Chapter 34: Chapter 28 – Ice Elemental Cavern

When Jake’s party arrived on the next floor, he nearly laughed out loud. They were once again in a frozen environment, and Jake was nearly certain one of two things were true: either the dungeon master was a complete troll, making an annoying challenge for them if they didn’t use Hestia’s or Fhesiah’s flames, or Jake was right and the dungeon master was trying to bait Jake into using Hestia’s fire, and getting him into a false sense of security besides. Just why would they put such a trivial threat for a fire user, otherwise?

 

Jake was even more sure of it as they killed the ice elementals throughout winding caves, and they got to the final boss room. It felt like the enemies leading up to the boss room were even weaker than the previous floor, and they spent their entire budget on the giant ice elemental boss encounter itself, one that would just be begging for the demoness to hit with a giant fireball and destroy it instantly. It was standing on the far end of a large cavern, just waiting for them to enter the large room.

The giant Ice Elemental looked like a bunch of giant rocks of different sizes and shapes made of ice stacked up on top of each other to eventually make a giant ice man, with both arms and legs, but no head. The creature was quite large, at five meters tall. As Jake used [Arcane Eye], he found that this encounter would be somewhat similar to their Ant Queen encounter, where little ice elementals that they had been destroying this whole time would come through smaller alcoves and tunnels once they engaged the boss.

Jake guessed that the room would get quite cold even if they killed the creatures quite rapidly, as when they faced small numbers of them, it had already gotten near the point of needing to heal frostbite without any actual attacks landing on them. Jake signaled his plan for taking on this boss over their bond: Ophelia and him would take on the boss, while Fhesiah took on the additional enemies.

They entered the room, and Jake and Ophelia began casting runic fire spears at the boss. The moment they started casting, the boss did too: a large magical ice barrier surrounded them, that looked like four giant kite shields that spun rapidly around them through the air.

Jake and Ophelia’s runic spears of fire slammed into one of the shields, and one of the shields crumbled. The Ice Elemental returned fire by casting four ice shards at Jake’s party, but they were able to dodge them easily from their end of the cavern. Jake and Ophelia charged at the boss, and Jake cast mini-Einherjar on the demoness. Some smaller ice elementals started entering the room, and she went to work hard on clearing them out rapidly. They would normally shatter in just a single swipe of her claws, targeting their cores.

Jake and Ophelia shielded one another from ice shards that the giant elemental boss kept sending at them during their approach, and returned fire spear spells of their own. They took down two more shields just as they reached the feet of the boss, but one more shield respawned. The two of them kept close to one another, so when the boss tried to punch Jake, it instead had two shields slammed into the hand at the same time.

The two of their melee coordination was now exceptional, thanks to all of their practice together. They transmit their thoughts and feelings over the bond, and with two shields meeting a massive amount of force at precisely the same moment, they are able to deflect the blow. Just a few milliseconds difference and the transfer of momentum would be so large that each would be flung away like they got hit by a car, but instead they were able to stop the fist of the large creature by meeting it at exactly the same time. The runes on their shields lit up, as they fed mana into the inertial dampening rune.

They darted in with spears of fire, which slammed into the shields as they slammed their physical spears into the Ice Elemental’s left leg. Chunks of ice were removed, but they could see that frost and ice was gathering near the wound to heal the punctures and cracks created by their attacks. They would need to keep working through the Ice Elemental’s defenses to land a decisive blow. Fhesiah was still speeding around the cavern, clearing the much smaller ice elementals as they entered the room, keeping them from having a chance to cast any smaller ice shard spells of their own.

Still, some smaller ice shard attacks nearly pelted Jake and Ophelia, to which they were able to block with their physical shields. The temperature in the room kept dropping, and if not for their temperature regulation enchantments on their gambesons under their armor, they would already be suffering from frostbite. They began to overcharge the enchantment using their mana, like they had done with the inertial dampening on their shields.

Jake cast mini-Einherjar on Ophelia as well, and her spear blurred as she mounted a large offensive on the boss. Stab after stab actually rocked the Ice Elemental back, and she added runic fire spears to the mix. The final shield floating around the boss shattered and Jake was able to land an empowered runic fire spear into the boss’s chest, exploding and sending shards of ice everywhere, melting a large portion of their chest and exposing the boss’s core.

They wanted to capitalize on this, but the amount of magical energy surrounding the boss skyrocketed as they raised their arms into the air. Frost from all around the room swirled around the giant ice elemental’s fists, pulling them from all living smaller ice elementals, which were not many thanks to Fhesiah’s frantic efforts. They slammed their arms down at Jake, but Jake and Ophelia were ready with their empowered internal dampening, slamming both their shields with Runic Shields layered on top of them.

Their runic shields shattered, and they were pushed down to their knees by the sheer amount of force. The temperature around them dropped and they started to freeze, and Jake’s shoulder dislocated from being pressed down at the odd angle. Jake screamed in pain, the crushing force and pain from the freezing of his lungs immense. Ophelia took some of the damage for him in addition to her own body freezing, but she still managed to grit her teeth and cast a minor enhancement of runic strength onto herself, allowing her to push up and shove the boss’s fists back, shattering the frozen energies around its fists.

As Jake worked to heal himself, he saw the valkyrie speed up. Her attacks became more vicious and full of energy, and her body began to glow. This was her making use of [Advanced Spear], as well as her [Valkyrie’s Fervor] triggering from Jake taking significant damage. Increasing the spear skill to the next tier wasn’t just hitting a little bit harder or faster, or simply being better with the weapon. It was a qualitative difference that allowed the user to better utilize stamina, and if they had it, mana, into their attacks for empowered strikes.

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Each of her spear thrusts rocked the giant ice elemental back, and removed large swathes of ice from its body. The ice elemental’s massive strike seemed to heal themselves in addition to empowering their attack, but once again the valkyrie was mixing runic spears of fire into her attacks, removing all the damage that was previously healed. Jake stood up, his shoulder now healed, and he sent another empowered runic spear of fire right at the chest, causing a similar outcome to before, exposing the ice elemental’s core.

Ophelia blurred towards the core using her [Charge] ability, and crashed into it with her own spear. As she did, she released her own runic fire spear into the core, destroying it. The giant ice elemental crumbled, along with all the remaining ice elementals in the room.

Ophelia immediately rushed to check on Jake with a serious look on her face, “Jake, are you alright?”

Jake just smiled wryly at her. While if he was back on earth, any thoughts of a sports career would probably be ruined after just the last twenty-four hours, but here he was right as rain after just a few healing spells. On the other hand, “I’m good, thanks to you, but what about you? Did you forget that you took damage, too?”

Looking over her, her chest was nearly covered in frost, and her breaths were still coming out like a fog. Her shield arm looked a little crooked, like her shoulder might have been fractured or dislocated as well. He immediately began casting his [Cure Wounds] spell, and she blushed. “When you got hurt, I…” She hesitated, and Jake sensed she wanted to use Hestia-related abilities, but she changed what she was going to say. “I decided to keep the enemy busy, giving you a chance to recover.”

Jake finished healing her, then smiled. “You were amazing, doing a lot more than that. You did the right thing. I know I can always count on you.” She gave Jake a shy smile, but before he could continue they were interrupted, “You two are so cute. Did you want to have some time alone in a tent? I know you battle angels get a little excited from a good fight, this one qualified, didn’t it?”

Ophelia and Jake both blushed at her teasing, and she continued, “Aha! Two for one that time. I was just joking, of course. Wouldn’t want to give a certain someone a show, after all. We have a bit of cleanup to do, don’t we?”

Of course, she was right. There were tons of ice elemental cores to collect, and special ice substances that they could gather using their [Looting] ability. They got to it, clearing out the room. Jake checked the dungeon completion notification.   

 

 

Jake would store the reward; you would never know when something like this could come in handy, though he doubted as a party that excelled with fire, that ice would ever be something that they would fear, unless the threat completely overpowered them. Normally, you would imagine that ice and fire counter one another, but things were different for Jake’s party: their flames were empowered by a goddess, or a dragon, in the demoness’ case. Most likely, there were some creatures of supernaturally special frost that could be a counter, but those types of creatures simply would not show up at level ten, Jake guessed. If the dungeon master pulled such a creature out, it would likely be a waste for them.

Jake used his [Arcane Eye] to make sure the dungeon was clear, and they set up bedrolls next to a fire they started; Jake taking kindling and other wood out of his storage bracelet. They would take a nap to be fresh for the next floor, as the demoness absorbed the kill energy from the large boss. WIth that, she too hit level 9, being not very far behind them now. They all lay there together, Jake using his summoned beast of a frost warg to keep watch in case they get caught off guard, but also to train the skill.

Jake had trained the summon beast spell to level 5 by keeping it out periodically even within their [Refuge]. Whenever he summoned it within, he would get a cat or a dog, but they had very little personality. The cat would usually just slink off and sleep in a corner, and the dog was content to just sleep around as well. Eventually, he had them lasting for nearly thirty minutes, but Jake found with the penalties that they remained too weak to be useful. Jake hoped when the skill upgraded that it would become more useful once again, but he would see. It was simply not his specialization, so for it to remain situationally useful was fine, he supposed.

When they had finished resting, there was still about six hours left of rest time, but they decided to move on. They had a light breakfast that they took out of their storage bracelets, cleaned up and stored everything they had taken out. They entered the portal, and the third floor was a little different.

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