Chapter 2201: Chapter 2201 Spitting Poison

--- Kat ---

Kat clicked her tongue as a bunch of golems dropped from the ceiling. "BACK!" Kat yelled as she dashed into the fight. "They explode!" explained Kat as some of the guards started to move forward despite her warnings. Of course, this just seemed to make Vanilla more interesting. So after the first explosion, Kat reminded her "Suit!" and that was finally enough for the entire group to back off a bit.

Kat winced. She’d wanted to try and keep these golems contained somewhat but apparently that wasn’t in the cards. Kat had to step back a few paces to grab the ones that had tried to flee around her. Slamming the first into the second and catching one of the flying limbs to hurl at the third. The fight was over in seconds but the corridor was filled with flames. Still... Kat wanted to get everyone through. Now that she knew how hot it was for everyone else.

Kat took a deep breath amongst the fire, ignoring the heat the air carried, before breathing out a wall of demonic fire of her own. The group had been moving forward a bit... but Kat’s flame breath stopped them. Kat allowed a good chunk of her reserves, a full twenty percent to flow out into the corridor, freezing it over completely. "Alright it should be safe."

So of course the first thing Appoline did was walk over to one of the patches of frozen liquid and tap it with her foot. "How safe do you think it would be for me to take some as samples?"

"I have no idea," admitted Kat. "If you’re willing to let everyone past first I can gather a bit for you. Do you want me to leave it as ice? Or see if I can warm it up a bit?"

Appoline nodded, "Yes I can wait a few seconds... and... hmm... might want to warm it up. I worry that it will explode in my ingredient containers if I allow it to melt on its own. I didn’t bring any specialised ones that can keep out oxygen entirely..."

"That seems somewhat useful considering all the poison around. Why didn’t you bring any?" asked Kat.

"They’re expensive and I don’t have any at the moment," countered Appoline.

"Oh," intoned Kat as she winced, feeling like a bit of an ass. That WAS the obvious reason. Kat supposed Appoline had some extra equipment now that she was helping Steel, and she was pretty sure the spatial storage item was new... but clearly the guards weren’t willing to spend the extra for her to more safely store ingredients. Kat supposed that was fair? Probably?

Eventually the group had moved pass... even if Kat did have to shoo Vanilla further on. Kat didn’t know what that idiot had planned with her ice, but it was probably collecting some ’samples’ of her own for more dangerous study. Once Kat was sure it was clear she dug her fingers into the ice around one of the golem ’corpses’. A bit of chipping later, and Kat could even see where some of the liquid remained. Well, it was frozen but a distinctly different colour to the rest of her ice.

Now how do I want to heat this up? Kat decided water was probably the easiest way. It would also let her keep an eye on the process. Converting her arm into water she spent some extra demonic energy to up the volume and envelope the ice chunk. It was... not melting fast. In fact, Kat wasn’t even entirely sure this was melting at all... still, she could wait. "Let’s continue. This isn’t going to be fast and I can make sure that I warn you all if it’s going to do anything."

"Are you sure it’s safe?" someone asked from the group. Might have been Brook. Kat couldn’t really tell with the masks on.

"I mean, I’m fairly certain? It’s still explosive and highly flammable liquid that I’m carrying. If we run into more golems I’m going to have to throw it at one of them just in case something sets it off while I’m fighting but I’d say the risk is minimal to you all," explained Kat.

"What about for you then?" Kat was certain it was Brook. "Have you explode would be bad for us. You’re allegedly the best fighter here, and having you go down because your hand exploded would be bad."

"There was a reason I told everyone else to get back. The fire from these things doesn’t hurt me at all. It could explode right next to my face and I’d be fine. Heck, I could swallow it and be fine, or have it explode next to my eye. The only risk in the latter case would be if some ice shards got into it. Well, that or maybe the liquid itself is hard on the eyes?" Kat shook her head. "Anyway, my point is that it’s not going to hurt me, and I have regeneration in any case."

Nobody said anything else... but Kat could here Vanilla and Maryland giggling in the background, likely finding it amusing that the flames could hurt me at all. Still, it was time to get moving again. Kat would end up being lucky, able to make it all the way to the dormitory without further attacks from golems. Kat wasn’t sure what that meant, especially when the other golem remains were still littering the floor in places they’d passed.

Lily was waiting at the door to the dorms, keeping an ear out for anyone that might’ve snuck in earlier. Their didn’t seem to be, but you could never be too careful. Technically it would’ve been better to wait for Kat to get down into the secret basement... but Lily had waited long enough not simply charging down the corridor. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

As they stepped into the dorms, Lily dropped from the ceiling onto Kat’s head, careful to avoid Kat’s horns in the process. Kat simply reached up and started to scratch her girlfriend’s face. Everyone else was less calm about it, with several guards readying weapons before seeing Kat’s lack of reaction. "This is Lily by the way, don’t worry about her," said Kat as she continued towards the trapdoor...

Except, "Isn’t this where we’re meant to set up?" asked Lan.

"No," countered Scar "We’re meant to hole up in the basement."

"But we were told to secure the dormitories weren’t we?" repeated Lan. "This is the dormitory."

"We were told that we could make ADDITIONAL fortifications in the dormitory," Scar said firmly.

"Actually, wasn’t it meant to be that we could decide if we wanted to reinforce the dorms or just the basement? This seems like a decent enough chokepoint..." suggested Carl. It was easy to tell which suit held Carl considering his height. His voice was also fairly distinct.

"I’m not sure I want to sign up for more work," grumbled Lan. "I just thought we were meant to reinforce things here. If not, I’m happy to skip it."

"That’s a poor attitude boy," countered Brook.

"It might not be extra work," offered Carl. "We can make larger runes and we don’t have to be quite so picky about the spacing. Plus, a layered defence might be for the best... though the mana here isn’t much denser. Hmmm... would we need to connect the wards?"

"Well, what about the filter wards?" asked Scar. "They won’t be too hard to extend, and even if we just want to massively reinforce everything downstairs, keeping this area as a place we can relax, or the guards can guard properly might be for the best. There is only one entrance correct?"

Kat shrugged. "As far as Lily and I know. I can see through illusions automatically so we didn’t find anything like that, but this is a secret crazy scientist facility. I’m not going to rule out hidden doorways. Those obviously aren’t illusions,"

The guards decided they weren’t really needed and started to fan out into the room to cover the corners. This did not affect the argument... or even stall it. Well Kat also wasn’t sure what the best thing to suggest was. Nobody seemed to be agreeing on anything. *Ok what do you recommend?*

[Get them to actually SEE the basement? No sense in arguing over which is the best place to fortify when they haven’t seen it.]

*Oh, wow I should’ve thought of that.* Kat slammed her hands together, cutting everyone off and getting their attention. Some looked pleased by this, others less so. "Hey, we should all go and LOOK at the basement first. Perhaps there’s something about the rocks there that would make it hell to reinforce, perhaps it would make it easier to fix things up here, or maybe the space will be an obvious issue at just a glance. We can look, and THEN make the argument."

Brook sighed, "Well I was looking forward to getting out of this suit at least but you’re right. Let’s go and see what the creepy basement has in store for us..."