Pear sighed as he read through the messages that he'd been sending back and forth with his friends. They'd all laser-focused on the fact that he had a girl going through the dungeon with him, and they hadn't cared what he said about not being able to really see her.

"This sucks," he sighed as he returned his attention to his spell list and continued grouping them all in a different fashion. "Hope she comes back soon, cause this place is miserable."

Would you like to confirm that the Spells: Air Bind, Dark Bind, Death Bind, Earth Bind, Fire Bind, Force Bind, Life Bind, Light Bind, and Water Bind will be grouped together beneath the classification (Elemental) Bind?

"Yes," Pear said aloud watching as the long list of his spells became much shorter now that everything was grouped differently. "God I hope that they don't add something ridiculous like multi-element spells into the mix."

As Pear worked through the rest of his spell list, a Water Elemental made its way happily toward him before stopping at the foot of the rocks he was sitting on and shifting around itself. Taking the distraction it offered, Pear minimized his status screen and raised his wand at the stangely bubble-shaped mass of water mana.

"Water Missile for the base line, and Water Shield to test how effective it is in this place," he muttered as he drew the shield and missile spells. As the Water Shield expanded around him, Pear watched the Water Missile impact the elemental and be consumed by the creature before it shot a stream of water at him playfully and began to leave.

"It wasn't getting ready to attack?" Pear muttered as he watched the Water Elemental leave his rock and continue on its way. "That's kind of not what I expected."

"What's not?" Savantha asked as she popped into place on the next rock over. "Get attacked by an elemental?"

"No actually," Pear told her. "One showed up and I shot a Water Missile at it, but it just spat water back at me and left."

"Weird," she said. "Wonder why it did that?"

"No telling," Pear said. "Did you take care of what you needed to IRL?"

"Yep," she said with a nod he couldn't see. "Even got to call my dad while I was in the middle of my exercises. He was happy to hear I was having fun."

"That's good," Pear said before changing topics. "I had an idea about how we can start working on the quest."

"Well, let's hear it, Goldeneye," Savantha urged him. "I want to get out of the floor that feels like a constant cold shower sooner rather than later."

"I know that if I use my Earth Manipulation spell, it actually effects the earth," Pear explained. "So I was thinking that if I used the spell to make something in the shape of a saw or an axe, we could use that to get through the trees. What do you think?"

"Why earth and not dark?" she asked. "Seemed to be pretty effective when the one elemental attacked me."

"Dark doesn't hold shape without a constant injection of MP," Pear explained. "It's physical manifestation is just a bunch of shadow. Useful to block sight, but not for making a solid weapon."

"And earth holds the shape best?" she asked. "Seems like fire would be good to use too."

"It does, and I can't get fire to stay lit, even with a constant injection of mana," Pear said, demonstrating as he cast Fire Shield for her to see it gutter out before it could take shape, despite his efforts to continually input mana.

"That sucks," Savantha said succinctly. "What's another one you can use that can go through this stuff?"

"Light," Pear said, changing his grip on the wand and pushing unshaped Light mana through it, forming a sword.

"Now you just need the other part of your robe and some mystical mind powers," Savantha joked as she looked at the laser sword that Pear had formed.

"Please don't," Pear begged as he pointed the sword downward and poked the rock they stood on, burning a perfectly round scorch mark into the wet stone as steam and smoke began to billow. As he pulled the laser away from the rock, he moved a step to the side and swiped at the rock again, leaving a line of scorched stone and another cloud of steam and smoke.

"What's that supposed to show me?" Savantha asked as he stopped inserting mana through his wand and the laser sword faded away.

"That the laser wasn't powerful enough," Pear explained as he checked his status for the Mana Crisped state. "Besides, just to keep it going, I have to pour MP into it and that risks giving me that debuff I told you about. To get through one tree would take me three full bars of MP, who knows how many days waiting for my pool to refill, and then there's this,"

With a wave of his wand, Pear shot a Light Missile at the water covering the ground, and allowed Savantha to watch as the dart of light disappeared into the water and refracted with a violent explosion.

"What the hell?" she asked as the water geysered into the air, sending more drops falling onto them.

"Best I can guess, the Light Missile is like a mini-laser blast and it super-heats the water," Pear told her. "I'm pretty sure if I used it on the Water Elementals that it would do more damage to them than the Dark Missiles. Which makes me wonder, if water beats fire, and light beats water, but dark beats arcane, not light, will air beat earth and earth beat light, or will fire beat air and air beat light?"

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"What kind of Pokemon-typing bullshit is that?" Savantha asked confused as Pear spoke. "Why doesn't it just follow the normal stuff? Water against fire, air against earth, light against dark, and arcane's the weird kid no one plays with."

"I don't know," Pear said. "Besides, it could just be that since there's so much Water mana on this floor, that it's reacting to the other types of mana differently. Maybe it really is like you said, but things are so thick with Water here that nothing else can show up. Not when the Water mana smothers most of it and washes it away."

"Which would be why earth is better for cutting down the trees than light or fire," Savantha nodded as she realized the point Pear was making. "You could use these stones as the base for it all and the water wouldn't be able to destroy it before we were done."

"That's the idea," Pear said. "Now before we do anything, I want to find more elementals and see if they're hostile when we don't do something that provokes them, like stepping on them."

"Because of the friend you made before I logged in?" Savantha asked.

"Yep," he nodded. "Let's go."

"You go ahead," she told him. "I'll stay here and work on my tan."

"Suit yourself," Pear shrugged as he stepped off the rock and into the calf-deep water. "I didn't know there was a light strong enough to be a sun in here."

Pear trudged through the water, exhausted, legs burning and pulled himself onto the rocks with a grateful groan.

"That sucked," he said as he flopped onto the rock. "Learned something cool though."

"What did you learn?" Savantha asked curious and desperate for something new to focus on.

"The Water Elementals are neutral," Pear said. "They only attacked us those few times before we got here because you stepped on them."

"Seriously?" she asked grumpily. "That sucks so much!"

"No one's into being stepped on," Pear told her as he rolled onto his side and sat up. "Let's get to work on getting out of here, they won't attack us as long as I shoo them away from the trees so they don't fall on them."

"Let's go," Savantha agreed as Pear used his Earth Manipulation spell and shaped the rock into a crude axe.

"How's that look?" he asked her, waving his wand at his work. "Think you can use that?"

"Maybe," she said. "The handle looks kind of thin, but if it breaks, you can just make a new one."

"Thanks," Pear said as he watched the brown and blue form of the stone axe surrounded by water mana, be hefted by a dead spot in the mana. "Let's go try it out."

"Lucky us, there's a bunch of trees for us to test this on," she agreed as she splashed into the water and approached one of them. "Here goes!"

Pear heard the thud of the axe head biting into the tree and the crunch of shattering stone before his companion began to swear enough to make sailors blush. He allowed her to work through her frustrations as he began to form another axe.

"This one had better not shatter in my hands," she griped as she accepted the proffered axe with a thicker handle.

"I hope it doesn't," Pear said as the sound of breaking stone rang out again. "Dammit."

As Savantha showed off her very colorful and inventive vocabulary and insulted the tree's mother, children, and siblings, Pear focused on his mana as he formed a third axe and hefted it onto his shoulder.

"Stand back," he urged her as he stepped up to a tree and prepared to swing the axe. "I'm gonna try something."

Pushing a small amount of Earth mana into the stone axe, Pear swung at the tree and felt the crude blade bite into the wood. With a wrench of his arms, he pulled the blade out and swung another ten times, each of them biting through the bark and into the Water-Drowned Cypress. Finally, he stepped back and passed the axe to Savatha.

"Go ahead," he said. "This is important. Don't worry if it breaks."

With a mighty swing, Savantha didn't need to be told twice as she buried the axe head deeply into the tree and the entire stone axe crumbled in her hands.

"Dammit all to Hell!" she screamed. "What am I doing wrong?"

"Nothing," Pear told her. "It's what we're doing wrong."

"What the hell does that mean?" she demanded.

"I have to be the one to cut the trees down," Pear explained. "The axe can't handle the force of the blows without a constant injection of Earth mana, so it's shattering in your grip because it's not strong enough to withstand the force of the whole thing. I don't know if it's because of the kind of stone, or what, but that's what's happening."

"If we're going to be stuck here waiting for you to cut all these trees down, then we're going to be here for a long ass time," Savantha said, practically gnashing her teeth as she spoke.

"Yep," Pear agreed. "Noodle arms aren't great for cutting down trees. I'm going to have to figure out how to make a different kind of spell. Let's sit down again. I need to message a friend on the outside. He'll find Ripspell and ask some questions for me."

Grumpily, Savantha followed the short mage to the rocks and they sat down as he prepared the message he'd be sending out to his friends.

Pear: Guys, I need some help. Axel: if she says that shes eighteen don't believe her Jim: whats up P? Markus: Really Axel? Pear: I need one of you to find Ripspell and ask him what the different shapes do when making spells. Tell him that I can't get through the floor I'm on without learning a new spell and the elementals aren't using anything but Missile, Bind, or Shield variants. I need something that cuts through. Markus: I've got him here, he says that you need to use a crescent shape. Also says that the way it's drawn into the circle matters. Jim: whats Ripspell doing in the city? Markus: College stuff I guess. How's your trip going? Jim: pretty good so far. nothings eaten me yet. Markus: Contact me when you get to the penninsula.

As Pear began to draw out a circle with Water mana, he tuned out his chat with his friends and focused on the crescent that Ripspell said he needed to use. With a simple motion, he drew a half-circle and allowed his mana to take over in the spell. It faded to nothing.

"Any luck?" Savantha asked as he cursed quietly.

"One of my friends had Ripspell close by and he told me that I need to use a crescent shape for cutting," Pear explained as he redrew his previous attempt with the half-circle in a different position. "I can't get it to snap into place though."

"From what I'm seeing, you're drawing half-circles," Savantha said. "Crescents are like the moon. Big and bulging on one side and short and narrow on the other."

"There's a differnce?" Pear asked as he followed her advice and drew a crescent moon shape in the center of his circle. With a flash, the entire formation glowed and then altered itself into a crescent blade of water before flying through the air the same way the Missile spell variants did.

You have learned the Spell: Water Slash! Water Slash: Form Water mana into a blade and send it flying outward to slice through a target.

"That worked," Savantha observed.

"Yeah," Pear agreed with a sigh as he began redrawing the spell with a different type of mana. "I'm going to need to experiment with different shapes for all this."

"I'll watch," Savantha said encouragingly. "Should be fun to watch you blow yourself up."