Worthy Core

Xenia rolls her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Well, guess I know why they're made of slime, now - it's super-elastic, like rubber or something."

Lollyp frowns as she pokes at one of the strands tying up Xenia's legs. "What's rubber?"

"Made from...trees? Fuck, I dunno. The point is that it's really stretchy and then when it gets let go, it snaps back into place. The wires here don't trigger a trap - the wires are the trap. Anyhow, a hand getting me loose?"

"ALLOW ME." Stepping forward with his scythe, the undead boss slides the blade between Xenia's legs and begins to saw at the strands binding them together. When it doesn't have an immediate impact he then channels some of his dark energy through the blade, causing the wires to begin deteriorating, although by time they're snapped there's a bit of collateral damage to the pants on the inside of Xenia's thighs.

"...Okay, that works on them, good to know. Guess slime might be partially organic or something? But damn, this outfit's gonna be a total loss by time we're done. Anyhow, think you can take out the other sets Big D?"

"SHOULD BE A SIMPLE MATTER." After using his weapon to motion for the others to step behind him, the bony rabbit-man blasts the room with dark magic, filling it with a shadowy mist. While the effect on the slime-wiring isn't as immediate as direct contact with his blade was, eventually the two remaining grids fray and snap, collapsing uselessly into bundles around the room.

Xenia claps for him. "Sweet! Given that this isn't a combat floor, definitely way more handy than Tank and Dips probably woulda been. DEATH is credit to team! Next room!" Moving on and again checking the door for traps, the reincarnator opens it to find that the third chamber is apparently empty. That is, of course, the most suspicious thing a room could possibly present to her, and so she begins to inspect the walls and floors.

"Pressure plates on this one. I probably could mark a path through, but to be honest, I'm kinda wondering what this one's gonna do. Any complaints if I set one off?" Xenia turns around to spy Sincere shrugging, but backing away.

"If you are confident in your skills, by all means. I, however, will simply watch from back here."

"Suit yerself!" Warning given, she prods the nearest one with her sword and almost immediately ducks at the sound of a pneumatic hiss. It's a brief warning before a round orange blob flies through the air, but the dodgeball-sized object doesn't come anywhere close to impacting the self-proclaimed Rogue, instead splattering itself against the right-side wall. "Ha! Slime cannons! Or, hell, this floor's got an actual paintball course, hehe. Makes my Hippity Blobbities look downright inefficient...even if they are way cuter."

Lollyp chuckles at the sight. "I don't think these would be fatal to us, but may as well skip what we can now that we've seen it in action. Still up for taking the lead?"

"Easy as pie!" Sure enough Xenia is able to spot the next few pressure plates and avoid them without issue, and then even dips her sword into some of the orange slime to use as an improvised paintbrush, making them out on the floor for the rest of the team. The path isn't too difficult for the rest of the party to follow, and soon Xenia is once again opening a door into the next chamber.

The fourth room of the floor has the shape and size of a boss arena, but rather than a combat encounter, awaiting them is a massive contraption of bronze and glass, with a variety of pipes linking together large canisters partially filled with slime in a wide mix of colors. The machine has a roughly circular shape, the smaller tubes orbiting a larger, empty glass pod in the center, and various levers and handwheels dot the mechanism. Walking around it, Xenia groans. "Aw, fuck, it's a puzzle! Any idea what the goal even is here?"

The party spends some time examining it from every side, with Sincere in particular tracing each of the pipes. "So, there's six colors of slime here. Clearly they can be opened up and sent into the main chamber where they'll mix, but I am uncertain as to the required result. Surely it can't be as simple as just filling it with all six kinds." As he speaks, Lollyp begins to wince.

"Ah, fuck, now this is really reminding me of how old this place is. It's freakin' slime colorology!" The Elementalist puts her hands on her approximate hips and glares at the device, making Xenia believe she would ideally like to melt the thing down.

"Color...ology? Is that even a word?"

"It's like, um...racism, for slimes. There's a bunch of old, outdated ideas about how a slime's color affects their personality, and how you can guess a kid's color based on the colors of their parents. It's all complete bullshit and no one's taken it seriously for over a century, but this place is way older than that. The most you get is the occasional slime who intentionally leans into the old stereotypes on purpose. Which is mostly just the pinks, usually. Those sluts." As Xenia stares at her, Lollyp shrugs back. "I meant it as a complement! My ex Lessupp was a pink!"

"...Right. Well, I'd really rather not dig into that, but I guess we kinda have to. As our resident expert on slime racism, what are we supposed to do here, Lolly Pop?"

Lollyp eyes the central pod a little closer. "I'd say this one's about...four times bigger than the small ones. Slime colors don't mix like paints, or even like, I dunno, human skin colors, you're just all or nothing. So we need to decide on a final color we want, and then the three sequential pairings that would end up with that color. According to old bullshit theories about slime genetics. But which color..."

Sincere nods along. "While I was never an adherent to those ideas myself, I do recall when they were the standard. If I'm not mistaken, the general stereotypes were...yellow for cheerful, orange for mischievous, red for destructive, green for caring, purple for seriousness, and pink for...promiscuity." As he goes through the list, Xenia eyes Lollyp again.

"Red for destruction, huh?"

"I like blowing things up cause it's fun, not cause of my color!"

"Fair, fair. So which do we want? I mean, I kinda want to see pink, but I doubt that's the solution to the room."

Sincere snorts at the suggestion. "Did you not have enough of that before we started? The...cheerful yellows were also theoretically the most helpful, so that would be my vote. However, there's another problem. The theories on 'color-mixing' shifted over time, and while we can date the Great Dungeon to the arrival of the colonists following the Age of Warlocks, I don't recall specifically which theory was in vogue at the time. Let's see, let's see...pink is supposedly overpowering, so none of that. I believe the first step would be green and purple makes green, then green and yellow makes yellow. Then...either yellow and red, or yellow and orange. Do you recall which, Lollyp?"

The slime shakes her head. "Pfft, nah. Matching up colors to personalities is kind of something people do for a joke these days, but the rest of it? No idea, especially not if we're trying to narrow down a specific edition of it."

Xenia taps her foot a few times before coming to a decision. "...Let's go with lucky red, huh? Alright Big D, give me a hand with these valves, would you? Green and purple first!" Circling the device, the two release four of the six canisters, piping them into the main pod where they congeal together into a larger and larger blob. Sincere's remarks prove correct with the first two pairings, however, when adding red into the mix, the final result of the blob is...red. Xenia turns disappointed at first, but that soon shifts to concern when the large red blob growls.

"Shit! Red was definitely not the target color!" As she steps back, a pair of massive arm-like tentacles emerge from the blob and begin to smash the glass holding it inside. Three blows is all it takes to crack it open, and the blob begins to emerge, ignoring the cuts the broken glass leaves on its membrane. "Giant slime! Take it down!"

Sincere begins to cast a spell to hold the creature in place, but was unfortunately standing too close - a third tentacle suddenly emerges from the monster and smashes into him, tossing him into the stone walls. Lollyp's elemental blasts are quicker to fire, but the creature is at least six times her own size, and the damage they do appears to be only membrane-deep. For her part, Xenia quickly takes her sword into hand and begins swinging, but it's all she can do to slice off the tentacles flailing in her direction. Getting into range for a body blow proves to be a bit too difficult, and even if she could, the damage a sword could do to such a slime would be minimal at best.

So it is that DEATH OF RABBITS gives a sigh as he looks on. "SO MUCH FOR THIS BEING A CHALLENGE OF THE MIND." Reaching out with a bony arm, he blasts the monster with a stream of shadowy mist, turning the slime into a pale gray wherever it hits. This quickly turns him into the monster's primary target, but as tentacles shoot in his direction, the boss proves adept at parrying them one-handed with his scythe, all while floating around the room to keep his distance and pouring on the magic at the same time.

Eventually, as it grows withered and sickly, the slime begins to slow down drastically, making it a much easier target for Lollyp and Xenia to hit. When Sincere recovers sufficiently to entirely freeze it in place, the fight is only a matter of time - the pair blast and hack the blob to pieces until its innards spill out, filling the room with a rotten stench. Stepping backwards, Xenia makes a face. "Ooof! Good work again, Big D, but damn that reeks!"

Any comment he's about to make in response is interrupted by the sound of a click from the door on the far side of the room, and DEATH turns his focus on that instead. "I SUPPOSE WE HAVE, IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING, SOLVED THE PUZZLE."

"Guess so. Let's see what we've got waiting for us this time..." Pushing the door open, Xenia finds a final chamber nearly identical to that on the previous floor, down to the earth elemental manning the desk. Or at least it seems that way, until the elemental speaks and a woman's voice comes out.

"Welcome, welcome. Congratulations on completion of Experimental Floor 14, Traps Division. Before we begin the survey, I have to ask - did you trigger the boss monster on purpose? If so, thank you, the last two testers have been ill-suited for combat testing, and we do need to test the failures too, after all."

Xenia chuckles a little awkwardly. "Ha, no, we wanted the yellow but just messed up that last step, I guess. Glad it worked out, though?" She gets the impression that the eyeless elemental is simply staring at her, as there's no response for several seconds.

"...Purple. The correct answer is purple, the color of the Dragonlord's personal servants, and those with the highest access to locked doors."

Xenia turns towards Lollyp, who shrugs. "Not something I ever heard of! Must be an ancient policy that got dropped or something!"

"Mmm, someone needs to tell your Mage to refresh her etiquette studies before she gets into trouble. So, that aside...any thoughts on the traps you encountered? We believe we're only scratching the surface of what slime materials are capable of!"

Sincere nods. "Personally, I suspect there must be even better uses for that elastic 'slime-wire' than simply using it by itself. There must be a reason I haven't seen more of it."

DEATH adds in his two cents. "ORGANIC MATERIAL TRAPS ARE INTERESTING TO ENCOUNTER. PERHAPS I TOO COULD SERVE A USE AS A TEAM ROGUE?"

Xenia eyes the shadowy figure, already notably taller than her even without counting the ears. "...Always good to have a dream, Big D. Anyhow, I kinda liked the slime cannon idea, but the triggers were a bit too obvious. Or...I'm a bit too good?"

"...No, the pressure plates are intentionally low-tier, for testing purposes." Reaching over, the elemental picks up a small chest and places it on the desk in front of her. "Well, here's your payment vouchers, please feel free to take a written survey in case you'd like to add more thoughts later. Especially if you can think of ways to make it easier to kill you with slime! Our division's been lacking in the lethal options so far on this project."

"...I will let you know! Thanks, and see you around!" Xenia reaches for the chest, but as she does her vision begins to blur.

As the party finds themselves back in the core chamber of Worthy Dungeon, Xenia gives out a cheer. "Whoop! Floor cleared first try, and no Dragonlord shenanigans! Guy, confirm our winnings for us, would you?"

"Certainly, ma'am - ack - I believe they're coming in, eugh, momentarily..." With a few more coughs, a monochrome window makes its appearance.

Looking over the short message, Xenia grins. "Ooooh yeah. This is gonna be fun..."