After being sure that no monster would pop out of the water again, Hera helped a shivering Blue to go inside the captain's quarters. Despite all the fighting, there wasn't a single scratch in the entire ship. Even that last monster and Blue's attack could not make a dent in the crystal vessel. This probably meant that the captain's quarters was the safest place in this entire dungeon.

"Are you ok?" Hera helped Blue sit on one of the many boxes inside the room.

"I-i-I'm f-f-ine," Blue replied.

"You are freezing cold!" Helena gasped and tried to take Blue's shirt off, "Here, it's better to exchange body heat, or your heart could give out."

Blue shook her head, "No. T-t-t-this is a d-d-debuff-f-f. Fi-fi-fi-fi-fi-fi" she gave up after that and just put out her hand, showing five fingers.

"Five? Five minutes?" Adriel asked and got a nod as a reply.

"And are you sure you don't need help to heat up?" Helena pressed.

Blue didn't say anything, just nodded in reply. Even so, Hera called Core over and told the rapier to trigger its glow and make it so that the light emanates heat. The Empress could have asked him to use the sediment to burn one of the boxes, but she wasn't sure how the crystal ship would react to magma. Still, that heat seemed to help Blue, who got closer to the blade and stopped shivering so much. Having nothing to do but wait for Blue's recovery, Hera opened the reward window for the dungeon.

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You have completed the dungeon quest.

You have gathered enough supplies for the Crystal Fisher's next voyage.

Rewards:

160 000 gold,

Oregano, Parsley, Rosemary, and Thyme blend (Strenght)

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The gold went straight for her tablet as it was supposed to, and the spices came in a single vial that should weigh around half a kilogram. Curious about the mention of strength on it, Hera used her [Inspect].

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Oregano, Parsley, Rosemary, and Thyme blend (Strenght)

A set of spices tailor-made to be used in dishes that contain fish. If at least 20 grams of this spice is consumed as part of a meal, you receive a temporary boost to your strength. If another boost from spices is applied, this buff is canceled.

Bonus to strength: +20%

Duration: 5 hours

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"Oh? This is interesting," Hera told everyone about the spices she got. Each of them seemed to have gotten a similar one. What varied were the actual spices in the blend as well as the attribute it would buff. More than the buff, everyone seemed excited about the idea of eating something seasoned. Hera, Helena, Adriel, and Mylo had some spices on them, but they were just the basic salt and pepper. Ever since arriving in the Seven Islands, every meal tasted the same. The fruit here already helped, but having more options was always better.

"Oh, by the way. What happened with that one octopus? You know, the one that killed itself?" Adriel asked.

"Right, I wanted to know that too," Hera turned to Helena.

"Soo… I got some new tricks. Instead of taking someone's senses away, I can trick them into thinking something is not where it should be. The issue is that to do something like that, the target needs to be almost completely covered in shadows. At least for now. The octopus worked great since it had that armor, but the effect is far from perfect. Any sentient or really intelligent creature wouldn't have the same reaction," Helena explained.

"Are you sure about that? Octopi are pretty damn smart. If you can trick one of them, I think even some people would be tricked by that spell," Adriel added.

"That was a perfect target. Since they were inside the armor, I didn't have to worry about removing the feeling of the wind and a bunch of other things. It was like they had already removed one of their senses, so I just doubled down. Also, I had no idea it would die like that. I just wanted to see if I could make it hit itself."

"I see," Adriel was looking down, in deep thought, "Say, do you think there is a way for me to help you improve that? In exchange, could you teach me a little about how to do that? Even if I don't get to the point of doing this, just making my target blind or deaf would help a lot."

Helena opened a big smile, "Sure! As long as you are willing to be my guinea pig. I want to know what to do to improve this, but using the spell on myself can only get me so far."

"Do you mind if I join in on that deal?" Hera asked. Once upon a time, she asked Helena about her spells, but the mage said they required way too much mana for the Empress to use them. However, now that she had increased her maximum mana so much, she might be able to use a couple of those spells, even if just for a while.

"Sure, you have around 1 million mana, right? That should be enough to use a few of my spells. I think," Helena smiled and turned to Adriel, "How much mana do you have?"

"More than enough. Let's just leave it at that, or I'll end up showing my age," the elf chuckled.

Hera glanced at the man and thought for a moment. If Helena, who was just about 10 years older than her, already had over 100 million mana to spend, she could only imagine how much an elf, who could live for several centuries, would have.

"Hey… stupid question. You guys have a lot more mana than I do, right? So can't you cast a simple spell and hypercharge it enough to kill pretty much anything? I know that if you put too much mana into a spell, it has diminishing returns, but even I can do some pretty badass things with simple spells," Hera's question seemed to interest Blue too, who perked up to listen in while staying close to Core.

"There are two problems with that idea, Sweetie. First, the diminishing return is not a line but a curve. The more mana you put into a spell, the less effective that mana will be. It will come to a point where even if I add 100 million points of mana, I will be lucky to make the spell 1% stronger. Let's take my Shadow Bolt. It's the most basic spell I have and it costs 10 mana per cast at its base form. Even if I put 1 million mana into that one, it will be like 100 times stronger and 10 million would make it just 106 times stronger. Sure it can still be deadly for a weak creature, but for a strong one, it won't do much. Now if I use a Shadow Lance, which takes 350 mana, I would only need around 2 thousand to make it as strong as the supercharged Shadow Bolt," Helena explained.

"The second problem is that simple spells can only take so much mana. A beginner spell is made in a way to be easy to use, but it also can't handle too much mana. If you go past that limit, the spell will break, and that comes with its own set of problems," Adriel continued while setting up one of his drones to carry the fish.

"L-l-like wha-wha-what?" Blue was starting to get better, and her shivering was slowly getting weaker.

"Well, if you use just a bit of mana beyond the limit, the spell will just fizzle out, and you will waste the mana. If you use more, you can cause an explosion or get a debuff that hinders your regeneration for a few minutes or up to a year if you exaggerate a bit. If you really go overboard, you might even permanently lose some of your maximum mana. Like if you have 10 million, it goes down by 2 million, and then you have to grow it back up again. Either way, this is not something you two have to worry about for now. Even the most basic of spells, like the light spell you both use, can take around 10 million mana when it's at the beginner level before fizzling out. If it goes to the novice level, it can handle 80 million or something stupid like that. When you get to the point of having that much mana, it's likely that you won't have to worry about this kind of thing," Helena opened her vial of spice and used her pinky to try a little bit before coughing, "Holy crap this is hot!"

"You got pepper?" Adriel asked and got a nod in reply, "Nice. I was missing something spicy."

"Why did no one tell us about that during training?" Hera asked, still confused. Even if it took a lot of mana for something like that to happen, it sounded like important information.

"I mean, it is part of the warnings the Guild gives. When you reach like 8 million or something, you are supposed to go for a class that explains all that. But in the end, most people won't ever have that much mana unless they are a Mage. Also, research has shown that knowing that this is a danger stops people from trying new things. In the end, people decided that this should be more of an advanced course that only people who are flagged as having enough mana would learn. That's even something that our bracelets can do. Along with the vitals, they send information about our maximum mana. When it gets close to the 'danger zone,' you are asked to take an online class about it," Helena turned to Blue, who had stopped shivering, "Is the debuff gone?

Blue shook her head.

"Do you think we could be moving? It's getting late, and I don't want to risk going back in the middle of the night," Helena asked and got a nod as a reply.

They all got up, started walking out of the dungeon, and noticed that the sun was already setting. It was a bit weird since it should still be 4 P.M., but there wasn't much they could do about that. While going back to the cabin they were staying at, Adriel started telling them how Elves had to take classes every few decades. Usually, that information about spells would be part of that course. Other things they learned were how to track time like the other races and how to cope with the loss of short-lived loved ones. Another more light-hearted tidbit was that Elves had to use unique products for skin care and for their teeth. Since they would be around for centuries, they had to use less aggressive products to avoid harming their bodies. Funnily enough, almost all Elves that went beyond 600 years had fake teeth. Most would implant a new set of them every 300 years or so, but a few just decided to go for dentures. Elven dental care was the best among all races, so much so that it should be impossible for anyone to know if an Elf had real or fake teeth.

When he finished that story, everyone was staring at Adriel's mouth, more specifically, trying to figure out if he was among the ones with fake teeth or not. The sun had already set, but the repellent stones illuminated the area enough so that no one felt afraid, not to mention the full moon rising on the horizon to their right. Here they had an unimpeded view of the ocean and the massive moon to the side. Hera had never seen the moon so big. Well, aside from the moon in the Moon Base room. Still, Hera had created a few dancing lights around the group.

After a few moments, Hera gave up on trying to find out about Adriel's teeth and turned to Blue, "Hey, can I ask about that skill…. Everyone stop!" the Empress yelled as she noticed what was going on. To her side, between a couple of cabins, she could see Blue, Adriel, and Helena walking toward the center of the raft. The problem was that she could also see them to her right, walking in the direction of the cabin they were staying at. To make things even worse, there was something causing her eyes to trick her. Even if she looked only at one of the two groups, she couldn't tell which of them was following the edge of the raft and which was going to its center.

"Hera, what is… Hera?" Blue started looking back and forth between Hera and another cabin, where there was another Hera looking out of the window.

"Doppelganger slimes, remember?" Hera said before asking her court to check everyone. Unfortunately, every single one of her blades also saw the copies. She tried using her [Observe], but even that was marking all the copies as themselves.

"What is going on here?" Adriel gasped and prepared a few spells just in case.

"Guys, calm down. I'm going to send you all a text with a password. Hera, can you read it and tell your court to approach us? We need to whisper that password to them and hold on to the weapons. Even if the slimes copy that, you can tell which weapons are real, right? And then the weapons can pull us in the right direction," Helena said her plan out loud. Even if the slimes could copy them and copy what they said, they shouldn't be able to see the message if everyone was careful.

It took a couple of moments, but thanks to Helena's plan, they managed to find who they were once again. Oddly enough, even though Nimbus was out, none of the slimes were trying to copy him. That wasn't the case for Daskka, though, since the other versions of Hera also had the snake around her neck.

"Ok, let's keep moving," Hera told Nimbus to say by her side as they walked in front of the group. That way, everyone else knew to follow the Sentinel, and the rest of the court would be like a lifeline.

A couple of tense minutes passed before the slimes changed tactics. Now, instead of showing one of the four in the group, they started appearing as Alex, Bonnie, Shane, or Mylo. All bloodied, wounded and even begging for help.

"Should we run?" Blue asked.

"I don't think so. We might get lost," Helena replied.

"It's a straight line until the cabin. And all we have to do is to follow Nimbus. Even if this place is trying to trick us into going in another direction, the griffon is not affected by that," Adriel said with an annoyed tone.

"He is also having trouble to see where is the right direction. I'm helping out with my map, but running is still an unnecessary danger. Those slimes are not attacking, and as long as we stay in the ...." as Hera spoke, they noticed something covering the moonlight. Slowly turning their heads, they saw the body of a gigantic snake-like creature covering the upper half of the moon and moving as if it just had come for air before returning to the depths.

"Can we run now?" Adriel asked with a crack in his voice.

"Yep!" Hera and Helena replied before the group bolted towards the cabin in the corner, trying their best not to scream while hoping to arrive someplace more or less safe soon.