Easily the craziest aspect of panda tribe spell was the fact that you tend to forget your inner thoughts are being transferred to the rest. Hearing Abby count her steps and Lacy's "left" "right" calls were wild to hear as you're walking by yourself. Then Adam said to Dante to 'Blink on their backside and we will flame them from both sides'.
I learned the names of Ghaston's beasts as he was not aware of us hearing their conversation as each was quite opinionated about us. Apparently Gus the lion and Gina the eagle both are fans of us while Glow the light wisp felt we were too naive to be trusted with anything important like what we were currently doing. I think all of us went quiet to listen to them or we were all busy fighting as I finally encountered a group of golems.
The golems were a solid ten feet tall and made of pure ice. The golems so far had been bronze and didn't have a ranged attack. I found out the hard way that silver golems have an icespike quite similar to my own icespike attack. I thanked the prince to myself when the first icespike connected perfectly to my chest. The power of which it hit me was a shock and knocked me onto my ass. I looked down and both could see I had no damage to my armor but also the golem had a confused look to see me ok.
I hopped up as quickly as I could and sent a fireball as quickly as I could as I was rushed in the moment. The first shot had been taken aim, I utilized the placement of the shot hoping to take all of them if not most. The silver golems had a higher resistance and my fireball only killed one so my second shot I took it with only pulling back to full power and releasing as quickly as I could aiming center mass. The frost golem sent an icespike that pierced my fireball and both attacks we nullified in the middle of the air.
"Why didn't you block that shot?" I asked Wispy out loud.
'You want to see or do you want me to defend you?' Wispy spoke to me.
"A warning that you weren't going to defend me would have helped!" I kept speaking out loud despite the fact that I could have thought it but I didn't want everyone to hear my frustration. The force of which the spike hit me was quite painful as my chest was pulsing. I really didn't have time to argue either but I wanted Wispy to know I wasn't happy.
I sent out another fireball to work on the golem as I hadn't realized I had night vision provided by Wispy melding into me. The golem was now defending itself by destroying my attacks as it saw the icespike didn't hurt me at all. I had to get creative as the next two fireballs were shot out of the air. I then decided to pull my bow back that was in my left hand, with my right hand I sent out an arcane barrage as it had no flight but appeared six spikes surrounding the golem.
The golem was severely injured and I sent another arcane barrage to finish the job. The realization that I could cast from my hands to change up the attacks gave me many more ideas as I wasn't sure until then if I could cast with my hands. I had always used the sceptre and bow to cast spells. An icespike came hurling my way so with my right hand I simply made a stop motion to the icespike and thought the arcane barrier I wanted to block the attack with and it appeared exactly how I wanted it and the icespike disintegrated.
'There you go, that is also why I let that icespike hit you, you need to realize how powerful you can be and stop relying on tools.' Wispy spoke to me again. Ghaston then uttered through the link 'Tools will boost you but if you rely on them they will cripple you.' I couldn't agree more and I was realizing it more and more as I was taking these golems out with ease and no bow.
'I am only fighting yetis how about you guys?' Adam inquired.
'I have only encountered golems.' I replied
'That is crazy, I have only encountered giants.' Abby spoke up to us through the link.
'Giants here as well' Ghaston added.
'These are all silver yetis are you guys fighting silver beasts as well?' Adam created a new line to the chat.
'Silver is all I have encountered so far' I replied quickly.
'Silver would explain why these bastards are tougher than before.' Abby added.
'If you come across platinum, they will be larger than the silver and most likely be wearing armor, do not engage. None of you are powerful enough to take on a platinum solo.' Ghaston reiterated the importance of not engaging above our rank for what felt like the umteenth time.
I then started to put it together as Wispy pointed out that there were four distinctive sources of power coming from this cave. The moment Wispy pointed it out Ghaston told us all to retreat and that we would go down Adam's as a unit. He too could feel the difference between the four different sources of power and wanted to make sure we went together upon reaching any of them.
When entering we were hoping it would be easy to find the beast nest and do the conversion. We were briefly told that we might have to defend for a bit if there are any beasts left connected to the nest. The beasts that were out of the cavern were too far away to help but we had to make sure that we cleared out the cavern or most of it before attempting to convert it.
We headed down Adam's cave and the yeti bodies were piled up in a couple locations as it appeared he fought twice the amount that I did in our short time going down each of the pathways. The best part about going as a group was that we were able to use Glow as our light source and Wispy was able to come out and help fight. We stopped for a moment to let Maddy and Joey collect the beast cores before moving on.
'A bunch of headless yetis, you catch them by surprise?' Abby asked Adam through the link as she was curiously looking at Adam's work. Adam had his katana out and as a response flicked it sending the last of the yeti blood off of the blade. The glow emitting off of his katana now that I didn't have night vision from Wispy was really awesome looking. Joey stabbed their bellies and popped out the crystal in one motion with his sai. The location was the same for each of the beast for their cores so he was becoming proficient with his removals.
We pushed forward once all the cores were collected when Ghaston stopped and pointed to his right there was a stream of liquid flowing out of the wall. 'Anyone have a flask to grab this? It's mana enriched water from the mana vein that is running through this cavern.' Travis of all people pulled out a big jug out of his dimensional space that was full of his favorite flavored water. He pitched the water and placed the jug below the opening to get it to slowly start filling up the jug. We all took a momentary break as Travis held the jug to get the liquid.
Maddy had multiple cups in her dimensional storage which I tried to give her a hard time for having, but at the same time it was awesome that she brought seven cups for us to be able to enjoy the liquid that we came across. The liquid was dripping from the edge of the jug as well so I placed my cup below the drops and once my cup was full I stepped away to take a sip.
"YO!" I blurted out which caused everyone to yell at me in my mind which felt even louder than if they had spoken it. It was easily the best tasting liquid I had ever had in my life and I had every right to be ecstatic. Wispy informed me it increased my mana pool by a percent, not a unit, he said percent to me.
Everyone else seeing my reaction though quickly got their own taste and struggled to keep their own reactions to a minimum. Adam even put his hand over his own mouth to stop the sound as best he could but his throat was the culprit. Finally Ghaston interjected to all of us 'Maybe we should stop drinking the liquid that is causing everyone to alert the cavern of our presence!'
Travis was the only one not to try it so he tried with all his might to keep it in as he shouted internally the moment it touched his lips. The internal laughter from all of us lightened the mood as it was apparent that we had all gone sour for a moment from Ghaston's comment. I think Ghaston realized he was working with eleven year olds at that moment as we weren't his usual button up and follow everything I say, aka soldiers.