Breaking bones was never a particularly pleasant experience. All the more so when dealing with a giant angry snake.

Thankfully, the experience was largely muted compared to how it would have felt back on Earth. A healthy dose of Pain Resistance helped to dull the worst of the pain, and the newer effects of Trauma Suppression were ensuring that I wasn’t about to go into mental shock.

Still, I had to say: Not particularly fun. And for all that my resistance was doing for me, broken bones were a bit more pain than the skill could handle. More than a few tears flowed down my face, to the point where I barely registered the shouts from everyone up top.

If nothing else, at least the snake didn’t seem to want to chase me down here, content letting me enjoy my little break from the fight. Realizing I wasn’t in immediate danger, I did my best to let my thoughts move to anything but the blinding pain.

Whole thing would have been a lot easier with that rockpiercer fruit, I realized. Another sign to just listen to Jason whenever he wanted something. Though his judgment didn’t often feel sound, he’d yet to steer me wrong.

Actually, on second thought, that blazeberry bush would have come in handy too, no?

As I slowly regained my faculties, my mind cleared up enough for me to start casting my healing spell. Sadly, it wasn’t yet up to the task of repairing broken bones, but as best as I could tell, I was only rocking a broken rib and leg. Only.

The revelation about the rockpiercer and the blazeberry bush had me a little bit worried in hindsight though. Was that the entire point? Were the other seeds specifically made for helping out if a party decided to fight Slippy?

Part of me wanted to say yes, but at the same time, I was hoping the answer was no. The remaining two would be the Venomsucker and the Gillvine.

When would we ever have to hold our breaths underwater though?

A triumphant cry sounded from above, and I tried to crane my head in its direction to see what had happened, but I was too far down.

A moment later, it was followed by a curse: “Oh hells,” I heard Barb shout. “Tess, we got another gem, and it activated before we pried it off. Incoming!”

Damnit, Barb. Incoming what?

The sound cleared things up a moment before it came into view.

Water.

Lots of water.

Evidently, the gem had another function on breaking, just like the earth gem had.

Probably didn’t matter as much to the four up top, but all that water started to flow in the obvious direction. Down.

In this case, I agreed with Barb completely: “Oh hells.”

Much like breaking bones, getting pummeled with a metric shit-ton of water while you were sporting broken bones was never a pleasant experience. True, at this point I was really only working with a sample size of one, but I was confident enough from a single time to generalize.

If nothing else, being submerged meant I had no need to wipe away the tears which were now freely flowing.

At least it’s not salt water? Pretty sure I have some cuts that wouldn’t appreciate that.

Sometimes, it was the little things.

Had I been a bit more of a badass, perhaps I would have used my water-walking enhancement in my feet, jumping atop the water as it rose and riding it to the surface. Sadly, I wasn’t yet a hardened enough adventurer to go gallivanting along with a broken leg.

The torrential downpour consumed me and subsumed me, dashing me against the walls of the pit and rapidly undoing all the healing I’d done after landing. Against my strongest attempts to keep my mouth shut, I also ended up swallowing a good deal of it.

Less of an embarrassing way to die than the hair cocoon, but still not great. Really? Just some water?

That was about the most coherent set of thoughts I managed to get out, interspersed with various expletives and panicking that managed to get through Trauma Suppression.

Then, blissfully, right when I thought I was at my limit, it stopped. The water receded, and I found myself lying on dry earth once again.

What…

“Good you’re not dead. Bad look for a healer. Glad I got washed down.” Eak, now looking like a drenched body-building naked-mole-rat, stood to my side, somehow projecting a bubble around him that kept the water away. A good deal of water still lay to our sides and above us, but for the moment, we were safe.

“Ooh, bad. Got some breaks. Here.” Some water flowed from the man and wrapped around me once more. This time, however, the experience was much more welcome. It sank through my skin, leaching straight into my bones. Over the course of a few seconds, it seemed to fuse them back together. A quick check of my status window let me know that I was back to tip top shape. And where his spells had washed away my physical damage, Trauma Suppression was already going to work to wash away the mental effects of my recent underwater pool party.

“Wow. Thanks. Pretty impressive, honestly. No chance your water powers can get us back up top, is there?” I was confident the other three could manage without me, but we were the two members who had healing spells. Getting Eak back up top was kind of important.

“Mm. Should have something. A second.” With that, he cast another spell, and our bubble of water started moving upwards. When at last we reached the top, the sounds of fighting once again reached us.

“This one takes a lot from me. Don’t want to use it again. We need to stay up top.” Thus said, the water started to roil beneath us before shooting upwards with the force of a geyser. Had I known earlier, I would have ridden atop it with my waterwalking, but as it was, the two of us were unceremoniously taken along for the ride, and equally unceremoniously spat out back onto the side of the cavern.

The very moment my vision cleared, I took stock of the room.

Oh damn. We’re actually winning aren’t we?

The upper half of the snake was still on fire, but it looked like Barb and Jason were ignoring that section, instead going to town on the lower half. The snake’s tail sported dozens of deep gashes, along with some craters where Jason must have punched it. What was more, significantly more of its hair had been cut off, and when I caught sight of Barb, the man was ripped. He moved with a frightening agility that one would hardly expect from someone of his age.

“Wow, looks like we didn’t even need to bother. They have-”

A flash from the life gem interrupted me, and I watched as the many visible wounds disappeared before my eyes. I’d call that bull, but then again, I’d just gotten broken bones healed in the matter of seconds, so I didn’t feel like I had much of a leg to stand on here. Or rather, I’d be a hypocrite precisely because I now had a leg to stand on again. Plus, there was only one charge of the life gem left, so at this rate, we’d be able to wear it down.

At least, that’s what I’d expected.

Even without any more wounds to heal, however, the life gem flashed once more.

“Something’s happening! It’s using a life spell!” I called out.

Barb took a quick break from slicing into the snake to glance in our direction. “Oh delightful! You two are back. What type of spe-”

The answer to his question soon became obvious, as with another menacing hiss, a thin green fog started emanating from the mouth of the serpent. Still in melee range, Barb was the first to come in contact with it, and he yelled as it touched his skin.

“Water! Into the water! Everyone!” Taking matters into his own hands, he charged at me and Eak, straight up tackling us back into the pit. A short fall later, we splashed back into the snake-made pool.

When we surfaced, Eak simply sighed.

Soon thereafter, two more splashes followed. And after those, the green fog rolled over the lip of the pit, starting its slow but steady descent down to our position.

“All right. If I have a vote, I’d like to vote we don’t touch the scary poison fog. Eak?” It was a lucky break that we’d ended up with someone who could help us fix our water breathing problem.

Though he seemed a bit tired after his recent stunts, the healer complied, wrapping all five of us in a bubble and descending back down to the floor of the pit.

“Delightful! Must say, I wasn’t expecting the poison, but I do suppose I should have. Must have been what that venom-repelling fruit was hinting at, hmm? Now, do we think our good friend ‘Slippy’ will be joining us down here, or are we waiting it out?”

A brief discussion ensued, but by the end of it, the fact that it hadn’t been interrupted made the answer pretty clear.

“Really feel like it doesn’t want to go swimming considering its last power is being covered in fire.” It was much happier letting us suffocate or die to the poison.

Except, with Eak, we weren’t much at risk of doing either right now.

So.

We just waited.

And waited.

“I suppose I’ll ask. Does anyone perhaps have any good jokes? Something snake related, perchance?” Barb tapped his foot against the dirt pit floor.

Silence.

More silence.

Why was this the most awkward part of the dungeon delve? Well, I could try.

“Um. Why don’t snakes drink coff- uh, kash?” The perks of having a heightened memory was that even jokes I’d only heard once came to mind.

After waiting a beat to see if anyone could get it, I delivered the punchline as best I could: “Because it makes them too viper-active.”

Four pairs of eyes stared at me blankly.

“Yeah, in retrospect, guess that one doesn’t really work in Common, does it? Um. Side note. Does it feel like it’s starting to get kind of hot in here?” Could just be the embarrassment.

With a brow arched, Barb moved to the side of the bubble and stuck a finger into the water. After a moment, he frowned.

“It would appear that the water is heating up. Eak, you wouldn’t happen to be able to get us back to the surface before we’re slowly baked to death as the water around us begins to boil, would you?”

Eak replied with a weary sigh. “Just… Be safe. I’ll have no mana.”

Then with a visible grunt of effort, Eak repeated his earlier feat, this time looking drained down to the last drop. After riding a geyser that was already at hot-tub temperatures, the five of us slammed down on the hard dirt floor, thankfully none the worse for wear except some bruised tailbones.

Much to her credit, even while we were flying upwards, Kex was casting. Her mud golem, bruised and battered (or whatever the equivalent to a bruise was on a mud creature), seemed to have lost its fight after she’d taken her eyes off of it. With a command from her mana, the inert mud began to reassemble itself. Even at half height, she was able to make it launch a mud ball at the snake, reasserting itself as Slippy’s main adversary.

It was a good thing too. Another few seconds, and Slippy would have charged us. Even if it hadn’t hit, there’d have been a fair chance one of us would have fallen back into the water.

But with it rushing back towards the golem, the fight had all but ended. Having used the last of its fire charges to heat up the pool below, the snake was out of tricks.

As combat hadn’t ended, Barb was still hopped up on his barber-roids, and before the rest of us could so much as blink, he shot off. Jason soon followed behind. Feeling particularly daring I even decided to join them this time around. Without the scalding steam or the fire, I liked my odds significantly better, and the snake wasn’t quite as adept at whipping the middle portion of its body around as it was the tail.

Without any remaining life charges to heal itself, the wounds on the snake started to add up more and more. It would be unfair to call the remainder of the fight easy, per se. It was still a giant snake made out of rock. Without the various tricks, however, even I wasn’t feeling too threatened. I alternated between spear strikes with a mana-conjured spear -- aiming for the space between the scales at range -- and pickaxe strikes, pummeling the snake whenever it slowed down enough for me to get a good shot in. Compared to the other two, I wasn’t doing as much damage, but it still felt good.

When it seemed like Slippy was truly in its death throes, I decided to throw some caution to the wind. It had slowed down enough for me to be sure of landing my next strike and I swapped out the spear for the pick. I funneled more and more mana into my Overcharge Weapon class skill, and with a dramatic surge of mana, my pickaxe dug into the snake’s midsection at the same time that both Barb and Jason delivered blows of their own.

Crack.

With one final hiss, at last the snake stopped in its struggles. It was over.

Exhausted, I collapsed to the ground.

“Worst. Community garden. Ever.”

Congratulations, you have reached level 11!

I took it back. Second worst community garden, maybe? It had its points, at least.