Duty Session 283: Is It Wrong to Pick Up Slimes in a Dungeon?

Every so often it seems enough Slimes manage to ooze their way into Alne's sewers it gums up the works. So to speak. As one of the town wells has been currently roped and barred off it is apparently one of those times. There's a few abandoned buckets lying about, and one upside conveniently provides a seat for Shiruba to rest on while waiting for the others to arrive.

Hardly the most glamerous of Duty, but doing jobs like this to help out the Landers is one of New World's driving purposes, so here we are.

Yeowang arrives at the well, having heard that adventurers' help is needed. She nods to Shiruba as she arrives, pulling her long hair back and gathering it into a long ponytail. She checks the quest, making a wince of distaste. "Slimes?" she confirms. Well, a mission is a mission, even though kicking slimes is pretty gross. That's the problem with being a bare-knuckles type.

She walks up, offers a nod, and says, "Well, I'm as ready as I'll ever be, so count me in."

"Hey there" the soft-looking sylph offers to Yeowang with a smile "Glad to have the help. Ayame - good to meet more people since moving down this way" She nods to Shiruba as well, offering that same polite, faintly distant greeting smile. Then she eyes the well and wrinkles her nose, her pointed eartips lifting an inch

"I hate climbing" Ayame sighs. She slung her shield to her back, clambering down the rope as best she could in her fitted, knee lenth skirts and high ankle boots.

Shiruba stands from her bucket seat, smiling happily at seeing fellow New Worlders answer the call as she bows briefly. "Thank you for coming guys. I know this isn't the most popular of duties, but keeping the water supply clean for the Landers and Adventurers that live here is important enough to bear through it, yes?" She may be the leader but she's not the type to waste a lot of time talking for no reason. She lets Ayame go first so the Tank can be in position, then grabs the rope and slides herself down as well.

The area just beneath the well seems to be clear, but the sounds of slimes splorting about can be heard farther down the tunnels. However venturing into the passages brings the trio to a stranger sight to see -- slime ghosts. "They really do come in almost anything, don't they?" Shiruba murmurs and readies her bow, even as the whisperings turn towards the new arrivals and do their best to scary with their 'oooowooo' sounds and wibbly movements.

Ayame shakes her head a the woo-ooo-ooing slime ghosts. Her shoulders shake a little, and she stares at them, laughing a little "Oh, oh dear. Those are just - just terrifying" She practically hiccups, lifting her wand and hefting her shield. She begins to chant.

Then she snorts in laughter. Another attempt. And another. It seems, instead of magic, there will only be giggles from the sylph on seeing these

Yeowang nods to Shiruba, and says, "I'm glad to help. And it's good training. I'm trying to get back into shape, and it's very difficult. The game ... well, to be fair, it's been less than a year. I suppose I've done well, for as long as I've been in." As we head down and into slimes' area, she blinks in surprise. "Ghost-slimes? That's different..."

So, she recites a ... sort of charm, she guesses. It's one of the game-things that she doesn't understand very well, but it seems to be effective at pushing back some of the slimes.

Shiruba fires a few small sparks of lightning from her bow, that are all flash and noise with no real harm. It's just a light show to help Yeowang chase them off. "Don't mind the skeleton. It's likely just a prop for the dungeon." Right? Right. Or at least easier to think of it that way.

Farther into the tunnels Shiruba stops again, ears stiffening in alertness. "Sssh. I hear something ahead." She scoots closer to the edge of the wall and peeks around it. Then looks back to the other two. "Hunter Slimes. They're like the feral version of Tabbys, and actually dangerous if they manage to mob you. Be careful."

The Hunter Slimes have stopped in the next chamber, the way they wiggle their little cat-faces like noses and twitch gooy ears suggesting they've noticed someone is nearby. However you choose to approach the matter, do so with caution.

Still stifling her laughter, Ayame's heels click on the bare stone as she moves from the sewers. She glances at Yeowang with a little sympathy "You for a bath after this place?" She laughs weakly, and then nods to Shiruba "I still find myself falling for that. It's a strange thing, no?" She asks, before peering at the slimes.

"They're adorable" She decides, before considering. "Hey. Kitty slimes?" She asks, and grins. The wand in her right hand flickers, and bursts into flame at the tip, before Ayame chants, whispers, summoning up a lens - and flashing the light through it.

Into a little red dot which she sends chasing away from themselves. Biting her lower lip frantically as she does.

Yeowang nods to Shiruba about the skeleton. So many strange things, they're hardly cause for comment after so long. She eyes Ayame curiously, but nods as she mentions a bath. "I normally just menu-wash, but a hot soak feels good sometimes." She nods to Shiruba about hunter slimes, but then the hunters are the hunted. "They track motion, right?" It seems she's got good instincts for hunting the hunters. She stands almost motionless, then at the right moment, she strikes as fast as lightning, then goes motionless again.

The magic pointer trick of Ayame's is just enough to trigger the Hunter Slimes' predatory instincts, and what was a pack scatters in an attempt to catch the little dot... and then poinging on top of each other as the hunt gets more competetive over who's going to splort the spot. A couple manage to stay focused on the Adventurers, but Yeowang just uses that to her own advantage to ambush one and pummel it into residue motes, and the other Shiruba picks off with her impeccable archery skills and puts an arrow right through the gloppy middle, causing the gelatenous form to collapse as it's center of mass is ripped open.

"Good teamwork, guys. Let's keep that up." Shiruba is pleased with her teammates' performance, but keeps moving on as they still have a fair way to go. A few passages down and they come to another larger chamber. This one is much more active, as slimes of various elemental types and wearing little witch or wizard hats are flicking around random pseudo spells. Shiruba pauses, and then starts slinking across the outer edge of the chamber. "I See something on the other side, cover me."

"Was this the child friendly dungeon or something?" Ayame asks, some exasperation starting to creep into the Sylph's voice "Those slimes are pretty adorable, but ridiculous with it" She huffs, and begins a chant to simply capture the energies the slimes are emitting; wrapping them around one another, binding them into a dry dust raining down from above

Yeowang nods to Shiruba, and follows along, feeling pretty confident now, that things are going well. Then it's magical slimes. She's supposed to have magical powers, it says so in the overview she read, but she's -always- had trouble with them, and so it's no surprise that when she tries to drop a big magical thing on the slimes that nothing happens. Except that her power gets consumed. She grimaces. Typical. Why does she even -have- magic? She punches people. She's a martial artist, she's won tournaments. Well, back in real life. Nothing that counts here. She goes up and kicks a slime, but nothing happens. Some sort of invulnerability?

While the other two keep the magic slimes at bay Shiruba is able to make her way to the far wall and example the runes there. "Aha." She pulls one of the arrows from her quiver, engages it's enchantment, and stabs it into the runes. The release of magic causes the runes to glow visibly as they're charged with the arcane energy. Ayame is holding slimes back, and Yeowang manages to kick one that tried to slip past back into the group even if she didn't do any actual damage to it. That's enough to get the job done as a magic barrier shimmers to life, penning the slimes off in the far corner of the chamber. "This sewer has a monster deterrent enchantment, but when this many slimes get in here I guess it overloads it and the rune circuit needed a recharge." By this point we've gotten use to these odd puzzles in dungeons, right? Moving on!

Deeper into the sewer, leaving the wide collection chamber behind and down into more gross and confining spaces. ".. This stinks.." Shiruba growls, ears laying back. "And I'm not talking about the poop smell you'd expect in a sewer." The source of the horrid stench becomes apparent soon enough, as they find the next room and the putrid pile of fetid ooze and greasy maw that is a black flan slorping up the center of the cistern. "A black flan! Be careful, they can be highly toxic to the touch!"

"Highly toxic, but we have someone who fights bare handed. Great game design there" Ayame says with a sigh. Then she brightens and twirls her wand in her fingertips, muttering, then calling out "I'll blind it!" Before trying to fire pinpricked beams of light at the eyes.

Right.

Do slimes have eyes? She apparently gets frustrated enough trying to find them to simply yell, blanketing the entire upper half of the slime with a potent, violet-searing slash of light

Yeowang moves deeper into the sewer with Shiruba and Ayame. She wrinkles her nose as the smell gets progressively worse and worse, commenting, "We should come down here with a dozen drums of bleach." But there's a slime boss down here, it seems. Well, fighting is what she's good at, it's what she's used to, back in real life. She's not as good here as in real life, but real life doesn't have the same fantastic monsters to face. Heavyset dudes standing six foot seven aren't as scary as some of the things she's fought off here, but the same strategy applies. Kick it as hard as you can until it stops moving. She's not quite ready to fight it bare-handed, though, instead kicking the snot out of it with roundhouse kicks.

Shiruba takes stock of the situation, nocks her bow... and leans backwards to fire it upwards at the top of the cistern and into one of the venting ducts where it, unsurprisingly, hits a blockage. Which causes the arrow's enchantment to activage and release a powerful wind blast to unclog the vent and push air out. Which reachs back into the chamber to suck air up, drawing away part of the hideous stench looming within. This makes it easier to approach the Black Flan without gagging, allowing Yeowang to kick the... well. It's a sewer. It's probably been eating the crap down here so there's plenty to kick out of it. Until Ayame roasts it with Light, burning the monstrousity away. With the clogging ooze gone, the cistern drains out properly once more... and reveals one more passage.

One more passage, one more chamber, with slime dribbling in streams across the floor. "There's still something her--" Shiruba is cut off by the translucent ooze rippling up from the floor, forming into a ghastly vagely fish-monster form, with ripples across it's form triggering that effect of the mind to see faces in negative spaces, making it all the more creepy and hard to look at. "Why? Why does it have to have a face like THAT?!" Shiruba yelps, even as she's charging a very large collection of lightning in her bow.

"This? This is foul" Ayame declaims. "I'm not getting near that thing. Nope." She looks back. And forward. And a smile spreads over her face a moment before she begins a slow, bubbling chant from the back of her throat. Really coughing it up there.

Hefting her shield, she continues the hacking, coughing chant, before taking the energy and spitting it at the sludge; from which rise ghostly slimes of her own! Ghostly, terrifying slimes with little mage hats and kitty ears. Then she leans forward, crossing her arms and resting them on the planted shield as her mini army assaults the boss.

Yeowang advances with the others, but pauses as we spot the ... "What even -is- that thing?" she has to ask. "The people that designed these games must have been on hard drugs." She shakes her head, it's going to be another round of magic powers, it seems, and Yeowang takes a breath, instantly regretting it, and coughs a few times. Then she resolves herself, gestures with her fists, and BAM, lightning strikes the slime. "That ought to make it a bit less nasty." In fact, it's taken off a good chunk of HP, and burned off some of the toxic gasses. Seeing some success, she does it again, BAM. Lightning strike takes off more HP.

Typically other slimes avoid the retched thing that is the Ectopudding. So there is clear confusion on it's gasping fish-face when several ghostly slimes are summoned to mob it. That keeps it from lumbering out of the center of the room. So it's still standing in the combination of ooze and water that's been pooling there. Which makes the combination of lightning blasts from Shiruba and Yeowang tear through it even more effectively, surging several times up and down the creature's form. Every time a chunk of HP is lost, a little spirit-like form drifts free and the ectopudding gets smaller. Until it can no longer compose it's form and it collapses, sending slime splashing all over the room.

"... We're definitely going to need that bath now." Just, gross. Shiruba shakes some of the slop off as one would expect a canine to shake.

There's also little memento coins floating in the ooze, like the ones Landers use at their funeral services since they don't leave actual bodies to bury.

As the Ectopudding shrinks, Ayame watches with interest. She calls out encouragement! She's helping! Then, as it explodes into a gush of slime, she yelps and dips behind her shield - minimising the splashing. Minimising, not avoiding. She still makes a face and wrinkles her nose as she stands, brushing herself down

"You're not kidding" She agrees with a little shudder. She squelches forward, little blasts of flame darting from her wand to dry the ooze, and she bends to pick up one of the coins, looking it over with interest "Huh. Made from dead landers, maybe? Or just grabbing them? Worrying, either way."

Yeowang takes the splatter right in the face, looking away just at the last moment to avoid getting any in her eyes or mouth. It's bad enough as it is. She nods to SHiruba about the bath, and shrugs to Ayame about the coins we've found. "Who can tell?" she wonders. "I don't understand the rhyme or reason for anything here." But it looks like things are over, at least. "But we're done, right?"

"The Landers use those to honor their dead, since they don't leave bodies behind. They've likedly been stolen, or lost, and somehow ended up down here." She shrugs a little to Yeowang. "I stopped trying to think too deeply into it months ago. This world runs on different rules." Shiruba shakes some gunk off her longbow and stows it. "The good news is there's an exit back up to the surface so you won't have to climb this time!"

"Anything avoiding climbing sounds wonderful" Ayame nods, pointedly smoothing her skirt before beginning to trot along. She stows her shield, examining the coin with interest as she goes "Besides, logic can help, but it's - well, the logic of the game. Not real life." She chuckles a touch and nods to the others "It's been good working with you. Always nice to meet people I can get some things done with."

Yeowang nods to Shiruba about not thinking too deeply. "I can help it, I analyze situations. But as you say, it's a game, logic has no place here. Whatever the game designers put in, that's what they have." She nods to Ayame, "It's been good working with you as well," she says, and will head out. It wouldn't be nice, hanging out here when the monsters respawn.