B3 C49: WHUMP

“All right, just like we’ve done all the other times.” With half the dungeon behind us, our party now stood at the entrance to the sub-boss chamber. The King Metal Slime wubbed and wobbled about, its chuckle-worthy movements belying its deadliness. Unlike in any of the other rooms, the floor had the same metal sheen to it as the walls and ceilings did, making the chamber feel a bit like a high-security bank vault.

I’d say we were tense to go up against a sub-boss, but it just wasn’t true. Perhaps the first time we’d fought the massive slime -- back when we were being watched over by our instructor -- we had, but by now, the encounter was routine.

“If we have prepared ourselves accordingly, then it is time!” Alara boomed while scanning the rest of us.

Evidently satisfied with what she saw, she nodded resolutely. And then she charged.

“To victory!”

Like a well-crafted mana construct, we got into place. As a plus, we’d made several discoveries since our first clash with the glorified pinball of a monster. Chief amongst them was that we didn’t need to fully rely on Alara to keep us safe.

Through a lot of trial and error, Emin and Oachin had figured out a way to attach plants to the roof. It involved one grumbling fire maniac acting as a ferry, a few potions that acted as a substitute for soil, and some specimens from a rare creeping vine that lived in metallic soil.

The end result was that Emin and Oachin now sat serenely in a viney cage attached to the ceiling. The entire thing looked utterly ridiculous, but our squishiest members were no longer at risk.

“Have fun up there you two!” Sadly, the vines couldn’t support much more weight, or perhaps I would have joined them.

Seeing that our preparations were now complete, Alara roared in approval. “Good! Now that you are safe, the true fight begins!” With a laugh that I was certain traveled through the entire dungeon, she struck.

WHUMP.

The slime practically flew backwards, slamming into the wall behind it. Though we’d tested this out extensively before, I still half-expected the ceiling to fall down on us, Emin and Oachin included. Where her fist had met its metal, a few smaller slimes pinched themselves off from the main body, repairing the dent she’d placed in it.

The regular metal slimes rolled off to break all of our ankles, all of which I left to Nella as I fired frost arrows at the sub-boss.

Ultimately, it was very on track to be an entirely normal fight for us. While I didn’t want to get complacent, I could feel my body slipping into autopilot as I fired arrow after arrow, tuning out the whoosh of Nella’s flames and the bone-deep vibrations from the boss colliding with the wall.

It was then, however, that I noticed something strange.

It was the walls. Specifically, the spots Alara had knocked the king slime into.

The metal covering them looked thinner. More than that, I could even see a few specks of dirt peeking through.

A moment of confusion, and then my heart started racing.

“Oachin!” I shouted up to him. “Does your corrosion potion work on the walls?”

With him partially hidden by his viney cage, I couldn’t make out his expression. When a stream of liquid shot from the ceiling and landed on one of the walls, though, I knew he’d listened.

“No go!” The corrosion potion slid off the metal ineffectively.

Not corrosion then. I could feel myself getting more excited by the second. “Nella! What about you? Do these walls melt if you burn them?”

“Wha- Can’t you see I’m busy here?” she snapped, currently in the middle of roasting one of the smaller slimes to slag. “Ugh. Fine. One second.” Slime successfully slagged, she rocketed off to a nearby wall, torching it with abandon.

It didn’t even redden, let alone liquidate.

WHUMP. The slime crashed into the wall once more, this time ricocheting off at speed. It was unmistakable now, the spot it had hit half-brown from dirt.

Except, that hadn’t happened in any of our other runs, had it? This was new. We’d also gone over both the boss’s and the sub-boss’s skills extensively in class, and I had no recollection of it having a mechanic like this.

Plus, were dungeon bosses supposed to get new skills when you exited student training mode? I didn’t think so. The only difference to the actual dungeon was supposed to be secrets and hidden rooms being added in.

The only difference.

Which meant if something had changed, it was related to a secret, didn’t it?

Maybe I was overthinking it or just flat-out wrong, but walls that gradually disappeared when a boss hit them? Walls that couldn’t be removed any other way? I could almost feel my Detect Secret pulling at me, gluing my eyes to the denuded walls, whispering that there was something more to them.

Whatever that something was, I wanted to find out.

“Alara! Change of plans! We need to-”

WHUMP. “PPG! Apologies, please repeat that!”

“We need to hit it into the walls until all the metal is gone!” It took some time to explain exactly what I meant, especially with the frequent, room-shaking interruptions, but eventually everyone understood.

In fact, more than that, Alara seemed jazzed.

“Excellent! A good opportunity to practice my aim!” As the slime rolled her way once more, she shifted to the side, lining up her shot. As soon as it neared her, wham, she punched with all her might, sending the slime shooting off once again. As desired, it connected with an entirely intact portion of the wall, stripping away a coating of metal as it departed.

“Hmm. I will admit I was aiming a bit to the left. No matter! Once again!”

Once again was exactly right. And again, and again, and again. WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP. Not wishing to deal too much magic damage to the boss and beat it prematurely, I laid off my arrows, letting Alara do her thing.

Honestly, I thought that would be the end of it. Belatedly, however, I realized there was one small detail I hadn’t picked up on.

Is it… getting bigger?

But of course it was. Naturally, the metal on the walls wasn’t just disappearing. It was going somewhere.

Namely, to the massive sub-boss that kept ramming into it.

Bit by bit, the sub-boss grew past its original prodigious size, veering into the absurd. And not just that. It feels like it’s getting faster too.

Another punch from Alara sent it at an angle, and it ricocheted off in my direction. With its size and speed, I was forced to Jet Step out of the way to keep myself from becoming a pancake.

“Actually, maybe… maybe don’t aim for the metal for a while. Let’s have it pinch off more slimes until it’s smaller.” There wasn’t much point in finding new secrets if we were too dead to explore them.

Alara shouted an affirmative, shifting her aim, but as soon as she hit the sub-boss, something incredible happened.

It started to spin.

As if sensing our intent, it forced its path to curve, once more striking into a metallic portion of the wall. Worse than that, instead of going directly back to Alara, it bounced off the wall three more times before returning, forcing Nella to dodge it with a curse.

Alara attempted once more to redirect it to a section of dirt, but it seemed as though the ruse was up. Done acting like a mere punching bag, the King Metal Slime began to slide around its arena with malice. Larger and larger it grew as it collected more and more metal, until it was nearly twice its original size.

“PPG! FFW! Stand behind me.”

Not needing to be told twice, we rushed towards the only sure place of safety in the room. Still, knowing that intellectually was different than knowing it in my body. As the slime rolled closer and closer, blotting out the rest of the chamber, looking like it was only seconds away from crushing me, from pulverizing me-

WHUMP.

Alara sent it hurtling back.

“Do not worry! I have activated Immovable Object. It will not be getting past me!”

With her firmly locked in place, Nella and I spent the next few minutes rapidly rotating around Alara so that she was always between us and the boss, a task that grew increasingly difficult as it became faster, and faster, and faster.

No longer worried about killing it too quickly, I shot a barrage of ice arrows after it while Oachin did his best to coat it in a glue-like mixture. As fast as we applied our slows, however, it shrugged them off, oblivious to our efforts.

Worse, without Nella to take care of the smaller slimes breaking off from the sub-boss, they started to amass. While not deadly on their own, they did their best to trip us up, keeping us from repositioning in time. The very moment they neared us, we demolished them, but even dead, they were obstacles.

And then, at last, equally blissfully and frighteningly, the boss collided with the very last of the metal on the wall. Its size was so great at this point that were it any larger, it might have scraped Emin and Oachin from the ceiling.

“All right! It only gets easier from here!” Muted cheers met my lukewarm morale booster, but it served its purpose. Wanting to slim the boss down as fast as possible, we redoubled our efforts, pulling out our strongest skills.

Spells, skills, and potions rained down on the sub-boss, dozens of slimes breaking off from it in the span of seconds.

Rather than slow down again, however, it only grew faster. Like a demonic game of pinball, it pinged off wall after wall in a dizzying display that left me wanting to vomit just from following it. We hid close behind Alara, but the smaller slimes just kept coming until the area around us looked like a ball-pit from hell.

Had I been at all convinced that the fight was about to be over, I would have flown up to the ceiling right then and there. With how much of a mana hog staying aloft was, though, I didn’t dare. I wasn’t confident I could maneuver well enough in the air to land safely if I ran out of mana, and Nella seemed to think much the same.

Bit by bit, however, the end grew closer. The king grew smaller and smaller with each hit, and by now, we were surrounded by so many of the smaller slimes that the new ones couldn’t get close. They only managed to fill in the ranks whenever a patch of them got flattened by the sub-boss.

It was too much. Any moment, it felt like I would slip up, or if I didn’t, someone would. Not built around Endurance as much as I was, Nella was panting from the repeated dashes and scrambling over slimes. One false move, and-

“Good! That will be enough of that.”

Significantly diminished, the King Metal Slime raced towards Alara with all the speed of a sports car. Instead of rearing back for a punch, however, she simply spread her arms wide.

In less than a heartbeat, the two connected.

And the king slime stopped.

None the worse for wear, Alara stood in the center of the room, wrapping the still-sizable slime in the world’s tightest hug.

It tried to escape, using its limited mobility to thrash about, but it was no use. At last, the boss was well and truly trapped.

Alara laughed like a madwoman, delighting in her captive prey. “I will leave the honors to the rest of you!”

Thankfully, there were no surprises left. Unable to bring its strongest attack to bear, the sub-boss and its many minions were ruthlessly beaten down. When at last it fell, the slime’s body liquified, oozing out in every direction.

Congratulations! You have slain a King Metal Slime! For your contribution, you have received 303 xp.

With the fight over at last, I collapsed to the ground, half from exertion, half from nerves. It had been a while since I’d felt that much in danger.

Nella flopped to the ground beside me, opting to take a breather before she collected Emin and Oachin. Yet even on the ground, she chided me. “What are you doing? You made us go through all of that, right? Don’t you have some big, special secret to find?”

That’s right! I do!

I shot up, discovering a new well of energy as I rushed to the now-barren walls.

I circled the room once.

Twice.

Thrice.

And found.

Nothing.

I didn’t just make us do all of that for no reason did I?

I started to sweat as I ran a fourth circuit around the room, dragging my hand along the dirt as I did so. Right as I was about to reach my starting point again, though, something strange happened.

Or rather, I thought something strange was happening. My eyes were telling me there was nothing but dirt in front of me. My hand was telling me there was nothing but dirt in front of me. But my skills were tugging at me.

It’s dirt. It’s just dirt. There’s nothing here. Stop wasting time. Move on.

My thoughts felt oddly insistent, and the moment I realized that, something peculiar happened.

Mental Resistance has reached level 11!

It was as though a fog had lifted. While I still couldn’t see anything amiss, I was now certain I was onto something. More than that, the wall felt oddly smooth now that I thought about it.

Although, why can’t I see anything? It’s not… It’s not an illusion is it?

True, God’s Eye had evolved to help me see through people’s illusions even better, but still, I was already strong enough to break through an archmage’s spell! What would such a powerful illusion even be doing on the first floor of a dungeon?

“Alara, can you stand here?” I had no way to break an illusion I couldn’t see through, but I thought back to the first night I’d met Alara. She’d dispelled the magic on a playing card just by touching it.

“That is something I am able to do!” Soon, I had Alara hugging the maybe-not-dirt before me.

“It feels somewhat odd, PPG! Fuzzy. I believe… I believe something is happening.” No sooner had she spoken than the image in front of me wavered before shattering completely.

Where once there had been empty dirt, there was now a small, simple stone door. Completely smooth, it lacked even a handle, but I was certain it was a door nonetheless.

Several exclamations flew around as it appeared from nothing, and soon all five of us surrounded the door, Emin and Oachin having been at last retrieved by Nella.

Wordlessly, I pushed on it, willing it to open unto riches and glory.

And yet, it didn’t budge.

Uh, am I missing some sort of keyhole here, or what?

What followed was perhaps one of the most frustrating half-an-hours in my entire life.

We tried sliding it. Breaking it. Mining it down. Attaching a stone to it with glue and pulling on it. Holding the four-colored metal disk up to it. Frankly, I was half-tempted to pull a Kex’Stella and lick at that point.

Accepting that force wasn’t going to get us anywhere, we had to assume there was another secret we were missing. Maybe the keyhole was hidden in another section of the wall.

If it was, though, I sure as hell couldn’t find it.

What is there even left to try at this point? I mean, there was a weird mental effect on the door, wasn’t there? Maybe I can run with that?

With nothing to lose, I got right up close and personal to the stone door and cast Sense Minds. For good measure, I retreated into my mental space, standing atop the outer walls of the Stygian Citadel. The spell pulsed outwards, expanding through the infinite darkness before me.

And much to my surprise, it found something.

A tiny dot of purple hung right before me, far too small to be an actual mind. Focusing on it didn’t even return a name or any information like it did for others.

Still, it felt almost tangible to me. The longer I stared at it, the more I swore I could feel it.

I reached out and out and out, pulling on it, letting it pull on me, until, with a snap, we connected.

Mental Magic has reached level 12!

Mental Magic has reached level 13!

Two whole levels? The hell?

The sound of surprised cries tore me from my mental space, the connection I’d just made falling apart in the process.

That was fine though, as it quickly became clear that it had done its purpose.

Somehow triggered by my mental mana, a small panel popped out from the wall bearing nothing but a singular circular indent. The size of the circular was familiar, and with a tense and expectant energy suffusing the air, I grabbed our metal disk and placed it within before pushing the panel back into the door. It returned seamlessly, not even a hint of its construction visible.

Our hard-won key supplied to it, the door finally slid open.

When it finally retreated entirely into the wall, the progress on my Detect Secret shot up to a full 90%, and the notification I’d been waiting for hit us at last.

Congratulations! You have discovered a hidden room!