Drip-Fed Pt. 06

This was the second outgrowth from the main, broad path of wood that extended out of the giant tree dungeon, that Apexus was munching on. The bark was the real problem, since the mandibles were meant to eat the somewhat softer core-wood of the three and thus had little problems once past. Little problems meaning that it still took way too long to tear into the wood, there was a reason why Archwood Maggots were staying inside one burrow for the majority of their lives.

Apexus had taken on quite a bit of mass already. If Reysha, herself a pretty tall humanoid, laid down next to him, she would havee been only about one head longer than him. Since he was also quite a bit broader, not to mention one massive ellipsis compared to the many segments the tiger girl's body was separated into, it was fair to say that Apexus had outgrown her by now.

If he would have copied her rough outline, with four limbs and those egg-shaped tops humanoids had, Apexus imagined he would have been taller than her by quite the margin. Well, depending on how broad or slim he made himself. It was just a thought experiment, he didn't find that shape particularly convincing in use. At least as long as he didn't have hands, feet and, most importantly, a bone structure. If he even wanted one of those.

Open questions, very open questions. For now, Apexus' personal next goal was a proper mouth. Not for talking, but to have a more reliable biting and ripping tool. On the topic of questions, Reysha had another one.

"So, wait, if you need to have things inside you, how did you eat the boss then?"

"You mean when he was dead or when alive?" Apexus asked, then stopped to ask Aclysia something. "Can I drop the second when in that sentence?"

Stopping in her somewhat paranoid watch of the surroundings, the metal fairy flew over, "Yes, that is not a required piece in the sentence to keep it understandable."

"For the record, I mean alive," Reysha kept them on topic. "When its dead and not squirming around, I get it. You can just search for a spot that is convenient and eat it from there..." She suddenly started giggling, "Like you did earlier."

What she was referring too was Apexus trying to eat a branch from the tip downwards. That was the logical idea, just wrap himself around some thin part and dissolve his way down. The last time he had tried something like that, it had worked perfectly. Last time, he had also been a lot lighter. Rather than the easy eating Apexus had hoped for, he indeed had the branch bend under his weight until he fell downwards like a massive drop of water.

Fortunately, he caught himself and flew back up before he could splatter on any surface. The slime could only imagine the amount of force behind an uncontrolled impact his current size would bring with it. After landing back on the safe wood, he had instead opted to cut the branch off piece by piece and digest those. Immensely more work, but way safer.

"Did not really... didn't really... I didn't really!" The wooden plate let out a frustrated groan after Apexus realized he needed three attempts to formulate a normal sentence start. Since he was a beast that grew through continuous efforts, rather than gaining sudden explosions of power, he had the patience to continue regardless, but sometimes it got annoying to be inept at new things. "I didn't really digest it, just managed to dissolve enough of the abrasive surface to make it too weak to sustain its own weight. Would be like making the bark smooth. Small meal, not helpful right now."

"Ah, okay," Reysha nodded and then looked at the remainder of her own remains of food.

"You always leave a mess," Apexus noted. "Can you not eat innards?"

"I guess I could search for the liver," Reysha noted, looking at the bird corpse behind her. The Woodsharper had decided to do its dirty work in the wrong corridor and was now, as Apexus has rightfully pointed out, a mess. Most of its feathers had been ripped out and muscle fibres all stripped of the bones, partly broken, leaving a bunch of organs scattered on the floor, still loosely connected and bloody. "But I am not going to fill my mouth with bile, stomach acid or literal shit... did you ever eat shit?"

"When I was a drop," Apexus told her, much to the tiger girls amusement as she began laughing. Loudly, in an immensely shrill tone that could probably be heard four branches over. Which was why Aclysia was quick flying up to her and held the redheads mouth close as best she could. The slime was still talking without caring about this, "First thing I ever ate was a small insect that survived off... well, wasn't exactly shit, was matter settling on the floor of a small pond in a state of decay. Pretty sure there was defecation amongst it, though. Tasted awful, I went on to hunt and eat moss instead."

"Right, I can ask you this now," Aclysia flew over and settled on her usual spot on his back. Although her eyes still were on the look-out for any sudden adventurer attacks, "Can you actually tell me where you are from? The description you gave me and Gizmo was rather short and lacklustre." To be fair to the slime, it had been one of his first extended writing assignments ever.

Reysha, biting her lower lip in an effort to keep down her laughter, a gesture that looked purely accidentally sexy, nodded. "Might help you... hihihi," she started talking, only to immediately giggle insanely, "Whew... sorry, bad at controlling myself. Might help you get better at talking, is what I wanted to say."

"Well..." Apexus started, "I cannot tell you much. There was a flash and then I just was. I came into consciousness and needed to eat. Then I knew how to copy. Then I ate different things. I grew, I ate bigger things." The slime took a moment off his work to point at a drop of rainwater that was hanging from a nearby leaf, "Was even smaller than that."

Aclysia hummed, this sounded entirely different from being created by a god. When she had been created, she had actively felt her soul forming and slowly growing stronger, a body being added later at the behest of her creator. "Does this match up with the usual mortal experience?" she asked Reysha. Not that she was actually that uneducated about the basic mortal reproductive cycle, it was just better to ask.

"Oh hells to the no," the blue-in-grey-eyed woman waved off. "We need like 14 to 18 years to grow up and basically nobody remembers being a baby... even if many people still are giant babies... speaking of that, how old are you anyway? Sheer curiosity."

The crunching of wood underlined Apexus's words, he had finally made it through the bark. Now he had to carefully take hold of that segment of the branch and separate it entirely. Aclysia had the decency to help him, flying underneath it and holding it up. If it fell away, it was just lost. "Impossible to say accurately. There was no sun in the cave. I know I spent like half a year with Gizmo... at least that...and time has passed since. Maybe two years now?"

"We should give you a birthday sometime," Aclysia decided, then let out a stressed sound as she felt the weight of the wood genuinely on her arms. She wasn't a divine creation designed for physical labour, a small one to boot and the wood was, as Apexus had said, dense, which made it heavy in turn. It only took Apexus a moment to take proper hold of it and pull it inside him, however.

"If you want to," the slime had no concept whether this birthday thing was any use or not. What was it going to get him, delicious food present with an awesome hunt? The wood dissolved inside him with an earthy, rich sweetness with a heavy aromatic undertone. "Seem to have gotten all I can out of this," he let the duo know, Reysha kicking the Woodsharper corpse off the branch with an ecstatic shout.

"Finally, movement!" she threw her arms into the air.

They waited until night fell over the land before making their attempt. Regardless of how many hunters interested in taking over Aclysia's quest would be after the group, it was best if people had no confirmation on whether they were still in the dungeon or not. As someone who had followed tracks and stalked prey before, both Apexus and Reysha were unified in their natural understanding that leaving fewer tracks was a good thing.

So, a week after entering the dungeon, they the tiger girl sat down on the large slime. "At least you aren't too tall," she noted, the curved back of the blob only reached up to her hips. That didn't make her position less awkward, she had to spread her legs to an uncomfortable degree in order to sit on the broad back. She wiggled her ass on the wood for a bit. "I expected this to be harder."

"It's not the bosses proper armour and even then, it's just...tree skin... bark!" Apexus voice vibrated out of the carapace. Although still part of his exterior, the Roller's exoskeleton was not quite the same as this organ Apexus had acquired. "Won't make for good protection forever. Works for talking, will have to downsize and replace at some point... why are you moaning?"

This was not meant as a complaint, the slime rather enjoyed the feeling of the tiger girl grinding against him. Even if the plates between them made his perception rather dull. The sweet sounds of pleasure coerced his ears undiluted, so he noticed that first. "Fuck, I already thought your voice was sexy," she groaned and stopped moving, "but these plate are like... buzzing like a bee against my pussy and that feels awesome."

Apexus couldn't quite understand how a bee buzzing on her sexual organ was supposed to sound anything but annoying. "Let's talk about that in safety," he decided, coercing one more moan from her as the high frequency went out. Then he spread his wings.

He usually kept them downsized while indoors, even if they were at their maximum size, when folded their sheer length went by largely unseen anyway. Now that he was about to fly again,neither of these conditions were true. Carrying something of the slimes size and mass was an almost inconceivable task. Although they had been originally taken from an eagle, the muscle strength behind Apexus' wings was more comparable to a dragon, a small dragon, but still something that didn't enjoy the perk of hollow bones. Despite that, his total wingspan still went up to four metres. A grown man could have laid down easily on just one wing.

That size made it somewhat difficult to spread them out, given all the branches in the way, but Apexus barely managed and then began the slow process of approaching the edge. The slime was like a kid jumping from stone to stone along a river and coming across one that seemed just close enough to make it but also far enough to land in the waters or, worse, only reach the edge of the stone with his metaphorical shins.

Still, this was the only way down, so Apexus fastened Reysha's position by wrapping tentacles around her legs. In response, the tiger girl pressed herself flatly onto his body. She was extra weight and would mess with his balance, but in this way she was as little an obstruction as was possible.

Aclysia looked downwards. They were several hundred metres above the ground. The field below them was empty, brown earth, the Guild building was on the opposite side of the massive trunk. "I hope that this will not end in a catastrophe," the metal fairy stated.

Rather than give an answer, Apexus decided to take the fall. The nearby branches whispered, the beating of the chimeric creature's wings whirling up a small current. One, two times the emerald feathers cut through the air, then, at the third time, it carried him and the redhead atop him forwards.

Everything seemed to work perfectly. Although Apexus didn't quite dare to flap around anymore, their goal was to reach the ground and, in that, gliding was perfectly acceptable. With outstretched wings, their altitude decreased ever so slowly. It was smooth and boring descent. Then the world had to throw a wrench into their plans.

A gust of wind suddenly caught them. The middle of the air wasn't known to have great cover and although it wasn't anything close to a storm, it was enough to throw Apexus of balance. Their smooth glide became a tilted, accelerating dive. Having last flown with a way smaller body and without meaningful luggage, the slime overcompensated and then did it again into the other direction.

His body turned, rolled like a barrel and Reysha let out a panicked laughter, the sound of a maniac fully aware that everything between her and a sudden death were half-liquid tentacles around her legs and her fingers desperately clawing under wooden plates.

They were falling like stones now, gravity steadily increasing its grip on them. Aclysia was helpless and doomed to watch, too slow to catch up and unable to do anything meaningful even if she did. It was the height of their starting point that saved them, giving Apexus enough time to, despite the body loosely holding onto him, turn back on the right side.

He beat his wings in an effort to slow their movement, no longer straight down, but still more steep than he would have liked. A crash landing was basically inevitable at that point, the question was just how bad it would be. The sea of dark green under them, canopies lit only by faint moonlight, rushed by. There had to be something that could make this whole thing less threatening.

Then he saw it, a body of water between the trees. He had no idea how deep it was, but even a muddy lakebed would have made for a better impact site than the forest floor. With desperate flapping, he attempted to get the rest of the distant crossed. The tips of tall trees scratched his soft underside, closely followed by the tips of normal trees, then all trees. Immense pain seared itself into Apexus' consciousness as one of the last trees he had to fly across shaved the entire membrane off his lower body, sending a fair portion of his liquid innards flying down onto the forest floor as a harmless rain.

Then the world suddenly became dark and wet, the remaining momentum forcing Apexus deep under the surface. His body restored the membrane as quick as it could, but yet more of his slime was lost upon impact and mixed with the water of the, thankfully deep, lake. The massive hole in his slimy hide only healed from the rim inwards. Although that was a quick process and reduced the leaking area by the second, that still made the slime feel himself become smaller by the second.

It was, however, lucky that he had taken the brunt of the impact. His slime was much easier restored than Reysha's bones were unbroken. Inside the water, their movement quickly came to a halt and the tiger girl detached herself from Apexus to swim to the surface. The slime himself had to fold his wings and settle on the floor of the lake, crawling his way to the shore. Since he didn't have to breathe, this was only annoying with how long it took.

By the time he crawled out of the water, Aclysia had caught up to them and Reysha was squeezing water out of her hair. "Whew, that was fun," the tiger girl grinned earnestly.

"You almost died!" Aclysia half-shouted, the worry clear in her voice.

"But we didn't, so that was fun," Reysha grinned from ear to ear.

Realizing that this was not worth a discussion, the metal fairy turned to the slime. "Are you alright, awakener?"

"Membrane is healed now," Apexus answered quickly. "Will need to eat to regain mass, but I am not... having... sustaining further loss. I suggest we go look for a hide first... also I want to procreate."

"Well, lady luck may be smiling on us," Reysha pointed at something in the distance. Turning to see, Apexus quickly spied what she meant. At the edge of the lake stood a natural formation of rocks that provided shelter from the elements and eyes. Three large boulders, one of them slanted and stuck between the other two, with a depression in the ground that was marked by a circle of stones.

It had every mark of a frequented resting spot, currently it was empty, however. "Not a place to stay long, but for one night it will do," Apexus agreed when they arrived there. "Do we have procreation now?"

"First, I want to be warm," Reysha exclaimed, shivering as she was still soaked in cold water and even summer nights weren't quite warm enough to offset that. Within a matter of minutes, she had gathered some dry wood from the nearby forest, Aclysia lighting it on fire with a bolt of her magic. Stripping out of her lightly damaged, skin-tight suit, and using it as her seat, the tiger girl held her hands close the fire.

Upon that sight, Apexus could no longer withhold the transformation, his remaining, and still quite impressive, mass turning into a bunch of tentacles. Despite feeling the burning desire, he still waited for Reysha and he couldn't fuck Aclysia anyway until she decided to morph herself.

"By the by, why do you keep saying procreate?" Reysha suddenly asked.

"Because that's what we are doing?" the slime wasn't quite sure what that question was supposed to mean.

The tiger girl sneered, "Yeah, okay, like you could knock me up... you are a slime, my dude." Monsters couldn't breed with humans. Monstrous humanoids, yes, and some monsters were perfectly able to fuck (more commonly referred to as rape in those situations) adventurers, but that's where that stopped.

"I can," the slime insisted.

"Yeah... sure..." Reysha's dismissiveness slowly crumbled, as she realized that she wasn't talking to any old slime here. Normalcy may not apply.

"No, I mean it, I can," Apexus stated and then tilted his body to express his confusion more understandably. "That's the purpose of sex, isn't it? Procreation, I want to procreate, like all other living beings. My instincts say I can only do it with humanoids. Other lifeforms are too weak."

There was a moment of silence around the campfire. "...What the fuck, Apexus?!" Reysha suddenly grabbed a knife and dangerously wiggled it in his direction. "I was doing this for FUN and because I was HORNY, I am not looking for some half-liquid cat to crawl out of me!"

"Oh," Apexus blinked in a honestly surprised fashion. "I was... under the... impression... no, too weak a word... conviction that the pleasure was a nice side effect."

"No, no, no, no, NO, NO, just NO, okay," the redhead growled, her claws extended. "I am twenty, I am not looking to be a mother yet and I certainly don't want to be pregnant while running away."

"We could solve that when we come to it," Apexus stated, still wondering about the prospect of her not wanting to breed. He had seen life in two categories so far, being 'things done to keep living' and 'things done to have offspring'. Well, with his recent decision to do what he felt was right rather than what was safe, those were compromised anyway. "Are you sure you don't want to procreate?"

Reysha rammed the knife into the ground close to where one of his tentacles was currently hovering. "Is that clear enough?" she asked in a sharp tone.

Carefully, he slithered that tentacle elsewhere. Getting those cut wouldn't hurt, it would just make him wish he was able to put himself into a coma to escape the torment. "Very clear," he stated in a tone of respect.

"If I am pregnant already, I will murder you," the tiger girl stated with absolute clarity. "I will pull your nucleus out through your gouged-out eyeballs. Okay?!"

"Rather you not," Apexus felt his horniness quickly quiet down as this whole thing took a very different turn than he had thought.

"If you would let me, I could see whether you are pregnant or not," Aclysia informed the worked-up cat, her bushed-up tail stopping in its movements.

"You can do that?" Reysha asked.

"It is a relatively time-intensive spellwork, but yes, us healer classes have means to tell whether or not somebody is carrying a life within them," Aclysia informed her.