Zoe focused on her new Earth skill and summoned a chunk of rock next to her. It took much longer than when she created ice with her Frost skill, and she watched as the mana twisted and churned to form the red hued floating ball of hematite next to her.

She looked at it for a moment and felt more than a little confused. She hadn’t thought much about what kind of rock she was going to make, but all this time that she’d spent trying to get the skill there was always this vision of her hurling around gray stones. But this was without a doubt, hematite.

Why? Was hematite the true version of Earth? Or was there something else to it. Most of her experience with Earth Manipulation was digging out the tunnel into the frozen cave, and most of that was digging through hematite. Had the skill been influenced by what she spent time doing with it?

Zoe focused on her skill again, but urged it towards the gray stone that surrounded her. Gabbro, maybe? She still wasn’t sure. But she tried to urge her skill to create the less mana intense stone rather than hematite. Mana surged from her and stitched together a floating ball of gray stone.

Would she be able to create anything that qualified as Earth? What about other minerals, like bismuth or bauxite? Zoe focused on her skill again and tried to force it towards a colourful bismuth crystal, but it just ended up creating more hematite.

She tried again with some other minerals she knew of. Bauxite, sphalerite, cassiterite. But none of them made anything other than hematite. What was the difference? Did they not count as earth? Or was it just because she wasn’t familiar with them?

If she travelled around and spent months manipulating natural magnetite would she be able to create her own eventually?

Now that she thought about it, how did that knowledge affect her other skills? What was Frost capable of doing? So far, all she’d done was use it to make ice in different shapes, but did frost always have to be water?

And for that matter, even if it did have to be water, did it always have to be fresh water? Why wouldn’t she be able to make salt water ice, or poisoned ice?

Zoe focused on her Frost and tried to make a flurry of snow. The mana surged and a light snowfall was created next to Zoe. Or, at least a snapshot of it was. The snow didn’t fall unless she told it to, but she was able to manipulate the light snow just as well as she could manipulate ice.

Could she make water? What was Frost, anyway?

What was Wind? Wind wasn’t a thing, like Earth and Frost. Was it just creating air? If she studied and practiced, would she be able to make oxygen, hydrogen, helium, or whatever other gasses she decide on? You could have wind in any gaseous atmosphere, as far as Zoe was aware. What was that really heavy gas that made your voice get deep, like helium did but in reverse?

Zoe had always wanted to try breathing in some sulfur hexafluoride but never had the opportunity to try it. Would she one day be able to just create her own with her new Wind skill?

There were so many options, but Zoe pushed them aside for a thought that popped in her mind. She summoned one of the icy splinters from her bracelet and took some time to flood it with her mana. When it was saturated, she tried to grab control over it with her Frost skill.

It wasn’t a simple process, the icy splinter seemed to fight back as she smashed through it with her mana. But in time, she was able to control it and float it around her cave room. It felt heavy to her skill, and the drain on her mana was intense. But it was possible.

Which in theory, should mean that it would be possible to create it as well with her Frost skill, if she knew what requirement needed to be met to create a variant of your element. If she carried it around with her for a few months and focused on nothing but manipulating it, would she be able to create her own icy splinters?

A thought for another time. There was much to do still. Zoe wanted to finish exploring the rest of the frozen cave, discover whatever creatures were lurking at the bottom and then tackle Moaning Point once more with all of her new capabilities.

Zoe left her cave and walked around to the other side of the hill to where she’d dug her tunnel. In the time she’d spent working on her manipulation skills she never once went back into the frozen cave. She’d peered in from the top while she was up there a few times, but that was the extent of her cave exploration since Eliza left.

The doors squished off to the side at Zoe’s command, and Zoe peered into the icy tunnel. It was just as she’d left it, the marks looked like she’d left them just a few minutes prior. She summoned her makeshift map and made sure she knew where she was going, and then took off down towards the first large opening.

The cave was populated with one more Frozen Shard, and Zoe took a moment to watch it glide around on the ground. Where did it come from? Was it created here, or did it wander in from somewhere else?

Zoe wasn’t sure, but she summoned a slab of hematite and flashed her Archery, Shield Manipulation and crushing focused Cooking Enchanted Mirror on it, then fired it off at the lonely Frozen Shard. It rocketed off with far more speed than she expected and smashed through the Frozen Shard. It exploded in a cloud of icy mist while the projectile of rock bounced off to the other side of the room.

She stared at the scene for a moment. That was why she took her time to work on her skills. She knew it would be more powerful, but that was night and day. Earth Manipulation was nothing more than a toy compared to this. A convenience at best.

Zoe ran through the rest of the tunnels as she followed her map until she ended up at the end of where she and Eliza had explored. There were a few more Frozen Shards along the way, but each were taken out in a moment with her Earth and Enchanted Mirror combination. She stopped to collect the icy splinters that covered the ground in each of the large caverns as she rushed through them.

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The cold was intense this deep in. Before with Eliza, she hadn’t noticed. There was so much going on all at once and the path down was so meandering and time consuming that the gradual temperature drop just didn’t stand out to her.

But this time, as she rushed through tunnel after tunnel and descended deeper into the ground? The temperature drop was as clear as day. Her health started ticking down quite a lot and she needed to keep pumping Restoration through herself.

The tunnel wound around itself as it continued descending, and Zoe followed along while she kept pulsing restoration through herself whenever she lost more than ten health. The icy crystals all along the walls grew clearer with each step she took, the walls looked crisper and more pristine as she kept following.

Zoe worried she wouldn’t make it all the way down before the cold ate through even her mana regeneration, but was proven wrong when she followed the tunnel around a sharp turn and saw it grow larger about fifty feet ahead.

Off in the distance were more of the Frozen Shards below the opening. What looked like thirteen of them, and that was just what she could see from so far back. Zoe walked up and looked over the edge, and saw she was only about ten feet off the bottom of the massive cavern.

Dozens of Frozen Shards covered the floor, and Zoe shuddered. Could she take them all on? At this point, with everything she knew? Zoe felt pretty confident in it. But more importantly, she felt confident in being able to escape if something did go wrong.

The tunnel wasn’t on the ground, so they’d have to climb up. Zoe could create a wall of earth to seal it off and had a map leading all the way back to the surface. She could escape if she needed to.

She looked around the bottom of the cave. From up above, it looked hectic. Even the lowest connection she’d found before this one was far above where she was now, and the scale of what she was working with just hadn’t set in.

From so far away, telling one Frozen Shard apart from two that were clambering over each other was difficult. It looked like a mess of ice and she wasn’t able to tell the creatures apart from each other or just large icicles that littered the floor..

But from up close, it was awe inspiring. There were so many of the Frozen Shards drifting around on the icy floor. Looking up towards the surface was a breath taking experience as well. The gaping hole at the top looked so small from the bottom, a tiny breach in the icy cavern that sunlight poured in through.

Zoe wasn’t sure what to do. There were so many of the Frozen Shards, even if she could take them all out it would take her time to do so. And did she want to? Just slaughter dozens of the innocent creatures to satisfy her desires?

Yes, she thought. She did want to. This was the culmination of everything she’d been working on for so many years. The climax of her first true adventure. And they weren’t innocent, not as far as Zoe was concerned.

They were powerful and dangerous, and Zoe didn’t think they had much intelligence either. They wandered aimlessly until something happened and then screeched and fired off frozen projectiles.

Zoe stepped back from the edge and pulled on her Earth to create a thick wall of hematite to seal off the tunnel. It took a few hours, but the Frozen Shards didn’t seem to mind her presence until she either walked near them or attacked them.

When the wall was done, Zoe carved out a small hole to look through and held the cylinder of rock she cut out off to the side. The hole was large enough for her to see through and aim her projectiles, but small enough that she would still be able to stay behind cover. And if everything hit the fan, then she’d have the plug on hand ready to cover up the hole as quick as possible before she booked it out of danger.

Next Zoe summoned some more earth and covered her ears with them. She wouldn’t be able to hear anything coming from behind her, but that was a risk she was willing to take. The alternative was not being prepared for the blast of sound from dozens of Frozen Shards at the same time. She continued piling on more and more rock onto her ears, and added some bits that attached to the top of her head and shoulders to provide some support.

It wasn’t very comfortable and didn’t help her mobility, but she hoped it would at least help dampen the screech that would come after she provoked the horde of Frozen Shards.

She took a deep breath and then summoned a large slab of rock through the hole she’d created and flashed her enchantment onto it. Not far away was a cluster of three of the Frozen Shards, and Zoe took aim at them then fired the slab off at them.

The slab smashed through the three, and bounced off the ground into another Frozen Shard before it settled down. All of the living Frozen Shards spun in place and Zoe watched them begin to vibrate. She braced herself for the coming screech, and even through all the stone she made the sound was still deafening.

Ice shattered from the walls and clattered on the ground, the thick wall Zoe made threatened to fall apart but Zoe held it together with her Earth while she withstood the powerful screech.

When it wore off, Zoe looked through the hole again and then dodged out of the way of dozens of frozen projectiles that came flying towards her. They shattered on the ice above her and covered her in shards of ice cold enough to bite into her skin. Zoe scraped them all off and flooded herself with the warmth of Restoration.

She created two more Earth projectiles and fired them both off into the cavern blind. Aiming through the hole wasn’t worth it if it risked getting slammed with so many projectiles. Zoe merged the cylinder she’d cut out into the hole and repaired the wall.

What felt like an eternity flew by as Zoe kept firing off projectiles blindly into the horde beyond the wall while she braced for the horrible noise and flooded her wall with mana. After just thirty seconds into the fight the screeching never ceased. The Frozen Shards fell into a rhythm where Zoe never had a chance to rest.

It was a careful balance of maintaining her own health with Restoration, keeping the wall’s integrity stable with her Earth, and firing off Earth projectiles blindly on the other side of the wall to try and thin the horde. By the time the screeching died down, she’d had to create several support pillars to keep the tunnel from caving in, and had dug herself out a small hole in the wall to avoid the odd icy projectile that managed to pierce through a weak section of her defenses.

Zoe kept firing projectiles off into the cavern for a while after the screeching stopped, and then carved out another small hole to take a look on the other side. Her heart raced as she did and she imagined a Frozen Shard right on the other side that she’d missed just waiting to slam a projectile into her face when she looked.

But what she saw was destruction. The cavern was covered in rubble — lots from Zoe’s projectiles that she’d fired off, but lots of large chunks of rock that had fallen from the ceiling or walls because of the intense vibrations too. Everything was covered in a thick, spiky sheet of ice. She pulled more of her defensive wall down and looked around.

There were no Frozen Shards that she could see, no dangers lurking around the corners. Just an immense amount of stone and ice that covered every surface Zoe could see.

Zoe sighed and then got to work clearing out some of the rock and collecting the hundreds of icy splinters that were strewn about the floor.