Eli stood up and stretched, letting the new stats kick in, he felt his skin and muscles tightening and relaxing over and over. His bones creaked and groaned and he could feel them getting heavier and more dense, then the system window popped up.
"Your Resistance stat has reached 25"
"Minor threshold reached, each point in Resistance is now worth more."
Then it happened again, his skin and muscles, his bones, but this time it was a stronger shift and knocked him on his ass. He lay there twitching in pain and started chuckling to himself as he thought that every time he was in pain, he was getting stronger, or learning something that would help him grow. He was starting to associate pain with progress and he was laughing because he knew this is how masochism starts, and he never thought that this was something he would end up experiencing. Slowly it died down and he stood stretching again, he bounced on his feet and could feel that he was heavier, he was going to have to get used to this.
He took a glance at his new stats.
"Magic level 34"
"Stats: Strength 17, Reaction 17, Vitality 17, Intellect 20, Wisdom 17, Resistance 25, Will 101"
Eli wasn't happy with the imbalance but he could fix that as he leveled. Taking a deep breath to refocus himself he looked up the volcano with a big smile under his mask and started moving. It was getting steeper so he started going around it, he was thinking that game logic was probably in play with how everything was set up on these zones. There was probably some kind of entrance that he just needed to find, these volcanoes just kind of scream point of interest. The closer he got to the top, the more the terrain became harder to navigate, large rock formations, wide gulleys with lava flowing down the middle, and cliffs that dropped for up to a hundred feet.
He was also being slowed down by an increase in monsters, some of which seemed to just want to push him over a cliff or simply down the increasingly steep grade. Twice he fell to surprise attacks and ended up losing time due to injury and falling a great deal down the slope. Another 2 days were lost from all this until he was walking to the top of one of the cliffs and there was a pile of rocks that looked like a marker for a path. Eli stood next to the marker and where a path would be and he saw another one about a hundred feet away. The problem was that this so-called path was not so much a path as a small edge with a steep drop, this was going to be tricky.
First, he thought that he could maybe jump the distance but with his heavier body he wasn't so sure and the path on the other side didn't look stable enough to handle his landing anyways. Then he thought he could just blink over there, but he didn't want to use that spell as a crutch and wanted it available in case anything came up on the other side. So he was left with side stepping across the ledge as his best option to get across. He stretched again and took a deep breath, he faced the rock wall and started side-stepping out onto the ledge.
Leaning against the cliff face and keeping his weight on his toes, Eli moved slowly across the ledge. There was loose gravel and dirt on the ledge that he had to keep moving out of the way while he shuffled his way along the ledge. About half way across, he got a bad feeling as he felt quite vulnerable where he was, if he was going to get attacked, this would be when it would happen. He closed his eyes and tried to see if he could hear or sense anything but the volcano's magic was strong and it drowned out almost everything else. He focused on his hearing and there was a constant low rumble and rocks falling that prevented him from hearing anything specific. His mask was helping him hear, but it didn't help him separate out the sounds or determine what caused them.
Continuing down the ledge, he was almost to the end when the ground shook. This was a volcano and had been happening randomly since Eli arrived here, but for some reason he knew that this one was timed too perfectly. The ledge he was standing on fell and he reached out to grab the ledge behind him, it was precarious, but he didn't completely fall. He managed to slowly pull himself up and decided to jump the rest of the way landing near the other marker and causing a lot more stone to fall destroying half the ledge. He shook himself off and moved forward up the so-called path, it was just a 3 foot wide ledge that led up to what might be a cave just out of sight.
Stepping one step past the marker and six of the ash vultures came out of holes in the stone and flew down towards him. He conjured some throwing cudgels and got 2 of them before they reached him, but the 4 that did reach him blasted him with ash and one even pecked at his chest leaving a small burn hole near his right collar bone. It wasn't enough to disable his arm but he was thinking that that was its goal. After many more misses with his throwing cudgels, he got them and their bodies fell down the volcano's side, which was good since he was just about out of magic. Conjuring so many so quickly drained him very fast.
He sat and let himself heal and regenerate his magic. While scratching his chin he thought about a better way to fight flying monsters, but his skills just weren't good for ranged. He needed that option, so he decided to meditate about it and just let his mind work the problem. As soon as he started he noticed something strange with his magic regeneration, the magic he was pulling in was the volcano magic, it was flavored with fire, ash, and a bit of chaos. It went into him because his magic was empty, then was broken down and remade as his magic. He immediately thought that he could open his fire node with this magic and began trying to focus his will on bringing the volcano's magic in, compressing it, and pushing it into his node. His node immediately reacted energetically and wanted more, it pulled on him causing a spiritual pain he didn't know was possible.
Eli's soul was going through pain and agony, burning and choking his internal magic giving it all the flavor of the volcano and all of it getting sucked into his fire node. This node was located on his left thigh and it started burning his leg, without there being a source, his leg just started charring and burning around the node. The fire and ash magic was tearing up his internal magic causing pain, but it was all going to the node so he didn't want to stop it. After almost passing out twice, the node just stopped and he stopped absorbing magic. What remained in his body broke down and became his own after a few minutes.
It took several long deep breaths for Eli to come back to his senses fully and another 20 minutes to feel mostly normal again, at least magically. His leg was slow to heal and he wasn't sure he could walk right now, but he kept himself calm and checked on his internal magic before looking at the system windows. Soul damage was rough, at least he thought that was his soul. It was like what contained magic in his body, it was the shape of his body and felt more like him than his physical body did. It didn't have a concrete feeling but something more nebulous, like a container that held all that he was but the container wasn't solid, it was porous letting magic in and out. But he didn't have a way to figure anything else out since he lacked the information and it wasn't as intuitive as just the magic components, so he checked the windows.
"You have opened your Fire node"
"Your fire node is taking in elemental magic"
"Warning: taking in outside magic into a node is dangerous"
"Warning: soul damage may occur if…
"Warning…"
"You have leveled your fire node from 1 'Body' to 2 'planet'"
"Your fire node has had its magic flavor changed"
"Warning: using a planet level node while your soul is level 0 can cause harm"
There is a lot to unpack there, Eli thought while scratching his chin, good news is his fire node is open, that makes 5 nodes. The bad news is the node might hurt him since his soul isn't strong enough and he had no idea how to level his soul yet so he probably shouldn't try and form a skill for it yet. However, he would not ignore it either, he slipped into his meditation and focused on his internal magic, just enjoying its movements and feeling how its flavor has changed. It was definitely different, the piece of his magic that was fire had a stronger part in his magic and he could almost sense its flavor of eruption and consumption. There was more to it and he would need to get into his node to get a better feel.
He sent his mind into the node slowly and its power was shocking, he could immediately tell that using this magic would be risky since its power felt unwieldy and like it had a desire of its own. As he split into it mentally, he could really get a taste of its flavor of fire. This magic wanted destruction, it wanted to explode and burn everything. There was a little twitch of fear in Eli at that moment because until he leveled his soul, he was like a time bomb. He needed to take extra care not to use it until he had a stronger soul to manage it, or maybe just enough wisdom. That stat would need to be his focus for a while to prevent any accidents.
The next thing he noticed from those windows was the names of the node levels, 'Body' and 'Planet'. The only thing he could guess was that Body meant what a person would consider fire is, and the Planet part is what fire would be to a planet. He couldn't help but let his mind wander a bit thinking about what the next level could be and how many levels there were. He wasn't in a hurry to find out since he needed more soul strength first, but he needed to try using a spell to see if his new internal magic flavor had any effects.
Eli used Smash to hit a rock outcropping up ahead that the path went around and put just a little of his own magic into it aside from the earth node magic that it used. The rock was obliterated and a bit of heat came out from the shockwave as well as a little ash trailing behind his cudgel right before it hit. It felt a bit stronger, however the other changes would mean that almost everyone's abilities would look different even if they were then the same due to their own magic's flavor. There was something to this he thought, but he had already lost another half a day and since he had 7 days left he wanted to push forward and finish this volcano so he had a few days to get to where he wanted to be when everyone returned.
He looked down the path and started towards what he thought was a cave, but it turned out to be an open crack in the side of the volcano that led inside. This was a very narrow crack and he thought he would barely fit inside if at all but it didn't look long, only maybe 30 feet or so. Turning to the side and dismissing his cudgel he slowly slid into the crack inching through it very slowly, the biggest threat to him on this was a collapse so he tried not to put too much pressure on any of the walls while he scooted through side stepping. After finally getting through he let out a breath and sighed from how nerve wrecking that just had been, when he finally looked at where he was his mouth dropped open and he froze on the spot.