Every maji regardless of their practice, affinity or abilities require aether to do any of it. Unfortunately, aether is very hard to gather.
It's not that there isn't enough of it to go around, in fact it's everywhere like water. The main issue is that it's everywhere like fog.
Aether in it's natural state is too spread out to gather normally, hence why maji developed cultivation techniques as a mean to condense and collect aether as efficiently as possible. Evidently, this desire for denser aether led to the development of spell circles and formations.
To go back to the water metaphor, cultviation techniques used by maji were like barrels left out to collect rain water, while formations were like digging out artificial ponds or a reservoir. Both collect water, but at very different scales.
Now how dungeons factor into this...imagine that reservoir was suddenly filled with fish, plants and corpses.
Voxea wasn't sure how it happened, but she guessed that over the course of eight hundred years, and a certain cataclysmic event, some of the formations had mutated into doing more than just collect aether.
Either way, my friends and I were now standing in front of a crazy gold and brown portal emitting dense Earth and Lightning aether. In front of the portal were pair of binder guards armed with spears and Lionyxes by their side.
"Well", I said for everyone to hear, "what are we waiting for? Let's go".
Putting on a brave face for myself and my friends, I walked right up to the guards of the portal.
"Please present entry key", the guards said in-sync as soon as we got close enough. Following their prompt, I took out the rune stone that Headmistress Malrena gave me.
"Acknowledged".
The guard to my left proceeded to reach out to take the rune stone from my hand...and then throw it out at the portal.
"???"
The rune stone went flying through the air until it suddenly stopped, suspended just a few feet in front of the entrance. The rune stone then began to fly upward and embed itself to a small part of the top of the portal. I soon felt a change in the aether as the rune stone locked into place.
"Location locked", the guards stated in unison, "please proceed".
[Huh...how unusual...], Voxea commented, [Whatever was going in there seemed to have change...I'm excited now, let's go]!
"Well then...shall we?", I said as I made my way to the portal. A moment of hesitation took me before I steeled my nerves and just pushed through.
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A strange, zappy feeling came over me as I walked through the portal, it reminded me of the cultivation exercises that Voxea had me go through...but a lot weirder.
After I came out the other side, I readjusted my bearings to make sure everything was in one piece. Shortly after, Albina, Savina, Bori, Boleros and Alyra followed after.
"Glad y'all could make it".
"That was....weird", Albina commented as she shook out her leg
"I found it kinda pleasant", Bori said nonchalantly.
"I feel ill", Boleros said while looking as pale as a drunkard. Alyra for her part stayed silent as she went to support her brother.
Savina was about to comment as well, but suddenly stopped as she stared at me.
"Savina? What's up"?
[She's not staring at you], Voxea interjected, [turn around].
"What?", I said as I turned my head, "oh...".
Behind me was the interior of the Conductive Earth Dungeon and it did not look like any dungeon I knew, it looked like another world!
A series of islands that seemed to be floating in midair laid before us, some looked like nothing but sand, others like a mountain top and one that was just completely flat and dry looking. Despite how different all these islands were, however, all these islands had a strange crystal pillar that was dead center of each them.
Surrounding us from all sides were swirling black clouds that radiated with the power of thunder and lightning. It was like we were in the eye of a massive storm.
But the thing that was most eye-catching, and confusing, was the sight of a giant floating castle that seemed to be carved out of a single uniform mountain.
"Oh...dear...gods", I muttered as I stared at the scne.
[Wait...that style of architecture...]