In a matter of seconds, the dirt began to take on shape, collecting and compacting until it formed an earthen analog of its previous body. Without the water that had comprised a sizable portion of its form, however, it was significantly smaller. It was still huge — much larger than the stone golem of the previous room — but it no longer came up to the tops of the columns.

Greater Earth Elemental: Level ??

Great. This one’s level is high enough that I can’t even see it.

“Ah, look at that. This one has arms. Seems like an improvement over the mud elemental though. Look! It can’t even reach us!” Barb waved down to the elemental with a smile. “Hello down there!”

Then the boss walked up to our column and punched. Chips of stone went flying, and the two of us barely kept our feet as the impact shook the ground.

“Holy shit, he’s going to knock the column down! We need to get the water back on now!” If it managed to knock one column down, it wasn’t the end of the world. If it managed to knock one in front of us and behind us though, we’d be stranded. The monster we’d created by using the dry stone was far worse than the one we’d started with.

Barb and I sprinted toward the column with the activation stone as the elemental pummeled the base of ours again and again. While the mud on the top of our target column hadn’t been washed off due to us turning the water off, it had thankfully dried out and would no longer impede our movements.

We jumped, and luckily, the boss chose not to follow us, instead seeking to finish what it had started. Not bothering with my bow this time, I followed Barb as he rushed to the gem, summoning up my spear. We wailed on the stone with abandon, racing against the elemental.

Before we could successfully turn the water back on, the earthen colossus had finished with its first task, and the previous column went tumbling down. Luckily, it fell inward instead of crashing into one of the other pillars, but even so, the entire room shook as an astronomical amount of rock fell to the ground.

The force of the crash nearly sent both of us over the edge. Thankfully, I was mid-strike when it occurred, and my blow helped to push me backwards. Barb was less lucky, lurching forward a step and nearly falling over. Another step, and it would have been over for him, but right before he would have fallen over, he managed to throw his body back. He landed by the edge on his butt, true fear painted across his face.

A battle-hardened adventurer, however, the man quickly recovered and attacked the gem, pushing it past its threshold once more. The shower started up anew.

The Barber walked towards the column’s center with me, still slightly shaken from his close call. “This is all well and good, you know, but this puts us back where we started, does it not?”

Sadly, it was true. As the water fell down onto the earth elemental, it began to fully soak the dirt. Bit by bit, its compact body expanded into its original slimy form, until once again we faced the mud elemental.

Unfortunately, there was one major difference.

You are rooted! Movement is restricted!

I looked down at my feet, horrified to find that the dried out layer of dirt we’d been walking on had likewise been restored to its former state. Barb and I were stuck.

“Forgive me for asking, but you wouldn’t happen to have a way to get out of this, would you? It appears we’re about to die.” The barber looked out towards the mud elemental which was currently swiveling in our direction.

Before it started charging its beam, the continued downpour managed to thin the mud a bit, and I pulled my foot from it with a shout. Sadly, the telltale sign of the boss’s mud beam formed in its mouth, and it was clear we weren’t going to make it.

“No dying yet! Come on!” I pulled the barber onward, and we ran across the top of the pillar extremely slowly, our every movement impeded. Then, just when the beam was about to hit, I grabbed onto Barb as hard as I could.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m really sorry dude.”

Then, I sent fire mana into my boots, and I jet stepped. Not merely once or even twice, however, but rather five times in rapid succession, dumping an entire 50 mana into my last ditch effort.

The beam came roaring from the elemental’s mouth even as we shot forward. Then, by only a hair’s margin, we outsped it. The massive attack displaced the air, buffeting us in a blast of wind, but we survived. A moment later, we crashed onto the next column, hearts racing and slightly bruised, but alive.

“Thank you. Let’s you and I agree to never do that again, shall we?” Barb untangled himself from me and stood before helping me up.

Just then, I heard a loud boom. Following the sound, I was shocked to find Jason almost all the way back to where we’d started, chucking rocks at our original stone. Why that one, and why wasn’t he with the others? I spotted Cal and Kex, not having moved from their position by the drying stone.

Jason dodged a mud beam, punched the floor to create a few more rocks, and then continued throwing them until his target took the necessary damage. As it activated, the water above us began to pour down faster and harder, the sheer force of it painful to withstand.

Debuff: Torrential Downpour

Take two physical damage per second.

Jason, what the hell? What was the point of this?

Cal shouted to us over the rain, and it was only through my enhanced Perception that I managed to hear her. “Get ready to turn the water off!”

Again? Really? I relayed the information to Barb, and he shrugged. “I suppose we should get to it, no? I do trust they have a plan, after all.”

We jumped back to our previous column, the heavy rain having washed away its mud in an instant. Then, rather quickly, things became more clear. Instead of preparing another attack, the boss began melting. At last I understood what was happening.

At the beginning, Kex had said we could beat the mud elemental by taking away its water or taking away its dirt. The latter hadn’t seemed plausible at the time, but in fact it was.

Fulfilling its intended purpose, the shower washed away the dirt.

Bit by bit, the mud was washed down the drain, and the dirt on the floor thinned until disappearing completely, revealing gray stone beneath it.

With the dirt gone, for a moment, I thought we’d won. Just as the elemental had managed without any water, however, so too did it manage without dirt.

As the last bit of mud vanished down the drain, a third elemental began to form. It grew larger and larger, the rain adding to its size.

“We’re so close! Turn the water off!” Barb slashed into the stone with his scissors while I focused on healing us from the pelting rain.

Faster than Barb could dish out damage, however, the elemental grew. In an instant, it was already larger than the two before it, a massive typhoon malevolently swirling about. Without warning, a wave began to form behind us, rapidly growing in width until it was large enough to swallow an entire three columns.

Deluge

Send forth a wave of water, knocking all enemies back.

I checked on the gem, but we weren’t going to make it. Barb had only managed to fill up 300 of the damage thus far, and another 200 before we were hit was out of the question.

“Barb! We’re about to get knocked off! Brace yourself!”

Confused, he glanced back, only now catching sight of the enormous wave. “I can’t say that I’m a fan of that, if I’m being honest.” He stared at the wave for a moment as if running some intense mental calculations before turning to me with a frown. “I… Well, I apologize for this.”

Then, in two quick flicks of his scissors, he chopped my hair off.

Debuff: Shave

You have lost 70% of your hair. Stats reduced by 35%.

I stood there, too stunned to move. Partly because I’d just become bald in an instant, but also for another reason.

That had only been 70% of my hair?

Yeesh. If I got out of this alive, maybe I’d ask to borrow a razor from Barb. Then again, maybe not? No one said you had to have smooth legs to beat up monsters.

Breaking me out of my stupor, Barb called out to me. “Grab on!” He jammed his scissors into the rock beneath us, and with the extra burst of strength he’d stolen from me, they sunk in deep.

I wrapped myself around the man, bear hugging him as hard as my reduced strength would allow me to. Was this really all that stood between us and being washed away? Wasn’t there something I could do besides hug a guy and be bald?

Suddenly, I remembered that I did have an ability that could help. I funneled life mana into my boots to summon vines from the ground. As we were on stone instead of soil, the skill barely worked, the vines struggling to poke through the solid rock. Thankfully, in this case the rain was to our benefit: As the water rushed over the vines, they greedily drank their fill, thickening and winding up to entangle my feet.

You are rooted!

Then, our time was up. The wave came crashing down.

When it slammed into us, never before had I felt such a force. The impact made me feel as though I’d been hit with a battering ram, and had it not been for both the vines and the scissors' deep grip, we would have been sent flying immediately.

The initial impact, however, was not the end of it. More and more water kept flowing, completely submerging us, pushing at us, pulling at us. It was all I could do to keep my grip on the man before me, and with each passing second, that grew harder and harder as my stamina waned.

Right as I thought I could take it no longer, it finally passed. Barb and I stood shakily, still standing only because falling to the ground would have been too much effort. The wave had washed away even the very thoughts from my head, and it took a moment to remember what we were doing.

“Barb! The stone! We need to turn the water off!” But then I realized, in fact, that we didn’t: The rain had stopped. The wave must have crashed into the stone, pushing it over the edge. Now all that remained was-

Just as the thought occurred to me, all the water in the room began to disappear, sucked into the next gem over from us. The roaring typhoon of an elemental was powerless, and with each passing second, it shrank by leaps and bounds. In an instant, even Barb and I were fully dry, though still slightly worse for wear.

Only five seconds later, it was over. There was no dirt. There was no water. All there was were five exhausted adventurers. And this time, the boss wouldn’t be coming back.

Congratulations! You have cleared the hidden room!