"So... the slime behaves like a beastkin in heat, except all the time?" asked Cluma, her innocence rapidly dwindling.

"Yes, pretty much."

"And you can... what? feel it? Because of the thing that left you in hospital last year?"

"Usually no, unless I deliberately try, but we're close enough together right now that it's kinda breaking through whether I want it to or not."

"And I let her... Wow, no wonder you wanted to do it yourself."

"Huh?" went the delver in front, Cluma's ambiguity getting a tad dangerous.

"And to think, you can spy on her having sex whenever you want..."

"Huh?!" went not only the delver in front, but everyone else in eavesdropping range.

"Cluma, are you deliberately trying to give people the wrong impression to clear the queue faster?"

"What? Was anything I said wrong?"

"Umm..." I thought back over her exact wording. "No, not exactly," I reluctantly admitted. "Just misleading."

Thankfully, despite Cluma's fears, the slime not known as Blobby was not currently in the middle of anything too compromising, merely sharing her bath with a group of four female delvers. She appeared to be giving them a wash, but from the way they were reacting, there was obviously more to it than that. They all certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

It was when she started on their armpits that it twigged it was hair removal. Of all the uses of a nymphomaniac slime girl, the delvers were abusing her powers for hair removal? The male population of Earth would be incredulous if they found out. The females would probably petition not-Blobby to emigrate.

Putting her proclivities aside, given the length of the queue and how long she was taking with each customer, we could be queuing for most of the day.

"If you want to get through the queue faster, why not point out that we only want to get to the next floor and will be in and out in a minute, rather than alarm people with the possibility of voyeurs?"

With her extroversion, she wouldn't have a problem asking people if she could push in, on top of which she'd have the advantage of people believing her. It actually worked, too, and before long we were standing in front of a square board containing a grid of twenty-five holes. Five of them had coloured cylinders inserted, and a bowl alongside the board contained more of them. Presumably we were supposed to insert them into the board in some specific pattern, but there was nothing to tell us what the rules were. Or rather, there was, but she was refusing to do so.

"What do you mean, you won't even stay for a chat?" complained not-Blobby.

"We told the other delvers we'd be quick."

"So? Just blame it on me. I'll put up my closed sign."

"That's unfair to them. How about we come back tomorrow, at fifth bell?"

"...Fine," she muttered. "You need to put the pegs in so that no two adjacent pegs share the same colour."

I turned to look at the board, which now had twenty-five cylinders inserted, not to mention a treasure chest behind it.

"What?" asked Cluma, in response to my staring. "I thought that was obvious? It couldn't have wanted us to have every colour in every column or something, because there weren't enough colours."

"So I've been trying to extract the rules from our host over there, and you'd already cleared the puzzle, and didn't tell me?"

"Listening to you argue was funny," she said, shrugging. "Sorry we can't stay," she added to the slime, giving her a quick but very damp hug, "but we'll definitely come back tomorrow."

I looted the chest and activated the crystal before the slime changed her mind. The slime that had gone the entire conversation without telling me her current name. Maybe tomorrow I could talk her into wearing a name badge?

"What monsters are on this floor?" asked Cluma.

"Crabs."

"Crabs? What are crabs?"

"The endpoint of all (evolution), according to a joke from Earth. Well, mostly a joke. I hope."

"(Evolution?) I don't think that's a word you've covered in our lessons."

"Darn... That's going to take a lot of explaining. A one line, and mostly wrong, explanation would be that it's like how your species changed, but slower, across hundreds of generations instead of a single individual."

"You know what? Forget it. Let's start this conversation again. What are crabs? And this time, please answer without making any Earth references."

"I only know crabs from Earth, though. These might be completely different."

I looked around with [Mana Sight], but couldn't find any. Despite my upgrades, the glare of this dungeon still seriously hampered my range.

"They've all been the same so far, at least in shape."

"Fine. Six legs, a pair of claws at the front, covered in a tough shell and a habit of walking sideways."

"Walking sideways? Why would they do that?"

"Haven't a clue."

ding

Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 14

"Oh, found one!"

I turned off the direct path and led us to a room in which a mostly Earth-like crab was pottering around.

"Wow. It really is going sideways," laughed Cluma. "It looks silly!"

The 'silly' crab responded to her voice with a high-pressure jet of water, blasting her backward into a wall. Her [Stealth] and silence enchantment didn't help much if she deliberately spoke out loud.

I used my lightning glove to zap the thing, trying to get back into the habit of using it if there was a chance Grover was going to come out with a much improved version.

"Oww," muttered Cluma. "That hurt."

"Don't mock monsters right in front of their face, then?" I suggested as I checked her over with [Analysis]. Thankfully, she'd only lost a couple of points of health.

"I stand by my claim. It did look silly!"

We killed a few more of the things on our way to the boss chamber. Their shells posed no resistance to our enchanted weapons, and when Cluma refrained from giving her position away, a single stab to the head was sufficient to dispatch them.

Despite the floor containing crabs, there was no water around, and the boss was a group of armadillo-like creatures. Yes, mobs and boss were both shelled, but beyond that, I didn't see any link. The great dungeon seemed to lack the underlying theme of the other dungeons, with no apparent link between monsters of one floor and the next. Why had Erryn created her home dungeon like this?

Floor eight had spiders, which were less objectionable than centipedes, but still gross. As ever, Cluma failed to recognise just how evil the monsters were, describing them with utterly incorrect words like 'adorable', and then, after slicing them to pieces, happily poking at their webs.

Floor nine had large feline creatures, with a structure similar to tigers, but fur that blended in well with the muddy-orange brickwork. Their camouflage was remarkably good, even while they were moving, but was spoilt rather horribly by my [Mana Sight] and Cluma's [Monster Perception].

Floor ten had orcs.

"I've long since had my fill of these," I complained, beheading a pair of them with [Far Reach].

"Mmm. Bad memories," agreed Cluma. "How much further to the boss room?"

"Not far. Five minutes, maybe?"

It took about seven, but as with all floors so far other than the sixth, there was no queue, and we could walk straight in.

"Nope," I declared, reaching for the crystal. Cluma grabbed my hand before I could touch it.

"Don't be such a baby! We can take them."

"We can take them, yes. That doesn't mean I want to!"

"Seriously, you can probably wash your lightning all over them. You don't even need to get close."

I glanced once more at the nest of centipedes—hundreds of the things writhing around, crawling all over each other in a squirming mass—and shuddered. I was reasonably sure they weren't a threat, even with my damaged armour, but while I understood that logically, human brains were anything but logical.

"Okay, I admit it! I have a phobia of creepy-crawlies! Especially things like that with more legs than sense! Now please let me out of here!"

I resisted the urge to hyperventilate, while Cluma remained firmly positioned between me and escape.

"Fine, but I reserve the right to tell your dad you ran away from a few centipedes."

"A few? There's hundreds of them. And they're a metre long each!"

"So? Are they dangerous?"

"...No," I reluctantly admitted.

"Then why are you afraid of them?"

"It's a phobia! It doesn't need to be logical!"

Cluma stared for a few more seconds, before sighing and standing aside. I ran for the crystal and jumped to the next floor, trying to get my breathing back under control. Cluma followed me, looking at me with something between surprise and disappointment.

"Don't you have anything you're afraid of, even though it makes no sense?" I asked.

"Of course not!"

"How about the research institute the other day?"

"Huh? I wasn't afraid."

"When we were doing the experiments with my arm. We had a pair of healers and potions that could immediately restore me to full health, and you were still panicking."

"That's different! That was... Umm..."

"See!" I said, pushing my advantage.

"Fine. But you expect me to cope when I have to watch you mutilating yourself, so I'm going to expect you to deal with your fear of bugs. You're lucky this dungeon lets you skip the bosses on floors that are a multiple of five. What would you have done if that was the floor nine boss?"

"It wouldn't have been such a big group if it wasn't one of the skippable bosses."

"A later floor's boss then. Or if we desperately wanted the contents of the chest. Or in a different dungeon."

"Fine. Since we're coming back here tomorrow anyway, I promise I'll spend some time hunting on floor six. I can cope with one at a time, and maybe I can build up to... that."

"Good boy," said Cluma, patting my head. What, was I some type of pet now?

"Come on. We've got as deep as we were planning, and I have no maps for this floor, so let's get back to Dawnhold and I'll give you that massage I promised."

"Oh, yay! I forgot about that!"

I almost made a joke about regretting mentioning it, before checking myself. If I wanted people to stop believing I could lie, perhaps a reasonable first step would be not lying.

"What happened about moving in?" I asked, when we were back in my house, Cluma flopped face-first onto my bed, her armour peeled down below her waist, leaving her topless.

"You obviously didn't want me to. Mum and dad are all for it, though."

They are? Clana, I could imagine, but Camus? "Why?"

"Dunno. They... ahh! You're good at this! They said I definitely should move in before summer. Mum wanted to talk to you at some point before then, too, without me. Ow! Careful!"

Hopefully it was for the same reason that Cluma wants to move out, then. It will be their first summer together in a long time, after all. But a talk without Cluma? Whatever for? Now I was nervous again, darn it. Sometimes, I wished me and Cluma were just good friends. Good enough friends to do this sort of thing, perhaps, but without me being terrified of the coming summer, and what her parents thought of me, or getting stressed out by homes and weddings. I regretted my complaints about not being an adult. Could I be a kid again? It was so much less complicated. Adulting was hard.

There was also the surprise that I was good at massaging. I wasn't even cheating by touching her tail. I just had some strange intuition as to where and how to kneed her shoulders for a good effect. How did I know that? I'd never done this before.

ding

Skill [Basic Etiquette] advanced to level 6

Oh. That would be how, then. Odd skill for it to be included under, but it wasn't as if I could think of any better options off the top of my head, and I knew the System tried to avoid skill bloat by bundling tangentially related things together. No way was I admitting it, though, or she'd make me put on my maid dress again for the enchantment's boost.

"Mmm," she moaned as I put my level-up to good use. "That feels nice. Still not as good as the slime, though."

Well, it was only a level six, rank one skill. It was hardly going to be replicating the miracles of a half-millennia old slime-girl. So I cheated, gently squeezing the base of her tail, then stroking it to the end, laughing as Cluma bit into my blanket in an attempt not to squeal.

"Better?"

"That... was... mean..." she panted.

"Oh, sorry. I won't do it again, then."

Even watching from the back, the conflict was obvious on Cluma's twitching ears. She didn't want to admit liking it, but likewise didn't want me thinking she didn't want me to do it again.

"Umm... Maybe sparingly?" she tried, causing me to laugh again.

This vacation was going well, despite not really doing anything for it that we wouldn't do anyway. I could forget the struggles of adulting for a while, and just have fun. Even then, I had to admit my worries over the summer were almost as empty as my fear of oversized bugs. It wasn't as if anything bad would happen, nor would stressing over it magically make the looming issue go away.

Life was good, which was, of course, the perfect time for a rude interruption.

ding

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

14 further administrative notifications follow.

"Aww, why'd you stop?"

"Umm... Cluma? Is the mana doing something weird again?"

She pondered for a moment, before growing far more serious. "Yes. That way." She waved over to the west. "It's... bad."

Seventeen foreign soul notifications; a massive increase from last time. Too damn right it was bad. Should I make my way over there?

ding

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates

23 further administrative notifications follow.

I stumbled backward, trying not to panic. For the first time, there had been a second batch. Another twenty-six. What the heck had Earth done?

Fortunately, I didn't have to spend long pondering my next move, because the roar of Kranakellicium reverberated through the air.

"Peter. We need you. Now!"