemental’s legs. With the elemental’s legs extinguished it starts to fall. This is my chance to take it down.

I charge the fire elemental again and **** myself into its chest. Just before I come into contact with the fire, I activate my [Sentinel] skill, which makes my body as hard as diamond and even makes me glitter a bit. For 3 seconds I am now immune to all damage, both magical and physical. Before leaving on this quest, I heard spirits like elementals can only sustain a body which fits with their element. With me in the middle, I am an interference to that purity and it loses cohesion, loses its shape, it melts away around me and the fires extinguish. The only thing that remains of the elemental is a pile of ashes. Just in time, as my [Sentinel] skill stops working.

I stand there taking in the fact I just jumped inside a furnace. That was insane. There is even smoke coming from between my armor plates. I am so lucky I didn’t get massive burn wounds.

“That was amazing.” Ryul says when my party walks up to me. “You were such a badass.”

Merlara, holding her left arm in an odd manner, agrees with Ryul. “You did good. I’m happy you are on my team.”

“Yeah, next time I plan on jumping into a magical fire, please advise against it will you.” I reply.

“Why is that?” Merlara asks.

“Well, it turns out my [Sentinel] skill only protects my body from magic fire.” I explain. “That means all the cloth I had in between my skin and plate armor … Yeah, that all got burned.”

Everybody, including myself, laugh a little at my misfortune and they promise to help me find new clothes one we get back to the mining village. We also help Merlara’s left arm out of her armor and like expected, it is broken. Fortunately, Shalia has a pretty good healing skill called [Nature’s Oath]. When she makes use of it, spirits of nature are drawn to her to come and heal the whole party. Not just Merlara’s broken arm gets healed, but also the parts of burned skin I and Ryul have sustained against that fire elemental. These spirits also heal us from our fatigue and will even stick around for an extra hour.

With our injuries dealt with, we check the elementals for loot. The earth elemental actually had a large clump of metal in its center. Merlara recognized it as Mithril. Perfect, I was hoping to get some of that. For the moment we put it in our backpacks. I am definitely going to petition this clump going to me once we get back to the guild and divide our spoils. I already start wondering which equipment I would to be crafted from it. The fire elemental also left behind a rock the size of a fist. It is pretty hot despite the fires being extinguished, but it doesn’t burn. Merlara calls it a fire heart. It is apparently pretty rare and alchemists are willing to pay much for it.

“So, Leona goes inside the fire elemental and later an egg comes out? Congratulations Leona, you’re a daddy now.” Ryul says gives me a thumbs up.

That was a stupid joke, but what pisses me off the most is that Shalia actually starts snickering.

I just end up rolling my eyes in disapproval and say, “Guys.”

After our looting, we return to the place we found the three large elementals. We look up towards the big glowing orb on the ceiling. It probably glows like that because of the magical energy inside it. That magical energy must have been what the spirits were drawn to. We should think about getting it out of here. Then at least the mine will stop having these elemental incursions.

When we look around, we notice 2 large buildings next to the fountain. We enter the biggest and most fancy looking of them first. The rooms are covered in dust and there are cobwebs everywhere. It is clear nobody has been here for a very long time. We can even see our footsteps on the dusty floor. It is like whomever used to live here simply decided to leave one day and never came back.

Eventually, we find a place that looks like a gym. There we find both a shield and a special looking gauntlet there with a weird carving on the palm. Ryul decides to put it on and try it out a bit. At first there is nothing special about it, but then Ryul hits a practice dummy with the palm. As soon as his palm hits the dummy, a shockwave appears from the gauntlet and throws the dummy away.

“Holy shit.” Ryul says as he stares at the gauntlet. He then sets the dummy back up and hits it again. Once more, a shockwave comes from the gauntlet when he hits it with his palm.

“Looks like you found an enchanted weapon, Ryul.” Merlara says. “You can count yourself lucky.

“Wait a minute.” I say looking at the new shield. “Does that mean this shield could be enchanted too?”

“That’s a good guess.” Merlara answers. “If we can’t find out ourselves what it does, we may need to ask Aelbrecht. He has a lot of knowledge on enchanted items.”

We search the mansion more and discover a book and a silver bracelet. The book is very old with on its pages a script I have never seen before. Merlara decides to take it with her and ask Aelbrecht about it. The silver bracelet is beautifully crafted and adorned with a large black pearl surrounded by smaller white pearls. We take that one with us as well.

Before heading back to the surface, we decide to check out the other large building. We quickly discover that one is actually a bathhouse. What surprises us the most is that the water there is clear and fresh. How come a centuries old hidden retreat has fresh water? Then we discover that at the center of the large bath is a pedestal, with on it a blue stone. The stone seems to be leaking water, like it is pulling moisture from the air and then water droplets run down the pedestal into the bath.

“Hey, you guys think maybe we could take a bath before heading back up?” I ask. “Ever since I jumped into that fire elemental, I’ve been sweating my tits off.”

“Yeah, the temperature here is high enough to make me sweat a bit. I could go for a bath.” Merlara says.

“Me too.” Shalia replies. “Let’s all take one together.”

After Shalia’s suggestion, Merlara and I both turn our gazes at Ryul. He looks rather confused because it’s not like he has said anything.

“Actually. Maybe Ryul and I should wait outside until you and Merlara are done.” Shalia then says and takes Ryul outside.

With the romantic couple gone, Merlara and I start to undress.