The party discuss their next action, and decide that they're still well enough to continue onwards without returning to Asuna. With Zedlyn and Flossaria recovered from the ghoul paralysis, they return to the second level of the catacombs to search the area where the ghouls attacked them. They find nothing of value on the ghouls themselves, although Zedlyn chops off a ghoul's hand, hoping to be able to somehow extract the paralytic poison from it. The room contains about 40 alcoves with corpses, so they get to work searching all of them, with Zedlyn keeping watch as the others search.
A few minutes into the search, Zedlyn catches a sound in the distance, a sort of oozing, squishy sound. He alerts the others, but they decide that they only need a few more minutes to finish their search, so he stays on guard, keeping an eye out for whatever might be making the sound. The source of the noise turns out to be a huge, nearly transparent ooze creature making its way down the hall. Its transparency means that Zedlyn doesn't see it until it's too late; he only has time to shout a warning before it engulfs him.
The rest of the party turn to attack this new foe. The melee fighters and the statues advance to attack, while others pelt it with missiles. Adokas hurls his grappling hook at the creature, which penetrates into it and lodges itself near Zedlyn. Inside the creature, Zedlyn is being eaten away by acidic ooze, and he struggles to turn and grab Adokas's rope. The creature advances towards the first rank of statues and engulfs them as well, but the party's attacks are starting to show as large pieces of the creature are being lopped off. Just as Zedlyn manages to grab the rope, Sharla hits the creature with a dagger, which turns out to the last straw, causing it to collapse into a pile of slime and discharge its contents.
Freed from the ooze creature, Zedlyn's body is covered in acid burns and much of his clothing and equipment are destroyed; however, the acid doesn't seem to have had any effect on metal. His armor is still wearable for the moment, but the haft of his trident is destroyed, so he arms himself with Iriellis's old flail and Flossaria's old shield. The statues, being made entirely of metal, seem to be unharmed by their brief exposure to the ooze.
Arik takes over on watch as they party complete their search of the alcoves. Most of the bodies inside seem to have been chewed on, which the party assume to be the work of the ghouls. In terms of valuables, they find a bag containing 80 silver pieces, and a box inlaid with ivory (empty, but likely of some value on its own). One of the alcoves contains not a body, but a dozen hands, all severed at the wrist. The group are puzzled by the hands, but eventually decide that they must be the severed hands of convicted thieves, due to the fact that there are more right hand than left hands, and no matching pairs.
Continuing their explorations, the party check the western passages near the ghoul lair; both are dead ends, but a careful search of the second reveals a secret door, similar to the one they found earlier. Passing through it leads to a concealed room, containing two iron chests placed in alcoves. On closer inspection, the chests are actually fused shut, and not easily accessible. The party decide that, hopefully, they will be able to break the curse on the monastary, which will turn the chests back into wood, as they are far to heavy to carry in their current state. They leave them behind for now.
The secret room eventually leads to a west-facing exit, protected by a pit trap which Flossaria spots. The party circumnavigate the trap, but are again forced to leave the statues behind. The exit is the back side of another concealed door, which opens into the largest room yet seen in the lower catacombs. The room contains four exits, in addition to the concealed door through which they enter; one on each wall. The southern exit is a stairway leading up, and a quick trip confirms that this is the stairway from the upper level that they hadn't investigated yet.
The main feature of this room is a ten-foot wide circular table in the center, with an iron spike mounted on it that points to the north. On closer inspection, the top of the table is covered in runes, and it is mounted on a circular track that allows it to rotate. Sharla mentions that she could probably translate these runes as well, but time is still at a premium. The party decide to take the northern passage, hoping that it'll reconnect with the area that they'd explored previously.
The passage does indeed connect to a room they'd already been to, where Sharla left an empty flask on the ground as a marker. The passage also continues to the west, so they collect the flask and continue onwards. Listening as they go, they can hear footsteps from further down the passage, and they assume these belong to zombies. They decide to back off, due to them not having their statue escort with them.
Back in the room with the circular table, they head to the east, hoping to find a passage that will allow them to bring the statues through into the room. The short passage leads into a much larger north-south passage that runs farther than their torchlight illuminates to the south. As with many other areas in the catacombs, it is stuffed with alcoves. There's an eastern passage almost directly across from where there came in, so they head through there, ignoring the southern passage for now.
Heading east, they enter a small chamber which they don't have much time to admire, because they are immediately ambushed by a pack of two ghouls and three skeletons. The undead creatures get the drop on them and attack, but with the aid of Flossaria and Iriellis's holy power, they are able to drive back the creatures and default them fairly easily. Zedlyn is struck by one of the ghouls, but he manages to resist the numbing paralysis.
Searching the room, they find one very unusual occupant in one of the alcoves - a golden skeleton. Unlike the iron skeleton from before, this one is very realistic and life-like. Zedlyn scratches a bit of the gold off, revealing that it's actually a gold-plated skeleton. The party pack up the entire skeleton to take with them, figuring that it must be quite valuable.
At this point, the party decide not to explore the southern hallway, as it will only take them further away from the statues. They instead return to the hallway where they were first attacked by ghouls and explore the south end of that. The end of that hallway has both eastern and western passages. The western passage is an apparent dead end, but close inspection reveals a secret door, which leads them right back to the room they just left, where they found the golden skeleton.
As they explore the eastern passage, Zedlyn and Flossaria trigger a pit trap, with both of them falling in and sustaining damage. The rest of the group help them out, and Flossaria and Iriellis use most of their remaining healing magic to remove the injuries caused by the fall. At this point, with their healing spells nearly used up, the group decide to move Arik to the front of the marching order and continue on.
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