Aki

As fun as it was to bond over adventuring and boobs, it was time to get going.

‘Do you think there are more of them here?’ Caei asked Lilyth as we gathered our things.

‘Probably,’ she said. ‘The quest didn't update about that part being completed.’

‘Should we hunt them down?’ I asked.

Those rewards do sound nice.

‘No,’ Caei shook her head and pointed at my torn clothes. ‘Those things are dangerous, sneaky and can think. So I don’t think any reward is worth risking it.’

‘We might still run into them,’ Lilyth said. ‘But otherwise, I agree. It would be a pointless risk.’

She pointed in the vague direction of the corpses and continued.

‘There were twelve of them in the hunting party. God only knows how many are “back home.”’

I didn’t consider that. The five I dove between almost tore me to shreds, so if there are more…

From what I gathered their shrieks were debilitating to Lilyth meaning I could not rely on her to be able to back me up. Well… not while we were fighting the shrieklins, at least. Maybe the next batch of monsters won’t cause her extra agony. She has suffered enough during her stay here. I never mentioned it to her, but the way she thrashed at night frequently woke me up. I could only hug her then and pray it soothed her.

So with that in mind, I agreed it would be best to forfeit the extra rewards. They were not worth the extra pain. Not for me, not for Lilyth, not for any of us. We should just find the quickest way out of here and leave.

‘That stuff could help us survive,’ Ren, who turned out to be quite a risk-taker, said.

‘Normally, I would agree with you,’ Lilyth retorted. ‘But we are operating under less than ideal circumstances. To put it bluntly - we don't have resources for a side trip. Our stocks are I believe two health and stamina potions and one mana potion? Between that and Caei’s spells, we don't have a lot of healing available and we don't know how long we will spend here.’

‘Sometimes you have to spend…’ Ren began but Lilyth cut her off.

‘Not while dealing with severe scarcity. At least not of those resources. It’s not money we are gambling with - it is our lives, and I can't guarantee I will be able to protect you.’

I could swear I heard her whisper “Or survive myself”, but I could have misheard her.

She's afraid. Lilyth's actually afraid. For us. For herself.

I looked at Caei and noticed she was also looking at our slimy cutie with concern, which told me I didn't mishear her.

I don’t think any of us feel up to this. I don’t think we can. But we have to.

‘Tell you what, Ren,’ I said. ‘If an opportunity presents itself and it is not an obvious suicide we will try. But we are not deliberately looking for trouble.’

Ren wasn’t happy about that, but tough luck. I looked at Caei, who gave me a nod of confirmation. It was time again for me to get my game on.

‘Lilyth… where do you think the exit is?’ I asked, agreeing with my pale beauty that Lilyth's brain could get us through this.

‘Logically?’ my wife responded. ‘The opposite side of the room. Practically? I have no idea, there is no guarantee it's even a door. Could be a ladder or a staircase hidden somewhere here.’

She indicated at the maze of wall segments.

‘Also, this place is designed for people to get lost. It will be very easy to get turned around here.’

‘Doesn’t look that complicated from here,’ Ren said.

She was right, but I felt Lilyth had an answer for that. She did.

‘Because we are at the entrance to the maze so we can see where the exits are. Once we lose sight of those it will get complicated. Without a point of reference sooner or later all of those wall segments might soon feel the same.’

Judging by the expressions of my other companions, none of us have even considered that.

‘All this while there are monsters prowling around…’ Ren muttered. ‘No. You guys are right. It will be difficult enough to find the exit. No need to look for trouble in this place because we might never find the way back.’

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‘We may still find it,’ I sighed. ‘Lilyth, you have something to write with, yes?’

‘Some paper sheets and a pencil, yes. Want me to make a map?’

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘That would be too inconvenient I think. But I was thinking we could try marking the walls?’

Lilyth took out a pencil and scribbled on the wall. It was barely visible at a glance.

‘It is something,’ Caei said with a shake of her head. ‘But I think the pencil will need to be sharpened long before we run out of the walls to mark. I was going to propose using weapons, but then it struck me it was a dumb idea. Unless… Lily, your knives cannot get damaged, yes?’

Lilyth summoned one of them and slashed at the wall, frowned and then made a perpendicular cut forming a cross. It wasn't ideal, but that made the grooves somewhat more distinct.

‘Better than nothing,’ I said.

And with that, we set off, and everything Lilyth said came to pass. A few dozen metres into the maze the wall segments started getting really dense and we quickly lost all orientation. I can't even count how many times we turned a corner thinking we found a new route, only to discover the markings on the wall.

‘I swear we’ve been through here three times before,’ Ren complained.

‘Then we would have marked the corridor we entered through,’ I said.

‘Unless Lilyth forgot to mark that again,’ our archer grumbled.

‘You are free to start using the pieces of your soul as a piece of fucking chalk any time now, sweetheart,’ my wife bit back.

‘Girls… girls…’ Caei sighed, annoyed. ‘Calm down, we are enough on edge as it is. Lilyth just forgot. It is easy to do it here. It is also on us to remind her.’

That somewhat defused the situation and the quarrel was quickly forgotten after we heard the high-pitched shriek of one of the monsters, which only made us hurry down a corridor we thought we hadn't gone down yet. I made sure Lilyth marked it down, just in case.

This wasn’t the first time we heard the shrieklins somewhere in the distance. After the first few times, Lilyth mentioned she heard them scurrying around from time to time, but the acoustics in the maze sucked so much that it was hard to tell where they were. An argument ensued about whether our Kitsune should have warned us about those, but ultimately we decided it didn't matter. Hearing faint footsteps of monsters we knew were somewhere there was no cause for alarm. Lilyth did promise to say if she heard them getting close, but so far it hasn't happened. Or perhaps she stopped caring. The mix of monotony and being on edge was wearing us down mentally and the tempers were high. The “Did Lilyth mark the corridors” argument wasn’t the first time some of us came to blows.

After we were a safe distance away, meaning we hadn't heard a monster for a few minutes, I called for a rest.

‘I wonder why they haven't found us yet,’ Caei said after we all sat down, each one of us in their own space.

‘Been thinking about that for a while now,’ Lilyth said. ‘The best option for us would be that they aren't actually looking for us.’

‘You think that's possible?’ Ren asked.

‘Yes. We slaughtered their hunting party. So they might not be aware we are here, or they are afraid to come after us.’

‘I wish that was the case,’ I said while stretching.

‘Could very well be. Then there are the possibilities that they are either as hopeless as us at navigating this place, or we’ve just walked in circles enough that we confused the living shit out of them.’

That made me involuntarily chuckle.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Just the mental image of the monsters just wandering around here aimlessly just as we do…’

‘Karl!’ Lilyth intoned in a raspy voice. ‘I told you we should have taken the left turn! Now we’ll never get back home!’

That made us all laugh. Then Lilyth got serious and finished her list.

‘The final option is that they are herding us somewhere.’

This time, Caei was the one to giggle.

‘I am just laughing at my brain worms because I thought that if the shrieklins are trying to do that they could be doing a better job.’

‘Yeah,’ Ren said dreamily. ‘We would finally get somewhere.’.

‘First time in history when people wander into a monsters’ nest and react with “fucking finally,’ Lilyth said in a deadpan way, which only caused more sweet tension-relieving laughter.

Ren then moved on to Lilyth and hugged her.

‘Sorry for being mad at you,’ she said.

‘No problem,’ Lilyth said as she reciprocated. ‘The same from me. I think we all want to get out of here.’

A few more rounds of hasty apologies later, we were once again sitting there huddled together, joking, laughing and just happy about the presence of others.

As we set off again, Lilyth turned to Caei.

‘Question… Is the glaive the only weapon you can make with your spell?’

‘No…’ the pale beauty answered with a furrowed brow. ‘I just had no reason to create anything else, why?’

‘Follow up first, do you need to wield it or can you hand it over to someone else?’

‘We would need to check for that. What are you going on about?’

‘Well… since we can't find an exit, I was thinking we should start making our own paths instead.’

OH! Genius!

‘You mean… just knock down the walls to get to places where we want to go?’ Caei asked with renewed hope.

Lilyth nodded and we decided to give it another hour before we tried since mana conservation was still an important factor.

To my immense disappointment, we didn't get a chance to show the maze who’s boss as we found the one thing we had been looking for.

The exit.

It was a simple wooden door with a metal handle, but to us, it looked like the gates to heaven.

‘You know…’ Lilyth said. ‘I never thought I would say this, but if you could give a door a blowjob I would happily get on my knees before this one.’

Judging by the expression on Ren's and Caei’s faces they shared the sentiment.

This door would have quite a harem between the four of us.