The straight line wasn't just a mapping error. There was in fact a line. Sure, it wasn't actually a clean cut line like on the map, but if he had been the one drawing the map, Jason would have drawn it straight as well.

The good news is that this isn't some strange fantasy landscape situation. Rather, the line is just the result of the earth moving from something like an earthquake or what have you. The swamp is cut off because the land next to it has suddenly risen up a good two or three stories. Though this must have happened a while ago as part of why it wasn't a straight line is the fact that parts of it have fallen down.

Those fallen bits were important for Jason as it meant he wasn't going to have to try his hand at free climbing a sheer cliff. It would likely be easy with his movement skill, but he didn't want to test it when the results of failure would be a long fall into a swamp. Not that the climb up the collapsed section nearest to him was easy.

It still required a decent bit of travel through the swamp to get to and it only turned the sheer cliff into a steep mountainside just waiting to collapse on you. Oh, and as Jason soon found out, there were some earth elementals chilling there. So, to say it took him by surprise when the rock beneath him grabbed him would be an understatement.

The good news for him is that he did choose to try and climb the fallen part as the entire cliff is infested with the earth elementals. It wasn't any kind of infestation or some such. It was just that a couple of situations lined up and combined with the general slow response of earth elementals if there isn't anyone around. Not that this would help Jason any.

Earth Elementals are one of the purer examples of a big bag of HP and they do a much better job of it than Jason. A problem when most of his more devastating attacks depend on his enemy having internals that are weaker than their externals. Even breaking apart the rocks that make up the elemental is pointless as the cohesion of its body depends on its earth mana and not the rocks being connected. So the fact it got the drop on him and managed to grab Jason's leg? A bit of a worry for him.

Jason tries to use his body blast to burst off the elemental's grip, but even reducing the rock pseudopod to gravel didn't release its grip. Then the elemental started to tighten said grip as it pulled him towards the main body.

With his other leg, Jason stomps down with a Runic Bloom as he suspects it will work better than Never Ending Threads.

This guess seems true enough though. The stamina powered flower blooms into the gravel pseudopod. Except this time the ability changed and twisted. Those petals that had sliced up so many enemies in the past instead curled up and dug in like roots.

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Jason wasn't quite certain what was going on except his thought that a plant would do alright against a rock was clearly onto something. So much so that the earth elemental goes as far as to abandon the pseudopod. Not that this caused any serious damage, though any damage was worth it.

The elemental didn't mind any of this. In fact, despite its size, the earth elemental doesn't have much of a mind at all. It might have grown fat with the amount of earth mana it could grab, but that didn't advance its stage. So without a single thought it surged towards Jason like an avalanche.

Well, not like an avalanche. It was and caused an avalanche. The already loose rocks followed the elemental as it came at Jason.

This actually made it easier for Jason to avoid as it provided places to step that weren't going to liquify and flow up around his foot. So as the avalanche crashed down around him, Jason stepped from rock to rock, studiously avoiding any that moved unnaturally or seemed to stick to others.

He wasn't advancing very far with this, but the fact Jason could basically stay in place during an avalanche, even a small one like this, was impressive. The earth elemental didn't care and tried to turn around to continue its attack. Maybe if it had been the entirety of the avalanche it could have managed to stop itself, unfortunately for the elemental the rest of the rocks in the avalanche aren't going to let it.

Then as it rumbles down, another two earth elementals get unearthed. They don't attack the falling earth elemental, but also don't follow it, instead charging towards Jason.

An act that seemed like a good reason to get off this cliffside. So without an earth elemental visible in front of him, Jason made a break for it while avoiding any of the larger boulders as they seem to be how the elementals liked to rest.

This still isn't enough as Jason wakes up four more elementals on his rush to get to the top. However, knowing they would be there makes all the difference and enables him to avoid their attempts to grapple him. Not that it was safe.

One of the earth elementals clearly had more of a mind than the others as it didn't just try to grab him with a single limb. Instead, it did a good imitation of the classic earth spike spell, pushing up over ten stalagmites of stone. A good tactic that worked.

Jason was speared through the arm and even that was only because of how much effort he put into not having his legs pierced. Though once it was through, the elemental really showed its chops. The stone spike ballooned outward near the exit wound, making it so the spike can't just be pulled out.

With the spike through the fleshy bit on the back of his right upper arm Jason is in theory caught. It missed the bone, but just barely and so there was a bunch of muscle in the way of getting it out. Jason didn't care about that though. If the spike stayed in he would have to fight all the other earth elementals.

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