Worthy Core

After reaching the far end of the crystal forest, the Perlin expedition found that they had no choice but to return to ground level. The boss arena wasn't entirely closed off from the rest of the chamber, but it may as well have been, with columns of stone and crystal wrapping around each other in a way reminiscent of a wall of thorny vines. The only entrance was down on the ground, and so the party had to abandon their secret path along the ceiling of the room and climb their way back down.

No door blocks the entrance to the arena, but the group halts at the threshold anyhow in order to take a look around. Inside they can see more giant growths of crystals, but unlike the rest of the chamber these don't appear treelike in the least. Instead they're nothing more than massive, fifteen-foot-tall prisms, one in every color of the rainbow, the sort of thing that could only ever be created by magic. Taking in the sight, Thunder Priest Redbeard shakes his head. "Unless those eyes of yours see something I don't, my lords, I see no sign of a boss monster within."

Arlon nods in agreement, but isn't any less tense for it. "Indeed, but that's hardly a surprise here - Worthy Dungeon loves its boss ambushes, does it not? The armors on Floor Three may be the only ones that don't attempt to take Challengers by surprise. The only question is - what exactly is the surprise waiting for us in there?"

Sansie chuckles, a little awkwardly. "Well, this is the reward we get for being the first to get this far, isn't it? Even the Association inspection team's not done more than poke their heads about the floor. Given it's a surprise, then, how shall we go about it?"

Their Royal Protector, Taylim, offers a suggestion. "I should take the lead, but we ought to remain close as well. My barriers can only extend so far, and I would not want to risk an attack from the rear with any of you more than ten feet from me."

"Fair enough." Arlon turns towards the Priest with an additional order. "We don't have much in the way of area control spells, but how about you summon us up a small storm in there before we enter, in order to possibly flush out any ambushes? Do you think you can manage that?"

Palm eyes the arena again before nodding. "Just about the right size, as it happens. Large enough for some wind movement, small enough for decent coverage. Here we go, then - oh Roe, hear your faithful! We ask for a squall to soften our foes, and strike fear into their hearts!" Electricity crackles along his metal-studded staff as he waves it about, and within moments a tiny thundercloud's begun to form in the center of the arena. The wind starts to pick up, and there's rumblings of thunder, although no lightning just yet. "The storm's found nothing to strike so far - the boss must be well-hidden."

"Only one way to draw it out then, I suppose - everyone on me." With his shield raised, Taylim leads the party into the arena, heading directly towards the center in order to get the best view of what could be hiding behind the giant crystals. There's nothing to find - but as the ground begins to rumble, the party keeps their eyes on the crystals regardless. Raylin shouts out the first warning.

"There - the red crystal, it's cracking!"

"The orange one too!" Sansie's eyes grow wide as she twists to face another. "And the blue one! Get ready for - something!"

As if on cue the three crystals shatter apart, revealing themselves to be hollow. The shards they spew are a minor concern, easily deflected by Taylim's barrier, but it's what the crystals were hiding inside them that worries him the most. "It's - slimes! Three giant slimes, be ready!" Sure enough, a red, an orange, and a blue slime each plop their way onto the stony ground before beginning to crawl towards the nobles. Each of them is at least four or five times Lollyp's size, although they don't bother to take a humanoid form, or much of a form at all, really. While Raylin begins to fire off arrows, Sansie hits the orange slime with a burst of flame, and a blast of lightning from Palm's staff strikes the blue one, triggering his storm to strike it once more as a follow-up.

Unfortunately, neither of his attacks do much of anything to the encroaching monster. "It's - I believe this slime may be immune to lightning! They may be mana slimes!"

Sansie has a moment to think, thanks to her flames successfully driving her own target back a few feet. "Pfah, mana slimes! The only ones I've ever seen were small enough to hold in your hand! But - the colors! The colors are important!"

Arlon grunts as he swings at the red slime with his sword. Blades aren't the best tool against monsters of this sort, but at least his weapon is enchanted with additional sharpness, so he can slice through its probing tendrils without worry of it getting stuck inside. "Good to know. So...important in what way, exactly?"

"Blue is lightning - Palm, help Arlon with the red! Red is fire, orange is...gah, orange is earth? Oh, see - there it goes." As she blasts her target with another flamethrower burst, the slime quickly grows itself a stone-like skin in response. It's short-lived, melting away again the moment the attack ends, but it does manage to spare it from most of the damage. Meanwhile, the next time Arlon cuts off a piece of the red slime he's rewarded with a gust of flame that nearly takes his eyebrows.

Raylin keeps firing away, magically enhancing each of his shots with a slight explosive charge to help blow the slimes apart. Even so, he keeps an eye on the other crystals circling them. "And these others - we've got green, purple, yellow, white, black - do you think they're holding slimes as well? What sorts might they be?"

Reversing his barrier, Taylim turns it onto the blue slime to contain it in place before shifting to assist Sansie. "Couldn't possibly be all of them - boss monsters grow weaker the more of them a floor uses! Eight slimes would be weak enough for an Advanced team to handle, never mind the numbers!"

While the blue slime begins to zap away at its prison with lightning of its own, the spell does hold long enough to turn the fight into a five-on-two for a good minute or two, which is long enough for the team of Experts. With Taylim as a Protector and Arlon himself trained as a Vanguard, the team's defense is excellent and more than sufficient to hold two relatively slow-moving monsters at bay. The slimes are durable themselves, certainly, but as piece after piece gets blasted away by magical attacks or cut by blades they eventually shrink down sufficiently for Raylin and Sansie to finish them off with magically overcharged strikes. As soon as her own target is down, Sansie turns towards the barrier containing the final monster.

"Can you give me a hole, Taylim? Hand-sized, if you would?"

"It's not that precise, my lady, but I shall do what I can." Already rather weakened, the dome-shaped barrier easily gives away about a fifth of its surface area, which is a bit more than Sansie would have preferred but sufficient for her needs. Reaching inside with her wand, the Noble Elementalist fires off as long of a sustained fire burst as she can, eventually turning the creature inside into blackened slag. As the barrier finally gives out so does she, falling to one knee with a gasp of exhaustion. "Ah, gods! Good thing that was the last one, I feel I'm nearly drained!"

Raylin groans. "Sansie..."

Before the Elementalist can ask what it is her cousin is complaining about, the sound of one more cracking crystal grabs all of their attention. Spinning around, they identify the culprit just moments before it shatters - the white crystal standing directly opposite of the entrance. The party raises their weapons for another round of attacks, but the ambushing slime beats them to it as it splatters onto the ground. Without warning, a massive flare of light blinds the entire party, causing them to raise their arms to protect their eyes, but far too late.

Arlon ducks behind his shield for additional protection. "Sansie! What's a white mana slime!?"

"There is no white mana slime! And - light attacks? I've never heard of light elemental energy! I - ahhhh!" Sansie lets out a scream, and although Taylim still can't quite see what's going on, he immediately rushes towards her to attempt to stop whatever it is that's happening. He finds himself slamming into the slime itself which had apparently grabbed on to the Mage's arm, and begun burning her right through her robes. Not with acid, as a traditional slime might, or even the flames of a red mana slime, but with simple sheer heat alone. As he forces the monster back with a combination of his shield and magical protections, the man would swear the sensation reminds him of being caught outside on a particularly sunny day - if perhaps far more intensely so.

"My lady - are you alright?"

Blinking as she swallows down a healing potion, Sansie nods. "I'll live! But it likes heat, does it? Let's see how this goes, then!" She follows up her first potion with a second to restore her mana, and then quickly begins to cast a spell. Meanwhile the slime has moved on to attack the other members of the party, although Redbeard does his best to slow it down with a summoned gust of wind. It does little against the heavy monster, but with Arlon adding his own defensive skills to the mix, it does buy Sansie the time she needs.

After around fifteen seconds, her spell finally fires off. A wall of ice crystals bursts from the ground, starting at her feet and crossing the arena in a line twenty feet long. It would make an excellent defense, but sometimes the best defense is also a good offense, and so her targeted path proceeds to cut the slime right down the middle. It doesn't quite manage it cleanly, not being exactly designed for such a thing, but perhaps a third of the slime does remain on the wrong side of the ice, quickly withering away.

In what could possibly be a form of panic, the slime begins to repeat its first attack but at a much more rapid pace, repeatedly flashing bright lights at its opponents. It's the sort of trick that only really works once though, and this time the Challengers are prepared enough to shield their eyes and not look directly at it as they move in for the kill. With the element of surprise lost it turns out to be not much more durable than the other slimes the party had already killed, and with a few more blasts of magic, enhanced arrows, and sword chops the final creature eventually meets its end as well.

Even when it stops moving they don't let down their guard, quickly examining the other prisms still standing, but eventually it begins to seem as if the fight is finally over. Even so, Raylin issues Sansie with a warning. "Sansie, Sansie...I really thought you knew better than to say things like that."

The Elementalist waves her arm in response, and then winces at both the pain and the sight of it, given that the healing potion has far from fully repaired the burn wound she received. "I daresay the dungeon taught me the lesson now, thank you, Raylin. Gah, just imagine though - if that had been a solo boss rather than one of four, I daresay that thing would have turned my arm to cinders in moments!"

Arlon breaths a sigh of relief as he sees a reward chest appear. "I would suspect the dungeon hasn't put too much effort into this boss, yet, given that it seems to be an un-ensouled one. You think that was a new form of slime, though?"

While Taylim and Redbeard move to help Sansie with her wound, Raylin checks out the rewards. "There must be a hundred, and sometimes the differences are so minor...I don't recall hearing of a bright slime before though, no. Hrmmm...a pile of gems, none particularly high-value, but some of these seem to be mana storage crystals - real ones, I'd wager, and not just dungeon décor. Ah, look Sansie, the dungeon's rewarded you for your inopportune comments!" He raises a wand into the air, and Arlon takes it to pass over to the Mage. Its handle seems to be made of a polished marble, while it's tipped with an orange crystal which makes Sansie grin.

"An Earth Wand, it seems. Always good to have - earth is one of the hardest elements for non-specialized Elementalists to manipulate, it's just so...rigid. A good special-case tool to have in the set. Anything else of note?"

"Currency, a few potions, the usual. The real reward lies ahead of us I believe though, wouldn't you say?" As he stands back up the Marksman points out a door at the rear of the arena, and Arlon agrees.

"The core chamber - assuming there's no eighth floor yet, at least. Come, let us claim our victory, shall we?" Before they can begin moving however, a second, smaller chest suddenly appears next to the first one. There's a few raised eyebrows, but Raylin goes ahead and opens it as well.

"It's...a quiver of enchanted arrows? They're crystal-tipped, I imagine they're elementally focused..." The man grows a smirk as he looks back at the rest of the team. "The bonus rewards for last night's efforts, I imagine."

Sansie snorts. "Targeted specifically for you? Going to be quite a hurdle if we all need to engage with a monster for a chance of a bonus item...but I suppose fair's fair."

While Sansie's wound will still require further healing later, the group is eager to get moving, and makes their way into the final room of the dungeon - the first Challengers to do so in months. As they do, they find a rather more decorative space than was described to them by other parties. The reported items of bedroom furniture are gone, with Xenia having finally given herself a much more private personal space up on Floor Five, and instead everything revolved around the core itself. Or at least, what one might imagine to be the core. The old clamshell statue had been replaced by one three times the size, and massive statues of Lollyp, Taly, Trush and DEATH stand in the four corners of the room, staring down at everyone who might approach it. Standing in front of the statue meanwhile was a final guardian, this one made of flesh and blood rather than stone.

"Congratulations. I haven't had to welcome a party to this chamber in quite some time."

Arlon gives Sincere the slightest of bows. "We're honored to be the ones to break that streak. Tell us though, do we need to ready ourselves for a final fight?"

The demon shakes his head. "If you have no intention of destroying the core, then you may have your victory peacefully." He gestures towards another chest sitting on a table off to the side, next to the exit portal. "Your final rewards await, as does the exit from the dungeon. You're welcome to revisit the inn, of course, but we ask that you step outside for a moment before you return."

Raylin again takes charge of collecting the loot, while Arlon remains focused on the Core Guardian. "Tell me, do you believe others will follow soon behind us? After taking so long, it would be nice to hold this particular record for a little while."

Sincere answers with a shrug. "The Valleylanders would have come close, had they not been intercepted by Trush on their attempt. You got lucky on this run...quite lucky, one might say."

Raylin gives a smirk at that. "Who needs luck when you have skill, yes? Now, come - the statues are rather nice to admire, but I think I'd rather have a drink and admire the beauty to be found up on Floor Five, wouldn't you?" The Perlins all give signs of agreement at that suggestion, and with final farewells to the guardian they finally make their exit.

Leaving Sincere behind with Xenia and Guy standing by his side. With her eyes narrowed in suspicion, Xenia asks her guardian a question. "So...that wasn't just me, right?"

"My viewpoint wasn't as good as yours, but from what I saw from my observation point?" Sincere shakes his head. "They were obviously looking around for something at the start of the floor and trying to look as if they weren't. I'd wager the money you don't pay me they knew the ramp was there, just not its exact location."

"...Yeah." The dungeon master scowls. "Seems like Deylia and I need a little chat..."