We finally found the stairway leading down from the secret passage. It was hidden behind a cluster of boulders by the wall—unless you knew where it was, it took patience and a careful eye to find it.
“So this is where we’re headed.” Kent peered down the stairs, muttering to himself, “What’s down there?”
“We finally made it!” Tarte purred, joy blooming on her face.
Thank you for carrying Ifrit all this way. “Are we ready to go down?” I asked.
The whole party was eager to go, so Kent cautiously led our descent.
At the bottom of the stairs, we were greeted by quite the sight—a space about the size of a gymnasium and at its center a lake of lava, bubbling like the volcano was about to blow any minute. This was the place where Ifrit could calm the volcano by performing her quelling dance. Normally, that would be the final step of this quest...but something about the lava lake didn’t look right.
“Hey, are we safe here?! It looks like the eruption could happen any second...” Kent said, eyeing the lava.
Sure enough, the lava was bubbling much faster and much more dramatically than I’d expected, like the volcano was really going to erupt. That was when I realized what was happening. “Oh. I forgot.”
“Sharon?” Kent turned to me, demanding an explanation.
In the grand scope of things, this quest was a relatively easy one, where players just had to defeat Ifrit and bring her to this spot...99.9 percent of the time. The other 0.1 percent of the time, a chance of one in one thousand, there was a bonus encounter. All I could do was chuckle. Lucky us. “We have to defeat that before Ifrit can quell the volcano.”
“Defeat what?” Kent asked.
I pointed at the lake of bubbling lava, just as the monster emerged from it.
“It looks kind of cute...but I have a feeling I won’t think that for long,” Cocoa remarked.
I couldn’t agree more. What had slithered out of the lava was Slava—a slime made of lava. Slimes had a reputation of being easy prey in video games, but Slava was exactly as dangerous as a blob of sentient lava should be, using its devastating Lava Launch attack to burn and melt through anything it hit. How hot does lava get? Thousands of degrees, probably...
“So we need to take that thing down,” Kent said, watching as Slava jiggled...or rather, burbled along. “It looks really hot... It won’t be easy, but we have to do it, right?”
“Unfortunately,” I confirmed. Slava wouldn’t attack us until we initiated combat, but Ifrit wouldn’t dance until we defeated Slava. If we wanted to progress the quest, we had to fight.
“Right. The question is how. I can’t exactly hold that thing off,” Kent added.
“Yeah,” I agreed. Merely touching Slava—whether attacking or blocking—would result in severe injury or death. Long-range attacks were our only option. However, with Cocoa and L’lyeh as our only attackers, we were a little lacking in the necessary firepower to take out Slava in a fair fight. I scanned the area until I found what I was looking for. “Over here.” I skirted the lava lake until I reached the other side and pointed to a spot where two mid-sized boulders stood close to each other about five meters from the wall. “Kent, I need you to stand there and lure Slava over with Taunt. Then we—by which I mean Cocoa and Lulu—will stand by the wall and attack Slava. That’s how we’re going to beat it!”
If we’d had higher levels and better equipment, we could have dogpiled long-range attacks and finished off the Slava before it could counterattack. Without that option, we had to cheese this fight. After much trial and error, the player base of Reas had discovered that Slava could get trapped between these two boulders. The Slava hack was to lure it to the boulders, immobilize it, and pile on attacks.
“O-Okay...” Kent said stiffly after I’d explained the plan. As hard as it was to believe that Slava would get stuck between those rocks, I knew it was going to work.
It’s a feature, not a bug. “Let’s give it a try,” I encouraged everyone.
“Sure.” Kent stood between the rocks. Once he saw that Cocoa and L’lyeh were in their positions by the wall, he psyched himself up. “Let’s do this! Taunt!”
Slava hopped in response. Then, it began slithering toward us, leaving a trail of burnt then resolidified ground in its wake. If that thing were to jump on me, I’d be melted into nothing in a heartbeat.
“Ugh,” Kent grunted—understandably.
Slava slithered ahead and got caught between the boulders just as it tried to attack Kent. To no avail, it pushed ahead, trying to force its way through the boulders—which looked like solidified lava. At least, that had been the best guess among the Reas players as to why Slava couldn’t melt past them. Slava stretched out an appendage toward Kent, but it fell short.
“Whoa! That was scary... I guess it really is stuck.” Kent watched Slava with curiosity. It wasn’t every day that people of this world could see a monster in a state like this.
Cocoa and L’lyeh didn’t waste any time before launching their magic. Their initial Skills found their mark, but that wasn’t enough to take down Slava. The lava slime writhed as if it were trying to attack us. Alas for Slava, it was perfectly stuck—unable to move or attack. All of a sudden, Slava had turned from a dangerous threat to a total doormat.
“That’s ameowzing!” Tarte breathed as she watched the trapped Slava. “I feel bad for it, a little bit.” Leave it to Tarte to be so kind.
After Cocoa and L’lyeh piled on another five shots of magic each, Slava burst into light, leaving us completely unscathed. In the back of my mind, I’d considered the possibility that the hack wouldn’t work in the real world. Luckily, we hadn’t had to power through an honest fight against Slava. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief, ready to accomplish what we’d come here for.
“I’m glad we took care of that,” Kent said.
“Now we just have to ask Ifrit to quell the volcano,” Tarte said.
A yawn came from Tarte’s back—Ifrit was waking up. “I see we’re in Underground Volcano. That didn’t take as long as I thought.”
“Ifrit, could we ask you to do your dance?” Tarte asked.
“Mm-hmm.” Just as Ifrit began to move, a large portion of the lava lake swelled up into a magma mountain.
“What?! What’s happening?!” I scrambled to reapply everyone’s buffs. I’d never heard of an event like this happening after beating Slava. What are we supposed to do?! Should we run? “Let’s go back upstairs,” I suggested, my gears churning to generate the right solution. Before we could reach the stairs, though, a giant Slava emerged from the lava lake. A Giant Slava?!
“Whoa! We’re not gonna make it out of here!” Kent shouted. “Taunt!”