Asher was leading Distil and Puff down the hallway, and they found themselves making slow progress as they had to be careful about the traps in the stone hallway. Luckily, Distil's skills were proving invaluable. While he couldn't use his power like the rest of them, he could use his experience as his powers to break things down into liquid, which had given him a solid understanding of how things like piping worked.

Because as a hero, Distil had to train his powers like the rest of them did, which was what led to the gaining of knowledge of hydraulics as he turned things into liquids and had them move through other things to see what would happen in certain situations. So he would know how to best use his powers in any situation.

This understanding of hydraulics engineering allowed him to understand and predict how the green goop traps worked. As well as when they would go off, giving him and his team an edge against the traps. Though even with their advantage, it wasn't easy as the hallway was filled to the brim with green burning goop coming from both the walls and the ceiling.

As the three were walking down the hallway, it was starting to turn to the left, and from their position, they could make out a large chamber up ahead. Asher figured it would be as good a time as any to ask the question that had been on his mind and honestly may be the last chance they had for this adventure of theirs.

"Have you all noticed how different Golden has been acting?" Asher asked the other two, who both stopped and stared at one another for a moment before they nodded a hesitant yes. As if they were afraid to admit they had noticed the difference. "Well then I thought it was just me." Asher said, then sighed as he stood still for a moment; the other two stood still with him.

So the three stood there in silence for a moment, thinking a few steps from the chamber, not moving. Then finally Asher spoke."We won't mention anything. We're here to monitor the game. We'll see how he acts outside the game and see if he's still different out there. If he or not will tell us if this game is affecting him or not." Asher said, voicing the plan he had come up with to his two comrades, who both nodded their agreement.

"Well, with that settled, let's see what awaits in the chamber, shall we?" Asher said as he led the three of them to the end of the hallway and into the large chamber. Once all three were through, a stone wall came down behind them, locking them in the chamber. The three gave each other a look that told each other this was an ambush, and so they quickly brought their shields up and brought their maces ready in their former empty hand, ready to bring the mace down on whatever was planning to jump them.

They looked around the room, scanning it and not seeing anything. It was largely empty; the only thing of note was large, circular, grey tiles built into the floor. That was until Puff noticed something above them. "Guys above us." He whispered to the other two, who looked up and saw what Puff had spotted, which was a large beetle statue hanging from the ceiling.

All three were wondering what the three statues were doing hanging from the ceiling, but then several holes opened up in the ceiling around the statue, and out of these holes came pouring out burning green goop. It started filling up the edges of the chamber but was quickly making its way towards them, and it would be the end for them if they fell in.

But they had nowhere to go, and the room was filling with the stuff, so they very well might not have a choice in the matter. As the situation seemed hopeless, Distil suddenly shouted, Get on the circular tiles. The other two, having no better ideas, listened to them, and so the tight formation the three had been in was broken up as the three each ran for a different grey circular tile.

Luckily they all got on one right as the chamber floor was beginning to fill, and so instead of filling their feet, beginning to be cooked in the green goop, they were instead rising as the grey circular tiles they were on floated on the green goop instead of burned. "Good call, Distil." Asher called out complimenting Distil on his quick thinking.

Now the group found themselves rising as the large chamber filled with the burning green goop. As they reached the halfway point, the group, now several meters in the air or on the goop depending on how you looked at it, was when the beetle statue decided to make its use known. As several smaller beetles suddenly flew out of it and went straight for them, they brought their giant iron maces ready to bear.

They reached Distil first, and just before he could swing his mace at it, he switched to his shield, bringing it in front of him and bracing himself as best he could. Then the small beetle slammed into his shield and exploded into a ball of burning green goop. Then several more slammed until his shield exploded, the combined force neatly throwing Distil off his platform, but he held on by the skin of his teeth.

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Asher and Puff, seeing the danger, also brought their shields in front of them and braced as fist-sized beetles slammed into their shields before exploding into burning green goop. Eventually the wave of beetles stopped, and they had a moment to get their breath back and wipe away all the burning goo that had gotten on them, which they had endured as they had been enduring the force of the beetles small explosions.

The three looked at the large beetle statue that the smaller beetles had sprung out of. As they did, a purple stats screen popped up in front of the three telling them what exactly they were dealing with, and they weren't liking what they were seeing.

Birthing blitser - tier two- undead construct- sentinel zombie- Trait: birthing goop chamber- this creature has an internal chamber where green goop is stored and this chamber uses green goop to form temporary beetles that reach their destaination before exploding back into burning green goop-description- a giant beetle statue impeded in the ceiling. Its insides are filled with dead blister beetles while it's outer shell is just regular stone made into the shape of the bodies it contains inside itself.

While it became obvious to the three of them that the birthing blitzer was just gathering more burning green goop to use, and so they only had a small window before it started sending waves of exploding goop beetles at them again. So, seeing at this specific moment it couldn't intercept with anything, Asher pulled back his hand and threw his giant onion mace with all his might at the birthing blitzer statue.

Luckily for the three adventurers, their aim was true, and it hit dead center of the birthing blitzer. The giant onion mace ability activated, multiplying the force used, causing massive damage, and breaking the birthing blitzer from the ceiling and into the sea of burning green goop the three were floating on. Luckily for Asher, Distil managed to catch his mace before it fell into your sea of burning green goop and passed it back to him. "Thanks," Asher said, to which Distil nodded.

Then, as the three began to wonder if they were going to be burned alive as the burning green goop levels continued to rise, they suddenly stopped. Then all of a sudden a door opened opposite them when they were now floating at the chamber's highest point. "Well, it looks like we have our way out." Asher said, and so the three made their way over to the newly opened door on their grey circular tiles.

"Well, I gotta say, Robert, that Lord Listex really loves his burning green goop." Simon said the surprise was clear in his voice despite the fact it sounded like it was coming through a broken mike. Robert didn't respond for a moment, thinking on something else that had caught his attention.

"Yes, he does." Robert said flippantly as he was trying to figure out something that had been bothering him. This was picked up rather easily by Simon, who decided to address rather than take offense at what had Robert so distracted.

"'Well, Robert, it seems something really got you by the ear. Care to share?" Simon asked, his voice filled with curiosity at what it was. Especially as it could be good for ratings, whatever it turned out to be, and he never wanted to miss any of those opportunities.

"Well, it was what Asher said before about golden being different. Allyssa doesn't have any kind of altering properties as far as I'm aware, so either something's gone very wrong or there's something deeper here." Robert said his nervousness was coming through clearly at the fact that possible mind alteration was going on within his creation without his knowledge.

"Oh, a conspiracy! That's juicy; well, don't you worry; Robert will get to the bottom of it." Simon said his excitement was almost physical, as viewers usually loved a good conspiracy, and this sounded like a good one. "Let's turn back to the dungeon run and see if there are any more clues we can get on this conspiracy." Simon said to Robert, who nodded and focused back on the screens to follow the four adventurers in their quest through the dungeon.