"Well, Floor Three wasn't so bad, was it? Anything like the dungeons back in your homeland, I wonder?" Grizza smiles as he poses the question to his current employer, wishing his mage training in the army had included some sort of acting practice. For his part, Fletcher eyes the drider for a moment before grunting.

"Oh yeah, had shit like that all the time. With the...slime bunnies, and the traps, and stuff. Pretty common shit."

"Really? You've seen slime rabbits before? Those were a new one to me when we first found them here, not that I've been in many other dungeons beyond Worthy Dungeon. Do you recall the name of the dungeon where you've seen rabbit monsters appear?"

The man doesn't answer right away, instead scanning the starting area of Floor Four while counting his arrows with his fingertips. It seemed a little on the nose - a man named Fletcher apparently being an Archer-type class - but Grizza was already nervous about the number of questions he'd been trying to slip in and had decided not to ask if Fletcher was a given name or a nickname. "Eh. All blurs together after a while, you know? Anyhow, you're the guide here, right? How about you and your rock pals stop gossiping and get to work, hrmm?"

"Of course, of course." Turning around, Grizza takes a look and counts up the rest of the party coming up behind them. It was a split party, with Grizza, Roxxy, and the magma elemental Ashley making up the 'mercenary' half of the party. The other three included Fletcher and his brother Jason, a dual-wielding swordsman, and Ruckus, an arcane Rogue of some sort, the goblin having been rather circumspect about the exact name of his class. For that matter, all three of them had been rather circumspect about nearly everything they said, but that wasn't particularly surprising.

After all, they were probably Domain spies.

It had taken some doing, linking this particular group of Challengers to the unfortunate orc shaman who had summoned the dungeon ghost into the woods some weeks ago. The Valleylands Army solders who had been sent to Grassbrook had taken turns following the possessed man and his apparent party, making up for their lack of expertise with their numbers, and had eventually noticed a few oddities. While the core group of spies, led by a man named Thaddeus, appeared to be rather isolated and disconnected from the other parties working out of the town, that turned out to be a rather superficial state of affairs. It had helped that his party never spent the night in the dungeon's inn, an unusual state of affairs for a high-level party, and so it had been possible to link them to another group who behaved in the same way.

Namely, the large group of which Fletcher and his companions seemed to be a part. The two parties never openly met, but Tinsel herself had caught them having brief conversations on the street and in alleyways, her small size making her an excellent eavesdropper. The core party was judged to be too dangerous for Grizza to approach directly, but this other group, the 'Inheritors', seemed to be much less powerful on an individual level. It had taken a few days for Grizza to successfully approach any of them about working together, but persistence had paid off and here he was, 'guiding' them through the dungeon's middle floors.

With that in mind, Grizza clears his throat and attempts to sound like a professional. "Ahem, ah, right! Now, this floor may appear to be open at first glance, and it is, but it's actually divided into two parts. The lower section, which we're currently on, is about a third of the floor and is relatively low-risk. Nuisance monsters, mostly, small rabbits and flying beasts. We'll then need to scale a small cliff to the upper level, avoiding traps in the process, and most of the real hazards are up there. In particular, shade-type monsters. If you don't have much in the way of magical skills, we should be able to help you out quite a bit there."

He gestures towards his companions, and his meaning is rather clear. Roxxy and Ashley are both studded with magical crystals, not particularly more of them than they had been some months previously, but very much better ones. There was a limit to how many crystals an earth or magma elemental could control, apparently, so eventually the Rough Gems had taken instead to upgrading their quality, prying gemstones from more powerful wands and swapping them out with their original set. Ashley continued to be largely equipped with crystals aspected to fire magic, but Roxxy had turned into nearly a geode rainbow - an effect that was made even more stunning thanks to her use of Grizza's enchanted rabbit-ear headband. When she'd used it in the inn the other day she'd only been wearing a handful of gems, her 'walking around' set, but when combined with her full battle set the gems had appeared to shift into becoming almost a sort of armor for the sculptured woman.

Armor that did little to hide the 'flesh' beneath, but at least it was covering her important bits, which she now appeared to have. Ruckus in particular couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of the elemental, and Grizza wasn't entirely sure if the goblin wanted to grope her or rob her. Either way, he kept a close eye on the rogue in turn.

"Right, right. Well, we are paying you for more than just the simple tricks and tips any five-coin guidebook coulda told us, so yeah, I'm sure hopin' you plan to help out." Jason has a grin on his face as he speaks, but it doesn't hide the seriousness behind his mocking tone. For her part, Roxxy doesn't seem to notice.

"Hey, we helped out a lot on the last floor, didn't we? Took care of most of those slimes, and helped break the puzzle room, right? But sure, shades aren't a problem for us. Even aside from our magic attacks, shades can't hurt an elemental as much as they can a fleshie." Roxxy playfully pokes Jason's arm with her finger, although Grizza's pretty sure the man's eyes spend more time on her marble tits than on her hands.

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"Sure, sure. Looking forward to, uh...seein' how you handle yourself. Lead on, m'guess."

They do so, and sure enough the beginning area of the floor is quite easy for the party to handle. The floor's fanged rabbits have virtually no chance of actually harming the team's elementals, and while the monsters are quick enough to dodge around them, the party's fleshier members are more than a match for the ones that get through. Grizza ensures that everyone stays far away from the floor's small river, and it's not long before they reach the cliff wall leading to the upper level. Ruckus seems to be rather excited at the idea of scaling up the cliff face, apparently having been looking forward to testing himself against the traps the dungeon had placed among the various paths upwards, but the goblin finds himself disappointed when his companions outvote him. Instead, a powered-up Roxxy simply picks a bare patch of stone and places her hand against it, willing the rock into forming a convenient set of stairs for them to take.

Once everyone's climbed on up, Grizza begins to explain the next portion in more detail. "Alright, so there's apparently been a few recent changes to the floor you might not have heard of. Shades do still stalk the forest, but the 'hidden shrine' where the bridge key is kept is apparently guarded by undead thralls these days. I don't recommend we skip collecting the key, while Roxxy could try and generate a bridge to the boss arena island on her own, it'd practically drain her mana supply - and potions don't really work on elementals, unfortunately. Beheading the monsters works well enough, as does fire."

Fletcher nods. "Be nice to fight something properly human-sized for once - though I imagine Ash here could probably burn some walking dead pretty good, heh. Same as before, I'll let you lot take the lead, since you're pretty good at tanking the hits around here."

Roxxy and Ashley have no complaints about their assignment, and Grizza himself follows shortly behind them as they begin to head towards the next patch of woods. Before they get there though, Roxxy pauses and looks around. Grizza himself has to come to a quick halt to keep from running into her, and quickly points his wand up towards the trees. "See something, Roxxy? I don't think the shades have ever ambushed someone this early, before. Wait, don't tell me the wandering boss is out there."

The elemental shakes her head. "No, not that. There's something different about this place compared to usual, not sure what though. Something feels...oh." Roxxy turns her head downwards and stares at the ground beneath her feet, and before Grizza can ask what the problem is, that ground suddenly gives way beneath them. It's a rather significant fall which claims both elementals and Grizza, at least twenty feet down, but it's fortunately broken with a splash of water rather than the shattering of the drider's eight legs. The relief Grizza feels at that is short-lived once the Mage recalls what lives in the waters of Floor Four.

Splashing around, Grizza shouts up towards the faces peering down at him from above. "Sinkhole! This is - this is new! Try not to fall in, there could be water elementals down here! ...I don't suppose you have a rope?"

The trio look at each other, and Fletcher doesn't attempt to hide his words as he speaks to his brother. "...What you think, Jason, any chance we'd actually be able to haul those mobile rocks up out of there?"

The swordsman laughs. "You fuckin' kidding? Doin' one of them would take all day, let alone two! How 'bout they just dig their own way out?"

Roxxy peers around at the darkened pond they find themselves in, growing more obscured over time thanks to the steam rising up from around Ashley's magma-filled form. "We probably could with enough time, but that'd leave us pretty vulnerable if the splashies come out to play! Think you could keep an eye out for them while we work, at least?"

There's a bit of silence before eventually Ruckus speaks up - but not to the Rough Gems. "...We didn't pay them up front, right? If they bite it, we're not out on anything?"

Fletcher shakes his head. "Pay was gonna be based on loot recovered. Which, y'know, splits a lot less three ways compared to six. You two good for some undead killin'?"

Grizza shouts out before the others can respond. "What!? You can't just leave us here! You'll - you'll never work with another Challenger in this town again!"

"...Oh noooo..." Ruckus cries briefly before chuckling. "I mean, it ain't nothing personal. But rescuing you three sounds like a prime trigger for an ambush up here, and I ain't really feeling it, you know? Good luck down there, though!"

"Wait - are you kidding - " Grizza's shouting dies off as the three faces vanish, and he briefly considers blasting the ceiling in an attempt to knock the rest down with them before they can escape. That'd almost certainly make his situation worse, though, and the drider is having a hard enough time swimming as it is. His bulky form is slightly buoyant, but his legs are hardly shaped for moving through the water, and the Mage can already feel himself beginning to tire. That is, until a stony platform rises up beneath him just enough to let him stand rather than tread endlessly. Looking around, he spots Roxxy staring back at him, the massive woman herself currently little more than a head and shoulders above the surface.

"That help you, Grizza? I'm standing on the bottom now, so it's not too deep. Don't think I could raise that platform all the way to the top, though, that'd be a bit much for me to do all at once."

"It'll help for now, Roxxy, thank you. But...gods, I've never seen such awful behavior! I suppose this does seem like more evidence for them being Domain spies, don't you think? ...This is very odd, though, I've never heard of the dungeon having a trap like this before? Do...do you think it's just because no one who's triggered it has survived to tell about it?"

Ashley shakes his head, or at least Grizza thinks so, considering the man is currently covered in a tiny cloud of steam. "Nah, if there was a hollow in the floor like this before, we woulda noticed for sure. Honestly we probably shoulda noticed it earlier anyways, guess we got complacent, huh?"

The Mage has to agree. "It seems so. Uh, is this water bothering you, Ashley? I've never seen a magma elemental get submerged before."

"Eh, it's coolin' me down, probably gonna be harder to toss a fireball around or whatever. Ain't bad for my health or nothin', though."

"Well that's something, at least. First things first, we need to get out of this water, Roxxy, can you make - " Whatever Grizza's about to say next, it's interrupted by a giggling form that emerges from the surface of the water between him and Roxxy. Or rather, it is the surface of the water.

"Haha, don't be silly, spider-man! You're not going anywhere."