The weapon was now complete, a long handle decorated in a spreading vine pattern that stretched from one tip to the other, a polished crystal shaped clear ice creating a pointed tip at the bottom, and the three blades peppered with snow while letting the two side blades fan out a bit so they could still be used for slashing attacks to make the work complete.

She raised it up high, satisfied with her work “pretty.” She found herself saying, lowering herself into a ready stance and trying out a few thrusts and slashes, it was a bit weighty now, but it still felt a hundred times better than the sword and axe. Even without a skill she could handle this better, she didn’t understand why, but she was already into it.

With that she was ready to start exploring the dungeon, shrinking the staff to make it easier to carry she faced submerged hallway and set off- or she was, until her stomach grumbled. “Hmn, need to find food…” she placed a hand over her empty stomach, slowly glancing over to that fish monster she killed earlier.

She was too distracted with her weapon crafting to think about it, but could she eat that? She trotted over to the abandoned corpse, kneeling down and poking it “Thin.” It was thinner then she was, it was just skin, bones, and teeth. If anything was there to eat, it wouldn’t be a lot.

“Going to try…” she made a knife, cutting into the creature with a bit of effort, and instantly recoiled “Blech, stinky.” She covered her nose and continued, but it was all in vain. The creature really was all just skin and bones, a thin layer of skin draped and pulled taut over the bones, and inside those bones were just organs “Organs…” it was still something…

She reached inside, pulling out a small purple bulbus mass the size of her nail “…no, not worth.” Besides smelling like death itself, it was just too little meat to even risk getting sick.

She gave up, washing her hands and discarding her knife in the water she sat out, heading deeper into the dungeon.

Trudging through the water was already starting to become a chore, she had wrapped her tail around her waist to avoid it getting wet again but that did nothing to solve the main issue, the knee-deep water. She didn’t pay attention to it while forcing her way in, but walking and running was a major pain in the butt, it also made her think she was not that far into the dungeon if this was the pace she had to traverse.

But she gritted her teeth and pushed on, weapon at the ready while idly thinking of ways to make this better.

The obvious being if she was taller but that was dream, she was starting to give up on… or flying, if she could fly she did not have to deal with the water in the first place.

“Oh!” she quickly stabbed into the water, pulling up another toothy fish monster “Hrm, or if I can make more platforms…” but that wasn’t feasible with her diminished mana pool, which was currently sitting at around 300… she wasted a bit too much mana on the weapon “But it looks good so it’s fine.”

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She continued like this for an hour, occasionally one or three of those fish monsters would swim up but she would dispatch them without much issue, the fact she was not gaining any levels by doing this was annoying, but with how weak they were she could only accept it.

“Bored.” But the dungeon was starting to bore her, with her slow pace, the unending hallway, and the one fish she could not even eat, she wanted more. “How far am i?” she glanced back, same hallway with no way to tell “Urgh…” with her hunger growing again she’d have to take a break to drink her fill again, something she wasn’t looking forward to.

Checking her status again, she was still just *hungry* and not starving, so she had time, and the poison had faded, leaving her at a healthy 62 hea- “wait, what?!”

She stopped in her tracks, she was losing health, since when?! “What hit me? Why?!” she was regaining health, even while poisoned, it was slow sure but she was regaining it! She inspected her body.

Arms, the cuts had scabbed over and were no longer bleeding.

Tail, has been wrapped around her this whole time, no change.

Body, clothes were still bad, but like the arms nothing new.

Head, same, nothing new to note.

That was everything, was it just because she was hungry? “No…starving is what loses health… what’s missing…”

Then it dawned on her.

She looked down, into the clear water below her, at the body part she had forgotten about previously, and paled.

She froze another platform in front of her, quickly climbing on while repeating “ew ew ew ew-“ she plopped herself down, her legs spread out in front of her, laying bare what was wrong.

Several black worm-like creatures had attached themselves to her legs, which were already scared and beat up to begin with, and were pulsating in a disgusting manner “What are these?!” She panicked, taking out a knife she stabbed one, trying to pull it off and with a *plop* she separated it from her leg, a trickle of blood running down it.

“They are sucking my blood!?!” she shivered, and in her panic she blasted her legs with a stream of ice, freezing the little blood suckers and then yanking them off, splattering blood all over the platform. She had 17 of them on her, kicking them back into the water she laid back, exhausted.

“Those things are in the water…” she grumbled, her health at fallen by another ten points in removing them, she felt horrible. Her legs, previously ignored, were also in horrid shape, especially her bare feet. How she didn’t even feel it was a miracle… or something she was just used to now.

Regardless, she needed to do something about it, after an hour or so of traveling her mana was back up to around 600, would be more if she didn’t create the platform and blast her legs, but she had enough to work with.

The question was, what.

Something to solve her feet getting attacked by small creatures and make traversing this place easier… but what.

Starting with the obvious, mimicking the knight’s armor, boots.

She coated her feet and legs in ice, forming boots that reached up to her knees. She stood up and tested them out, modifying them to make them easier to walk in, testing with a few steps on the platform she nodded “Works, now-“

She leaped into the water, tensing up immediately as her foot clattered around inside the hard boot “Ow… felt that…” taking a few more steps, this time in water she did not find it easier to move, but she was sure those bloodsuckers could not reach her feet in these… at the cost of severely hurting her feet as she dragged these things around.

She climbed back onto shore and began pacing, the boots where too hard, didn’t offer anything to help with mobility, and hurt when she made quick movements…

She sighed heavily, plopping down and going to work on them, her trip inside was just getting delayed a bit more as she experimented with her boot idea.