Drip-Fed

A second bath later, as both of the girls had some body fluids of vastly different origins to clean off, they continued their way through the dungeon. “So, what is his name?” Reysha asked, following the once more spider-legged slime.

“Its name is Apexus,” Aclysia answered, flying at a point between the two of them. The chimeric slime, the fairy and the redheaded tiger girl walked through a dungeon. Surely, somebody would be able to spin a joke out of that line.

“It? Please, this guy is clearly a guy,” Reysha scoffed, stubbing Apexus’ behind with the tip of her boot. She had to make an overreaching step to accomplish that.

Apexus was somewhat inclined to agree, but it also wasn’t. Until it actually had intercourse for the first time, it didn’t feel like it was set in either gender. It was like part of its genetic code still hadn’t decided what should be written there, so it possessed inferior versions of both possibilities, waiting for the slime to take action and decide. It was just that the thought of stuffing parts of it inside others was a nicer thought than being stuffed.

Maybe that would have been different if it had seen suitable males before females, but Apexus felt pretty set on what gender it wanted to breed with at this point.

“The awakener would have to specify itself. As a unique existence without any physical marks of either sex, only Apexus can tell us what it is,” Aclysia took the careful approach.

“I am going to say he,” Reysha didn’t care whatsoever and they went deeper into the dungeon. Now in a party, the tiger girl’s wish to leave was lessened tremendously. There was a yearning for sunlight, for sure, but her main concern had been safety and that was cleared now. “Because those tentacles surely wanted to be all up inside me.”

“Yes…” Aclysia cleared her throat, feeling a bit awkward about the conversation and the recent memories it invoked. “As you please, Reysha.”

Apexus now felt its lack of a mouth more than ever before, failing to be part of this conversation. Between Gizmo and Aclysia, there had only been few words and they had been focused around topics the slime had very little care for.

Now, however, it desperately wanted to be part of the talking. Not because what was said was that interesting, but because it was happening between two girls Apexus was really interested in. The only way it could get that was a humanoid mouth and the only way to get one of those was to eat a humanoid. None of the ones the slime had met so far, it wanted or had the opportunity to kill and devour.

Maybe time would present it with a solution, for now things were as they were. Rather than keep brooding about it, Apexus skittered up the walls and engaged in a short scuffle with an oversized spider, ending in the predictable demise of the thing. Apexus preferred digesting carapaces to hair, but the legs of these things were just the worst of both worlds. Therefore, it just ate the delicious, if small, body and bum of the spider.

The legs fell to the floor as the connecting segment was melted away. Reysha stretched out one of her hands and one of the dismembered limbs fell into it. She grabbed the upper edge of it with both hands and then used her teeth to pry open the biological armour, revealing the soft flesh underneath.

Reysha ripped into the sweet spider meat with immediacy. Compared to the rats earlier it was a delicacy, like lobster was to pigs. The better question was why she was hungry again. She had eaten not too long ago and a lot as well. Still, she shoved more and more of the creature’s meat into her mouth as if she had been famished for days, eating all eight of the fallen legs with glee. By the end, her hands were sticky with the spider’s hemolymph, the lifeblood of arthropods. She licked her hands until they were clean again, same for her lips.

Neither Apexus nor Aclysia had anything about the display they found odd, one of them was a glutton itself and the other a being of metallic structure that knew not how much was normal for a humanoid to eat. She just possessed general knowledge of the world at large and detailed about the affairs of the divine, for everything else she had to learn just as much as the next physical being.

They continued on their way through the structure. In the labyrinthian outline of the Clearwater Dungeon, it was hard to feel like they made any progress towards their goal. Everything continued to look the same no matter where they went. Simple stone walls, smooth enough to be of intelligent design, stretched around them in the shape of arcs and glowing crystals in the ceiling gave light and warmth.

Only the pheromone trail Apexus left behind was a steady mark of their progress. The fact that they just had to walk back their cold trail to get a guaranteed, if unnecessarily winding, path back to the entrance area, was a perfect security net.

As to the question of where they were going to, Apexus was under the impression that it had devoured just about everything that this dungeon had in variety. Adding to that that the slime had already found something it wanted to permanently acquire, being the Spirit Fox’s ears, and Apexus had decided that they were now heading for the boss. It had informed the other two of that decision by scribbling that word into the condensation covered walls of the health fountain chamber.

The tiger girl agreed because she was feeling her luck turning and really wanted to take revenge on the dungeon. While the structure itself was nothing she could do anything about, the boss was about as close a physical manifestation of it as she could reach. Aclysia on the other hand was halfway convinced that the next part of herself was located there. It made more sense than hiding it at some random point in the rather large structure.

Reysha noticed movement in the edge of her periphery when they went past a crossroad and immediately jumped on it. The large rat was still aiming its own pounce, so the swiftness of the tiger girl’s movement completely took it by surprise. Its life was snuffed out just as quickly, when Reysha rammed her fangs in the exposed neck.

‘I never thought these would be that useful,’ Reysha thought as she picked up the corpse. Having grown up in a civilized leaf, biting things to death was a thing she only had to learn recently. Similarly, her claws had only ever seen playful usage before she lost her daggers. She looked at the rat, she could have gone for a post-meal snack, but she didn’t want to be stained in blood again. “You want?” she asked Apexus, who nodded in its slimy way (more of a bob really) and consequently caught the rat in its spider fangs after the corpse was thrown its way.

The slime gobbled the rat up in a few minutes. It had eaten so many of these things, its body must have figured out how to dissolve them quicker. Either that or the continuous increase in size also helped the slime in acidity. It surely felt stronger all around, compared to when it had entered the dungeon. Its diameter had also increased noticeably, although that growth rate was slowly declining. Apexus wasn’t bothered by this, it didn’t want to end up like a Forester Dragon, too big to ever move about unnoticed.

Most encounters with enemies were laughable now that they had two proper fighters in the party. Being able to keep each other’s backs free from ambushes was incredibly valuable, as was the intimidation factor of being in their own group. There were still some cases were sneaking past was the better idea. One example was a room filled to the brim with spiders, who didn’t even try to hide, situated around a pedestal. On top of that stood a large chest of a brilliant red with rims of cold, a trapeze shaped lid inviting people to explore what lay below.

However, Apexus liked its life more than tools made for human hands, thusly useless for itself. Reysha grumbled a bit after they had rushed past that room and went elsewhere, but as she had lost her bag she wouldn’t have been able to carry whatever they found anyway. Chests, like monsters, just appeared within dungeons and missing one was considered somewhat of a shameful display in the adventurer community.

“I have been meaning to ask,” Aclysia struck up a new conversation as they had yet another food pause. “What is your level?”

With two gluttons, these breaks were pretty frequent. Apexus spent this one trying to figure out how to use the Spirit Fox tail. It was odd to have a Growth that was hovering on its mass, rather than being directly attached. Much like with the eagle’s lightning magic before, the slime was unable to figure out how to use the thing to make spellcraft happen. Didn’t help that it had murdered this specimen before even seeing what it was supposed to do. Soon after, it got rid of the Growth again, sensing that it was just too supernaturally illiterate to get this working.

Reysha cupped her breasts, “These you can C for yourself,” she answered. She laughed out loud when Aclysia made a confounded face. “Just messing around. Last estimate was about four,” the tiger girl answered earnestly. “But that was before I got stuck here, so I would say I made it to five now.”

“That sounds accurate,” Aclysia stated, having thought it to be around that herself. As Apexus looked at both of them questioningly after that exchange, the metal fairy went on to explaining what she had just asked about.

There were two ways adventurers got stronger over time. One was raw experience, continued engagements with life-threatening situations honed one’s skills. The other was a process referred to as levelling. Each monster killed, each dungeon beaten, each mystery solved, whatever an adventurer did, they would be exposed to magic and some of it would settle in their body over time. As such, adventurers slowly rose above the natural limitations of mere mortals.

There were tests to accurately gauge a person’s level and spread of abilities among stats, but those cost the actual time and effort of a skilled Analyst and were thus reserved for the ones who went up further the ladder than Reysha had yet. A Scribe could provide a basic level esitmation, but none of those were around either. “Lastly, it should be noted that those who get carried through challenges far above their current level usually get the bursting sickness,” Aclysia finished, her simple explanation having turned into an elaborate lecture at some point. “In that their mana vessels expand too fast by absorbing the powerful magic and are left permanently damaged.”

“We don’t get shortcuts,” Reysha grinned, “adventuring is a business of talent and dedication… and luck.” She added the last part with an unsteady laugh, aware of the twists of fate that allowed this conversation to happen.

They continued to fight and eat their way through the dungeon.