Drip-Fed Pt. 06

He stretched his body into a very steep curve, increasing the gaps between the plates until they became visible. Part of the water begun running out. A couple of testing sounds, not words just notes, informed the slime that he hadn't cleaned his vocal plate thoroughly enough. As a next measure, he pulled together like a worm on the move. This put pressure on the middle plates, pressing yet more water out of them. After repeating both motions a couple of times, the slime finally had dried the wood enough that he sounded close to the deep tone he wanted to address them with.

"I hungry... I AM hungry. Don't need healing. Don't think sleep was particularly... good," he answered the questions in order, fluttering with his right wing as feeling returned to it through something like a thousand thorns pricking into the limb under the feathers. Not in a particularly painful way, just deeply bothersome. It quickly became better though, so the slime soon folded both wings into their proper positions, rather than the odd angles they must have laid in during his slumber. "Eyes burning... feel... tired? Unused to it. Want to sleep more. Also don't. Saw bad images."

"You were moving around a lot," Reysha observed, kneeling down and poking Aclysia until she backed off Apexus at least enough for the slime to see the tiger girl. Since she moved with the usual smoothness, the slime guessed that she had been healed. The fact that neither of them were glaring claws at the other was also a positive sign. "What did you dream?"

"That was dr... a dream?" Apexus spoke while correcting himself. Since he already sucked at math, he didn't also want to be bad at speaking. He didn't want Aclysia to laugh at him again. Much rather, he hoped that she would one day be impressed with his wordiness. 'Elo-kensh... eloquence!' Apexus found that one bigger word. "Saw you two and teaching old man, were all ridiculing me. Then you left me to be eaten by walking steel-man. Dream was awful... Awful dreams nightm... ARE nightmares, correct?"

"Yes," Aclysia gently caressed the base of his ear. That was a nice place to be touched on, sensitive in a pleasant way, different from the sexual stuff. "I will never leave you, awakener, do not worry. The nightmare is over now."

Not too long ago, Apexus had been convinced the only thing that could separate him from Gizmo was the old man's death. That had turned out to be wrong. Despite that, the slime decided to believe those words. What he felt for the fairy was vastly stronger than the bond of studentship it had possessed with the leech in man's skin.

"Yeah, while we are on the prospect of me also not leaving," Reysha raised herself into their awareness. "We need to get a couple of things done. First, me and Apexus got to eat. Then, we got to fuck. THEN we got to get out of this thing without using the entrance, somehow."

"I think it would be wiser if we switched step 2 and 3 in order," Aclysia offered a correction.

"And I think I need to get my holes ravaged so badly I might start masturbating to an attractive looking piece of wood," Reysha put against that. "Seriously, I have been in need since I first ate something. The whole fighting kept me from even masturbating. If another thing gets in my way, my pussy is going to drown in its own juices. Hell, I can take off this suit and show y-"

She was already moving her hands when Apexus extended a tentacle. As always, during sleep all of his temporary Growths had disappeared, otherwise he would have raised a leg. Currently, he felt too famished to grow a new one. "No, not necessary," he stopped her. "I in agreement wi- I AM in agreement with Aclysia. Don't want scary people finding us. Not during procreation, especially. Want to have procreation in safety."

"Urgh fine... can I still strip?" Reysha asked.

"Wouldn't be able to concentrate if you did," Apexus told her. The tiger girl's hand moved and revealed the naked skin of her shoulders. Two dark brown stripes spanned over her muscles, a few shades darker than the rest of her.

Aclysia flew up to her and poked the tiger girl's nose, "He said no."

"Yeah, that's why I'm teasing him," Reysha stuck out her tongue but then, with a giggle, pulled her suit back into position. The fact that this bit of shoulder was enough to get Apexus dangerously close to changing into tentacle-state was evidence that he too really wanted to get laid. Still, not the place for it. "Anyway, we're agreeing on the food then, right? Because I'm going to load my guts before the dullness sets in again."

"Want to ask just one other... thing," Apexus presented a small interference. "Did we get rewards? Something useful?" Although Apexus didn't have the capabilities to wield any equipment yet, he had respect for it after seeing it in action. The dagger was more dangerous than any claw the slime had come across and clothes had deflected various blows. Eventually, the sapient blob wanted to try his limbs on those things as well. "From anything. Never asked what rewards before boss were."

"Well, we got four items in total," Reysha answered and went to rummage inside her bag, pulling out one item after another. "Guess Hashahin isn't that generous here because just about everyone goes into this dungeon, but nobody goes to Clearwater. Anyway, as I said, these two are useless. To us, at least," she showed Apexus the two items the chests before the boss had spewed out. One was a giant mace that would be hard to wield even with two arms and the other was a little feather. "This would sell for a lot, Scribe items are pretty rare and sought after," Reysha stated, pointing at the latter, "but we're wanted now, so whatever."

"If useless, can I try eating it?" Apexus asked. The feather was black and reflected the moonlight with an intense shimmering that didn't seem natural.

"For all I care," Reysha extended her hand towards Apexus, who enveloped her down to the fingertips. In this, he was careful not to digest her a little bit. A successful attempt at holding back, her fingers came away unscathed even as the feather was pulled inside. The slime had become pretty adept at this. "For your info, you're heavy as shit... and also not acidic while you are unconscious."

"...Are there... are there excrements as big and heavy as me?" Apexus asked while trying to eat the feather. Nothing happened to the item. It simply existed inside him and radiated a magic aura, somewhat like Aclysia but way weaker. That reminded the slime to try and perceive Aclysia purely on the basis of her magic. Only the part of her that was touching him, her butt and legs, he could actually feel.

Those were the specific parts he could feel because she had found her resting place on his back again. He had even shrunk down one of the plates just to feel her directly, rather than just be faintly aware that there was something sitting on him. The natural armour had a massive disadvantage, if he couldn't feel those firm thighs and soft ass of hers.

"...Are you seriously not aware of metaphors?" Reysha asked.

"...Ooooh!" Apexus made a long sound. "It was a metaphor! I do get it now! I am sorry, never understood all of speech in all of its windings."

Aclysia chuckled and gently touched his nearby feathers. "That's alright, you will learn, my awakener," he could hear the smile in her voice, "I love your voice, I would love to teach you to use it more eloquently... I mean, give you more wordin-"

"I know that word!" Apexus was quick to assure her. "Know most words, just hard to remember them. You and Gizmo were talking in lots of terms. I... am very observant!"

Reysha snapped her fingers numerous times to interrupt them. "You two get to flirt when I get to have sex!" she declared. "Anyway, other two items, give me a second."

She pulled two pieces of dark wood from her inventory. One was extremely long, smooth and reinforced with metal at the caps. Some sort of fighting staff. The second was much shorter, barely longer than Reysha's hand, and seemed more like an unworked branch. Twigs grew out of the upper end and formed some sort of cage.

"This thing is at least somewhat useful," the tiger girl stated, holding it in her right. After a few moments, the inside of the cage began to glow, the brightness increasing steadily. "Low-tier magical torch. As long as someone with magical power holds it, it emits light. With our line-up, not all that necessary." She put everything back into the velvet bag on her hips, even the feather, as Apexus found he couldn't eat it.

"Alright... now we hunt," Apexus declared.

"Having legs's nice," Apexus announced as he stretched the four thin stalks. Although he was a bit bigger, those things carried him reliably. They were surprisingly strong. If he hadn't needed to yell at his two companions, then he would probably would have considered growing those instead.

"You wouldn't use a contraction there," Aclysia informed.

The slime thought for a second. "Having legs is nice?" he repeated what he thought to be the corrected version. As he was given a nod for that, he tried to remember this rule. "Language is weird. Will get better."

"We'll..." Reysha stopped to slurp down some thin piece of meat, the insides of the same legs Apexus now had. It was sucked into her mouth, aided by its own fatty exterior, in a continuous stream until it vanished completely. "We'll see about that. How do I look?" The answer was obviously bloody, a unavoidably side-appearance of ripping out monster guts all the time. What she meant, though, were her eyes.

"Darker, but not black," Apexus answered. "Somewhere in the middle. Not really getting any black anymore. Might be similar to me and growing? Can't grow if I only eat the same stuff."

Aclysia hummed, "Alternatively, it might be that your level is simply too high now. Noir is, as I understood it, magic poisoning that the body somehow reacts to by mutating rapidly. Well, this is just a theory, I can't claim to know more than the fellow who wrote the book you initially got the information from."

"Okay, lemme just mash these two theories together: the poison is too weak and I have partly immunized against it so my condition isn't getting 'worse'," Reysha summarized in a bored tone, licking the remaining blood of her claws while Apexus got over and devoured the rest of the carcass she had been working on. "And since its not getting worse, my body doesn't need to adapt further."

"Something to that extent, yes," Aclysia agreed.

Apexus turned his ears. "Clacking steps," he warned, regulating his voice in volume to be as quiet as a whisper. "There is a steel man coming." The group quickly fled into a dark niche. In this case, a side room that had not a single piece of illuminating sap inside it. Having been through this area before, the trio was aware of several such areas. This wasn't the first group they had to avoid after all.

Reysha held her stiletto at the ready. Deadly blow or not, if they were discovered it could prove fatal whether they got the first attack or not. "Guys, I really don't think we should be in here!" they heard a whining, barely male voice. It was high-pitched and definitely annoying.

The tip of the stiletto quivered as Reysha giggled. "That's what you sounded like," her words were barely more than a breathe, a Rogue spell called Aimed Whisper preventing it from bouncing back from the walls. Instead, it travelled only directly into Apexus' ears. Despite its limited range, it was rather useful for secretive communication.

"Did you hear that?" Well, that was the theory. Since Reysha now had to discover all spells of her weight class on her lonesome, having only learned descriptions of their function to work with, flawed attempts were to be expected. "I definitely heard something."

"Yeah, you heard something the last fifteen times as well," a second voice grumbled, judging by the rough tone, probably the Warrior of the group. "Now, let's move along... hm?"

"Now that's unusual," a third, melodic and clearly female tone spoke. "There is blood here."

"By the darkest roots, what of that is unusual? We are -- in -- a -- dungeon!"

"There is no corpse, you woodbrain," the female chuckled, followed by a sound of wood, presumably a staff, dinging on metal, a helmet. It sounded pretty hollow. "Also there is blood EVERYWHERE. Just seems unusual."

"M-m-m-maybe it's that r-r-r-r-rare monster the Guild warned us about?!" the whiny first voice stuttered, Apexus could practically hear his kneecaps repeatedly clacking against one another.

'That's all the info they have?' Apexus wondered. 'Expected more, honestly.'

Suddenly the Warrior shouted, as if in massive pain, and the whiny one let out a high-pitched scream. There was the sound of a person falling down and hearty laughter from the two others. "Relax, will you," the (alleged) Warrior said in a good mood. "See, no rare monster around. Even if there was, we could probably kill it. We are a pretty good group, us three."

"Y-yeah," despite being ridiculed the whiny one seemed relieved. Two hands met, somebody got back on their feet. "Okay... okay, I will try to be calm."

"Some paranoia is healthy," the woman mused. "I do wonder what happened here, but it probably won't affect us.... Speaking of paranoia, do we want to explore that room?" There was only one room around and it was dark.

The hiding trio tensed up. "Nah," they relaxed again. "I am not going into rooms without light in this place. One extra item isn't worth the injuries."

"Agreed," the melodic female answered and soon the steps went from moving to distant. Once they almost couldn't hear them anymore, Reysha and Apexus nodded and left their hiding place.

"Need to train that some more," the tiger girl said, rubbing her throat. "They say base skills are easy, but you still gotta practice them a teeny weeny itty bitty bit." Base skills were basically what made the starting classes the starting classes. What separated one class from another in practical terms was the way their spells worked. Rogue's were all about manipulating the effectiveness of their movements, whether that more quietly sneaking or stabbing particularly effectively.

All of that utilized the same mindset and typically utilized the same techniques for mana manipulation. Rogue's affected their joints to be more flexible and find mean tricks, Warriors strengthened their bones to be sturdier and Brawlers their muscles to pack more of a punch with their melee attacks. That was a rough generalization, but it painted a generally true picture. The spells and skills hadn't come about because the classes existed, the classes existed because spells and skills fit into certain applications.

The base skills somebody specialized in or showed talents for pretty quickly brought them on their path. Although Reysha was a gifted individual, that didn't mean she was just able to learn all of them immediately. If base skills were so easy that just anyone could learn them quickly, every living humanoid would at least be a starting level adventurer. Even within a class, it was highly unusual to have an individual who mastered all base skills. Most of them took the creed of 'build tall, not wide' to heart and dabbled only in what worked.

"Anyway, I guess we're leaving then?" Reysha asked. "Because, as fun as this all-I-can-eat is, this tree is getting on my nerves." She showed a very dangerous smile and began stabbing the thorn-like weapon in her hand at the wooden walls. "I would loooove to burn this whole fucking thing down."

"Can't burn it," Apexus raised his voice. "I'll eat it... though? Is that a word I can use there?"

"Yes... and why would you eat it?" Aclysia wanted to know.

"Let's find a branch," the slime began walking on all fours, always careful to stay away from the spiked walls. "Easier to explain there." It didn't take them too long, maybe two hours. It would have gone faster were it not for the adventuring groups roaming around. At least they learned what was going on currently, apparently the Guild had issued a warning about a rare monster that could roam freely and was currently hiding in this dungeon.

It wasn't an unheard off thing, sometimes a monster was born from the dungeon without possessing the dungeon instinct. Since they were, for all intents and purposes, fully functioning animals, the monsters then vanished into the wild. As they were still rare enough to never find a mate out in the wild, such strays died out in one generation. If they weren't culled by somebody out for the bounty. Farmers didn't take kindly to giant lizards running around, biting their livestock. Neither did empires to drakes, burning down their citizenry. All a question of scale.

'At least that's what Gizmo said,' Apexus thought as a breeze rushed over his feathers. 'No idea what empire... an empire even is... many people, but how many?' There was a fine summer rain that fell down around the tree. They were mostly shielded by the branches above them, only an occasional gathering of water making it down in one large drop. In the distance, Apexus saw Haralry. "Is that an empire?" for everyone else, the question must have come out of the blue.

"No, that's just a city," Aclysia told him.

"Isn't a city a type of habitat and empire a type of government?" the slime wanted to know.

"Yes, but the two are intertwined," Aclysia answered. "More people mean more elaborate systems of governance are needed. An empire is made out of many kingdoms, kingdoms are made out of many duchies, duchies are mostly one large city with many lands. Although not always."

Apexus remembered that lecture, but the refresher helped. "Bigger animals need more complicated organs. Humanoids grow organs in their minds that keep order. Like that?"

"Largely accurate," Aclysia nodded.

"I see. Will ponder more about that later. Seems interesting and overcrowded..." Also entirely useless for him, since he didn't plan to engage with humanoids if he could avoid it. Their track record didn't speak out for him being safe around them. Nevertheless, something to riddle about when he was bored. "Plan... my plan," Apexus went for the actual topic. "Reysha can't get out through the main entrance, right?"

"Thanksh for pointing out the obvioush, again," Reysha rolled her eyes, peeling some remaining meat out between her teeth. Her light red claws looked like there was still blood stuck under them. "How is you eating the tree going to help."

"Highly magical tree," Apexus explained, "should make me much bigger. Hopefully, big enough so I can fly you down."

"Aaaaaaah," the tiger snapped her finger, "Gotcha. Works for me." The alternative was trying to sneak out the front gate, probably highly guarded right now, given the circumstances. It was either taking a potentially lethal dive with a chimeric slime or getting imprisoned and having to listen to Mehily and the rest of her sanctimonious lot. The former sounded way better. "Alright then, you sexy voiced batch of something, you start eating that and I will try to munch on something else before we leave!"

"Can you hurry it up?!" Reysha groaned, licking her hands clean of the third meal she had taken while Apexus was busy trying to gnaw on the dungeon structure. "You have been working on that branch for like four hours now."

"Is dense material," Apexus answered. "IT is dense material... Keep... I keep forgetting the first word in sentences."

The tiger girl yawned, to show just how little she cared about the slimes imperfect speech patterns. "Gimme an idea of what you're doing then, so I can share in your plight," she requested, a sudden curiosity coming over her.

"I need to get the exterior... the bark under my exterior... my membrane," Apexus had to stop twice in the sentence to find the correct terms. "I can't properly digest things just on my body. They need to be in." All the while he spoke, mandibles of the local creatures were working on a branch and slowly chipping away on the surface.