Apexus looked at his newly grown claws and let some mana flow inside them. He relied on his instincts and the purpose of the organ to achieve any effect. How to form the supernatural energies into something that had an external effect, the slime still didn’t know. Inside his body, he had some limited control. He couldn’t dictate what his acid burned, that was strictly limited to organic entities that had been recently alive, as the slime understood it, but he could influence the strength of the acid if those conditions were fulfilled.
In the same fashion, he could control pheromone production, the dimensions of his skeleton, the shape he took, and several other things. The crystal nails now joined that series of Growths in three different ways. Number one, the predictable, was that he could make them grow and manipulate the shape it came out as to quite the degree. Number two, as he had found out during the sexual encounter, he could make them vibrate. Number three, which he realized at that moment, he could make them glow.
The nails retained the attributes they had held while part of their original organism. Apexus continued to push mana into a single finger until it burned bright enough to put a hole in his retina. Then he let the magic ebb away again. He was left with a slightly heated nail. A mere side effect of the imperfect energy transition and not exploitable for the slime. Notably, he couldn’t create a light elemental, but that was tied to some other organs and magical shenanigans.
Apexus looked at the path of smooth, flat crystal on his wrist. He had used it for lewd purposes, but the interesting revelation was that he could grow crystal ducts wherever he wanted on his body. Pushing the experiment a bit further, he realized that, while position may not have mattered, the size of what he tried to grow out very much did. A nail, a claw or a small rectangle? All done in a matter of seconds. A thick defensive plate covering his forearm? He still wasn’t done growing it by the time the girls were dressed again. The energy expenditure was noticeable as well. If he kept using it for too long, he would be like a thin bit of slime spread over too much game.
“Does the new Growth satisfy you, darling?” Aclysia shouted a question over from the edge of the boss arena.
“Hoped I could use it as reactive armour. It’s not fast enough for that,” Apexus responded and inspected the addition to his body a bit more. The silvery crystal on his arm had a few facets, but an otherwise smooth surface. “It’s still pretty useful though. Just takes preparation.” He severed not only the flow of mana, but also discontinued the unnecessary crystal glands on his arm. The patch fell to the ground, no longer properly connected to the slime’s membrane. The extended claws soon followed. Apexus wasn’t able to reduce the size of the crystals, the ducts only permitted the addition of more materials. Replacing them entirely was the only way to get some regularly shaped, if still silver, fingernails. They weren’t that conspicuous as long as Apexus didn’t make them glow.
The slime grabbed the discarded pieces of crystal and tried eating one of them to regain at least a fraction of the energy he had used creating it. Even the single claw he now had in his stomach only dissolved at a crawling pace. The high level of inorganic material that was part of it made it a chore and it didn’t taste all that great either.
‘Feels like it would take even longer than normal crystal,’ Apexus thought, wondering why that was. ‘Maybe the crystal I grow is just better? That’s usually what happens with these permanent Growths.’ Whatever it was, he didn’t feel like melting through all of them. Rather than eating them, Apexus tossed the remaining crystal pieces into the water. They wouldn’t be found there, not with all the other pieces of crystal that were slowly dissolving in the water. “How is the loot?” Apexus asked loudly.
After they had put their clothes back on, Reysha and Aclysia turned their attention to the chests that were revealed. At the outer part of the walkway, where it touched the wall before curving into the spiral, pieces of the wall had parted and revealed the boss rewards. Because this was the first time they had beaten the boss, a total of three chests had shown themselves. Repeated killings rewarded only one item at a time. That was how dungeons tended to operate. The gods wanted to incentivize adventurers to keep moving on.
The ultimate purpose of adventurers was to perpetuate the cycle of birthing new gods. They could hardly do so if they stagnated on one level of difficulty.
Reysha pushed the lid of the leftmost chest open. “Looks good, actually,” she shouted back and pulled something long from the chest. Apexus, done with his experiments, came over with a couple of wing-boosted jumps. “Think you’ll like this, Clysia.”
What the tiger girl held in her hands was a metal staff. It was of a fairly boring design and material, a long metal rod of steel grey whose only accent was a tip of six black and white crystals that locked into each other to create a colour-inverting diamond shape. Aclysia took it with interest, but immediately seemed a bit disheartened. “It’s heavy,” she noted.
“No, it's not, ya just have weak arms,” Reysha giggled.
“Be that as it may, if I am to wield it, it should function with my physical abilities in mind.” Raising and lowering the staff several times, Aclysia continued to test how bad exactly it was. She could fly with it and she could hold it without tiring too quickly. Standing, it helped that the thing was long enough that she could rest the bottom end on the floor. The crystal tip would still be at shoulder height.
Aclysia closed her eyes and extended her mind into the tool. The metal served as a connection between her and the crystal, which served as a focus for her power. Drawing magic out of the surrounding area, she shaped it into a familiar structure and then opened her eyes. The tip of the staff glowed. With a thrusting gesture, she caused the energy within to become unbound and fly across the room as a simple Sunlight Bolt.
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It was more powerful than the variety she could cast with just her hands. Staves, large as they were, happened to be the best focuses that existed. Priests often preferred pendants for their religious iconography, but there was nothing stopping someone from using both. Only one could be utilized at a time, at least by a regular mage, but having a back-up focus on hand was never unwise. They eased the gathering of external mana into spells and amplified the effects of the spells through magically resonant materials. Every mage could cast with their hands, most would find greater success when using a focus.
“It is a well-made staff,” Aclysia begrudgingly admitted. It was difficult to get hands on mage tools. The materials necessary to make a worthwhile focus required a particularly skilled gem cutter or jeweller, and were rare on any Leaf. Beginner friendly worlds often had a few very basic focuses in stock. Mostly, mages had to rely on dungeon loot to replace their starting equipment. Luckily, they were dangerous without additional weaponry. “It’s still so heavy, however…”
“Ya gotta train a bit if ya wanna be able to ever lift anything,” Reysha pointed out.
“That is technically correct,” Aclysia sighed. Although she lacked the biological components to grow muscles, she did become stronger through the same magical mechanism as all regular adventurers did. Magic unleashed by slaying dungeon creatures or solving whatever quests or riddles the gods placed through the Omniverse was partly absorbed by her Spark. The increase of power that absorbed magic brought was largely dependent on the way one had exerted oneself recently.
As with all things, retraining wasn’t impossible, but quite difficult. It often involved a cleansing ritual that left the person weaker but, because their Spark was already ‘widened’, able to regain power quite rapidly and in ways that fit their desires. If they did it correctly, of course.
“I admit, my physical strength continuing to be this low may bring about problems in due time,” Aclysia said and ran a hand through her silky white hair. “I will attempt to use this staff.”
“Good girl,” Reysha grinned and walked over to the second chest. “Alright and here we have… whatever the hell this is?” She pulled out a statue, only large enough to serve as table decoration, that looked like a mixture of a boar and a woman with a noticeable but not worrying amount of body fat.
“I believe this might be a variety of fertility idol,” Aclysia responded.
“It’s hideous,” Apexus stated, heavily displeased by the giant tusks and pig nose that distorted the woman’s face.
“Interesting that you agree, darling,” Aclysia noted. “The Omniverse houses many sapient species with a Divine Spark. It is doubtlessly the case that a species of boar-people exists and looks similar to this idol. It should be possible for you to procreate with such a woman,” she pointed at the statue, “which I took to be your primary interest in the other species.”
“Hmmm,” Apexus thought about that. “I do like wide hips and I cannot lie, that’s because of the shape of butts and the promise of easier childbirth…” Pausing, he searched his core for any reason why he was so put off by that face. The idol didn’t look unhealthy. It was easy to explain why Apexus didn’t like bags under eyes or dry skin. Tusks and a pig’s nose weren’t indicators of bad health in a species that was born with tusks and a pig’s nose. “It might be…” he slowly formed his hypothesis, “…because of you two. I’ve become conditioned to see your face shapes as the most pleasing so things that are far removed from them just put me off? If I was born on a Leaf where these were the norm, it might have gone differently? I could have become a female as well, after all.”
“Wonder if ya would have become pink and called yourself Apexa in that case,” Reysha joked.
“I am pleased to have become your beauty standard, darling,” Aclysia smiled.
“Standard?” Apexus wondered out loud. “No, that doesn’t seem to be the right word. Ideal, Aclysia. You’re my beauty ideal. Both of you are.” For once, he knew that this would have a pleasing effect on the two beloved women. They blushed a little bit, showed him their smiles, then gave him a kiss. He was getting better at flattering them deliberately, rather than just saying things and accidentally pleasing them.
“Well, let’s just hope that sells for something,” Reysha tossed the fertility idol at Aclysia, who barely caught it and stored it in their financial bag. “Chest number three we got…” she pushed the lid off the stone container. Like the doors, it wasn’t her physical strength alone that enabled the movement, but the magical design of the chest as well. Eventually the lid fell to the ground and Reysha reached inside. “…a bag of seeds.”
“Seriously?” Aclysia asked.
“Seriously,” Reysha confirmed.
“Seriously?” Apexus repeated the question.
“Yeah, seriously,” the tiger girl stated a second time.
They came in a bag of simple linen and were of a white colour. Aclysia inspected the bag first, then Apexus did. The slime grabbed a couple and extended his supernatural senses. “They’re… moving?” he said, not quite certain. “They’re quivering. Not sure if its physical movement or the magical pulses.”
“So, they aren’t just seeds?” Reysha wanted to know.
“They have quite a bit of magic for their size. Something is going on with them,” Apexus answered. “We could eat them? I am very hungry.”
“I reckon that is better fixed with fresh prey,” Aclysia suggested and took the bag from her darling before he could actually devour the seeds. “Before we know the value of these, we should not hastily dissolve them.”
“Yeah, for the love of fuck, let’s please get out of here and get some meat,” Reysha declared. With all of the chests plundered, there remained no reason for them to remain in the incandescent cave. The winding tunnels of Myrlight that held them in a state of voracious dissatisfaction for several days were no longer a confinement they had to suffer in. With that realization, even for the feline redhead who had her major urges satisfied so recently, the promise of delicious game was all the reason they needed to finally leave the dungeon.
“We’ll have to walk,” Apexus pointed out. There hadn’t been a shortcut that opened for them. “Let’s make it as quick as we can.”
And so they did. Following the map back out as hastily as they could, only stopping twice – once to get a minimalistic meal and once to sleep – they marched out of the dungeon in the matter of two days. The person on the reception didn’t pay any attention to them at all. Their job was to inform adventurers going in, not to look after those going out. The group didn’t care for them either. They were just happy they still didn’t get bothered. Reysha’s break-in hadn’t been noticed.
The group got to walk away, as free as they had been in months, and hunt themselves something proper to eat.