"I think we should first check what has changed in the dungeon, and then kill enough goblins until Anna reaches level ten. Then, we rest a bit and go over our new element and class options. Isabelle, I think the first groups of goblins shouldn't be that dangerous. You should be able to show us what kind of spells you have. Fedor, I think it would be best for you to stay back until your arm is in reasonably good condition again." Daniel suggested and his teammates nodded and the others accepted his plan.

From the entrance, there was only one way forward. The party went down the tunnel and in less than a minute, they encountered the first three starving goblins. Daniel stepped aside to give Isabella a clear line of fire. She started with throwing a fireball at the goblins and it exploded in the middle of them. While it didn't create a gory mess like his Air bomb, it was enough to send all enemies to the ground. Just as Daniel wanted to get over to dispose the heavy injured goblins, another fireball flew in their direction. He turned to Isabella and saw here her face was distorted by rage when she threw a third fireball.

He hesitated a moment, looked at Fedor who was shaking his head. Daniel decided to keep quiet for the moment and to not address the overkill and the waste of mana.

They kept on moving. Over the next minutes, they encountered more groups of goblins that were slowly getting larger. Isabella kept her fireball spamming going, until they met the fifth group of enemies. She threw one fireball, but then she stopped. When Anna looked at her with a questioning look, Isabella responded while breathing hard.

"I ran out of mana."

There were still five goblins standing and Daniel used them to test his progress from fighting against the boss and the stronger goblins. He ran at them while he activated Windcutter. With his now much higher agility, he had no problems staying out of their range. He killed them one after another. The last two went down after a single slash from his saber. His attack had removed both of their heads. Daniel turned back to his team and confronted Isabella.

"You should have told us that you are running low on mana. It wasn't a problem against these weak opponents, but against serious enemies this could lead to real trouble. Oh and why are you spamming so many fireballs and wasting your mana when the battle is already over and the enemies are defeated?" Daniel asked his new teammate. Isabella was angered by his criticism.

"I killed them didn't I? What do you care how I use my mana." She responded.

"The goblins are still in small groups and weak. I think we should keep going. Daniel and I are more than enough to deal with them. You can regenerate your mana in the meantime." Anna interjected to change the topic and to prevent discussion from escalating.

They moved on and after a few more goblin groups, the last one consisted of 15 of the small creatures, Anna reached level ten and they decided to take a break. Isabella leveled up twice and was now level six. While they'd moved forward, they gathered a few goblins in their inventory.

If the layout up to now was an indicator, the dungeon had changed a lot. It was no longer a confusing maze, but a single tunnel interrupted by caves that became larger and larger in size.

Daniel sat down, opened his status window and directly selected earth as his second element. He'd pondered over it since the boss fight and his conclusion had been that his main weakness was his defense. Fedor used earth magic to toughen his skin and created earth walls with it. This was exactly what he needed. The other reason was that he hoped he could create a synergy between air and earth magic. If he could create a static charge from creating friction with his air magic, maybe he could use earth magic to guide it. After all, that was more or less how lightning was created in a thunderstorm.

He started to test his theory and was rewarded after a while.

Congratulation, you used your elements to create a new type of magic.

Access to lightning magic gained.

Perk gained

Elemental mastery I

You have proven your excellent control over your elements by using them to gain access to another element. All spells using basic or derived elements are 5% stronger.

Daniel smiled, this was even better than he'd hoped for. The information that you could create your own perks was very useful. He looked at his status window to see the changes to his elements.

Basic Elements

(2/4)

Air

Earth

Derived Elements (1/6) Lightning

He closed his status window and paused a moment. While he didn't fully trust everyone of his team, especially Isabella, this discovery was too important to hide from them. In addition, he really liked Fedor and Anna. He informed them about the discovery and explained what he did to create a derived element.

"I think I take air as my second element. Water and fire don't sound very useful together and water and earth is just mud. Maybe, I can gain access to ice magic." Anna decided.

"I'm taking fire. You already have the combination of earth and air, mud doesn't seem very appealing and I like the thought of throwing molten rock at my enemies." Fedor explained.

"Seems reasonable, did you already check your class options?" Daniel asked.

"Yes, but there a lot to choose from. I think it's best for you to have a look at it yourself, before we talk about it." Anna responded.

Daniel decided to do exactly that and opened the class part of his status window.

Class

A class focuses the development of a person into a certain direction. Depending on the rarity of the class, it will provide a bonus to the power of attributes. A basic class makes one attribute 20% more powerful and a rare class improves a single attribute by 40% or two attributes by 20%. At certain levels, existing classes can be developed further.

Each class will provide skill templates that can directly be chosen. If the understanding of a class skill is high enough, it can be transformed to a normal skill.

As a traveler you have lowered requirements to gain access to a class.

Show available classes

That was a lot of new information. He contemplated it a bit. It was clear that one should get a class as rare as possible, but it was even more important to choose the right primary attributes of the class. He concluded that only classes that focused on agility, mana cap or regeneration would be of real long term use for him.

He opened the menu with the available classes and looked through them. Only two really caught his eye.

Air blade dancer (rare) (agility, mana cap)

An air blade dancer combines the use of mana with his speed with a blade. Together this forms a far more deadly fighting style.

First striker (rare) (2x agility)

A first striker uses his high agility to end a fight before his opponents even realize it had begun.

While the air blade dancer hat some appeal to him, he decided to wait. The system had told him that he had lowered requirements to gain access to a class. He was in no hurry right now. Maybe, after gaining more spells, he would be able to access a class with a higher rarity.

"I think we should leave the dungeon for now and inform the others about the situation. With the change and the slowly increasing numbers of weak goblins, it shouldn't be too dangerous for the others to defeat the first few groups and level up a bit. They are probably desperate, even after you gave them your little speech and this could give them new hope and prevent a lot of them from dying." Anna suggested thoughtful, interrupting his pondering.

"I think you are right. But, let us test something first." Daniel said and removed a dead goblin from his inventory, before he continued.

"Please Anna, try to use your water magic to remove the water from it. I think it's best for you to create a construct that does it for you, otherwise you'd probably end up with a channeling and not with a casting spell."

He stepped away from the goblin, just in case, not wanting to have water removed from his own body. It took Anna a bit, but she figured it out eventually. She fired a brown water construct in the direction of the goblin. Once in position, it started to gather all the water in its surroundings.

Two minutes later, all that remained from the goblin was a mummified husk.

"I don't think it would be very useful in a fight. The effect is not fast enough. But, it would make a great torture spell." Fedor suggested with a serious look on his face.

"We don't torture anyone!" Anna responded in a resolute tone.

"I think it was just a joke Anna. While using it in battle wasn't what I had in mind, it may be more powerful later on a higher level. At least, it would force enemies to evacuate a certain area and could be used to interrupt archers for example. But, that wasn't the point of the exercise. What I had in mind was to create a solution for our lack of fuel. If we want to fight our way to that icy area outside, we could now used mummified goblins for fuel." Daniel explained.

"Disgusting, but seems like a good idea. In addition they would use less space in the inventory this way. Let me check something else." Fedor commented and removed another goblin from his own inventory. Then he took out a knife, cut of a leg and removed the skin. After that he started to use his new fire magic to roast the leg. While he was doing that, Anna shared her new discovery with the rest of the group.

"The spell I just created, it's called Drain is my eighth one. I got a perk as a reward. It's called spell creator one and I got it for creating new spells without copying somebody else's work. It reduced the mana cost of the spells I created by 5%."

"Interesting, we should probably create some spells, too. But, I wonder what one had to do to get the perk spell creator two. I don't think it would be so easy to just create more spells. Otherwise, everyone could just create a hundred useless spells to level up that perk." Daniel responded while Fedor finished roasting the goblin meat.

He closed his eyes, cursed and then took a bite out of the goblin leg. He chewed a bit and then swallowed. After washing out his mouth with water, he commented the experience.

"Not as bad as I feared. I got no system message about being poisoned, so that's good news. The meat itself is wiry and the gristle doesn't improve the experience. But, all in all, it should be edible as an emergency ration."

"I would need to be very hungry and desperate to try that." Isabella commented and Daniel had to agree with her.

They started their way back and ten minutes later, they arrived at the dungeon entrance. When they arrived outside, they noticed that the other survivors had done something useful. They cleared an area from snow and had begun to create some protections against the wind in the cave entrance that led to the dungeon. They used blankets, some furniture and plastics from their inventory. Five people were missing. Daniel decided to let Anna do the explanations. He'd been very cold to the them before and they probably didn't like him and Fedor very much. It was always easier for people to forgive a good looking young woman.

Anna explained the situation and the changes to the dungeon, while Daniel and Fedor started to stack dried goblin corpses on a pile. After they finished, they lit them on fire. The resulting heat made the temperature outside much more tolerable.

The others informed them that the bearded man went into the dungeon alone without saying anything. Four other people created a party and decided to give the dungeon a try.

With the new information, there were six more people who decided to go into the dungeon. After deciding that there was nothing useful to do outside, Daniel and his party went back into the dungeon.