As the party files into Lollyp's boss arena they once again find that things have changed. At least the place isn't in its Challenge Mode state, with cauldrons of boiling acid spewing left and right, but the layout of those dangerous chemicals is certainly not what it used to be. Instead channels have been carved throughout the floor, leaving islands and bridges of stone dividing out sections of yellow and green soup. Cautiously, Gerliari reaches out with a wand and does her best to sense the arrangement of metals in the liquid and stone beneath it.
"The good news is, those channels aren't very deep. I don't think there's any more acid here than there used to be, it's just spread out more. Not going to drown in it, but it'll be a lot harder to avoid."
Thaddeus frowns at the Metal Mage's analysis. "Triply difficult as there's so many of us and we'll be covering so much more space. A traditionally-sized party might find it easier like this, but with us..." Thaddeus pauses to eye the ceiling, looking for ambush points. "Everybody spread out, watch both your footing and the ceiling. Ideally everyone should take part in order to earn tokens, but it's more important that we don't end up hurting each other in the process. Caution and precision are the name of the game."
The party acknowledges his words, and carefully the group makes their way through the cavern arena, hopping over bits of acid, or making their way across stone bridges after carefully testing them to make sure that they're not about to fall apart. By time everyone's taken up a position that they feel comfortable with they've taken up half the room - and yet oddly enough there's no sign of the guardian.
The half-orc Norlash is the one to lose his patience and shout out first. "Are you planning to bore us to death, slime? I know the dungeon can't block us from moving on simply by refusing to fight - if you don't challenge us, we'll just break down that door and move on without you!"
There's no immediate response, or at least it would be more accurate to say that there's no verbal answer to the man's question. A portion of the wall does begin to move however in a moment when no one's looking at it, slowly and subtly. That is until it suddenly moves very quickly indeed, walloping Nalain on the back of the head with a massive fist made of stone. To her fortune the orcish woman is fully encased in heavy armor, and a high-quality set at that, but it doesn't save her from tumbling into a nearby stream of hissing chemicals. She quickly rolls out of it and onto the opposite side, but her scream as acids pour into that armor of hers quickly alerts the rest of the group.
Hylii gives identification his best attempt. "It's - a golem? Or an earth elemental, or something! They've switched up the bosses on us!"
Chuckling, the 'golem' in question turns its attention on him and begins to blast him with shards of stone, flung from a cannon-like orifice on one arm. The Body Mage is an agile target and moves quickly, but not enough to keep a handful of the shards from embedding themselves in his skin. "You got it half right! You know, I've always been kind of basic up til now. 'Slime - Red'. The red part is just a description, it doesn't even give me any special abilities!"
The boss's introduction is cut a little short by several of the party's mages as she ducks a force blast from Linda, and converts her arm into a thick earthen shield to protect herself from one of Tizzy's pink arcane beams. Neither are enough to entirely shut her up, though. "But you know what we have now? Earth Slimes. Now, earth was never my favorite element. We slimes are more fluid-minded, y'know? But when you combine Elementalist magic with having a body made of one of the elements? Oooh ho ho ho, then you're in for some fun times!"
As Violetta sees to Nalain's aid, doing her best to clear the acid from the orc's skin, several of the party's melee members decide that it's time to jump in. Literally, as Thaddeus, Norlash, and Lyman take running leaps over channels of acid to land in front of Lollyp on her little island. The prince claims the first blow, giving a shout of triumph as his sword penetrates through a crack in Lollyp's stony armor to bury itself inside her chest...and then realizes his mistake as that armor seals itself shut around his blade, trapping it inside her.
"Oh no, right in the heart! ...If I had one! Haha!" The slime gives a wide swing of a heavy tendril-shaped limb in the prince's direction, which the man easily ducks back to avoid, but Norlash is a little less lucky. His axe does deflect the blow somewhat, but the sheer weight involved manages to make him stumble several feet, barely avoiding an impromptu bath. Meanwhile Lyman thrusts away with his fencer's blade, landing several quick jabs which Lollyp is unable to catch...but to even less noticeable effect than Thaddeus had caused with his sword. Frowning, the man turns and leaps back to another island, admitting to a minor defeat.
"Not much I can do while she's got all that stone holding her together! Blast or tear it off, maybe, and then we can take her apart!"
"Gah! You'd strip a lady in front of all of these people? How rude!" Lollyp continues to engage both Thaddeus and Norlash in a melee, moving more fluidly than any earth elemental could ever dream of doing while resisting every blow they land in return. The prince makes one more attempt to recover his sword before he too jumps away.
"We need to pin her down! Hylii, can you slow her?"
"No can do, my lord - that slime barely has a body as far as my magic can recognize such a thing! I'm doing my best to improve our own speed, though!"
"Gerliari, then! Shut down her armor!"
The dark elf reaches into her voluminous sleeves, and pulls out a handful of metal shards. "There's not enough metal in that stone for me to control it - but there's always the indirect option!" With that shout she magically slings the shards forward, triggering them into changing their shape as they fly. When they land it's not as mere blades, but seven-inch-long nails that slam into the slime's feet, pinning them to the ground. Of course, the monster laughs at the injury.
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"You're trying to pin down a slime? You'd think you'd never fought one before - oh." In this case Lollyp's experience works against her, as she attempts to simply shift her mass around the metal pinning her in place...only to realize that the stone she's grown into her skin isn't moving with her. It leaves her faced with two bad options - one of them to stand where she is until the mage blasts wear through her shield, a tactic they're already trying to some effect. Or, she can do what few 'rigids' would ever be willing to. After firing back with a lightning bolt which splatters uselessly against Linda's barriers but at least distracts her for a moment, Lollyp shouts and steps forward, ripping off her own legs and growing new ones as she goes.
The replacement is quick but it's not a regeneration, the slime becoming quite a bit smaller in the process. More notably her new legs are nearly undefended, a brown-grey mix of goo without the stone armor that protects the rest of her body. Lollyp can already see the shots being lined up to blast her legs off again, chipping away at her bit by bit, and so she pulls a second slime-exclusive maneuver. Quickly tipping forward into a half-somersault, the guardian lands on her hands and her blobby feet rise straight into the air. The adventurers pause briefly in their attacks at the sight of it, and even more so when Lollyp's head suddenly emerges from what use to be her crotch.
"Even if I don't have a leg to stand on, that doesn't mean I need a hand!" There's a wild look in her eyes as Lollyp's limbs again take a tendril-like form, but the threat they pose is quite different from what they were a minute earlier. Her stone-encrusted limbs were attacks of weight and mass, knocking her foes aside if they didn't dodge. Her new arms on the other hand are far more flexible without their armor - but rather than hands what they end in are stone shards, turning them into primitive bladed whips.
Gerliari reaches for another handful of metal from her robes, but finds herself with a new priority with the sound of a cracking whip. Lollyp had stretched her limb over a dozen feet, weakening it terribly, and indeed the last two feet of it had completely snapped off with the impact of her attack. It was worth the expense of body mass however as Gerliari reaches up to find a stone implanted in her throat, the strands of slime left dangling from it already dissolving onto her chest and mixing with her blood.
Norlash does manage to prevent a repeat of the blow, severing Lollyp's other tendril with his heavy axe, but Thaddeus doesn't feel inclined to give her time to think up any more clever tricks. "Hylii, keep Gerliari alive! Linda, cage!"
"...Right!" The barrier mage is a little slow to react, given that she can't maintain her defensive barriers and enclose the slime within one at the same time, or at least not to a strength at which she'd be comfortable with. But after a moment thin pillars of magical force slam into place around the guardian, each of them only barely visible, but solid enough to block any more melee attacks of the sort that downed Gery. Lollyp does quickly begin trying to shift her way through the cracks, but realizes that once again her new form is working against her. Many of the stones encasing her skin are too large to fit through without a bit of finangling, and even a second's slowdown is enough time for Tizzy to blast off her head.
A new head does reform soon enough, but at this point Lollyp is down to little more than half of her original body mass, a critical amount for a slime. Deciding she only has time left for one more attack, the elementalist plays her last card.
"Hrmm, guess you win! As Xen would say, suppose it's time for you to hit the showers!" A limb stretches forward and fires an elemental blast at the ceiling, not with much strength behind it, but not much is needed. Previously-weakened stone crumbles apart, and almost before her enemies have time to react the hidden half of the room's acid is pouring down across the chamber.
To some extent the party is lucky to have several defensive specialists among its number. Tizzy and Nalain both possess personal barrier spells, and the previously-wounded orc is still aware enough to grab Violetta and shield the mage with her own body. Linda quickly refocuses on a magical umbrella above her own head, but only has time to create a second for her lord Thaddeus before the steaming liquid begins to land. Across the room, Norlash, Hylii, Lyman, Reed, and Liani howl as the acid burns into their skin - and Gerliari grows disturbingly silent. Without the Body Mage's focus on keeping the wound in her neck sealed the woman's lifeblood continues to pour from her throat, and the prince moves forward to aid her by removing the threat.
With another dash from his enchanted boots the prince lands before Lollyp once again, and this time when he grabs hold of the blade stuck in her torso Lollyp lacks the strength to hold onto it. A spray of brown slime jets forward as it slides through her skin, and it's joined by more and more as the man slashes at her most vulnerable parts. Not that it takes much, though - with her previous wounds Lollyp was already at her limit, and after just a few blows the guardian collapses into a mash of slime and stone.
Thaddeus doesn't tarry in his victory, quickly turning back towards the party's dark elves. "Gerliari! Can she still be saved, Hylii?" The man in question winces at the question, still willing his own flesh to knit back together as he stares at his long-time companion, and frowns.
"It's...a question of effectiveness, my lord. If Violetta and I work together, and we use some of our best potions...perhaps. But we'll barely be able to heal the wounds all the rest of us have just received if we drain ourselves to that extent. I couldn't recommend continuing the raid like this, sir. We'd have to leave and try again in a few days."
"...A few more days for the dungeon to devise new tricks...and to be thrown back at only the second floor?" Avoiding the puddles and streams, the prince makes his way to Gerliari's side and kneels next to her. It seems plain the woman can't hear them - her face is half-melted from the acid rain, and the fact that she isn't screaming or flailing is strong evidence that she's already unconscious, if she's still alive at all. "I'm sorry, Gerliari. For the good of us all, we must win or lose this fight today. I can promise you that you will not be forgotten...and that you will not have to suffer in pain."
The party watches on as the prince's dagger finishes what Lollyp started, but few find that they have much to say. Indeed, most of them are focused on themselves, healing their wounds as best as they're able, but their leader urges them on. "Come. This is no place to recover, and I don't want someone wasting a potion with a slip in one of these puddles. We'll rest in the next room...but we will continue soon."