Chapter Twenty Two

The air within the large dark cavern of frost met with a glow of orange as a fire ball the size of Steve's sedan floated in the air. As it did, it emitted a warmth akin to the sun.

The frost fought the heat with all its might, yet the flame refused to diminish in size. Instead it seemed to grow slightly with each passing minute. Gradually, the bitter frost was replaced with a mid summer day.

As it warmed up, Jason could see the ice melting from the doors. Within a few minutes, they opened on their own, and the temperature in the room became warm enough for him to bear without using fire skin.

Jason let his new ability fizzle out as he went to the next room. As he entered the threshold, the doors slammed shut behind him. Almost immediately, Jason felt the rapid increase in temperature. Understanding hit him as he began picturing glaciers, frozen lakes and snowy alps. Before the heat became too uncomfortable, a feeling of coolness hit him. He could feel the frost skin accumulate around his body.

Starting once again, Jason set his imaginary line, yet he soon realized that it wasn't his mana regeneration that would halt him from going forward, but instead the intense heat he would have to train through.

Turning up the intensity of his new frost skin, he made his way forward in the sauna-like cavern. As he made his way forward, he saw flame spouting from the corners of the room. It took a little more than an hour, but he made it to the next set of double doors and began to freeze the ground in front of him.

The heat of the room reduced the frost to a puddle in a matter of seconds if he was not channeling the ability. The drain was more than it was in the previous room, but Jason used the same concept, freezing the area in front of the doors for as long as he could before stepping back and replenishing his mana.

After a few hours, he was able to form a block of ice. A few hours further and he had a spire of ice growing in the center.

The heat licked at the core of ice, yet Jason continued to feed it mana, allowing it to battle the element for supremacy.

Jason felt the shift in temperature before he saw the double doors open.

On the other side was the first sign of actual life that Jason had seen in this dungeon. Within it, frozen elementals, which looked like balls of floating ice with faces carved into them, were huddled together staring at the door. Jason took advantage of what he could only assume was surprise and summoned his mana saber.

He slashed at one of the elementals only to find it had left a shallow groove in the otherwise unblemished ice. He gave himself a mental slap on the face as he summoned his fire skin. Summoning a ball of flame to his hand, he hurled it to the same elemental he just attacked. He watched the size of the ice creature shrink, yet the power of his flame wasn't enough to melt it completely.

Jason sent another fire ball towards the creature, and finally he watched as it turned to a puddle. The exchange cost him his precious few seconds of surprise, and now the group of four ice elementals launched themselves at him.

Dodging out of the way of the kamikaze icicles, Jason launched another fireball at one which was turning to take another charge at him. Before it could, he sent another towards it. As soon as the flame hit the elemental, it burst into a puddle.

His victory was short lived however. As he readied his next attack, a stabbing cold hit his back, making his vision turn red. He looked down to see an icicle impaling his abdomen. He coughed up a lungful of blood onto the frozen floor. "All that health from one attack?" He gritted his teeth as he sent a fireball flying to the creature that had just attacked him. As he did, his vision turned from red to gray. As it did, he noticed the elemental he hadn't been attacking finish its charge.

The next moment, Jason found himself back at the beginning of the dungeon with all doors closed. "Shit!" He swore as he realized he'd have to do the whole thing over again.

"Okay," He said as he sat down on the floor to think. "In the rooms leading up to the elementals, I was shown how to use both frost skin and flame skin." He summoned his frost skin. "I then had to change the temperature drastically meanwhile keeping my skin ability activated." He summoned frost to his hand and formed a cube.

Staring at the cube for a moment, he grimaced. "Shit! It was right there staring me in the face!" He felt as if the fire had seared his brain cells as he got up and began walking back to the doors. "I only used half of what I learned," He changed his frost skin to fire and began heating the cavern.

It took only a fraction of the original time to get back to the set of doors where the elementals lay behind. Jason readied his flame skin after the doors began to creep open. Before the elementals could react, he sent a rapid fireballs to double tap two of them.

As they fell, two others circled around to catch him, only to run into his fire skin. Jason watched as they shrunk by the smallest amount before he sent two fireballs per creature to finish them off. He then activated temporal shift, teleporting out of the way before the final elemental could cast a frost ball at him, then double tapped it with fireball.

In less than thirty seconds, Jason walked away from five puddles of water, ready to clear the dungeon.

Jason walked forward, leaving five puddles behind.