Shortly after the sun did rise, Aclysia finally ceased in her song, urging their journey to continue. As little as Apexus wanted to, it had to admit that it was out of excuses to prolong the existence of their moment. Bathing in the warmth of the sunlight, it soon felt liveliness return to its mass and at that point sitting on a rock all day was also fleeting in interest from its mind.
There was a whole different thing that caught its attention though. A translucent blob, crawling out from a small cave in the rocky landscape. Flying over, Apexus got a better view, Aclysia following with interest as to what her awakener was this excited about.
Apexus was staring at the tiny slime in front of it. It was so small, it would barely have filled a tea cup with its body. Unbothered by the presence of its gigantic brethren, the normal slime put itself into a nice spot to do some sunbathing before going about its business, searching the ponds and lakes for small fish or plants and eating them.
“Right, this is the first time you meet something of your kind,” Aclysia commented, standing next to that small thing. “This must be a pretty young one.” At more than double its height, even the metal fairy looked big in comparison. There were a couple of things Apexus felt while looking at the blue translucent shape. Adoration, for it was small and cute, hunger, out of curiosity, disgust with itself, for wanting to eat something that looked pretty much exactly like it had at the beginning, and jealousy because Aclysia was standing that close to it. Pretty much all silly feelings, Apexus found, pushing them aside. It watched curiously for a couple more minutes for the slime to do anything, but the small blob seemed intent on just existing around.
Ultimately, Apexus felt disappointed and lonely. Aclysia hopped on its back as soon as her awakener spread its wings. From up in the air and equipped with excellent eyes, the slime saw more of its lesser kind crawling around the place, the biggest of them reaching the size of pigs. None of them were special in any way, just blobs of acidic gelatine.
This was the confirmation for Apexus that he was truly unique. Given the circumstances of its birth and abilities, that had always been the basic assumption, but now that it had confirmation it left the taste of shells in its taste receptors. It was alone.
Aclysia’s presence felt doubly reassuring in that moment, as it may have been alone in kind but not in reality. That, at least, was a great feeling. Taking its eyes off the floor, Apexus concentrated on the horizon ahead, their destination was not much further now.
The landscape rose. Not slowly over the course of the many kilometres they were leaving behind them, but in perfectly visible steps. It looked like somebody had dropped circular slabs of stone on the otherwise flat plain of rocks and water, stacked them in an uneven fashion and then left them to be worn down by the elements for a couple millennia.
That was basically what had happened back in the days of this leaf’s’ creation. Hashahin, wanting to create a landmark, had simply elevated the ground and then dumped immense amounts of water on top of it. A marvellous, but truly lazy piece of work.
As to what the landmark was for, the answer could be found at the very top of those stacks. Aclysia patted Apexus on the back three times, the pre-discussed signal that they had arrived. Somewhere around here, they would find a source of the living metal that the fairy’s physical form was forged from.
While hoping not to find it the slime flew a giant circle to look anyway. They had come all this way, to just get what they desired without any trial would be immensely boring. Luckily, the slime was not treated to such an easily gotten gain. After having finished scanning the ground, they descended towards the peak of the slanted stack of rocks.
What lay at the centre of the highest and smallest of the segments was a large natural fountain surrounded by an arrangement of pillars. It looked like an ancient ritual site, the water shooting into the sky like a never-ending geyser. Rather than pooling, the massive amounts of liquid flowed outwards through six channels. From there they dropped onto the next lower platforms and continued on that way until they reached the lowest levels of the coral continent.
The pillars surrounding that endless fountain were organized in between these channels and connected through withering bridges that once were a marble white, but now looked more like a washed-out grey. Five pillars stood on each of the segments of land, three directly next to the fountain, another two a bit distanced. Between them, staircases spiraled underneath the terrain.
This was the entrance to the Clearwater Dungeon, a beginner friendly underground structure befitting of this safe leaf. Just being for beginners didn’t mean it was perfectly safe, however, and due to its placement at the fringes of the leaf it was pretty unpopular. There were more readily available dungeons closer to the city in the west, Haralry, so the only people that ever came here to train were eccentrics, those who had something to hide or who wanted something very specific from this place.
Apexus, technically, was all three of these things. Changing the shape of its wings to something more easily foldable, doubling as makeshift shield on it back, the slime was ready to get in there and eat whatever it came across. The only things it had eaten the past few days were plants, a fish and several dozen ants. Last of which had been a somewhat lucky encounter, as the slime had been in desperate need of a working nose. Except that ants didn't have noses, they smelled with their antenna. So that's what it had. Regardless, it was a working sensory organ for air tasting, if small in scale.
The duo descended down the stairs. Always staying aware of troublesome tremors, the slime took one step at a time. They were slippery from the high humidity in the air, which only got worse the deeper they went. The stairs wound around the underground source of the fountain, evading each other by running parallel. No matter which one of the flights Apexus would have taken, they all led it and Aclysia into the same chamber.
The shape of a ring, the sound of rushing water prevalent through the thick walls of the central pillar, they arrived at the start of the dungeon. The very first room of these structures was traditionally safe, allowing adventurers to make their plans. Only the most sadistic of gods placed a trap right at the start.
Hashahin was, thankfully, not of such evil a nature and thus Apexus could take a look around unobstructed. The walls were smooth, covered in a repeating pattern of large knots and crosses. Towards the ceiling, the walls curved towards each other, meeting at a sharp point. Every few metres, a glowing crystal fixed inside the meeting point was giving off light, illuminating much of the dungeon.
Aside from the stairs that led back up, several dozen hallways in equal distance from each other invited the duo into the labyrinthian structure. That was the dangerous part for most adventurers, getting lost inside these corridors was quite easy. Luckily, Apexus could leave trails of pheromones behind to find its way back.
Other adventurers solved this problem by either buying or making maps. This worked splendidly for starting dungeons like this one, higher ones tended to have some way to readjust their layout in random intervals.
Apexus crawled three laps around the central room to leave an extra strong mark on the area before picking a corridor at random. Their adventure had begun. With eagerness, the slime began to creep its way forward. This place had the air of a potential biome to be conquered, which raised an interesting question. Was each appropriately difficult dungeon a way to acquire a permanent Growth? If yes, Apexus would have great fun climbing, discovering, and eating its way through these places.
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It didn’t take Apexus too long to encounter the first monster. Inside dungeons, monsters were created from special breeding rooms, the magic of the world itself giving birth to them and keeping them nourished even in the absence of adventurers.
It was a spider the size of a wagon-wheel. It had fuzzy legs as broad as a clenched fist, but a surprisingly small abdomen and main body. It sat still under the ceiling, in the twilight between two illuminating crystals. Its grey body made it blend well enough with the background, but not to the point where it was hard to spot or anything. Especially not for the dark-sensitive eyes that Apexus had developed.
The slime and the spider had a stare-off. If the spider knew that it had been discovered, it made no show of it. At the same time, Apexus wondered if it could simply take another route. It was pretty clear that the spider was waiting to get a drop on whoever passed underneath it. Its twin fangs were at the ready.
The common dungeon spider, as this creature was called, was a monster that impressed only with its size. It couldn’t hide very well, it wasn’t venomous and aside from ambushing, its combat abilities were actually under-average. What made it such a staple in beginner dungeons was that they taught adventurers some basic awareness skills while also facing them with a commonly feared animal. Adventuring was not for the faint of heart. The gods were nice enough to give the newcomers a chance to drop out before throwing the actually deadly stuff at them.
As to whether or not the spider had seen Apexus, the answer was a clear no. These things were almost blind and reacted mostly following what they could sense through their hairs and the strings attached to their feet. While the slime was not aware of these things, Aclysia was.
With minor worry, Apexus watched the metal fairy fly up to the spider. She did so with no further announcement, but the slime trusted her enough to let her. Once there, the metal fairy gently tickled one of the spider’s leg hairs. A thusly triggered monster with a brain relative to the size of a walnut thus lunged in that direction, diagonally down the wall. Where an action ready slime then pounced on it in return. Sloppily, sure, without legs or the room to fly it could just stretch as fast as possible, but sloppy was just good enough when dealing with a confused spider.
Once Apexus had latched onto the back of the creature, the win was in the bag. Large as it was in its entirety, most of that was the span of the spider’s legs, and to score a kill those were optional, that much the slime knew. Weighed down and with a sudden pull at its back the spider was forced to the ground. A vengeful bite successfully tore into Apexus’ side, but it took that damage in stride, encapsulating the spider’s main body over the next minute.
Having eaten that, the slime now had access to a couple of very useful tools, namely the legs and fangs of the spider. Carapace and spinneret could also be viable, but the former took time to grow while the latter took skill, neither of which Apexus had time for.
There was one thing the slime became aware of as it continued on in the dungeon though, and that was that it should go ahead and explore this whole place very carefully. When it eventually did meet whatever was the big boss inside here, and according to all the slime had learned there usually was something worthy of that title, and defeated it, Apexus didn’t want a repeat of the Forester Dragon situation. Having a limited pool of options when picking what it wanted to keep sucked, so it best clear the dungeon only after having eaten everything it had to offer.
Thus, the slime began munching its way through most of the dungeon’s different inhabitants. First was a large snail, which tasted quite good and came in large numbers, but aside from that was uninteresting. Apexus could kill these with one bite from its newly acquired fangs.
Then there was another staple of beginner’s dungeons, giant rats. That finally gave Apexus access to a new set of ears and it liked that being’s nose better than the ant one it used up until then. After confirming that the new nose could indeed smell the pheromone trails, the slime disregarded the insectoid one.
It spent a long time skittering around the place, dodging encounters that seemed too crowded for its liking by travelling along the ceiling. Taking out one rat was pretty easy, three rats grouping up underneath a spider behind what looked like slippery trail of snail slime? Yeah, Apexus was good without that engagement. It helped that it eventually became so monstrous looking that the inhabitants of the dungeon were confused as to whether or not they were looking at an intruder or not. They wouldn’t want to attack one of their own.
Apexus was currently digesting a snail as it wondered how long exactly it was down in the dungeon already. Resting by hanging underneath the ceiling, hiding a crystal underneath it, it tried to make an educated guess. The slime had no need to ever stop and recharge, the crystals were not only sources of light but also of heat, meaning that Apexus was always wide awake. Without the sun to follow, the slime had no idea how much time was passing. It had been at least a day, but it could have easily been three. Something in that range. Probably.
They had mapped out large parts of the dungeon at this point, pheromones marking wherever they had been already. “I guess we have discovered about a quarter of it,” Aclysia told Apexus, seemingly reading its mind. She was sitting on its belly in a diligent fashion, her butt resting against her heels, hands orderly folded. While it couldn’t actually see her, Apexus just knew she was sitting that way. She almost always was.
They were currently taking a page out of the spider’s book and it worked very well in leaving them unbothered. Aclysia was apparently in need to recover her magical energies, or something to that effect. The slime was very much supernaturally illiterate still.
While lost in some fantasies involving Aclysia tangled up in spider silk, her body forced into some enticing poses, the slime felt something very unusual: footsteps. Not the barely noticeable skittering of a spider, not the consistent crawl of a slug and not the running of tiny rat feet, no, footsteps. The kind Gizmo had, just lighter and quicker.
Whoever they belonged to was running away from something and directly towards Apexus. Suddenly, underneath the slime, appeared the figure they belonged to.
“Come on, some fucking thing,” she spoke, out of breathe, taking quick looks around in a hasty, desperate fashion. Dark red hair flew from one side to the other, a perfectly messy cascade of crimson, shining and voluminous despite a clear lack of proper care. A pair of pointy cat ears atop her head were moving separately from her eyes.
She had an athletic body, the kind of attractive that fit right into the fantasies Apexus had been having moments ago. Her clothes may have hid something once upon a time, but the skin-tight leather was hanging in black tatters now, hiding only her breasts and crotch reliably. With nicely proportioned breasts, bigger than Aclysia’s but also not in the truly large category, that curved perfectly into a flat midriff and from there into a tight ass and trained thighs, she looked soft in all the right places with the bonus of muscles shifting subtly under the surface.
Her skin was of a light brown complexion and stripes that tended more towards the black side of things covered her in an interesting pattern. It was a cat girl, or a tiger girl to be more exact, and a sexy one at that. Her boots, the only part of her outfit that had survived, vibrated over the ceiling as she jumped back in reaction to a loud howl.
“Shit,” she cursed, slowly backing away from the corridor she came from. Glancing over her shoulder to find a group of rats, she realized she was cornered between them and the creature that had chased her there. Tapping in came a canine creature. It had fur the colour of red itself and was rather large.
It was something like a fox, except much larger and more muscular. Its front paws had large claws, but even they were only there to hurt and weaken its prey. The long, black snout with the sharp teeth was what this creature used to kill. A fluffy tail waved around at the end of its body, not attached to any regular spine but a magical extension of the monster’s body, a clear show of the fox’s excitement.
Such a tail could only belong to a Spirit Fox and at one it was the lowest of its kind. Still, a rather rare find in a dungeon of this level. Rare and highly unfortunate for the tiger girl, who had no weapons or armour to speak of.
Still, she roared like a beast herself and spread her fingers, brandishing her own claws. That took the Spirit Fox back a single step, but it sensed that it was facing weakened prey and then took two more steps forwards.
That was when Apexus dropped down.