Drip-Fed Pt. 10

The guide had warned them about the transformation and about the capabilities the boss now had. His emotional manipulation changed from an active measure to a passive, dreadful aura, steadily spreading from the light. It reinforced the uncertainty of the mist. The Laghast could have been stalking, walking, crawling or crouching for a charge, the group had nothing to go off except the occasional mocking gargle and the position of the light.

The latter was also treacherous.

What the boss had lost in active emotional measures, it had gained in minor illusion magic. In this environment, just the act of faking a sphere of light was a massive advantage.

Hyperaware of this, Apexus tensed all of his senses. His tremor sense combined with sight and hearing to create a more accurate layout of the room. At least he tried to get an accurate reading. The Laghast was moving with such utter care that Apexus couldn't feel it outside of tiny missteps. Eyes and ears were better relied on, in this situation. Eyes, ears, and the capabilities of his teammates.

The slime narrowed his eyes on the light, several metres removed. Staring directly at it was dreadfully hypnotic. Like a rabbit staring at a snake, he was drawn in by the danger. He growled at the feeling, a gesture Reysha echoed with a cat-liked hiss. As predators, they hated this feeling of being prey. A mocking gurgle responded to their dread.

A gurgle right in front of them.

The light in the distance suddenly switched off, just as the bleak-white skin of the abomination launched out of the dark mist. Two lanky arms snapped forwards, grabbed Apexus and Reysha and tossed them to the side with immense force. They were knocked to the ground, sliding over the slippery wet stone, while the boss monster assaulted the last member of their trio.

Several options rushed through Aclysia's mind, her brilliant mind trying to discern which was the perfect one and taking too long to decide. A simple panicked reaction was to protectively raise an arm in front of her chest. The Laghast took the outstanding target and bit down.

Needle sharp teeth penetrated the soft, flesh-like metal that made up the majority of the angel's physical form. Yanking its neck back, the Laghast forced Aclysia to extend her arm. The tentacled slithered out between the thin needles, grabbed the white-haired woman's arm and held it in place while the abomination changed the angle of its bite. Like a bizarre mixture between serpent, octopus and anglerfish, the Laghast unhinged its outer jaw and let the tentacles pull Aclysia's limb into its maw.

Aclysia whimpered and screamed in pain, a sensation she experienced so much less than her comrades, while she struggled to pull out. The boss was too strong, especially once its four elongated fingers wrapped around her narrow waist. Like tightly wrapped wires, they started squeezing, putting immense pressure one her bones, while the skin of her fist and arm was rapidly gnawed off by a secondary, internal set of teeth within the monster's throat. Every layer of 'flesh' removed made it more difficult to use magic with that limb.

When she was down to the shoulder inside the disgusting, fleshy depth of the creature, Aclysia managed to formulate a single thought. 'Bolt.' Heaving the tip of her staff against the monster's chest with one hand was difficult, but the metal fairy managed. Magic concentrated in the crystal tip and then came blasting out.

The heat dispersed on the thick skin of the creature, leaving a scorched mark on the blubber and a pissed Laghast. Its jaw unhinged further; the formerly humanoid shape now grotesquely stretched when it came to the head.

'Thinner,' Aclysia realized what she had to do in order to penetrate the opponent. 'Like a dagger.' Magic weaved together again, while sharp teeth borrowed into the underside of her shoulder and the top of her scalp. The monster wasn't trying to eat her, all food it needed was supplied by the dungeon, just to break her bones with the sheer force of its jaws. At least her skull was harder than her skin, buying her time. 'Concentrate...' she tried to blend out the pain, even as a steady whimper escaped her lips. All she could see was the writhing flesh inside the monster's maw.

When pain and dread became too much, the spell was unleashed.

Magic, condensed into a smaller point, blasted at the already wounded spot on the monster's chest. The blubber was penetrated by the concentrated Sunlight Bolt, scorching the muscles underneath. "Grhhrhrhhhrllll," the monster let out a gargling, pained protest, all of its muscles tensing and relaxing for a moment from the shock. Its neck snapped back and Aclysia finally saw the room again.

And a redhead's dagger descending.

She had needed to orient herself, but Aclysia's pained outcries had allowed her to know where to go fairly quickly. With the calm rage of a semi-insane tiger Rogue, she had snuck back to her original position. The Laghast didn't know he had to hurry until a knife was rammed into its left eye.

It was much harder than it seemed to be, feeling more like a mass of cartilage than an eyeball under Reysha's blade. "Piece of shit!" she growled, pulling back her blade for the next strike. A wave of revulsion hit her, as the Laghast defensively increased the light its lantern produced. Towards a more weak-willed adventurer, that would have had a paralyzing effect. Reysha, however, had gone through too much trauma to let something as simple as magically induced despair stop her. "GET OUT OF MY MIND!" she screamed and sliced off the lantern.

The boss let out a high-pitched scream and stumbled back, pulling Aclysia with it. The metal fairy felt parts of her spine shatter under the continuing squeeze. An organic person would long since have died from organ's tearing. It was her luck that she didn't die from those causes, but the continuous degradation of her form threatened to destabilize it enough that her divine soul would be evicted.

Before the boss could retreat into the dark mist, it was suddenly tackled by Apexus. Rage surging inside him at the sight of his beloved fairy's state. Her spine was crooked, her beautiful white hair disrupted by several dozen thin trenches, and from the boss' maw exuded the green mist her wounds dispersed.

Wordless, Apexus grabbed the monster's face, embraced his shoulder and bit his neck. It was far from a loving gesture, as the duality of sizzling and pain from the boss proved. The slime's body, heated to the point that he added additional steam to the mist, scorched the creature wherever he touched it. The blubber protected against the worst, but its eyes weren't shielded in the same way.

All the while, Apexus ripped chunks out of the monster's shoulder and swallowed them whole. That arm became useless in a matter of bites. On the other side, Reysha was frantically hacking away at the monster's jaw muscles. She had to dodge the Laghast's wild attempts at getting away in the meantime. Even covered in wounds, it still tried to retreat backwards. Its tail swung from side to side, but the vengeful duo ignored the whipping and kept on going.

The boss and the group knew that the adventurers had won. However, the Laghast could make that a hollow victory if it only managed to ruin the corporeal form of the angel. Granted, the Laghast thought of this as an act of simple murder. A slightly less despair inducing prospect for the group.

All the Laghast had to do was keep biting and squeezing, using its remaining hand.

"No, no, no, no," Reysha stammered, letting the panic fuel her movements. She needed no method to dissect an unknown organism, she just needed enough stabs that the jaw failed to work.

Done with the arm on his side, Apexus started to expand. By pure accident, he found the wound Aclysia had blasted into the monster's chest. Slime as hot as steaming water poured into the cavity. He couldn't start dissolving the Laghast, pulling something out of the body and under his membrane was too difficult to try in this position but it did hurt. Hurt enough that the Laghast's body trembled and that the sinews became loose for one moment. Loose enough for Reysha to cut it.

Noticing her success after three more stabs, Reysha backed off the ruined, slacked jaw and instead ruined the monster's arm with a few deliberate cuts with both of her weapons. Then she simply dropped both and wrapped her arms around the metal fairy. While the Laghast kept retreating, Reysha pulled at Aclysia.

"Fucking tentacles!" the tiger girl cursed over the disgusting sound of teeth scraping over metal. She knew nothing of the internal jaw and Aclysia was in too much pain to explain things to her. Capable of feeling torment with every part of her body, nervous system replaced by a magical sensing of body integrity, it didn't matter that the arm that slowly emerged from the disgusting maw of the Laghast was gnawed down to the bone. "Hang in there, Aclysia!"

The metal fairy did. She did more than that. Clenching her teeth, ignoring the tears of pain that rolled over her face, she raised her feet and kicked the Laghast's chest as strongly as she could. That she hit Apexus' slime in the process was of fairly little concern. The heat didn't bother her and all that mattered was that she got out.

Scratching over her raw, black bones, the two sets of teeth kept torturing her body and ears. The more she slid out, the more tendrils tried to grip her. The boss got a good grip on her towards the end, only for her absolutely ruined wrist to snap off. Reysha and Aclysia fell backwards, the boss swallowed the hand, and Apexus enveloped him fully. The Larghast tried to free himself, using his still functioning legs. In a limited way, it succeeded, one of the kicks breaking through the inside of Apexus' membrane. Getting out of the boiling, acidic slime was impossible, however.

"It's going to be fine... it's going to be fine..." Reysha mumbled repeatedly, both to Aclysia and to herself. While the metal fairy healed herself from the heavy damage, the tiger girl tried to not think too much about the memories the sight of the black bone evoked.

While it may have been far from clean, they had won.

The taste of victory had seldom been sweeter. After the Laghast stopped moving, Apexus got to finally turn down the superheating of his body. His appetite was considerable, following the fight, but he still left some of the best bits of the Laghast for Reysha to indulge in. At the same time, he cuddled the metal fairy that so thoroughly deserved it.

The degree to which Aclysia had been hurt had them worried for a while. Only after the healing magic started to work, the skin restoring from her torn shoulder downwards, did they start feeling comfortable. As for the room itself, the mist had dispersed and the crystals resumed their light production. The loot awaited them in five chests, four having been revealed inside hidden chambers on the inside for the pillars and the fifth, the bonus chest for going through the dungeon the first time, inside the altar. The stone had simply parted on top and revealed a wooden chest within.

That had to wait though, until they were finished cleaning up.

Layer after layer of deliciousness presented themselves to Apexus. The thick skin of the monster was essentially cooked fat drenched in the spice of magic. Underneath were surprisingly tender muscles that had a similar taste as clam. The internal organs were little to sing home about, but the bones had a specific flavour that the slime couldn't really share with Reysha.

The redhead devoured the boss with an unbridled appetite. Eating something that had given them so much trouble just felt right and knowing what would follow, she wanted to have all the energy she needed. Wanting less than usual, partly because the meal was so filling, partly because she wanted the slime to restore as much energy as he could, the tiger girl soon recused herself. "Imma go and freshen up," she purred. "Call me when we get to the lootin' and the lewdin'."

"Will do," Apexus promised and pulled a shard of Aclysia out of himself. Luckily, Aclysia was made out of indigestible materials, so the slime could dissolve everything around her parts. While it was not strictly necessary for the metal fairy to have the metal returned to her, it did speed up the regeneration process immensely. Were they not absorbed back into her body, the pieces of metal would soon become simple iron. The body of an angel wasn't something that should be left somewhere random.

"Thank you, darling." Aclysia took the shard of herself and simply swallowed it. To absorb it this way was simpler than to try and reassemble her arm. Much of her bone was still visible, but the steady healing she cast on herself in combination with the return of materials let her fully recover by the time Apexus finished his meal.

For all the difficulty the boss had given them, at least there had been enough energy to its mutated flesh to refill most of what Apexus had expanded. An appropriate reward, as far as the slime was concerned. Of all the boss monster's they had fought so far, it had definitely been the most difficult. As much as he hated that Aclysia had gotten hurt this much, he also appreciated the challenge. The possible evolution echoing inside him felt every bit earned.

The difficulty rising steadily was, of course, a deliberate design decision by the gods. While the ultimate goal of this design was to cultivate new adventurers into becoming new deities, it would have been foolish to entice people only with the end of the journey. Especially with how few people ended up achieving it. Loot was a way to motivate people into trying, the parts harvested from monsters another, and both were lucrative. Lucrative enough that many adventurers didn't do their job in search of some faraway divinity, but merely for the money.

For those adventurers, level 25 dungeons were the general stopping point. Average people with coordination could clear dungeons up to level 10. Adventurers with no drive to continuously outdo themselves continued up to 25. Above that, willpower was usually the true divider of how far a person came. Willpower and a fair share of luck. Everyone who had no talent was long filtered out by that point. People who stopped at level 40, 50, 75, or whatever else before divinity, they did so not for a lack of possibility or because they wanted to do a simple job, but because of ever increasing danger.

The Drowned Altar was a level 15-20 dungeon. Just one step below that dividing line where the casual adventurers and those who strived for greatness separated. Because of their unique combination of factors, the dungeon itself had been relatively easy. Not that the group lacked in the will to keep growing anyway.

"Let's go check out the loot," Apexus said, him and Aclysia going over to Reysha. The tiger girl was soaking in the healing fountain. Something Aclysia mimicked for a quick dip. She wasn't dirty, but rubbing the combat off her body and it was a good excuse to change out of the priest robe. With one sleeve completely torn, it wasn't as fashionable as before.

"Don't even bother putting something new on," Reysha laughed, when she saw Aclysia pull her travelling dress out of her bags. "We all know what comes next." Her blue eyes reflected an entirely different kind of hunger now, as she looked at Apexus. "You can do it, right?"

"Yes," the slime kept the answer simple, while filling his body with all of the liquid it still needed. "I've already acquired the muscles -- I just need to properly construct them now."

"Ohhh, yes," Reysha gasped and involuntarily reached down to her nether regions. She stopped herself just before she actually started something. 'There'll be enough of that in a minute,' she scolded herself. "Let's see that loot."

"I am honestly surprised you have the patience to put that first," Aclysia pointed out, while stuffing her dress back into her bag. The tiger girl was entirely right, she would just have to remove it again in five minutes. Three naked people, two gorgeous women of delicious curves and one gorgeous man with the body of a malnourished hermit, they returned to the boss room.

"Got a lick of reason right now because the fight was so gruesome," Reysha reported. "Don't get me wrong, my body is absolutely ready for whatever is going to happen, but my mind wants a bit of a transition."

Aclysia, as someone who recently had her arm restored, could only agree with that. Although not as outspoken about it, she could feel the lust swirling inside her. The hasty sex they had during the travel wasn't the same, not with the quickness of it and not without the tiger girl in the mix. 'And darling will be fully perfected soon,' she thought, a little bit of thigh-rubbing sneaking itself into her step. It wasn't just the bath that made her wet down there.

For his part, Apexus noticed all of this and hardly held back his own excitement. The mood that permeated the gazes of his companions made it easy to forget that he acquired the liquid muscles for the sake of his personal strength. Even Apexus felt that priority cede ground to the overt desire of his lovers. What man wouldn't be swayed by his women having such a clearly manifested wish?

The chimera slime kept his core clear as best he could, while approaching the chests. 'One thing after the other,' he thought.

They started with the chests inside the pillars. Traditionally, the first kill bonus loot was of a higher calibre than the rest and the best was saved for last. The mantle of the nut would be inspected before the delicious inside became unveiled. The first chest they approached was the leftmost one.

In the decrepit stone structure they inhabited, the wooden, completely intact, chest seemed incredibly out of place. Apexus didn't mind that much, simply lifting the lid and reaching into the darkness. Often containing items larger than themselves, dungeon chests were divinely enchanted to accommodate and a side effect of this was a mysterious shroud keeping the suspense going for a little bit longer.

From the depths of the chest, the chimera slime produced a robe. It was of dark blue colour, invoking the feeling of the ocean, and covered in black embroidery that roughly resembled the sea. It shimmered, being woven from fine silk, and parted into two segments on the lower half through slits that started below the waist segment.

Apexus turned it around and found two holes at the back that were sewn shut. A person who didn't have wings would leave that untouched. For this robe to work for Aclysia, they just had to cut the string. A fair design adjustment, all things considered.

Aclysia looked at the robe with a mixed expression. "I somewhat dislike the thought of wearing the robe of another god," she confessed. "Particularly Sloan, after I was so disgustingly maimed by what I assume is one of his creations." The god of the depth and darkness was the third winter and 11th of the 33 original gods. He was generally regarded as the closest approximation of an evil god in the generally benevolent pantheon. A more accurate description of him would be demanding.

"That's your issue?" Reysha asked, "not the absolutely SCANDALOUS amount of leg that'll show?"

"My divine garb revealed about as much. You know, the black dress I was created with?"

"That your daddy took away and left you naked, flying through an entire village?" Reysha giggled, "Yeah, I won't ever forget that. Shit was hilarious."

"Don't call my father 'daddy' and do not remind me of that incident."

"No," Reysha denied the request, quickly undoing the seams and then tossing the robe at Aclysia. "Either way, ya need a new robe, so ya might as well use it."

Aclysia let out a resigned grumble and put the robe on. As magical dungeon loot, it would change its shape once to fit the party member it was given to. The very act of putting it on diminished its value, which was about the same as Aclysia accepting the tiger girl's statement. "I must admit that the silk is rather pleasant on my skin," she said and tied the two dangling cords around her waist. Both were so long that she had to wrap them once around herself before she could properly bind them. Once she was done, the robe sat so tightly on her figure, it looked more like a dress.