Olivia strode through the slime puddles and chunks of frozen ooze, moving on toward the door that should take her to the final room of the third level. Predictably, she’d had to fight four oozes in the fourth room, so she figured there’d be five in the final room. She didn’t want to be overconfident, though, so she paused in front of the door, leaning with her back against the stone wall, and waited for her Energy to top off and for her Elemental Form to be ready. So far, she didn’t think this dungeon had been that challenging, but when she thought of the swarms of spiders, the giant rock bear, the barriers she’d had to bypass, and the girl caught in the ooze, she had to conclude that she was simply lucky to have a powerful skill set.

When she felt ready, Olivia pulled open the heavy, water-logged door and looked into the fifth room of the third floor. She’d been right on one count; five creatures were within, but they weren’t all oozes. She saw three green oozes, one red ooze, and then a smooth, humanoid-shaped black, slimy creature.

It was a bizarre and disconcerting thing to see, a walking slime, pacing around the far wall, shaking its smooth, bendy arms and grunting out weird noises. Olivia couldn’t study it any longer, though; the nearest two green oozes had noticed her pulling the door open and surged toward her. She pointed her right palm at the advancing oozes and poured forth a Fiery Burst spraying the flames liberally over the two creatures. They hissed, popped, and shriveled into black sludge, and Olivia stepped between their bubbling corpses to fire an Arcfrost Cascade at the red ooze that had started to heave toward her.

The spray of crackling white-blue ice petrified, then exploded the ooze, sending chunks of flash-frozen slime slithering over the stony, mossy floor. Olivia turned to face the final green ooze and the strange shambling ooze-man but was alarmed to see the black, shimmery, jiggling form trudging toward her with a rictus grin on its otherwise smooth, featureless face. Olivia saw rows of sharp needle-like teeth within its mouth, and she stumbled back in fear.

This creature was much faster than the oozes. Olivia backpedaled, holding her hands up and firing the first spell that came to mind, Fiery Burst. The ooze-man waded through her flames, its grinning maw spreading further, and the fire seemed to roll over its jiggling body. Olivia’s spell had just sputtered out when the ooze man reached forward and smashed a jiggly fist into her stomach.

Olivia grunted in pain, stumbling back, breathless. She knew that if she’d taken a hit like that when she first came to this world, it would have sent her sprawling, breathless, and in pain, unable to act. As it was, her much higher vitality seemed to be paying off. She quickly straightened and ran a few steps from the ooze-man, calling on her Elemental Form spell, but this time she fueled it with earth-attuned Energy.

Olivia felt her skin stiffen and her sense of mass increase. She knew from practicing with Oylla that her body was now much more dense and resistant to physical damage. In her haste to get away from the ooze-man, she’d run close to the last green slime, so she summoned a ball of plasma and dropped it into the center of the probing creature. It writhed and contorted, bubbling and hissing as her plasma cooked it from the inside.

She felt an impact on her upper back, but it didn’t hurt. Olivia turned and saw the shimmering ooze-man right behind her, swinging its balled-up, slimy fists at her. She held up her left arm, knocking aside the blows, pleased to see that the jiggly flesh of the ooze-man was ineffectual against her gray, stony flesh. Olivia fired one spell after another at the creature, trying to find a weakness in its resistances, but nothing seemed to work; even her Pyrosteam Drill simply slid along the surface of his body and tore into the far wall. Whatever this creature was, it was designed to thwart spells.

Frustration started to turn toward worry when Olivia realized how much Energy she’d burned and how long she’d been holding onto her Elemental Form. Once again, she blocked the creature’s quivering fist, and the thought occurred to her that it seemed weak against the sturdy earthen form; why not try to give it a good bludgeoning of her own? She called up a sphere of earth-attuned Energy, basically, a rocky orb the size of a bowling ball, and, just as she’d practiced with Oylla, sent it whipping through the air to crash into the oily ooze-man’s body.

The concussion of the stone into its jiggling chest sent a satisfying ripple through its body, and it tumbled back, sliding along the mossy floor to crash into the wall. Olivia followed up with an arcing barrage of strikes. She sent her stony orb forward again and again to pummel the creature. Sometime during her attack, her Elemental Form wore off, but she didn’t panic; the ooze monster was starting to deform, and a piteous wheezing, wailing sound gurgled out of its smashed maw when she directed her orb of stone to crash into its rows of needle-like teeth.

Something inside the creature must have been solid because as she broke it apart, the creature lost what rigidity it had and became a quivering mound of black slime. Her attacks never breached its jiggling skin, but a viscous fluid started to leak from its mouth, and it seemed to cease its attempts to move or rise. Olivia whooped and let her rocky orb dissipate into a cloud of green-tinted Energy that faded into nothing. She started to turn when her body stiffened, and a jolt of electricity passed through her.

The current was so strong that Olivia felt herself lose control of her muscles and fell to the ground spasming. She couldn’t form a coherent thought as pulse after pulse of electricity wracked through her, and then she felt her consciousness start to slip. She fought against it, squeezing her eyes shut but forcing herself to focus inward on her Core, shutting out her spasming body and maintaining her consciousness with an act of will.

“Poor thing,” a familiar voice said. “You did a good job, though. Too bad you emptied your bag of tricks on that thing.” It was Jaliss. Olivia couldn’t believe it, couldn’t wrap her mind around it; she’d attacked her after Olivia had gone out of her way to help her.

Through the agony of electric pulses, Olivia suddenly felt a surge of Energy pour into her; the ooze-man must have finally died. “Oh no, you don’t!” Jaliss said from somewhere behind her, and a fresh surge of electricity wracked through Olivia’s body, making her spasm and lose control of her bladder. Red waves of embarrassment and rage surged around her Core, and Olivia knew the sliver of her soul born from a primal elemental was waking up and urging action.

For once, she didn’t try to hold it back. Her Elemental Form was still on cooldown, but she knew its pattern. Once again, turning her mind away from her spasming body, she focused on her Core and nearby pathways. She formed the pattern for Elemental Form, then removed almost all of it, just keeping the part that caused attuned Energy to form around her body, then she added the pattern for Fiery Burst.

She wasn’t doing anything all that complicated, just changing the way Fiery Burst was produced; instead of firing a torrent of fire from one pathway through her hand, she was allowing it to propagate through all her pathways and out through her flesh. It was a quick hack, but she had to do something; she had no control of her body and couldn’t move to focus a spell on her assailant. She was thinking fast, bending and twisting strands of Energy into the clumsy pattern, but once it was set, she fired it off, pushing all the fire-attuned Energy in her Core out to fuel it.

If Olivia could see, she’d have witnessed a ball of fire erupt from her prone, spasming form, billowing out with tremendous force, scorching the ground, the ceiling, and even the room's walls. Jaliss, who’d been standing a few paces from Olivia pouring electricity into her, was instantly scorched and flung back to slam into the stone wall. With the source of her torture knocked aside, Olivia’s body stopped thrashing and spasming, and she was able to see the notifications that had appeared in her vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Elemental Bomb - Improved***

***Elemental Bomb - Basic: Prerequisite: Elemental Affinity. You create an explosion originating from your body that unleashes 100% of an elementally-attuned Energy from your Core. Energy cost: Varied, Cooldown: Long.***

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 18 Elemental Archon. You have gained 10 Intelligence, 10 Will, and have 8 points to distribute.***

Olivia groaned and flopped onto her stomach, looking around the room with bloodshot eyes. A layer of ash coated everything, and the sickly odor of burnt fungus filled the air. She scrambled to her hands and knees and caught sight of Jaliss against the wall. She was twitching and scrabbling weakly with her left hand.

Olivia struggled to her feet and staggered over to her. Jaliss was slumped against the wall, her skin covered with char, and parts of her face looked painfully blistered. Her hair had been burnt off save for a few patches, and Olivia saw that her right hand was missing some fingers. “Probably the hand you pointed at me while you electrocuted me, hmm?” She knelt by the girl and poked her chest. Her eyes popped open, startlingly white in her soot-covered face. She started to cry and whispered hoarsely, “It hurts so bad! Oh, Ancestors, it hurts.”

Olivia didn’t listen to her or respond. She grabbed the girl’s undamaged hand and lifted it, flattening it against the little round pendant hanging from Jaliss’s neck. “Activate it. You’re done.” Jaliss struggled weakly for a moment, trying to pull her hand down, but Olivia just pressed harder. The girl sobbed, but she closed her eyes, and Olivia felt the heat of Energy pulse into the amulet. She let go of her hand and stood up, watching as the girl seemed to dissolve in front of her.

Olivia stood and sighed, looking around at the destruction she’d wrought. Even with the Energy from the enemies she’d killed, she was running on fumes. She moved stiffly over to what was hopefully the last of the soggy wooden doors and began the process of yanking the swollen wood over the stone floor. When she’d gotten it open enough to squeeze through, she peered into a square stone room with a matching stone staircase leading straight down from the opposite wall. A large, mold-covered chest sat in the center of the room.

Olivia squeezed through the doorway, turned, and dragged it shut behind her; she’d decided she would rather not have any more surprise visitors. Then, she walked over to the chest and lifted the heavy, soggy lid. She saw four items at the bottom of the chest and held her hand back in case she’d only be allowed to select one. The four items couldn’t be more different; from left to right, she saw a shiny double-bladed axe, a floppy-looking black hat, a pair of shiny black boots, and a leather bandolier or belt holding seven glass tubes.

She thought any of the items could prove very valuable, but she looked down at her white jumper and the thin cloth pads under her feet and impulsively picked up the shiny black boots. Just as she’d expected, the other items seemed to burst into yellow and blue motes and then simply faded from existence. She wondered at the mechanic the System used to do that. Were the items being absorbed by the ambient Energy? Were they being transported into a bank in an alternate universe? She shrugged and looked at her new boots. They had sturdy thick soles and rounded toes, and the uppers would comfortably cover her feet and ankles. She set them down and slipped her feet into them; they were a size or two too large.

Olivia had learned by now how magical items in this world worked, so she trickled some Energy into the boots, and they instantly hugged her feet, and a System message popped up:

***Boots of Steady Striding - These boots have been artificed by a master craftsman to help the wearer keep their footing on any sort of surface. Additionally, a person wearing these boots will be very difficult to knock down. They are also enchanted to self-repair and clean.***

“Lovely!” Olivia said, walking in a circle and getting a feel for the boots. They felt better than any footwear she’d ever owned, even her favorite sneakers back home. Olivia took stock of herself, checking that her Energy was rapidly recovering and her big spells were off cooldown, then she started walking down the steps. She’d only descended about twenty steps when her foot sank into cold, dark water. The stairway was dim, and visibility wasn’t great, but Olivia could clearly see that further progress down would require her to swim. “That’s a new twist,” she said to herself.