Drip-Fed Pt. 11

'Have you no shame?' his voice whispered into his mind.

'The only shame here is how inept those thralls are,' the Warlock responded, while sitting down on the fur of a Greatwolf. It was situated in front of a fireplace. Although the season of Sorcia kept temperatures at a pleasant balance, the Warlock always kept a fire crackling. It comforted him. The flames had the same colour as his long, crimson hair. It was neatly combed. His muscular, lean body was clean and naked. He hadn't yet been offered tribute that he deemed worthy of wearing outside of protecting his skin from the muck. 'I give them the chance to contribute to greatness and this is all they achieve in a month.'

Finding a proper base of operations hadn't been an easy task. Even with all of the tools Apotho had at his disposal, navigating the Branches took time. As a Master of the Roots whose level 50 Art had been Ritualist, he could open portals between demonically tainted worlds. For that, he just needed an adequate amount of lifeforce to sacrifice. Thanks to Deathless Greed that was not an issue. He had infinite energy to sacrifice within himself.

Finding the first tainted world, however, that had taken some time. Apotho even considered transforming one himself. If it hadn't been for the Church, he would have considered. Staying stationary near Ctania would have been risky. Slow as the response of the Church would be, the Warlock needed to delay the confrontation for as long as possible. They had more resources than he could hope to gather even in a thousand years. Engaging them had to be carefully weighed.

Ultimately, after two months, he found what he needed. As far as tainted worlds went, it wasn't an impressive one. Apotho would have rather taken the time to dethrone a halfway powerful overlord than take the time of building up his own infrastructure there. Beggars couldn't be choosers, as they said, and so Apotho established himself as ruler there. He wouldn't stay, but the children he had abducted from Ctania would. At worst, this place would serve as a distraction. At best, it would be an outpost for future operations.

Many of the corrupted Leaves that Apotho once knew had since been cleansed, eliminating his first choices. Rather than a specific place, the Warlock came to travel to an area he found the Church wasn't particularly influential around. There, after several more months of search, he finally found, close to the tip of the Branch, a Paradise Leaf. Only the most powerful of Adventurers could even breathe the air without choking at the raw magic. A perfect barrier between him and the scouts of the Church.

Enslaving the local people and putting them to work had been the easiest part of all of this. They wouldn't serve him for long. Much as regular folk couldn't enter, those born in this atmosphere couldn't leave. They had their temporary use as builders and slaves, but Apotho needed warriors if he was to build an empire. The gods had denied him his right of creation and so he would carve out of their worlds what he wanted.

Tehomeia, that had been the name of the Paradise Leaf. The Warlock did not care for what the divine had ordained a place to be called. He was his own master, he was the master of these people and this Leaf. It would be called Fell Seed, the place where his reign over the Omniverse blossomed from.

Apotho turned his head as Jolene reached the current floor. Stairs were beneath people of their status, so magically lifted stone platforms brought them up or down instead. Along with the meticulously clean Empress of Blood came the four Deathhounds.

They were roughly humanoid in shape, albeit none would have ever thought of them similar to even the most monstrous of the 'proper' humanoids. Their skin was dark and leathery, and glistened as if oiled. Their heads were neckless and elongated, with four black eyes. They moved independently from each other, the red of their scleras shifting around. Two slits between the eyes served as the nostrils. Their maws extended halfway down their long heads, filled with nothing but canines, developed to rend flesh.

One of the Deathhounds tasted the air with his pointy tongue, while he tapped around Jolene on his six limbs. Each of the demons had four arms, ending in three long claws and two, comparatively short, thumps. Their four-taloned legs could support upright walking just as well, but they knew better than to raise their head above their superiors. The one that kept running around Jolene's legs wagged his prehensile tail.

"Purlesk, out of my way," Jolene scolded him. "Master called for me."

"Yes, Empresssss," the demon hissed obediently and made his way to the corner of the room where a pile of bones from various lesser animals had been piled up.

The other three Tharnatos class demons followed their enthusiastic brethren. Soon, they fought over who got to sharpen their teeth on the human skull. As always, Kurlesh was the one to win that fight. "Know your place!" the leader of the pack scolded the rest.

"I know my place, yes I do," Purlesk amusedly responded. "I serve Master and Empress, not a show-off like you."

"Grrrrrrr," Kurlesh growled, pulling his lips back. He only stopped when he was about to salivate on Apotho's gleaming floor.

"Can't even growl right..." Terlash chimed in, quiet for a monstrosity of his size. Next to him, Turlesh looked for the Ice Drake bone that he preferred to gnaw on. Anything else just didn't taste right.

Kurlesh tensed up, ready to assert his dominance, when Apotho said a simple word, "Quiet." The entire room obeyed. The Deathhounds didn't even dare to touch their bones, in case their rattling annoyed their Master. Apotho stared into the flames and thought. "Jolene, strip."

"As you wish, Master," the Empress of Blood swooned, sliding out of her dress with supernatural elegance. Even if he was only looking from the corner of his eyes, she put all of her sinful lust into the motions. She wore nothing under the dress. Her pink nipples were already erect and her cunt overflowing. "Do you wish to take me, Apotho?" she asked. "I'm yours and yours alone, do with me as you wish, Master!" The execution had left her excited and serving him would please her greatly.

"Get on the bed and play with yourself," he gave her another command and the outwardly perfect woman obeyed with crazed haste. While ecstatic moans and the wet dancing of fingers filled the black mansion, Apotho directed his gaze at the Deathhounds. It had been a while since he last attempted to solve a certain matter. "Turlesh."

"Yes, Massterrrr?" the Deathhound asked, having finally found his favourite bone.

"I want you to..." he pressed against mental resistance -- and broke though, "...to find that pesky slime."

The moans from the bed spiked in intensity. Jolene's excitement only grew, witnessing the Master she had helped create inch closer to his old glory. There was a gap, when she brought herself to a first climax.

"If that issss your wish, Master," Turlesh obediently bowed his head and made his first steps towards the elevator. Kurlesh grabbed him by the leg and pulled him back.

"Only to find him, Master?" the leader of the pack asked. "Shall I bring him back? Unharmed?"

Apotho knew what he wanted to say, but those words refused to leave his lips. The remains of Gizmo struggled, still strong enough to protect the few people that he had come to care for. "Just find him... and..." it physically strained the Warlock to speak, his commands changing to an angry growl. "You useless splinter of my mind, shatter already..." he inhaled and stood up, crossing the room.

His aggression found its outlet in Jolene's throat. With both hands, he gripped her and strangled the Empress of Blood. Her ecstatic sounds were silenced, her eyes rolled up, their white surrounding turning as red as the other demons. Her flaming locks of auburn hair shook wildly, as her body spasmed. "Yessshhhh," she managed to press out a wanton cry. Her spine curved, black wings, like a bat's, extending from it. Still, her beauty remained peerless.

"Hurt -- him!" Apotho shouted. "Remind that creature that his life is mine to take!"

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Reysha ran her tongue along the side of the shaft and then slipped her lips around the thick tip. Even with the entire group clean and thoroughly satisfied, the tiger girl remained figuratively glued to her lover's crotch. Much as the tiger girl liked getting her mouth filled, she hadn't actually given blowjobs for the fun of it in the past. It had always been an enthusiastic preamble to the main course. After such a long break without hard cock around her, she was driven to break with that behaviour and enjoy the act of worshipping the erect member itself. Certainly, another part of her engaging so eagerly was that the person who that cock was attached to was dearer to her than random hook-ups.

Apexus had improvised the dick by using muscle to create a dangly outgrowth and then manipulated the membrane in the area to be of a spongy structure. By filling the resulting caverns with slime, he could achieve the same pressure-induced hardness as a male reproductive organ. As for the engorged head, he didn't need to recreate that, since the top of his tentacles had always been similar to a human's, minus the foreskin. Just fusing one of them into the improvised extension finished the product and gave it top-centred sensitivity, even if the shaft was a lot more sensitive than it would have been for the average male. As a being that was used to several pleasure sources simultaneously reaching his core, Apexus had no issue with that.

From a purely visual standpoint, the copy was almost flawless. The liquid muscle at the centre of the crafted cock even poked out of the underside, mimicking the tract that usually ran along there. Apexus didn't have a need to urinate and his cum was produced at the tip, so that was just decorative. Reysha appreciated the familiar sensations, as she took him all the way into her throat.

If he still had the second dick around, she would have been all over that one as well. After they had finished their threesome, Apexus had decided that it was superfluous to keep it around. If he wasn't in the process of double-penetrating both of her lower holes, two dicks were a bit of an issue.

For all of the fun he had with it, the one male reproductive organ he kept around was also part of his disguise. Possessing no dick would have raised eyebrows, one dick was normal, and two would have caused questions again. There was also the practicality issue of where to leave that floppy thing.

"We should go," Aclysia spoke up, her wisdom triumphing over her desire to join in the cock worship. They had places to be and affairs to get in line. Also, she felt some phantom-aching on her round backside. Healing magic took care of the actual drawbacks from being aggressively spanked and fucked, but her body remembered.

"I need food," Apexus backed up his metal fairy, his hunger triumphing over his to desire to keep watching the tiger girl's head bob in his lap. Blowjobs were pretty fantastic from every angle, he had to admit, but he was running low on energy. All of the seed produced put aside, most of the energy he had gotten from eating the boss had gone into transforming into his new, muscular form. Additional nutrients were required to increase his reserves.

"Jusht fiahve more minutesh," Reysha slurred and slobbered all over the hard prick, her lust triumphing over anything else. The ecstatic return of cock into her life had her desires at an immense high. Even if tentacles were their own fun, the tiger girl could not deny how much she craved to suck on Apexus' manmeat. The tip produced a steady stream of pheromone-induced lubricant, which only prolonged her desires. The actual cum had an even bigger amount of the ever-stronger aphrodisiac in it. It was a new capability, activated by Apexus' breeding instincts and not disabled yet by his will.

If pure lust wasn't enough to keep on going, then Apexus being an absolute hunk of a gorgeous man, who she also happened to be in love with, absolutely was. With her blue eyes looking up into Apexus', she continued to caress the entirety of his length with lips, tongue and throat. Her eyelids fluttered when her fingers rubbed her to an orgasm of her own.

While she gasped and throated his cock, the chimera slime considered her plea. 'We'll be here until I have absolutely no energy left, if I keep indulging her,' he realized. A moment later, his dick began to deflate. It wasn't pleasant to stop in the middle of, what his instincts perceived to be, a potential breeding encounter. What had to be done, however, had to be done. Sustenance was more important.

The shape of the improvised male reproductive organ was maintained remained the same. This was notable due to the nature of the tip, being the kind of tendril Apexus usually only manifested during sexual encounters. Fusing it to the muscle and membrane gave it staying power. As a minor drawback the pleasure cells in the area did not go completely dormant, while the head and the entire cock shrunk down.

As Apexus experienced all of that, Reysha was experiencing a state of shock. As a woman of considerable beauty, libido and skill at giving head, she had not had a man go limp on her outside of the bumbling beginnings of her sexual adventures. "Please tell me you can do that deliberately?!" she asked in an almost panicked tone.

"Yes," Apexus gave the direct answer, slightly tilting his head. "Can normal men not?"

"It's usually more of an automated reaction," Aclysia informed him, "from what my pre-conceived knowledge tells me, an erection does not go away because the man just wills it."

"Sounds bothersome," Apexus said, and looked at the tiger girl poking his now flaccid dick. "I won't make it erect again."

"Yeah, yeah," Reysha pouted, but kept inspecting it. Fully deflated, his pecker was less than a fifth of its previous size. Given the fully adjustable dimensions of the member, that spoke to nothing consequential. "You're definitely a grower," she joked.

"Don't want it to dangle too much," Apexus told her. Because of the simplicity of the improved organ, he could theoretically create it in a matter of minutes. If it was already present, he could adjust it in a matter of seconds. It was better to keep it around for the odd case that someone had a thorough look at him. At such an occasion he would get mocked for the deceiving smallness, but the slime didn't care about a measuring contest. "Anything you want adjusted, now that you are clear-minded?" he asked, gesturing at his body.

There was a stark difference in perception between the horny and the sober mind. Both women, however, found that the only reaction they had to inspecting his crafted muscles was that they drifted from the latter to the former.

"Nah, ya nailed it," the tiger girl spoke for both of them and looked back between his legs. "Having no balls is a bit odd, but there are races that have them on the inside, so that works."

"Alternatively, he could tell that he is a eunuch?" Aclysia suggested.

"That is not untrue, I think?" the slime tilted his head the other direction.

He had made himself infertile a while back, when the girls first found out that he was able and aiming to impregnate them. A misunderstanding born from Apexus thinking that was the natural reason why anyone would engage in procreation proceedings. Nowadays, he was wise to the fact that sex just felt really good. Whenever they felt that they wanted to pursue offspring again, he could just undo the change.

"Let's go with my explanation, it's easier and closer to the truth -- which makes it an easier maintained lie." Reysha rubbed herself down with healing fountain water one last time. Then she nodded towards the way they had originally come from.

There was no shortcut out of this dungeon.

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"Dungeon tore all of his clothes apart, so we had to give him one of our robes," Reysha lied naturally, while the tailor took Apexus's measurements. The newly improved body of the slime had outgrown all of his previous clothes and so they had to get him something new. They were getting that done before they looked into replacements for Reysha's lost equipment.

"I don't care what happened, as long as you pay me," the tailor grumbled and suddenly looked up. The already unfriendly face of the middle-aged human darkened when he spotted a young woman peeking into the shop. "Oy, Veera, get out of here!" Hastily, she ran away. Grumbling, the tailor finished taking the measurements. "Sorry about that, I'll remind my daughter that she has manners later."

"For what?" Apexus asked slowly, raising an eyebrow only after he had finished speaking. It was the first time the slime was in a village without his mask. The presence of facial muscles helped him emote properly, but there was a delay between what his old mouth said and what his face expressed. Part of that was because he was still getting used to faking his lip movements. The week they had spent getting out of the dungeon and to this city had been filled with acting lessons.

They hadn't been filled with common sense lessons though.

The tailor looked with befuddlement at his naked customer. "You're an odd one," he commented, before stomping over to the many drawers that covered one wall of the workshop. "First things first... undergarments," he declared, "before another one of my daughters tries to take a peek at you, cover your shame up."

A pair of simple linen trunks were soon tossed across the room. Apexus turned them in his hands, then sighed mentally and put them on. 'All to fit in,' he told himself, pulling the undergarments up to his waist and then securing them in place with the ends of the cord that stuck out the front.

"And you're sure you only need the one pair?" the tailor asked.

"We have to conserve our money," Aclysia responded in the slime's stead. "We are not lacking funding, but our income streams are unreliable."

"If money is the issue, I could give y'all a quest," the tailor said, peeking into another drawer. "You lot interested in going back into the Drowned Altar? I'd like someone to harvest some of the slime muscles for me. They make for flexible waistbands. It's a lot more comfortable to wear than cords."

"Appreciated, but we must decline," Aclysia shook her head. "We have other destinations in mind."

"Hrmph, I'll post something on the blackboard then," the tailor didn't pursue the discussion further. Craftsmen paying for monster materials found in dungeons was one line of income the group was missing out on with their current lifestyle. Depending on what was asked, supplying merchants with certain materials could be incredibly lucrative. Apexus and Reysha liked to eat more than they liked to be rich, however. "Guess you're on your way to White Ice then?"

"How did you know?" Apexus wondered, happy to continue the conversation. Anything to continue his emotional display training.

"You don't strike me the sort that would visit the Trickster's Tower, so I took a wild guess between the Lemyr Crater and the dungeon," the tailor explained with a shrug. Both places that he mentioned were some of the god-placed landmarks on the Leaf that weren't dungeons but still could be of interest to an adventurer. The trio, with their defined goals, had no interest in sightseeing.

There was silence in the room for a little bit, as the tailor placed a robe on the table and checked on its status. As a fully dedicated craftsman, he created clothes in his spare time. Either to have something to sell immediately or to keep his skills sharp. What he currently held was more an overcoat than a robe, and of a simple grey colour.