"Like that," Tanth continues. "Pona, you get the last one. Then we can rush the skeleton."

She steps forward, pausing only to grab her discarded dagger, now clean of slime. She stalks up to the last slime and stabs it before it can jump at her. Then she moves to stand behind one of the support columns, so that the skeleton will have a harder time hitting her.

The skeleton tries its best anyway. It's not terribly fast or accurate with its sling, although Yarold can't say whether that's because it hasn't had much practice, or because his mental model of how to use a sling isn't as good as it could be.

He makes a note that he should try having the next generation of sling-monster be self-releasing, and see if that helps with accuracy.

Timrat and Tanth move up to join her. When Timrat is solidly positioned on top of the trapdoor, it snaps its door open, and he falls into the pit.

"Aaah!" he screams. He lands on his ankle at an odd angle, since he had been trying to take weight off of the rock in his shoe.

Kose whirls to look at Yarold's core. "What was that?" she exclaims.

"I added a pit trap," he explains. "It's a good way to break the adventurers up so that the skeleton doesn't have to deal with them all at once."

"It is certainly ... effective," Kose agrees. "It's usually a good idea to keep your dungeon fairy informed of the hazards present in your dungeon so that they can help point out synergies or flaws," she continues in a lightly reprimanding tone. "Is there anything in there, like spikes?"

The hole is not terribly big, so Timrat can easily reach the lip, which he grabs onto to try and pull himself out.

He's doing well until the wall-slime which Yarold left in the wall of the pit just under the trapdoor hits him in the face with its stone hat.

"Kakestrit!" he curses, one hand going reflexively to his nose, leaving him hanging from his other hand.

"Not really. I left a slime in there," Yarold replies. "He took out one of them pretty easily, though, so I don't think it will really bother him."

The wall-slime pulls itself back into its crevice before Timrat can make a grab for it.

"Are you okay in there, lad?" Tanth asks, stepping up to the edge of the hole and peeking in at him. Tanth is still careful to keep an eye on the Skeleton. It seems to be trying to land a hit on Pona, but its aim isn't very good and it's not willing to close to closer range.

"It hit my nose!" Timrat responds. "Uh, I mean there's another monster in the wall there," he continues, pointing.

Tanth eyes the location.

"I don't like this," he mutters to himself. "Pona, you hang on there for a minute while I get Timrat out of this hole and then we can regroup."

Yarold frowns internally as the skeleton's shot goes wide again. It seems as though it's erring too far to the left (towards the center of the corridor) for some reason. He's not sure why. He feels as though he's going to have to do a lot more experimentation to produce skeleton's with decent aim.

"Aim at the gentleman instead," he tells it.

Tanth crouches and tries to lever the wall-slime out of the wall with his shortsword. It pops out a moment later, and falls down onto Timrat, who crushes it against the wall before it can recover.

The skeleton hits him in the head. Tanth is slightly rattled, but his helmet takes the brunt of it. He grabs Timrat's arm, grunts, and stands, helping Timrat haul himself out.

Tanth and Timrat jump over the pit. Tanth deflects another bullet with his bracer, and they join Pona behind the cover of one of the tunnel supports.

"This is surprisingly sophisticated," he warns them. "The dungeon already has traps and ambush monsters, so we should be on our guard for any other tricks. I'm going to rush the skeleton. Timrat, you back me up. Pona, you watch our backs for any additional surprises."

After receiving a pair of nods, Tanth steps out from behind the pillar and charges the skeleton, which backpedals toward Yarold's core room. It hits him in the jaw with another stone.

Kose throws herself out of the doorway where she had been watching as the skeleton comes backwards into the room.

"I realize I didn't mention this, so it's totally on me, but it's generally a bad idea to let the fight get into your core room," she advises him, ducking behind his pillar. "Because fights can be messy, and you usually want to keep that away from your core."

"That makes sense," he replies. "But it's not like I have a lot of territory for the skeleton to retreat through, and it's very much a ranged monster."

Behind the adventurers, the wall-slimes have sensed an opportunity. About a third of them pop out of the wall, forming a five-slime-strong hopping phalanx to pursue the adventurers.

Tanth proves the point by shoulder checking the skeleton, and then following up with a sword-swipe to behead it. The skeleton disintegrates, spilling the rest of its bullets and letting the sling flutter to the ground.

He straightens up as Timrat follows him through the door.

Kose stands from her defensive crouch and absentmindedly brushes the leaves of her dress flat.

"Greetings, brave Adventurers," she starts to say, before being cut off by a cry from Pona.

"Guys? There's more slimes, and they have hats," she calls. One of her daggers lies behind them where it fell after skittering harmlessly off of the hat of the lead slime. She readies the other to throw, but the slimes' short stature makes trying to hit them below the hat more difficult than it looks.

"There's more?" Kose exclaims, before schooling her face. "I mean, uh, I'm afraid your challenge is not quite complete."

Tanth shoots her a dirty look before wheeling and running back out the door. He comes back alongside Pona, and aims a low swing at the leading slime.