The keep rumbled and shook violently as the party fled from it. They didn’t stop running until they got back to the gate way. Behind them the horde of mucus zombies poured out of the keep, chasing after the party. It was then that they realized that Jason and his companions realized that there was no way that they would be able to open the gate before they were overran by the army of toxic creatures. They were trapped.

Just then, the keep exploded, sending brick shrapnel in all directions. Some crashed into the wall and blew chunks of it out. They came crashing down. Soon the bailey was covered in debris and not a building was left standing. At the center, there was the large hole where the keep once stood as the last defence of the city. Now, a fluorescent ooze bubbled to the surfaced and gushed out slowly taking the shape of a slime creature that existed in many role playing games on earth, but this one was massive and only getting larger by the second as more of it’s toxic sludge of a body seeped up to the surface and joined with it.

“I don’t think I have enough salt for that,” Jason said, trying to make light of the situation they were in.

The zombies creatures shuffled forwards tripping over the debris littered grounds of the bailey. They had finally stopped coming out of the remains of the keep, but their numbers were enough to fill the grounds from the hole to the walls, leaving only the gateway and the area taken up by the slime, which now reached several meters in height, empty of their presence. The party had no choice but to fight back now. They turned and drew their weapons. Xev set Rina down and joined them in preparing for a long battle.

“Let us deal with the small ones first,” Lady Apisis said.

“Right,” Jason said as stepped forward to the edge of the territory that was safe with a slash across one of the many zombies closing in on them. Its form destabilized and dropped into a puddle on the ground surrounding the bones and feted corpse meat that they had brought up within their bodies. A second later it reformed as if nothing had ever been done to it.

“Shit,” Jason said disappointed.

Duk summoned his barrier at a size big enough to span the entirety of the entrance into the alcove of the gateway. “This will not hold long. Do you have a plan to get out of this?” he asked.

The group looked to each other hoping that one of them would have an answer, but none of them had anything that came to mind. THey had never come across anything like this before.

“Experimentation!” Rina said giving her best impression of an evil mad scientist.

“Can you let one in while keep the others out?” Jason asked Duk.

Duk nodded and pushed forward into the crowd with a grunt, tilting the barrier on one side so an opening appeared on the side. A single ooze zombie shambled into the gateway entrance. Duk relaxed immediately after he was sure it was in. It went right for Duk, but Apisis cut across its back turning it into a puddle.

“Rina, try casting cure on it,” Jason said to the amazement of all the aliens who gave looks like they thought he had gone nuts. “It would take to long to explain.” Rina happily nodded, took aim, focusing the cross at the slime. It began to reform. The spell charge went off. The healing light surrounded the slime. They all looked on with anticipation, but the aura dispersed having no visible effect. It finished reforming and started back towards Duk. Apisis put it down again. “Now what?” she asked.

Jason thought to himself trying to think of a solution. They tried cutting them down and it didn’t work. They tried the classic zombie killing maneuver of healing them to death. That also didn’t work. There had to be a solution he thought. Whatever else was the case with this world and whatever was running it, so far it had never presented a situation that one would assume could be beaten that could not be. In effect, the gods, for lack of a better word, of this world were fair, so, there must be a solution. He just couldn’t think of one. Maybe it was because of how exhausted he was. This entire dungeon had been more trying than Xev had made it out to be, or maybe she had over estimated him. If he didn’t figure out something soon they likely wouldn’t live to regret this adventure.

Rina watched as Apisis cut down the slime zombie over and over again, each time cutting in different places and in different ways. She had removed its limbs once. It had no real effect, the ooze dropped to the ground, reabsorbed into its feet and a new set of arms formed. Cutting its head off caused it to become a puddle for a few seconds before reforming. The same was true of when it was bisected horizontally through its waste or vertically from head down through it’s crotch. Rina shouted to Apisis, “Cut the meat!” Apisis and Jason hadn’t considered this as a solution, but Apisis didn’t think it was any sillier than what had already been suggested and Jason was wondering why he didn’t think of that himself. The meat was an obvious signal for a weak point which was fairly standard in many games that used modified rules on a standard model so that players could figure out where to attack fairly easily. Apisis cut down into the rotten mean chunk lodged within its body.

The slime zombie paused in its movement toward Duk. It seemed to look down at where its meat core was. It was now split in twain. After a moment of apparently slimey self reflection it lost form, melting to the ground into a puddle yet again, but this time it didn’t reform. The meat and bone was abandoned by the slime as the ooze mass shot out of the space under the barrier and joined the massive slime body in the center of the bailey.

“Well, that worked,” Jason was surprised that it had worked. He was getting used to nothing working out with this slime. “Duk, let one in at a time if you can keep it. Apisis, I think you know what to do,” he told them. He felt bad for Duk. For as tired as he felt Duk had done as much and more than Jason. They had been going all day and most of the heavy combat involved Duk, either fighting or defending, all in heavy armor that would be exhausting to wear by itself walking around casually. Jason decided to sit against the wall and look through his inventory, organizing it to make things easier to find and looking at what they had found. Often times, game dungeons had the answer to a problem in their treasure so it was possible that however the gods of Debris intended for people to defeat this monster it would be within what they had already collected and stashed away.

While Jason sat to rest Duk and Aspisis worked together. Duk adjusted the barrier to allow only one zombie in at a time and Apisis for her part quickly located and destroyed the hunks of meat that seemed to be the animating force of the zombie slimes. With each one taken out, their mass fled and joined back into the larger formless glowing slime. It wasn’t getting much larger from it. At that size it would take all the creatures to be added into its body to add much to its size. One by one the zombie horde entered and one by one they were dispatched. It seemed like an endless stream of and what was worse was that the rotting meat began to pile up. One piece gave off a rancid smell that only Duk didn’t seem to be affected by. A large pile of them made it very hard for them to concentrate. Apisis had only cut down about a quarter of them, but the meat had already become too much to bare, but there was no place to put it. It was already filling up a significant portion of their alcove that they were using to keep safe.

Jason ignored the smell as best he could, hoping that one of the others would figure out what to do with the meat, but given that Duk didn’t seem like the thinking type and while Aspisis seemed a bit smarter she didn’t seem like the type of general to come up with brilliant strategies, but more relied on pointing out the enemy to be attacked and even if that wasn’t the case she had shown an earlier aversion to meat in general. Xev definitely wouldn’t lift a finger to help them. She only seemed to help when it came to Rina or herself. Right as he was about to give in Rina stepped up and ordered Duk to toss it to the other side of the barrier, whether that meant picking it up and tossing over the barrier or push them out under it. This had two effects. One, the stench was lessened by the air flow of the bailey and two, it created a secondary wall that pushed back the zombies and made it harder for them to keep pressure on Duk, giving him a chance to rest a bit.

When they found the ARMS devices earlier no one had bothered to check what they were, whether they were improvements or any other kind of useful equipment. They now had a way to kill the zombie slimes but there was still the matter of the gigantic slime and hopefully the answer would be something he had already picked up. This dungeon had provided quite a number of ARMS devices, far more than the previous dungeon and a quick glance at them seemed to indicate that they were of a higher rank than what he was currently using. The first one he looked at had green to mark its rank and was a dagger. The description in the inventory said that it had some sort of ‘flame’ modification. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but whatever it was it had to be better than the dagger he currently had on. The next one he looked at was a foci of the same rank. He didn’t have much use for that, but it was a magic type weapon so he tossed it over to Rina. She needed some way to defend herself so it made sense to give her something to those ends as soon as he could. He didn’t look at what abilities it had, just that it was something to do with magic. She could figure out that what it was and how to use it on her own, as she had figured out so many other things helpfully since he had known her. The other ARMS device that stood out to him was a sword that was marked with silver. He looked at its description but there was nothing there. For all intents and purposes, according to his inventory it was another low ranked sword like the basic one he had from what he could tell. If nothing else it would be good for a back up he thought. The last interesting thing he found was a bracer with a jewel in it that was cracked. Its description read, “Ancient filthy beings love shiny jewels.” It was odd that the jewel on the bracer was no only cracked, but dull, long having lost its luster to the ancient past. Jason knew that this usually meant that there was another quest that was needed to be completed when something like this appeared, but it was too late for that now, but it also couldn’t hurt to wear the bracer just in case it did something without having to do some restoration mission.