The polar bear patriarch wasted no time slamming a claw at the entrance to its den where John and Matayal were just entering. The attack was more than just physical force, but also the intention to free the lower half of the humans just exiting the pool leading inside. The couple split apart to avoid the former while Matayal negated the latter transformation of the water. At least, she kept it from fully solidifying- a thin layer of ice still coated their lower bodies.

The two stood side by side once more on solid ground, spiritual energy flowing between them. John was pushing the limits of how much fire element he could control without a totem, augmenting Matayal’s water element while in turn her water element was exchanged back to him to augment his air. He had some of his own, but they needed more than just a quarter portion of air element. Wind wrapped around the two of them as lightning coated their weapons.

Their forms blurred, moving with great haste to flank the creature. From the right John’s blade slashed through the creature’s fur, durable as it was. Jolts of lightning blackened the flesh as he moved. On the other side, Matayal’s borrowed spear stabbed into the creature’s shoulder, a sudden burst of power followed by a burst of water element transformation. As her spear withdrew there was no spray of blood and the twisting body of the ice bear came with a cracking sound as frozen blood within its shoulder broke apart. That application of the water element was hardly useful against humans- if Matayal stabbed a spear twenty centimeters into a cultivator they would have a hole all the way through them.

The roars of rage from the beast echoed inside the small chamber with great intensity, causing it to tremble as the two cultivators danced around it. Even as it spun around Matayal remained out of its reach while John slashed at its left rear leg. When it threw its body to try to crush him against the wall, that left an opening for her to stab its paw. The creature held back nothing, but the coordinated efforts were able to overcome its rage.

The battle ended with the great bear opening its jaws wide, biting at Matayal. Her spear stabbed upward through its palate, having just enough reach to do so without her burying her arm inside the massive creature’s mouth. She still had to drop the weapon as she backed away to avoid snapping jaws that forced the weapon deeper and into the creature’s brain. The bear crashed to the ground, unmoving. John didn’t take its stillness state for granted and stabbed it through the eye, nearly burying his sword up to the hilt to reach the brain from another angle.

Matayal sighed. “We need to get better quality weapons. Nobody was ready to make anything worthy for mid or late Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators.”

“That is the unfortunate truth,” John admitted. “We’re not even a full generation into our clans having Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators. The Stone Conglomerate and Shimmering Islands didn’t have that many before this generation either.” He shook his head, “And now things are going well enough that the Molten Sea and some Sky Islands are taking note of the region.” He looked down at his blood covered sword, “We’ll definitely need to look into better equipment.”

There did happen to be a pile of treasure in the den, but there weren’t any unchewed spears or longswords. However, there was the potential to reuse some materials, and plenty of things to pick through. More than that, there was the entire patriarch ice bear. The fur could be used for armor padding or perhaps armor all on its own, and its bones would certainly have other value. The only problem was fitting it in a storage bag- or rather, how they would divide it up between storage bags. There would likely be some mistakes with dismantling it, diminishing its value, but it was better than leaving it behind or trying to drag it around with them.

After the battle they took stock of their casualties- dead and wounded. There were fortunately only two of the former, but more than a handful of individuals with more than light wounds. Away from the others, John consulted with Matayal and the others. “Did we overestimate our capabilities? Obviously I understand we can’t completely avoid losses, but we’re here to empower our clans, not weaken them.”

Harta folded his arms in front of himself. “If the Mulyani clan bore greater strength outside of our matriarch…”

“Your contributions were more than sufficient,” Matayal assured him. “We are confident that your strength will reach the Consolidated Soul Phase later, and even if the Mulyani clan fails to grow for some reason… we would not abandon our allies. We fight for each other to what degree we can.”

Livna offered her opinion to John’s initial question, “In a battle at any scale, losses on both sides are inevitable. Most would judge the rewards from this battle sufficient. There is enough here to train up two Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators, for which an equal number of Soul Expansion Phase cultivators is no match.”

John nodded. It was basically like that, wasn’t it? It was all about profits and losses. That was the truth of this reality. “We will make sure their families are properly rewarded for their sacrifice.” There was little they could do- except choose to remain stagnant. That would simply postpone losses until someone stronger came around and decided they wanted what the clans or individual members had. A slow and steady cultivation rate was nice, but only worked at a certain size. The clans were growing, but they had not yet reached such a point. Even then, large clans and sects expected losses for various reasons.

Had they been somewhere else, the injured would have been sent back. As it was, they could not afford to spare escorts for a trip of many days, escorts who would likely be unable to return. Sending the injured back along the route they came would likely be safe from natural dangers, but that wasn’t a guarantee. More importantly, there would be some cultivators looking to take advantage of weak groups. With the vast scale of the Prismatic Chambers, it wasn’t possible for anyone to enforce actual rules of engagement. Thus, it was riskier to send them back than to just have them trail behind, slightly slowing their progress and weakening their fighting force, but allowing them to rejoin once they recovered. Those who could not recover to a fighting fit state had simply died, though if they had been facing different challenges the results might not have been the same in that regard. Poisons, for example.

-----

The chances of running into any particular group within the sprawling Prismatic Chambers was rather low, with the exception of the tunnels around the entrance. Everyone had to pass through some of a small number of tunnels, and those were well mapped out. The earth element sections which were the closest to the entrance were densely packed and people spread out from there.

Because the triplets and the others with them were only present for the sake of experience and training, they were not going far. Though it would have been beneficial for many of them to seek out alternate elemental areas, especially those leaning towards the light side of things, they simply couldn’t reach them without traversing areas that were much too dangerous and too unknown.

But just because some would be favored didn’t mean the opportunity wasn’t worthwhile for all involved. The triplets saw their allies fighting and growing, whether it was those on the younger end or those who just took longer to advance in cultivation. Some simply couldn’t gain any insights without dipping their toes into a bit of danger.

“Uuuugh,” Ursel groaned. “Can we stop fighting things made of rock now?”

“I’m the one who should be saying that,” Melanthina commented. “You’re quite suited for dealing with them, aren’t you?”

“My arms are tired…” Ursel sighed. “And I can only bash so many things.”

“I have developed good techniques for augmenting any small cracks you make,” Tirto added his own take. “You don’t have to pummel things into dust if you just cause an appropriate amount of damage.”

“I could do that too!” Ursel said. “Just instead of expanding ice, I could grow plants in there!”

“Why haven’t I seen you do it, then?” Tirto asked.

“... Because I wanted to give you the chance,” Ursel said, her eyes turning away.

“So you didn’t actually think of that until just now,” Tirto pointed out.

“Shut up. I can still smash you into the ground.”

“That would just make your arms more tired,” Tirto shrugged. He was also quite good at countering her straightforward attacks by redirecting the force of her blows just enough. Neither water nor earth had an elemental advantage over the other, but that just meant how they were used was more important.

Melanthina looked around them, her eyes surveying the tunnel about them- floor, walls, and ceiling if the continuous flow could be called any of those things. “Something’s weird.”

“What do you mean?” Tirto said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Yonit was nearby. The Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators were spread throughout the group to make sure they could support anyone who ended up in danger.

“It’s like getting caught,” Melanthina said.

“Like a trap?” Ursel said, carefully prodding the wall nearby with her stone club.

“Uh… more like being watched,” Melanthina admitted. “Which used to happen before I got caught doing something I shouldn’t.” Now she got caught less, but when she did it was usually by her father and she couldn’t detect him. She turned towards Yonit, “Something is watching us, right?”

He nodded. Though they were merely there to support, confirming something like that wasn’t harmful for anyone’s growth. “Perhaps you should pass that information on,” the Brandle clan bodyguard pointed out.

“Uh, right,” Melanthina nodded. She cleared her throat and enhanced her voice to spread behind her. “Careful! Something is watching us!” The various individuals behind them all clutched their weapons tightly- even some of the Soul Expansion Phase cultivators. The four Consolidated Soul Phase cultivators didn’t really change their relaxed stanced, but she knew they were able to spring into action at any point.

They came across an oddity- an offset tunnel cutting through their own. It was vaguely circular like their own path, but instead of intersecting with theirs and splitting off it began about halfway up the wall on both sides. That left them with a high roof very briefly. Ahead, the tunnel split into three more paths, some of which had their own weird intersections that could barely be picked up at the current distance.

“What could cause the tunnels to be like this?” Ursel asked, and when her siblings looked at her she frowned back. “What? You think I should know? You spend as much time around the Stone Conglomerate as me!”

“Nearly,” Tirto said. “As for the tunnels, I would normally say they should be due to the erosion of particular minerals. That configuration back there, however, would not happen naturally.” He closed his eyes and nodded. “Something dug some of these tunnels.”

“What, like through solid rock?” Ursel rolled her eyes. “That would take… a lot of work!”

“Years, maybe,” Tirto said. “But with control over earth it would be much faster.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ursel said. “But it would be easier to just… liquify it for a bit and push through. That would leave signs like… weird lumpy piles of stone that aren’t stalagmites.”

Melanthina turned back to Ursel who had been keeping pace with her. “Why’d you stop?”

Ursel pointed at an indentation in the wall, around the size of the tunnels but quite shallow. Some of the stone in that area seemed as if it had flowed like melted wax, not quite the same way as magma would as it kept the same properties but simply shifted its arrangement. “Something made tunnels large enough for us to walk through, but circular. And that’s the smaller tunnels.”

That revelation was met with a slight shifting underneath Tirto’s feet- but being ready he managed to leap aside as nearly circular jaws opened up a meter wide beneath him, a creature flowing out of the floor as if stone weren’t an impediment at all. A strange body with six limbs rose up, upper and lower claws in a tripod formation with a large central mouth on the front.

“Oh!” Ursel exclaimed. “Those things! They’re called earth… birds?”

“Earth gliders,” Melanthina said while she ducked backwards as the creature began to spin about, upper claws outstretched. “You might be happy to know they are not actually made of rock.” Though she said that calmly, she was already taking stock of how many others were appearing throughout and around their group. Not everyone had gotten away unscathed, but the guardian cultivators were already on the move to cull the enemy ranks to a manageable level for people to fight.