Poison Gelatin of the Lake

Once the Empress called her court, all of its members appeared by her side. Not just the title blades, but the regular blades as well. They were all floating around her, ready to fight. The Ophidianite wasn't worried because the monster in front of her was powerful. Strictly speaking, its level shouldn't be something that would cause any problems for her.

The problem was the monster's element. Poison. It wasn't just regular poison, but the same poison that existed in the lake. The same poison that Livy struggled to fight against. The same poison that Viper seemed to be affected by. If anything, that poison made the creature be at the very least 10 levels more dangerous than it was seeming to be. Maybe even more if the gelatin of the lake had some sort of intelligence and could use its power properly.

Hoop and Eira were the first to engage with the gelatin. Not so much because they thought they were the best option for it, but because their elements gave a decent chance of not being too injured by it. Or making things worse. Eira could, in theory, completely freeze the creature while Hoop and its constant movement might be able to use centripetal force to push away the poison that was left behind.

Instead of just collapsing or being hit, the creature dodged, even cleaving itself in two before reuniting its pieces to continue moving towards the Empress. It was doing that almost as if it didn't have to worry about the other court members. As if they were nothing in comparison to her. Which, in a sense it was right, but Hera didn't feel like the monster was intelligent enough to know that kind of thing. It was more as if it only cared about what it could eat. And it instinctively knew that wasn't the case for the entire court.

The Empress wanted to test a few things out before continuing the fight, as she had no idea what other abilities this poison gelatin had. But the creature wasn't about to allow that. After seeing the two incoming attacks, the monster started to shake and burst into an explosion, splitting itself into numerous parts. Each of the pieces started sliding in a different direction, with a few of them rushing towards Hera and the others to each individual court member.

Livy started pushing the smaller versions of the gelatin away while making sure that none of them got too close. And Hera couldn't help but feel frustrated at the situation. She was the one supposed to be fighting with more numbers, and having that scenario flip itself onto her wasn't a great feeling.

Everybody else was also doing their best to stay away from the smaller versions of the gelatin. But Viper and Crimson were the two struggling the most. They were used to vanishing from sight when the situation required. Using their skills to make sure that whatever was chasing them could no longer see them. The problem was there were too many of those smaller cubes of poison. And they all seemed to be able to share their sensory information with each other.

If they were hiding from one, there was another that could see them. Which caused the first one that was already chasing them to just continue their chase as if they could even see them, because it could.

Livy brandished her war axe and used [Seal of Draconic Vortex] to pull the enemies towards her just before jumping away. She did all that while, being sure not to be touched by the creatures. And that was most successful, but there were a few of the smaller cubes of poison that were able to approach her and they would have been able to get her if it wasn't for Nimbus stepping in and creating a few barriers around the Leviathan. She would have ended up getting hurt by the attack.

On the other side of the battlefield, Filigree created a net using her bladed wire in hopes of destroying one of the bigger cubes, but the gelatin simply split off in even more pieces, making things harder for everyone.

Turning to Storm, Hera asked for the long sword to use [Crackling Strike] in hopes of the chaining strike effect being enough to get rid of all the tiny slimes. And the idea did work. Several of them were hit by the chaining attack and exploded in contact. The really small ones, the ones that had been split apart by Filigree, became just a strange mucus that was now staining the surrounding ground. But the bigger ones split into even smaller versions of themselves. It seemed like one way to destroy it was to just make the poison gelatin become as small as they could until they couldn't become even smaller.

Once they came to the realization that all they had to do was keep destroying the creature until it couldn't come back up anymore, everybody changed their behavior. Especially Livy, Vulcan, and Filigree. After all, if they were required to brute force this situation, the three of them were more than willing to do just that. Hera was glad she wouldn't have to use that much brainpower to figure out a solution. Fixing the altar already fried her mind enough for the day.

The Empress quickly created a rare, venomous long sword and started attacking the monsters. She added a few shots of her Flaming Cannon, which created a large bowl of fire, destroying everything on its path. While from the tip of her tail which was being aimed at Pyro, the flamethrower spell continuously burned any gelatin that got close. In just a few moments, all the larger cubes were gone. But the Empress wasn't sure if this meant that the creature was dead. There was a lingering feeling in the air that she couldn't quite put her finger around. But it was hard to make sense of anything while the lake was still bubbling and erupting all the time.

During the entire fight, the ground was shaking continuously. That tremor forced the Empress to attempt to regain her footing after every motion. Which was hardly a good way to fight. Not just that, but the constant spray of poison in the air made it almost impossible for her to notice the telltale signs of a skill or spell being cast. And for that very reason, the Empress failed to notice as all the liquid that the gelatin had turned into shook ever so slightly and became sharp spikes aimed at her.

And while she was too distracted with the entire situation to notice, that wasn't the same for her court. Lurize was the one who realized there was something wrong and saw the incoming attack. Unfortunately, he was too far away from the Empress to do anything. That is, if he didn't have the correct skill set to solve this issue. Using a combination of winged boost and thundering charge, the Royal tutor moved like a flash across the battlefield, tackling Hera and pushing her away from the target of the various parts of poison created by the gelatin. The attacks pierced his armor and started to corrode the metal as he instantly felt the poison taking hold of his body.

But Hera survived with only a scratch. Only one of the many poison spikes was able to graze her arm. And her scales were not strong enough to completely negate the blow. The pieces of gelatin reached out to each other after delivering the blow to Lurize and tried to gather once more. But Filigree didn't allow them, creating a large net that cut them in many, many tiny pieces again.

Lurize was now out of commission, but that didn't mean the rest of the Court was going to take this lying down. Eira quickly activated [Permafrost Vortex] to damage everything in her surrounding area. At the same time, Hera decided to create the [Blade Accord] together with the [Noble Shroud] creating an area of chains and clouds that the creature wouldn't be able to escape. In addition, she also used the blueprint she had placed inside the Empress Palace to quickly deploy the Pool of Styx to reduce the attributes of the gelatin, allowing her attacks to do even more damage.

What she really wanted to do was trigger Shroud of Tartarus or Quetzalcoatl's Wrath, but both attacks were poison-based and using it against the creature like this felt like more of a healing spell than anything.

Instead, Hera activated a brake combo using the long sword in her hand. Using the slash version for the grasshopper skill and imbuing her weapon with an electric basic enchantment that could cause chain attacks to jump to another target. It was a minor version of Storm's [Crackling Strike]. She hoped so the combination of attack would increase the power of the blow. Just as she was expecting, the explosion destroyed a large clump of the gelatins. But not all of them were killed.

Vulcan started chasing after the remaining ones, using his sacred fire to burn away the creatures without reprieve. And only then, Filigree had an idea. She pulled back her threads and coated them in a different kind of spell. Not destruction, but about curing. Not directly a healing spell, but an antidote version that she had been working with Alex to create. It was, in essence, replicating what the Purifying Light could do only on a much smaller scale and nowhere near as powerful. But the idea of just cleansing all the poison seemed to have worked as all the pieces of gelatin that were being hit by her bladed threats started to burn away, almost as if they were being touched by acid.

Once they realized that it was working, everybody doubled down and started guiding the monsters towards Filigree's attacks. Wanting to help her get rid of as many of them as possible. So far, it had been fairly two minutes since the fight started. Everything happening extremely quickly. But now that they had a proper way to go after the creatures, the fight started to drag since the gelatin instinctively knew that getting hit by Filigree's bladed strings would end up badly and the people in the area didn't want to let the monster escape.

They continuously went after them, chasing the small pieces of gelatin all around the island. It even got to a point where they had to grab those slime creatures with their bare hands before tossing them towards the Weaver. But eventually, they were able to kill all poison gelatin off the lake and could now just stare in awe at the waters that were still being actively disrupted by whatever was happening with the altar.

After 1 hour or so, the waves and geysers became more tame. They were still very violent and splashing everywhere, but Nimbus felt he was confident enough in his abilities to escape the area without being caught by all of that. Hera double checked with the Sentinel several times to make sure he was sure about it and even created her cloud and chain wings reiterating the versions that she could use until she found one that while wasn't able to flap and keep her in the air, would at the very least function as a glider so she could pop them out if something were to happen with Nimbus.

Satisfied with the preparations, Hera recalled the entire court back to the Legacy, climbed on top of Nimbus and started flying off back towards excellent. The lake was still bubbling and rolling over once they left, but something was clearly happening. And now they would need to wait until they could see the results of their attempts at solving the issues in this room.

But there was one lingering question stewing in her mind. The lake was supposed to be one of the sources of corruption in the room. And in theory, a minor one at that. After all, according to Legan, one of the few Explorers in the Royal Explorers, the lake was just one of the smaller problems they would have to deal with. The dwarf had already used his guide skill in this room and had gotten that information. While the lake was the first issue to solve, it was not the one that was affecting the room as a whole. Which meant that there was something worse somewhere. And if that was the case, then, maybe, that could be another monster waiting, just like the Gelatin of the Lake. And if that was already a hassle to deal with, even to the point where it managed to take Lurize out of commission, what else could be waiting and lurking in the depths of the Deakoshara?

That was a question that Hera wanted and didn't want to have the answers to. But she had already started taking the first step into this area. Now all she had to do was continue exploring and following what the quest was telling her to do.