The Rivals

The Crassus team starts attacking the Valerian team, but then the fountains produce water elementals. Those run over lots of Roman soldiers, but also infuse the soil with elemental water which brings forth monsters! Ogres, four-armed tusked swordsmonsters, giant insects, etc.

Both teams and the remaining Romans fight the monsters. A cross scratched onto the fountains prevents further monsterism.

Once the fighting is over, the mysterious White General of the Crassians shows his face for a moment to Junius. Junius decides to trust him. The two parties agree to race through the mansion, grabbing all they can.

Rosa finds a huge chessboard with hundreds of figures representing powerful leaders and monsters. And for some reason, there are models of all of the dungeoneers except for Retarius. Rosa uses juice from the fruit of the tree of life to bring the model of a wizard partially to life. The wizard turns out to be Bowenn, who doesn't like that at all and destroys the model. This makes Bowenn die, but he gets better, because elf.

Junius finds a miraculous machine that makes whatever you ask for, but then stops working. He tricks the Crassians into going there, hoping to waste their time. They don't have an engineer, but they do discover that you have to put matter into one end of the machine, ask for what you want, and an equal weight of material will be given at the other end. So it cannot make gold out of nothing, but it can turn rocks into gold, carpeting into silver, art and goblets and loose wall boards into tasty pigeon pies, and so forth. His plan succeeds; the Crassians spend all their time at the machine. But they also get all sorts of stuff; the Black Mouser, their thief, is seen leaving with a pillowcase full of diamonds.

Rosa finds a nightmare, which tries to carry her to Hell, and a pegasus, which carries her off into the sky. She sees a huge fireball approaching from the Alps, with a seated man in it.

She warns everyone, and they withdraw with cartloads of loot. The Crassus team teleports to safety, presumably. The fireball blows up the mansion, all of it, and burns down the Tree of Life planted outside.

However, Rosa returns after the Man In The Fireball leaves, digs up the undamaged roots of the Tree of Life, and brings a cutting away with her.