Caleb was dumbstruck when he saw that geyser bursting out of the ground all of a sudden. The redheaded mage must have noticed a hidden aquifer underneath her feet, which was why she’d cast all those meteor spells to try to breach through the ground in order to unleash it.
Once the geyser began flooding the cavern with water, she was able to utilize it to her advantage. She waited for the water to pool beneath the slimes so that she could shock them with a lightning-elemental attack spell, dealing substantially more damage. The “Shock Resist” boons they’d placed on themselves were probably there for protection against any stray lighting damage that might have conducted its way back at them during the process.
Overall, it was a clever strategy—almost ingenious even. Caleb had already suspected these two contestants to be fairly smart due to their ability to solve the riddle for this particular rune and their use of the mauve agaric spores to deal with the foxbats. However, this was a whole new level of ingenuity altogether.
As the geyser continued sprouting out more water, it started filling the cavern, causing more slimes to be drenched from it. Miri had subsequently attacked those slimes with even more of her Shock Orbs, inflicting them with amplified lightning damage that electrocuted and disintegrated them into pink particles of light. With just a few casts of the Shock Orbs, all of the cave slimes within the cavern were eliminated.
“Haha, yes!” Miri cheered, turning to Caleb with a cheeky grin. “How do you like us now, druid?!”
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“I admit that your method is quite clever,” Caleb said, feeling a bit annoyed. “However, you’ve now got a new problem in your hands, that being the cavern now filling up with water. Eventually, the whole cavern will be completely flooded and you two will drown in it.”
“Ahh, but we’re not going to drown. Instead, we’ll simply escape through that way,” Miri said, pointing to the skylight above them.
“But I thought you said you couldn’t reach it,” Anne pointed out.
“I couldn’t before. But once the cavern has reached about half full, then I can reach it,” Miri said. “The rising water level will allow us to simply float higher and thus approach closer to the skylight. Once we reach a close enough distance, we can simply teleport ourselves out of here.”
“Ahh, I see. That is genius, Miri!” Anne commented with a triumphant smile.
“You know I am!” Miri said to the blonde cleric before turning back to the green-haired druid. “You, on the other hand, are going to be the one who’s drowning in here. That is, unless you deactivate that crystal barrier of yours and all the crystal walls sealing off this cavern, which will flush all the water out. However, the moment you step out of that barrier is the moment where I’m gonna hit you with everything I’ve got, faux-killing you and eliminating you from the competition.
“Now, I assume you’re not willing to fight both of us head-on because your actual combat skills are not good enough to take us on. Instead, you have to rely on cheap tricks to try to trap us in a precarious situation. But now, it is you who is being trapped. How ironic that the tables have turned. Whichever way it is, you are gonna end up dead. Check and mate.”
