In a truly astonishing turn of events, Trixie had awoken before me. It was a surprise I couldn't quite fathom. Before leaving my bathtub bed, I confirmed that Gamma was successfully restored and appropriately filled myself out with a bit of reserve slime.

Outside, I found Trixie, a sight to behold, trimming branches from the giant tree with an almost assembly line of Branch Sprites. The way she orchestrated the process was nothing short of ingenious. The sprites would bring her a stick, she would cast a spell, and a new sprite would be formed. Then, equipped with what I could only describe as a tiny leaf glider, they would wander to the edge of our tree island and jump off.

"Morning, sleepy head," Trixie greeted me with a mischievous grin, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

"Morning... Dare I ask what is with all the sprites?" I asked.

"I figured this would make our task easier, rather than flying around aimlessly for days on end," Trixie explained. "The sprites will send me a mental note when they encounter a monster, or if they are killed, I'll know where, and then we burst onto the scene."

"I mean... Not to complain about [Ice Magic] because, honestly, it's pretty cool." I started. Trixie rolled her eyes at the terrible pun I had stolen, but I caught a hint of a giggle. "But that seems vastly more useful than the majority of spells I've unlocked. Aren't Ice and Nature supposed to be on the same tier?"

"They are, and I guess it depends on what you'd define as useful. One of the primary concepts in [Nature Magic] is 'giving life,' while it undoubtedly has some combat uses, I find it better suited to more utility roles like this." Trixie explained while she continued to work. "The 'freeze' concept of [Ice Magic] is downright deadly; it's likely one of the scariest in all elemental magic. I can't think of a single nature construct I could craft to stand up against it, so while you get little to no utility, you've got a stacked deck in the killing department."

"Thanks. Sorry for whinging." I said sheepishly.

"Hey, no worries. If you get your hands on Earth, you may also get yourself Nature. Then you'll see my point more clearly when you're wondering why you get a spell that creates brambles while others can shoot bolts of lightning or freeze something to death."

We chatted for a bit longer, and eventually, Trixie stopped creating more Branch Sprites. She sat atop my head to top herself up with mana, as it was much preferable to her eating some of the essence on the island, and she was only skimming the top off my passive regeneration.

True to her words, she started getting information about the island from her minions and communicated with me that the largest buildup was near the lake. We rushed over to the still-frozen wasteland.

"Shit. I should have expected this." Trixie sighed as we saw what had spawned by the lake—ice elementals.

Seeing the various forms of the elemental was interesting, even though I knew at the heart they were technically the same being with the same traits. I could probably harvest the elemental core from the solid variants, but I could almost imagine the slurry or snow poofing into nothing when they died.

I shifted my elemental alignment to fire and was ready to start killing; then, I recalled my newest spell [Contagion]. While the situation wasn't ideal since I didn't need anything other than [Flammable] at the end of the day, I was still curious about my new spell and its effectiveness.

The elementals were meandering about, having not noticed our presence. I picked one of the most central ones as my target and began my barrage of debuffs. I was about to cast [Contagion] but was suddenly inspired.

"I can cast my afflictions at range now!" I realized.

[Combust] and [Frostbite] were still both limited to their close-range magical powder form of distribution, as I had only applied [Dissolve] to [Acid Arrow]. While I still wanted to free them from such an unideal limitation, it didn't matter right now. I wanted to cast [Combust] on my target, then [Contagion], spreading everything. I held an empowered [Contagion] at the ready, boosting the spore radius to its current maximum, and then, with perfect timing, cast my spells.

[Combust] applied to the elemental and started to take burning damage, but before it could react, [Contagion] went off. A transparent blackish cloud of mana burst from the elemental, spreading out in a wave around it. I saw all its ailment durations get halved, and that was when I saw them all get applied to the nearby elementals.

"Damn, Syl, you're like a walking bio-hazard," Trixie commented. "And you complained about my little twigs, honestly..."

I winced at the harsh comment. "I guess it's easy to get blinded by what we don't have..."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Trixie nodded in agreement. The weaker elementals were already dying, and I decided to clean up using a point-blank [Fireball] spell. It was another theory I wanted to test; I cast the [Fireball] in the center of the pack, and it rapidly swelled in size and swirling blue flame. Then I destabilized the spell as if I were in a [Counter Magic] battle, and it detonated in place. It was very effective, and the remaining elementals were dispatched in one fiery swoop.

"Good idea, in theory, but destabilizing your spell like that cost you a lot of mana," Trixie said, wagging her finger.

"Damn it... I forgot about that. I can't gauge or measure spells right now." I groaned. The stupid broken mana thing was seriously inconvenient; I might have drained myself without knowing.

"Yeah, you'd be better off removing the projectile portion of [Fireball] if you wanted it to detonate without colliding into something or perhaps aiming it downward," Trixie suggested.

Trixie's words tickled my memory; then I recalled the long-forgotten third-level fire spell—[Nova]. I groaned at my stupidity in hindsight.

"I already have an explosion spell... [Nova]..." I reluctantly informed Trixie.

She cackled with laughter at my expense. "If that isn't the damnedest proof, a Pyromancer originally trained you. Of course, you think [Fireball] solves everything."

I groaned while mentally cursing Dewi and flew down to examine the icy remains. Surprisingly, I managed to recover two ice elemental crystals. I ate one just in case, but it fell under my original [Elemental] profile, as I had predicted. I stored the other one away for selling.

"I'd suggest you toss some fire spells around and melt the ice as much as possible; otherwise, this area will keep spawning more ice elementals," Trixie suggested. "Whatever you did here is so rich in ice mana it's actually ridiculous."

I took her advice to heart and started to spam some fire spells around. I also got to try out casting [Nova] at range, and it worked perfectly without me needing to destabilize it. It was frankly a lot of fun just casually tossing spells around, like fulfilling any child's power fantasy.

With my inner pyromaniac thoroughly fulfilled and most of the lake no longer solid, I decided to speed up the process by triggering [Blaze Slime] to the maximum and plunging into the icy lake. Once submerged, I started withdrawing more slime to expand myself and then elongated exploratory [Pseudopods] to increase my surface area further.

"What are you doing?" Trixie eventually asked, giving me a telepathic poke.

"Doing my best jellyfish impression," I replied cheekily.

Trixie snorted, "Good one."

"I try. But in all seriousness, I'm trying to raise the temperature enough to deal with any remaining [Cryo Slime], hopefully..."

"Huh... Neat." Trixie responded, and I watched her dip a toe in the water above me. Eventually, she gained the courage and fully submerged herself; a deep and refreshing sigh echoed in my head.

"You're like a portable hot-spring generator; just add water." She chuckled. "Who knew you slimes were so useful."

While I was stuck here, I tried out [Elemental Adaptation]. I had asked Trixie if she knew anything about it, but she admitted that she'd never heard of it. Her friend who had this class either didn't mention it or hadn't qualified for it.

The most immediate difference was entirely visual, my normal [Mana Reinforcement] now glowing with Fire-attuned mana rather than raw. Weirdly, I felt... Stronger? It almost felt like I was borrowing [Enhanced Strength]. I shifted to Water and felt the strength fade, and when I reapplied the reinforcement with the new element, it was replaced with... Something.

"Hey Trixie, if Fire is Strength, then what would Water be?" I asked.

"Uhh... Flexibility? Fluidity?" She answered, a little unsure.

I accepted that answer; it made sense since my Water Affinity gave me an improved version of [Evasion]. I shifted to Ice, and another strange sensation filled me when I reinforced again. I tried to puzzle out what this gave me but couldn't think of anything, and Trixie's answer was 'Cold.'

Eventually, we exited the water. Trixie had warned me that if I stayed too long, we might end up with the opposite problem and find Steam or Hot-spring Elementals in the morning. Chunks of frost still floated near the edges, but Trixie said it would likely even out eventually.

We returned to our tree for a rather pleasant evening. I was hopeful for better results the next day.

***

"Hey, how's your crab doing?" Gramps asked, approaching his target.

"H-hey... He's doing okay... He still refuses to leave, though; I don't know what to do."

"Well, I was just thinking that we have a unique opportunity to explore shell-based evolutions and traits!" Gramps began, making sure to lay it on thick with attempted pizzazz. "I was even thinking of designing a trait myself; I think your crab would love it. It might even give him some newfound confidence."

"R-really!?" He replied, startled. "You'd do that for me? I mean... Him?"

Gramps chuckled. "Of course, my friend, we wouldn't want to lose such valuable test data. Would we?"

"N-no. Of course not." He replied almost immediately.

"I'm glad we see eye to eye on the importance of keeping the experiments going," Gramps said, giving him a good pat on the shoulders. "There's another subject that's fallen into very unfortunate circumstances." Gramps swapped his tactics, taking a more regretful approach.

"Oh no... Is there not something you can do?"

Gramps tried not to smirk; he felt he had landed his hook. "Not alone. But... Perhaps with some help?"

"I-I'll help. It's good to stick together. Though... Depending on the severity, we might need someone else."

Gramps gave himself a mental high-five. "Don't worry, my friend, you can leave that to me. Now, let's see what we can do about your crab. I was thinking of possibly a trait that lets him build a custom shell; the scalability would give him some confidence, and if we make some of the materials required for later upgrades only acquirable outside the ocean..."

"He'd be forced to leave! That's brilliant!" He cheered. Then, as quickly as the joy came, it vanished. "But how... Would we give it to him? He's already lost his trait helper, and his next evolution is far away."

"I can just give him a [??? LV 0] trait the next time he picks up a shell, then let it unlock after he's collected a few more. Since he's not my subject, it wouldn't be against the rules."

"Huh... Why didn't I think of that?" He paused. "Won't the others complain?"

Gramps chuckled. "Who do you think I stole the idea from? I'm certainly not the first to throw some zest into this event."

They continued to walk off and throw some ideas around, although, in the end, it would be wholly Gramps's design that was implemented. But that was no excuse not to let him feel like he helped contribute, even if the truth showed otherwise.

'Well, that's the easy part done. Now I just need to convince her...'