"Practice makes perfect, so you will run this dungeon until you can do so blind, deaf, and weaponless."

- Taskmaster Beatrice, Former trainer for the Anastas Adventurers Guild

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With only a brief moment between dealing with one crystalmit and the arrival of the other, Jackson only barely dodged in time while I heard a muffled thump, but no call for help or any other dangerous noises from the direction of Leo, so I followed the original plan and focused on helping Jackson before we both go over to help Leo. And after a few short exchanges between Jackson and the crystalmit, I saw an opportunity and made use of it and another 50 mana to stun it long enough to let Jackson take out its legs, though this time he had acquired a few shallow scratches before we could take it down. Once it was taken care of we both rushed to Leo, who was now focusing entirely on defence and not even attempting to use his sword for anything other than a brace while Jason had managed to take one leg from the original crystalmit, which had much less effect on its overall speed and agility than you'd think. Nevertheless, with me and Jackson added to the equation it wasn't long before they were taken care of with a message from the system letting us know that the fight was finished.

Congratulations, you have defeated a level 8 Crystalmit X5 and gained 250 EXP

With a general sigh of relief and a bit of annoyance at the fact that this one fight gave me almost as much EXP as a full run of the dungeon before this point, we all settled down to wait for the mobs to despawn as well as to regain resources, as both Leo and me tended to burn through our stamina and mana respectively every fight, with me being down 200 mana from the initial bolt and the two stuns while he had lost a whopping 406 stamina from the two initial charges and a few other attacks when he was fending off two of them. And since I didn't want to get into a fight with only 120 mana and nobody wanted to get into a fight when Leo only had 96 stamina, we decided to take a break, so I went and retrieved my lightning crystal while Jason gathered his cards and everyone else inspected their wounds, minor as they may be. After gathering our stuff and another minute or so of waiting the crystalmits dissolved and revealed nothing to reward our efforts, which was disappointing but far from unexpected given the drop rates we had experienced on previous runs.

With no loot to ogle and still another hour or two until we regained enough resources to confidently continue I got into a comfortable position and started meditating. Over the course of our grinding I had meditated in the time it took to regain my mana between every practice session or delve, though my injury had significantly slowed my progress and made it almost impossible to meditate inside the dungeon until yesterday, and even then it was less efficient than doing so outside. But with an added night of healing and five more points into my END officially putting me past normal human limits, what was once a chunk of flesh missing now felt like a bad bruise, though there was a scar to make sure I remember how bad it was, I was now confident in being able to meditate at the same efficiency as before the injury. Easily getting into the now familiar trance and ignoring the mild throbbing of my leg, I focused on the kaleidoscopic world around me as I worked to break shards of the energy surrounding me from the air and absorb it into myself, slowly stepping closer and closer to what I assumed would be crystal attunement. Just like that time passed until I felt myself being shaken awake and I lost control of the shard of energy I was trying to absorb before opening my eyes to see Jason.

"Alright, its been three-ish hours how are you on mana?"(Jason)

"I have 223 mana right now, how much stamina does Leo have?"(Mason)

"I only have 253 but if we wait any longer it'd be more efficient to just leave and run the dungeon again."(Leo)

He was right, since the lower leveled crystalmits were weak enough for us to handle without using any significant amount of stamina or mana, with only the one group of level sixes needing any when we were level seven, it simply wasn't worth it to wait hours to regenerate resources when the dungeon only takes an hour to respawn, even though our newly gained level would probably mean that the whole dungeon gives us less EXP than this one fight, we can run it two to three times if we only fight the high levelled group once in the time it would take to rest enough to refill our mana and stamina.

"So what, should we just leave?"(Mason)

"No, I say we scout out the next group to see if its another level eight, and if its three or less we can probably handle them before turning back."(Leo)

"Sounds good to me."(Jason)

"Fine, but any more than three or any level higher than eight and we turn back immediately, and we go forward carefully to make sure we notice them before they notice us."(Jackson)

"Deal"(Leo)

And with that settled we slowly and cautiously made our way into the dungeon, the crystals lining the walls getting brighter and deeper in color as we went. After about a minute of walking through the wide and winding tunnels of the dungeon we came across a single level eight crystalmit, which made all of us somewhat disappointed, but we initiated the fight and used the method we had figured out to make sure everyone got contribution when we got unlucky and only a single enemy spawned. Leo tanked the initial charge, I stunned it with lightning, Jackson took out its legs, and Jason finished it off once Leo and Jackson tipped it..

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Congratulations, you have defeated a level 8 Crystalmit and gained 50 EXP

With the crystalmit dead and no loot dropped we begrudgingly turned back as Jackson held us to our word and didn't allow for any arguments for continuing to be entertained, and so we all walked out of the dungeon and waited for it to reset while Jason went out to hunt some turkeys, as he had the greatest range and the easiest time dealing with them, while the rest of us went about our usual activities of training, thinking, and in my case meditating. And as such five days passed with that routine repeating itself and we grinded the dungeon, slowly going deeper and deeper until we all hit level ten, during which time we managed to find what we thought was the boss room behind a group of level nine crystalmits, or at least that was the assumption since it was a sealed door and the cave didn't go anywhere else, so we assumed that the miniboss needed to be beaten first.

Over the course of our delves, we managed to get a decent array of loot including; 4 more legs, 5 crystal shards, a common pair of bracers that didn't give stats but were very durable, an uncommon crystal sword also with no stats but an unnatural sharpness, and the coup de grace, a rare rated gemstone that you could apparently store a spell in for later use. While the non equipment went into the community chest, the bracers were given to Jackson, the sword to Leo and the gem to no one as even with level ten none of us had any spells to store.

Other than the loot and levels, during day three of our grind to level ten I felt something while meditating, it felt like all the crystal energy that I had absorbed into my body was resonating with my very being before I suddenly felt a kind of vacuum in my core that made all the crystal energy in my body condense and I could feel an intense connection with Crystal at that moment and I instinctively knew that all it would take is a small push to truly connect myself with the element, and once I gave that push I felt that condensed energy in my body form a connection with the world around me and resonate with the universe itself before it exploded and reintegrated with my body on a much deeper level than before. Once the feeling of connectivity to the world ended I could feel the presence of Crystal within myself, somewhat similar to how I felt Lightning, but rather than crackling under my skin waiting to be unleashed Crystal felt more solid and patient, ready to spring into action if called but content to wait for when its needed. After a brief introspection to the new feeling in my body I turned towards the notification that had popped up and broke into a smile at both the expected and unexpected messages.

Congratulations, you have gained the Attunement: [Crystal I] and gained 500 EXP. Congratulations, your skill [Elemental Meditation] Has levelled up!

After reading and processing two notifications I quickly informed the group and then spent almost all of my free time over the next two days testing out my new attunement and how it worked, while making use of my newly levelled skill to gain more crystal affinity while I have the chance, as the other element, which was earth, that I had access to was too thin to make any meaningful progress in before the tutorial ends. Through my experimentation, I learned that while I could form crystals out of nothing, similar to how I conjure the lightning, and could launch them at things or make them sprout from surfaces, I could not control them telekinetically and instead could only give an initial push when first forming the crystals. Also, when making any kind of crystal construct I had an intuitive knowledge of how long each crystal would last before dissapaiting and how hard it would be, both of which could be increased by imbuing more mana into the construct but making any crystals last permanently was beyond my current mana and/or skill capacity, even though I knew that it was possible instinctively. I could also change the colors of the crystals I make if I focused, but it was difficult and gave no real benefits, so I kept them as the default transparent for the most part. Another thing to note is that while in the dungeon it was harder to use the crystal element, but when I did it was cheaper and more powerful than when used outside as well as the crystals adopting the same hue as the ones in the surroundings, which I attributed to the high concentration of crystal energy in the dungeon rather than an aspect of the element itself. Also when using my [Elemental Channeling] skill with the crystal element it rapidly formed a crystalline shell over my body, and even after I cut off the skill from taking more mana after it almost drained me the shell itself still lasted for an hour or so before it started dissapaiting, though I was only able to cut the skill after it took almost all of my mana and repeated practice didn't change that, though I was only able to practice before going to bed as otherwise I wouldn't have enough mana to be helpful in the dungeon.

After a lot of practice with the element, I learned three important things. One, I had terrible aim as when I tried to shoot crystal needles or spikes at trees I missed more often than not, and that was when I was only doing one at a time and focusing on each shot, if I tried to form and shoot multiple some of them wouldn't even launch as I'd lose focus after they formed and would just drop to the ground. Two, while I could more or less make crystalline constructs of any shape or size, anything large or complex required a great amount of mana and concentration, even when making the crystals themselves as cheaply as possible Third, crystalmits are extremely ill-equipped to handle attacks coming from below, as by using crystal spikes instead of lightning I was able to reduce the average mana used per equal leveled crystalmit to 20 instead of 50.

Of course, aside from that, by reaching level ten we all received another class skill as well as finally gaining access to the class shop as well as the ability to get a second class, though it came in a message that specified that we unlocked it by achieving level 10 and accumulated enough achievement, rather than just through levelling. though none of us chose one as we hadn't unlocked anything since the original class selection and we were confident in being able to get something better, thankfully we wouldn't gain our next until we filled the empty class slot so we wouldn't lose any possible stats, but any EXP beyond what was stored for the next level would be wasted. Skill wise, I gained another non-combat skill, [Elemental Sight] which had a max level of five and was something I could turn on/off at will that let me see the flow of elemental energy without having to meditate first if a bit fuzzier, though using it in the dungeon basically blinded me due to the density, Jackson got the skill [Double Thrust] which let him summon a phantasmal attack along with his regular one, Leo got the trait [Man the Formation] that reduced his stamina usage whenever he was in formation, which seemed to mean whenever we followed a battle plan, and Jason got the skill [Card Creation] which let him create cards imbued with active skills or energy types, although when he tried to make a card out of Jackson's [Power Thrust] he failed and said that he felt it was possible but lacked the technical skill to do so, but he was able to make a few cards out of my lightning and crystal energies, with both of them becoming explosive with the various energies on impact, though the crystal wasn't as useful due to the low amount of energy he could store in a card so it barely did anything. Still, it was a skill that all of us could recognize the potential of and eliminated any doubt that his class deserved its [Rare] rating, the only downside being that only he could use them.