Drip-Fed Pt. 08

The hundred-fold staccato chased Apexus as he kept as much of a distance between them as he could. His earlier estimate about the creature being slower had proven true, albeit it wasn't quite as easy as that. While Apexus was doubtlessly quicker on his feet, the demon's speed was consistent no matter where they passed. As the chimeric slime had found out in the last few minutes of being chased and almost getting caught, while heading through a part too shallow to properly utilize his legs.

"SPARK-EATER!" if the vibrations and tiny, individual steps hadn't tipped Apexus off he was still being chased, the ceaseless screams certainly did. Apexus wanted to understand what had caused this shift in behaviour, this particular phrase to be hurled at him over and over. However, making up a plan to win this seemed like a priority.

Apexus wasn't just running away to escape those sickles, although that was certainly a good reason to keep up the distance. In the first place, he had chosen flight over fight because he figured that the injuries the demon had already sustained would soon take their toll. However, there were no signs of the abomination minding any of the black, crusted patches or it slowing down because of them. Occasionally they would crack open, causing a bit of black liquid to trickle, evaporate and instantly seal the wound again.

The higher up they got, the quicker the wounds seemed to close. Something that Apexus noted along the ever withdrawing amount of moss around them.

While Skinwalker had no high regeneration capabilities, it was tremendously good at the initial sealing of its wounds. Stamina loss was prevented to the largest part. As such, Apexus initial strategy of just waiting until the bleeding caused the Skinwalker to die of exhaustion, was out. Now, the slime was trying to think of an alternative strategy.

'Could try to lure it out...' the slime thought, but immediately dismissed that strategy. Not only did he not know what he could achieve outside better than in here, Gizmo had made it sound like this demon was bound to these caves. While that opened the option of fleeing, Apexus didn't want to take that either. While the wounds weren't as useful as Apexus had hoped, they were still better than fighting this thing when it was uninjured. Apexus was pressed for time already anyway.

As such, Apexus turned away from the way that would have brought him back up towards the entrance and instead into some depths that weren't part of the demon's lair. Soon, stone made way to glowing moss again. The softness causing both of them to become a tad slower.

There had to be something else down here, something that Apexus could utilize if he was smart about it. Where there was moss, there was humidity, there had to be water. Where there was water, there were lakes.

All he had to do was find it.

A search that sent him through yet another shallow passage. Slipping in as quickly as he could, he used as much of his distance as he could to avoid the sickle claws. The screams, however, were right behind him as he rushed through stone above and moss below.

"SPARK-EATER! SPARK-EATER! SPARK-EATER!" The Skinwalker immediately flattened down and practically flowed into the gap in the stone like a living puddle. Apexus would have doubled his efforts to claw through, if he had any more speed to give. Hands tore out moss in a panicked fashion that didn't allow for the earlier guilty conscience about wasting food. The sickles were already ripping at his soles, slicing down to the bone, threatening to engulf even more of him.

Then he grabbed some sort corner in the darkness before him. Pulling into the extension of the cave, Apexus fell down a drop and then rolled uncontrollably. A sharp slope, disorienting him completely, was exactly the thing he needed. Even though it wasn't pleasant, this created distance once again. Distance that the Skinwalker didn't regain, naturally choosing to remain in control of its own movements, as it spilled out of the crack in a controlled and secured fashion.

Apexus came to a halt on the soft moss and hurriedly oriented himself. In the soft glow of the pale plants, he saw it. A lake. A pretty big lake, especially considering how far underground it was. It seemed sufficiently deep, and the humid air condensed on the ceiling, allowing stalagmites to form.

Apexus felt nostalgic at the sight, was it so close to his birthplace, although undoubtedly a different chamber. He didn't have the time to revel in this though, as the Impreh-class demon was immediately on his tail. "SPARK-EATER!" it bellowed with utmost contempt as it charged once more as quick as its physique allowed.

Backing off into the shore of the lake, moss hastily making room for the water, Apexus let the Skinwalker approach. The abomination only saw the target it had to destroy before it could grow to become an even greater threat. Towering up high it attempted to slice at Apexus. The slime dodged to the side. The demon stretched its body in a slamming downwards motion, lead by the pitch-black centre of its sewn-together body.

An attack that Apexus met with literally open arms. Embracing the screeching monstrosity, the chimeric slime held against the attack. His head and chest vibrated under the impact, but the core surface of the Skinwalker had none of the sickle-legs. Which made this anything but a secure position, as there was still a myriad of them digging into his waist and upper legs. Also, they weren't standing still, the demon immediately tried to free himself.

Locked into a raw power struggle, one for which both creatures were poorly equipped too handle, Apexus dropped all tension in his body and simply let his mass drop towards the lake. The large monsters disturbed a serenity that had been untouched for years, as they slammed into the surface, causing every last creature inside the lake, from the smallest insect to the biggest axolotl, to scramble from their resting position and go somewhere this source of turmoil wasn't.

Apexus dragged the two of them along the shallow water, into the deeper parts of the lake. His legs became unusable for this soon, all slime was scrapped of the bones by the endless scratching of the sickles. By then, they were deep enough that Apexus could utilize his wings for a single beat, propelling them yet deeper.

Water fully surrounded them, hot, heavy, and the flat body of the Skinwalker was not prepared to deal with a liquid environment. If he had been sprawled out, maybe he could have floated, but all clumped up and with Apexus attached to him, they instead stuck to the floor like a stone.

And the wounds that Apexus had observed sealing so quickly, they all opened again. The black vapour rising of the wounds as they quickly crusted over had tipped Apexus off that the demon's blood simply evaporated quickly once exposed to the air, leaving only the hard bits to seal the wound. That this effect had accelerated where there was less moisture in the air was the final piece that had told Apexus that proper, liquid water, would cause the crust to liquify again.

Not just that, but the demon was clearly not designed to exist under water. Even though the same could be said about Apexus' current shape, at least he had experience with this environment. Most importantly, however, water hindered quick movements.

Apexus once more began to flow around the black centre of the demon's body. On land, that move would have carried the risk of getting thrown off the thrashing abomination again mid-engulfment. Now, however, with their combined weight pressing them into the lakebed, that was no worry. Doubly so, since the Skinwalker was laying on his side, confused and crumpled together, instead in the flat state that allowed it to rise up quickly.

That didn't mean that Apexus was safe. In a desperate throw of motions, the demon tried to writhe its body around the slime. Its inexperience with water was what saved the digesting blob the most pain. The Skinwalker tried to move in a spread-out way, to cover as much in one move as possible. That worked through air, but in water it created an enormous amount of resistance against itself. It only accelerated the process of getting tired out from blood loss.

It screamed still in the water, gargled sounds, coming from airless lungs. Empty eye sockets flared with red light. Even as Apexus engulfed the smooth black skull, the creature continued to scream. The words were gone, but the intent shifted, from anger to panic. Endless panic. Right up until the demon died.

Apexus felt different after consuming the demon.

Not better or worse. At least not in the sense of any mood. He was feeling more powerful, definitely. Faster, more acute, as if his slime itself had received an upgrade. This was a general trend from every thing he ate, but this time it just felt so much more pronounced. A noticeable jump in his basic power, what laid underneath all the Growths.

To which he now got to add a new one. Gizmo had been right, not that there was any doubt after seeing the monstrosity. Eating it, Apexus had understood quite a bit about the demon and its rather absurd lifecycle. There had been next to no internal organs to it, only a blood producing lump within the pitch-black main body, few sensory systems and a number of magical cortexes scattered throughout the body, usually one per skin segment.

Apexus didn't need blood, especially not that odd stuff. For the sensory systems, he failed to make them work properly. They were based on magic, that much was clear, and the chimeric slime continued to be incompetent in that field. While he definitely wanted to change that at some point, now definitely wasn't the time for experiments. Same reason he didn't want that magical cortex, which he formed but failed to use in any way.

Choosing them as a Permanent Growth would have likely alleviated that problem, but not completely and there was no guarantee. This was, again, not the time for experiments and he didn't want to get used to rather odd muscle structures.

On the outside, its skin was fascinating. It extended beyond the pitch-black exterior of the central body that Apexus had seen. The skin could grow on continuously, but, like Apexus' slime, stopped working if too far removed from the creature's head. That was, unless it had some sort of magical conductor. A magical conductor it attached to itself by the virtue of its skin being able to thin itself until blood poured through. Blood that turned into some sort of cohesive glue and centipede legs, in these, the right circumstances.

Apexus realized that the Skinwalker had flailed and worn all of those skins as a way to protect the vulnerable parts of itself. It was like a hermit crab in that sense. Except, rather than an extension of a hard shell, the demon needed flexible skin that could also work with magic to some degree, since the demon's existence was seeped with it. Every piece of human skin added to its collective allowed the Skinwalker to get bigger, absorb more magic from the surroundings, and served as an extension of its central sensory system.

The slime was still opposed to the killing of anything sapient, so the demon's particular prey he found disgusting, but overall it was a fascinating creature. Especially since it so clearly shouldn't have been alive. It didn't eat, it didn't breathe, it didn't drink, it just existed off the magic in the air and grew by flaying skin off careless humans.

Without a single human yet devoured, it would have been an armless torso on a fleshy, lightly bleeding lump of flesh, walking on the few centipede legs it could sustain. It would have been barely able to sense anything. On its own, the Skinwalker was short-sighted, could only hear the loudest noises, had a dull sense of touch and Apexus wasn't even quite sure if it could pick up scents.

In other words, Apexus couldn't see how these things managed to start-off on their own. The slime knew fairly little about Warlocks and how happy many of them were to feed a few humans to their demonic companions in exchange for power and loyalty.

All of that aside, Apexus knew instantaneously which part of the demon he wanted permanently. The skin wasn't just good for him, it was a natural addition to Apexus's own physique. It was malleable, which was always good when getting added to a largely liquid being. That it could thin itself out exactly like his membrane was also simply perfect.

Testing it a bit, it was actually quicker than his membrane in the whole opening and closing department. It was also more durable, despite being thinner, although Apexus still managed to puncture through it with a particularly sharp rock. As a side benefit, it ended the slime's translucency.

Apexus wasn't sure yet how important that was. Just on the face of it, having enemies not see what he possessed of internal organs and where they were located was already pretty great. If there was much usage beyond that, however, eluded him.

The choice was easily made just with knowing those things. Having picked the Skinwalker's hide as his Permanent Growth for this victory, however, something unexpected happened. The skin didn't just layer on top of Apexus' membrane, it replaced it entirely. Things that became a lasting part of his body usually were modified in some fashion, this time it also modified his baseline.

'Body must have noticed the superior option,' Apexus analysed as he got used to that new feeling. Only to feel himself thicken up, particularly around the limbs, as the densed down membrane dissolved into normal slime again. 'Nooooo...' he whined internally, not looking forwards to looking for a solution to being too big again. However, it soon turned out to be no problem whatsoever. For two reasons.

One, Apexus found out, relatively quickly, that he could actually fuel slime into the new skin as well, slightly increasing its stability. And stability was the proper term there, because it didn't really become harder or thicker. It just became harder to break through, while remaining just as flexible and thin. It was a longshot from something like the armours that guards were wearing, but it sure beat regular human skin.

Secondly, and that was even more interesting, like his bones, this new skin allowed control of his slime to be extended. This didn't boost Apexus' morphing ability itself in any tremendous way, neither in scope nor speed. What it did do, however, was that it allowed him to hold these shifts in shape for long times without developing a slime-ache over it, as he had before.

It was a Growth that was almost tailored to the slime's needs. It boosted all of his current capabilities and functioned as a wonderful base for the future. He could feed excess mass into the skin, so the problem of growing uncontrollably was solved, for now. If there was a maximum to this, Apexus hadn't found it yet. The limiting factor was that the increase in stability, just as the shift back, cost time and energy. It wasn't something he could do quickly; it was also impossible to focus on chosen areas. It all increased in sturdiness equally.

As for the looks of it, Apexus hadn't changed much. He was the same azure blue colour, he just wasn't translucent anymore. His surface was largely smooth, except for the little bumps and depressions that came from the pheromone ducts. Whether that made him more or less nightmarish to the average person was, indeed, a matter between them fainting at his sight or just soiling themselves. After all, he was still an over two-metres long amalgam of different animals.

In summary, this skin was perfect for Apexus. More things could be layered on top of it or put underneath and it would be able to take new shapes as needed for them. Aside from those benefits in the future, there was one for now as well. The mass of normal slime that made up the limbs, so closely around a bone and surrounded by skin, was under pretty much perfect control now.

While it still didn't reach the level of musculature, it came pretty close now. Apexus trotted out of the cave with smooth motions. He left behind a lake that would soon calm itself again and a huge spot of bare ground. All of those experimentations had cost a lot of moss to be fuelled.

Reysha's teeth reverberated with an odd pleasantness as she dragged them over the bones. Scraping off whatever remains of meat were on the carcass of the monster she had slain not much earlier. She tossed the stripped bone aside and went to devour the remains of the oversized rat. Her teeth sank directly into the bloody guts, using her hands to secure the body in place as she ripped bite for bite out of it.

The dungeon she was in right now was popular with adventurers almost strong enough to leave this world behind and begin their proper journeys with their starting abilities fleshed out. North-east of the church, it was much less controlled by the Adventurer's Guild. For the simple reason that it possessed more than once entrance.

Caveborder, that was the uncreative name the dungeon had. Accessed through one of numerous holes in the ground and landscape in general, it was a system of artistically decorated chambers, connected via normal cave tunnels, that stretched along the rim of the leaf. The chambers stretched out in every direction, especially downwards, however.

If she had been of a better mindset, Reysha may have appreciated the view. Instead, she was using the invisible wall, that prevented her from dropping into the endless abyss of black and silver below, as something to press her prey against to rip off a particular strenuous piece of flesh.

Although the dungeon was quite popular, its difficult to monitor entrances and anthill-esque internal structure made it the perfect hideout for Reysha during her wait for the Day of the First Ascension. That she could see sunrise and fall from within those chambers as well was just as important, as she otherwise could have lost track of time.

And time was the only thing she counted like a proper human anymore.

Without someone to hold her back or talk to, Reysha had given into her bestial desires for the past few days. There was no reason to be held back by such things as efficiency or decency. Her prey was hunted for as long as it continued to amuse her. Luckily for everyone involved, she still possessed enough common sense to avoid other people. A murder case in the dungeon could have brought unwarranted attention, when she was so close to her goal.

'Just stay low, Reysha, just stay low,' she silently repeated to herself as she licked her lips, running with blood. She was still wearing the standardized, brown leather uniform of the city guard that she had stolen. Although it was not quite apparent, having been doused in blood and scrubbed as clean as was possible with bare hands numerous times.

She had no weapons, the short sword had been unsalvageable following her outburst in the cave and the little knife she in addition soon broke. Not to any of her care, her claws and fangs were as reliable as ever. Additionally to that, Apotho had supplied her with a number of concoctions. Health potions, for the most part, with their typical red colour. More importantly, however, an array of oddly tinted potions, green, yellow, purple, primarily, with other colours swirling inside, that the warlock had explained to her in quick detail.

All of them there to boost her success rate in what she was going to do in just a few days. Just like he had supplied those potions and the bag to transport them in, Apotho had also told her where to lie in wait and what to do. In essence, it was quite easy: keep Noir satisfied until the day of the First Ascension came. Then, while everyone in the damned Church was out praying to gods that wouldn't listen anyway, she would get in there and find whatever she was supposed to find.