Drip-Fed Pt. 06

"You'll find that they are stupid everywhere," the tiger girl cackled.

"That aside," Aclysia chimed back in. "This seems like a proper plan to me. Once my quest is completed, they will lose their reason to hunt you. At least, the biggest one, they will doubtlessly be the few who want to kill you just because you are just another monster in their eyes, if not a worse than usual one."

"What worse than usual monster doesn't kill?" Apexus asked. Not that he was asking for a reward or anything, but he felt like people would give him at least some credit for not being a murderer.

With a full mouth, Reysha reprimanded, "Don't expect them to think that logically. Knowing Mehily, she'll delude herself into thinking you are the problem with the stick in her ass or something." The barely chewed meat slowly ran down her throat when she gulped. "Just another reason why the world wouldn't have missed her."

"The excesses of the worst people do not justify the fall of the best," Aclysia held against that.

"Please," Apexus pleaded with a single word when he saw the conflict looming again in the opened mouths of both women. Snapping shout, they chose to leave their disagreement where it was. They had made up, but the fundamental divide did and would always remain. Even people that were friends could disagree quite heavily.

With that avoided, it was time for Apexus to fill up on his body mass and then it was high time they headed out.

Getting ready to leave took a while. While they didn't have a whole lot of things that needed packing, nothing to be perfectly realistic, they still aimed to obscure the fact that they had been here by obfuscating the more obvious signs that it hadn't been a normal adventurer party that had been here recently. Mostly, that included the depressions Apexus' resting body caused in the ground, alongside the small footprints from Aclysia, alongside the little marks she left in the soft dirt when her wings started beating at their blurring speed.

The remains of the bunny were left behind, since the fresh ash of the campfire already gave away the somebody had rested there, putting remainders of food should cause at least some confusion. Slimes, even if they didn't have sapience, weren't known to leave any food wasted. Unless somebody had the mystical gift for accurately guessing how much ash should have been left behind by the fire and that it didn't line up with the average of sticks that should have laid around the area, eaten by Apexus, they had their bases covered in that regard.

Granted, a masterful tracker may still have been able to gather enough from even their obscured footprints, but doing much more would have made it clear that they were obscuring things and that raised red flags with everyone.

Next on the list of making tracking as hard as possible was for Reysha to move on by herself while Apexus and Aclysia took to the sky. The possibility of being seen from the distance was worth avoiding the massive drag-marks that Apexus normal slugging around caused. The alternative was to use the pointy legs of the Archwood Walker and that was only slightly more subtle. Compared to that, flying was really stealthy. No tracks and even if he was spotted, catching up to him and finding where exactly they had landed was pretty hard. Reysha had her own Rogue tricks to avoid leaving too many footprints.

Ultimately, the only hard thing would be to get together again by the end of the day. Apexus wanted to avoid leaving pheromone trails, since that was just a giant 'COME FIND ME!' request pasted all over the landscape. They would manage though, Aclysia could make some signal lights or something if they missed each other in the darkness.

Their next goal was just a couple of days away. According to Aclysia's senses, there were two more parts of her. Given how much she had grown the last time, this sounded about accurate to Apexus. Although that didn't have to mean anything, since her god could dictate that she should just be twenty metres tall whenever he so desired, for all the slime knew.

Aside from covering their tracks, the journey ran smoothly. So far, no hunters to be seen, although Apexus was under no illusions how quickly that could change. Once they had been located, it would be very hard to shake off whoever was searching them. If humans were even half as adept at circling strategies as ants were, they would be as trapped as an animal once encapsulated in his slime.

That image aside, they did arrive at their destination with utter confusion. It was a completely smooth hole in the forest, no trees, just grass and flowers with black and white petals. The typical triumvirate of colours when engaging with things relating to Hashahin. Following their sway in the soft, warm breezes of a beautiful summer day was quite nice. Indeed, it invited them to lay down and just enjoy the eternal summer.

If this location hadn't been so far from anything else important, it would probably have been quite the renowned relaxation spot. Apexus liked soaking in the heat, it got his slime properly warmed up and kept his reflexes quick. Generally, he felt more awake like this.

All of that was nice. Not what the trio was there for, however.

Logically, one would expect the new source of Aclysia's metal to be found in the middle of this area. However, all there was was a patch of grass. Not even a remarkable patch of grass. There were flowers there like everywhere else.

"I am highly confused, my creator," Aclysia uttered after half an hour spend traversing this, admittedly large, hole in the forest. They had paced the rim, looked for secret messages in how the flowers were arranged from the sky and looked at a whole bunch of greenery. She landed on the floor, Apexus feeling her tiny feet cause the smallest impact through his tremor sense. "What are we to do here?"

"Maybe we are at the wrong place?" Reysha suggested, walking her way over. It was a desperate suggestion, one with the expected answer.

"No, I definitely feel it nearby... if we were to leave, I would just feel the urge to turn around again," Aclysia stated and fell on her back. "I don't get this. What kind of riddle did my creator want to present us? He is normally quite forward with his challenges."

Apexus hummed, brooding over this himself. "Maybe we have to unlock them in the right order?"

"I would expect to have knowledge of that," the metal fairy rolled onto her side and, unaware of her own movements, hugged tightly onto her awakener's side. For the first time, she was feeling frustration towards her divine father. It made her pout quite a bit, closeness to her loved one helped soothe that feeling. "I can not dismiss the possibility, however."

As their thinking continued, Reysha eventually changed the topic. "By the way, where did you two meet?" the tiger girl was curious. "You were always that legend that everyone was looking for, so I really have to wonder how Apexus was the person who unlocked you after all that time."

"I found an odd thing near the peak of the mountain," Apexus explained, pointing at the incredibly small peak in the far-off distance. "It sucked mana from me, I gave it, Aclysia was formed... then I tried to eat her."

"I always thought it was a handshake... but that makes more sense in hindsight," the metal fairy mumbled, quickly drowned out by Reysha falling to the floor laughing.

"SERIOUSLY?! You were just existing out in the open and everybody missed you?!"

"I suspect nobody wanted to take the gamble with the mana absorbing metal," Aclysia presented her theory. "My location wouldn't have helped either. Although it was a depression, it was still easily overlooked from a distance. Although I admit that it is odd that it took people 64 years to find it. Sometimes, luck just works out that way... and I am happy for it."

"Do that again," Apexus suddenly stated.

Aclysia smiled and hugged him a little tighter, "I can tell you I that I am happy to have met you as often as you want to hear it, Apexus."

"I..." the slime felt like he could really easily say the wrong thing here. "I would be happy to hear it numerous more times... but I meant Reysha falling to the ground."

"What, why?" the tiger girl found that odd.

"Want to confirm... I want to confirm something," the slime urged the redhead. "Could you please?"

Reysha jumped back to her feet and smirked, "Shit, I am down, might blow away the greyness." As her mood indicated, it wasn't as they hoped and her state had not reached the same low as before. Although she still had much duller senses then usual and periods where she just looked through the landscape with glassy, unmotivated eyes. "Here I GO!"

With way too much motivation and a hysteric cry, the tiger girl body-slammed the ground. All of the usual senses ignored, Apexus only concentrated on the one he was born with. The tremors of her movement travelled through the ground, normally they would simply be lost, but something about the way the ground underneath them shook felt... wrong.

"We need to dig," the slime told his girls, "there is a cave underneath us."

None of them had proper digging equipment, so Apexus' request turned out to be slightly difficult. The best they had was the slime growing a bunch cat paws and then using them to rip at the dirt while balancing on the Archwood Walker legs. It looked a bit goofy (or nightmarish to people not used to the chimeric slime's sight) but it did the trick.

Bigger limbs would have been better, but there were only deer and the Forester Dragons that qualified for that around. One had the drawback of being hooves and lanky, while the other were strictly too big. In other words, the cat paws remained the best option.

"Can't you grow just front paws?" Reysha asked, watching her slimefriend dig deeper. Although strong, the back legs of a cat were not the greatest for the quick motions used for this endeavour. The slime lowered himself into the earth bit by bit.

Still, as the dirt flew away from under it, it had ample time to answer. "No, some Growths come in sets."

"But why though?" Reysha wondered.

"Why can't you live off eating treebark?" Apexus asked in return. "Is just nature's way, some things are as they are. Arms and legs in four-legged creatures come together. Skeletons always... are always one growth, external or internal. Teeth don't count into that though."

"And why's THAT again?!" the tiger girl grew just more confused. Hooking her index fingers into each corner of her mouth she pulled her brown lips far open, revealing her maw. "Thish," she spoke rather sloppily as the expected result, "ish clearly bone."

The slime would have shook his face, if he hadn't been preoccupied. "Incorrect," he stated. "Teeth aren't the same material as bone. They are something like hair... also bone-y"

"What the fuck are you on about?" Reysha laughed out loud, cleaning her fingers on some blades of grass. "Hair? Seriously? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a while."

"It's true nonetheless," Apexus insisted and then felt his paws scratch over something. Getting off his digging position, he checked what it was. Curious, the girls joined him.

Under a layer of healthy, brown dirt peeked out something black. It appeared to be stone, with a surface too smooth and too wide for being just a regular boulder underneath the ground. Additionally, as Apexus found out by carefully probing that thing, "It is hollow."

"Alrighty," Reysha laid down on the steep decline of this hole, holding down onto the edge as best she could, and then brought her heel down on the stone. It cracked, hard but brittle. A second kick, the lines caused jagged shards to protrude out of the smooth surface. The third time, she broke through, sounds like clam shells shattering echoing from within this cavity when the shards hit the floor.

"Interesting," Aclysia noted, flying down to the hole. Underneath, it was pitch black, all they could see was some sort of pillar illuminated by the sunlight that peeked through. "I shall scout ahead," the metal fairy offered, ready to squeeze herself through. Only for Apexus to step in and block the hole with one of the thin Walker legs.

"No," the slime stated in the tone of absolute conviction.

Aclysia blinked at her awakener. "I can easily fly out again while shining through the dark with light spells, Apexus."

"No." This time Apexus put extra emphasis on making it clear that he wasn't having a discussion about this. Her scouting ahead in dungeons where she knew the enemies and that she could get away was one thing. Sending her in first into something that she, the declared guide, didn't know existed wasn't happening. Not on the watch of a slime in love. "I'm not risking losing you again."

Even if she wanted to continue arguing, Aclysia felt that it was futile. Reysha weighing in on Apexus' side didn't help. "Info would be pretty good, but I am also against sending our healer in first," the tiger girl made a sound point. The topic was thusly decided.

Instead, they went on to widen the hole. It was a bit easier now, Apexus and Aclysia were holding onto Reysha as she kicked away the rim of the porcelain-esque material. More shards and earth fell down into a pile, one the trio eventually landed on. For Aclysia, the descent was no problem at all, Reysha had a bit of a rough landing, the drop was around three metres, but nothing a tiger girl Rogue wasn't equipped to handle. Indeed, it was Apexus who came down last and somewhat awkwardly. The hole was nowhere big enough to fly, so he had to take advantage of his semi-liquidity, stretching a Growthless part in front of him and then, when most of his weight was extended that way, dropping down.

A 'Splat' sound accompanied the sight of all of Apexus' organs squishing together in a tight clump, from ears to nucleus. It was a deeply uncomfortable but thankfully short moment, then everything began to flow back to where they belonged. As they would have gotten in the way, Apexus was now without additional Growths, except for the Walker legs.

Near absolute darkness kept a grip on the chamber around them. The noon sun was casting an equal cone of light around them. That got quickly lost between the pillars, odd-looking things, like connected drip-stone that had been smoothed down. How big this area was, none of them knew, a likely idea would have been the size of the flowered area above.

Magic gathered between Aclysia's hands in an orb of golden flames that had an odd flow to them, as if the tongues were fluid rather than flickering heat. She threw the orb into a random direction and it travelled forwards, illuminating some sort of odd bump curving between two pillars. A smooth curve about as tall as Apexus or at the hips of Reysha. The light went as quickly as it had come when it hit a pillar and dispersed.

"Well, seems like we're alone down here," Reysha smirked, keeping a grip on her stiletto and her posture ready to move despite her own words.

"Do not relax until we get confirmation," Aclysia warned. Moments later, she repeated the spell, throwing it past Apexus into the darkness right of herself. It didn't make it past far beyond the cone of light. Rather, it collided with a massive, elongated head. Eyeless, covered in smooth black scales and sitting on a body that was entirely one long lean muscle, coiled around some sort of sphere.

Although it was just a flash, Apexus got a perfect view of the rows of teeth of the creature. The front set looked sharp, with oddly serrated edges, and the neighbouring canines were clearly curved to secure prey in position, while the back were as broad as the teeth of a herbivore. Ideal to rend flesh from bone and crush the latter once there was nothing more to gnaw off. As the slime quickly learned, trying to move away, just as great at ripping through wooden plating and slime.

The toothed, giant serpent had already been about to strike. The last second warning had barely allowed Apexus to get a foot off the ground before the jaws snapped closed around him. With one simple bite, the slime was robbed of a wing, its speech plating torn apart and experienced the pain of having a sharp tooth scratch over the surface of its nucleus, barely missing it. The frontal teeth cut, destroying the structural integrity of his plated back, then broader teeth at the back moved on to splinter and crush.

In return, the guardian snake had to suffer a mouthful of acid. Although it failed at protecting Apexus, the wooden plating still kept the snake from just penetrating straight through. Even better, at least from a raw damage perspective, the boss monster had a harder time pulling back.

Apexus physique made him the absolute nightmare of strike predators such as this. Although he lost a massive amount of slime in the process, the holes in his membrane filled the snake's mouth with more acid as it pulled away. Immensely sharp teeth were reduced to stubs before the removal from the slime's body caused the searing liquid to neutralize, becoming nothing but water as the magic inside petered out.

"Motherfucker!" Reysha was anything but amused about somebody striking at the slime this way. Before the snake could pull back into the darkness, she rammed her stiletto through the scales. The weapon was made for penetrating armour, oddly perfect for this fight. It vanished halfway down into the meat, then got stuck in the thick skull of the creature, before being wrestled from the tiger girl's hand by the snake jerking backwards.

It vanished once more into the darkness, occasionally hissing angrily. "Awakener!" Aclysia's worried voice reached Apexus as he dissolved his legs, two of them were broken and he didn't have the energy to spare to worry about them while having so many punctures in his membrane. A puddle of water began to form underneath him. "Stay still!" the metal fairy began her soothing healing spell.

"Krrkrkktt...rrktt," Apexus wanted to say something to the effect of 'Thank you', but those cracking sounds were all the broken plates produced. The healing spell that washed over him quickly aided the recovery of his membrane, keeping further slime loss from occurring. His bit-off wing was laying on the floor to his side.

"Motherfucker!" Reysha growled for a second time, desperately trying to spy the snake in the darkness. Her eyes were as little able to perceive the monster as Apexus' tremor sense. Despite its enormous size, it was moving with scary efficiency. "What's the plan?"

"Is... trkrarge... can... btrkeed" Apexus managed to get out as the continued healing stitched back together the plates. It was really a horrible idea to use it as both plating and the only means of communication. "I muskrkr... gekrkr krkrail."

"You must get what?" Reysha asked nervously jumping from spot to spot.

Aclysia recognized the pattern in the mistake quick enough to provide the answer. "Tail, Apexus wants to get the tail!"

"...Okay, sure, whatever!" the tiger girl didn't care for the part where they explained to her the why, this was definitely not the time. Toothless as the serpent may have been now, but it still had a strong jaw big enough to swallow her whole if she didn't watch out. Once Apexus was in decent shape, healing the entire wing was far down the line of priority in this cave there, the trio separated. Aclysia and Reysha kept together, searching for the head of the beast to distract it. "OY YOU BIG BLIND ASSHOLE!" Reysha screamed, the area around her illuminated by Aclysia keep a sphere of sunlight hovering between her hands.

It worked like a charm, the head of the snake emerged from the darkness. A direct charge was nowhere near as quick as the strike earlier, not having the force of a curled up body suddenly bolting forwards, but still strong enough to break and swallow an entire human. The opened maw seared through the air and snapped closed. Rather than ripping flesh, the remaining stubs of teeth broke off when the snake bit into a pillar of stone.