I took a second to prepare myself for the creature I was about to face. My barrier spell was still active, as was Cellestra’s. In addition to that, I cast the imbue elements spell on myself. I took a quick look at my list of abilities and noted that my previous plan was as effective as it would get. Physical attacks were just the most useful against this creature.

I entered the room with Cellestra still on my back. The room, like last time, was lit by the torches on the walls, and soon after entering it, the sand in the middle started shifting.

“I’m just going to keep hitting it with my legs,” I said. “Just make sure to hold on. This shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Cellestra nodded as the sand rose up.

I didn’t even give the creature the time to emerge from it. I started attacking immediately, scraping off bits and pieces of the hardened sand from the slime while it didn’t seem to be able to retaliate.

I had the bright idea to summon threads to try to bind the sand-covered creature with, but they had no effects as the amorphous nature of my enemy meant that it could always slip out of them.

The creature finally shot a bolt of sand at me, hitting my new elven torso, but the attack was completely negated by my barrier. I never felt a thing. It attacked me with the same attack twice more, but didn’t do me any harm. My barrier didn’t seem to have issues absorbing the damage either, so I just kept up my flurry of attacks.

Thanks to my imbue elements spell, my attacks summoned smaller versions of ice lance in the air around me which flew out to strike my opponent. Unfortunately, they were even weaker than before and hardly seemed to do anything. The wind blessing effect, however, did not seem affected by my drop in power. Sure, my attacks with my legs were weaker, but they still struck twice every now and then.

I kept up my relentless assault until a small hole in the slime’s surface appeared. I kept attacking with my legs while I cast elemental blast. Even though the hole wasn’t that big, my attack easily found its way into the slime’s vulnerable main body. It then exploded.

The creature then melted into a weird puddle of sand mixed with slime.

Nice. I’d shattered the core with that spell. I was happy that worked. It made a significant dent in the time I’d have to spend fighting it.

Then, a thought entered my mind. I scratched my head as I looked at the puddle with all my frontal eyes.

“Uhhhh,” Cellestra let out.

“Good question. I have no idea.”

I stared for several more seconds before I concluded this was impossible.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat this. There’s a lot of sand mixed with the slime, and I don’t think it’s part of the creature, so I doubt my devour skill can trigger from eating that. Not to speak of the taste… Can my stomach even deal with sand?”

“Don’t bother,” Cellestra said. “What kind of ability would this creature offer you anyway? If it’s anything like the toad, I doubt it’s going to be any useful.”

I nodded. “Good point.”

Not being able to eat the creature I’d killed made my mind wander off to the massive tree that guarded this dungeon’s entrance. I wouldn’t be able to eat that thing either. Wood, or rather charcoal, wasn’t exactly something I planned on eating. To be fair, the thought of eating it hadn’t entered my mind until just now.

The sound of stones grinding reverberated throughout the room. I decided to ignore the sand slime creature and shift my attention to the wall before me. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the wall before me that lowered into the ground, but the one to the right.

I remained where I was, unsure what to do.

“What’s wrong?” Cellestra asked.

“That’s not the wall that opened last time I was here.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Uhm, I think so?” I said. “I’m not sure what’s behind this door, but it can’t be worse than skeletons right?”

“You want to check it out?”

I nodded. “I’m curious what’s down there now.”

I skittered over to the new entrance that had opened. The darkness behind was quickly dispelled as I summoned a flame spell to float in front of me. Despite the fire being close to me, I felt the surrounding temperature drop almost immediately after entering the dark hall that lay beyond. A tunnel with stone walls to the side, similar to the one found when one entered the dungeon stretched out before us.

As I walked down, the temperature continued to drop. Fortunately, I seemed to be fairly resistant against the cold, thanks to the hair that covered most of my body. How my elven part, which had only my breasts covered by silk, wasn’t freezing, was a mystery to me.

“Cold,” Cellestra said.

“Too cold for you?” I asked. “Should I head back?”

The elf shook her head. “I’m fine. If it gets much colder I’ll use my own flame spell to help out.”

“Alright. Just let me know if it becomes too much. I don’t seem to be affected as much.”

“Yeah. You do have a nice fur coat. The same can’t be said about me, unfortunately.”

I walked for a few more seconds before Cellestra noted the same thing I’d already concluded.

“How are you not freezing, though. You know…?”

I chuckled. “I’m literally clueless. I know that my abilities apply to all parts of my body, but I don’t have anything that should work against the cold. Maybe it’s my blood? I don’t know.”

“Lucky you.”

A smile kept growing on my face as I continued to walk down the corridor. The elf on my back seemed to be glued to my ‘fur coat’ as she had put it. She was remodeling the hairs on my body to have them cover her as much as possible. I couldn’t help but think that she was acting tough.

She soon summoned her own flame spell, adding more warmth to both our bodies. I also added more mana to my own to help her out a bit more. Fortunately, the elf never started shivering, so I reckoned she was mostly okay.

Eventually, the corridor ended in another archway that led to a new room.

Or so I thought.

What lay beyond the archway wasn’t a room. Rather, we stepped into a snowy plain.

An open field stretched out before us. It was like a desert, but there was nothing but snow and ice. I didn’t know where to look or what to make of this place. I didn’t even know how all this was possible. There didn’t seem to be a ceiling like in the swamp area. Instead, there was a blue sky and there was no darkness to be found anywhere. There was no sun, which made me wonder where the light was coming from.

A snowy hill a few hundred meters out from our position blocked our view.

“What an odd place,” Cellestra said as I turned around to see a huge wall of ice that stretched all the way to the sky. In this wall was the archway that led back the way we came.

“What is this place? Is this still inside a dungeon?” I asked, unsure where to look.

A cold breeze flew across my face, taking my hair with it. It made me look at the elf on my back who seemed unfazed still by the cold.

“I think we’re still inside the dungeon. I didn’t know it could look anything like this, though.”

“Heh,” I chuckled. “There’s not much to look at here. It’s nothing but white.”

“There has to be something…” Cellestra said.

“Let’s find out about that,” I resolved as I walked towards the hill. This was the first time in my new life walking on snowy terrain. There seemed to be a thick layer of snow, but my legs didn’t sink deep in it. My weight seemed to be distributed well enough to prevent that.

And I carried a lot of weight with me…

It made me wonder just how thick this layer of snow was.

My thermal vision didn’t pick up anything. If anything, it was worse than my normal sight; the only colors that it showed were black and grey.

“Hey, Cellestra?”

“Hm?”

“If the cold gets too much, do warn me, okay?”

“I will.”

I skittered up the hill when I noticed something large beneath the snow burrowing itself a way to me from my front. Cellestra and I both tracked its movements. When I was about to put up an earthen wall in the snow as the trail got too close for my liking, a creature presented itself by jumping out.

I was staring at an ape-like creature of a size that I couldn’t imagine. It was about the same size as my spider abdomen and weighed probably just as much. It had a completely white fur that seemed to offer ample protection against the cold.

It roared, forcing me to look at two large fang-like canine teeth, each of them the size of my hand. It then pounded its chest in a show of dominance while I prepared to strike with my spells.