The usual coordination of the group was currently dysfunctional. Between Reysha and Aclysia, the atmosphere could charitably be described as frosty. Now, Apexus actually had no idea what frost felt like, but he was pretty certain that it fit, since it made him shiver whenever the two began another fight. It was like they were trying to eat each other’s arguments by throwing copious amounts of word-acid at each other.

Worse enough, their fights pretty quickly spiralled away from the initial topic, which had been unproductive enough. Through the hours and eventual days they spent exploring the tree, it devolved from a strained silence to either of them occasionally making a small comment that then exploded into an argument. About basically nothing at all. In many cases, the thing they were opposing each other on was just a fight to be had while not mentioning the actual thing they disagreed over.

Apexus realized that it eventually just became about one of them being right, the ‘what about’ ceased to matter the further communication dissolved. To the point where they were arguing about which path in the road to take despite having no idea where either lead. The slime wasn’t even sure why the two girls were behaving that way, it wasn’t exactly in either one’s interest. Normally, Reysha would just have laughed it off and Aclysia would simply forego such unnecessary engagements in favour of more advantageous procedures.

It was like their ire had pushed some rock past the point of no return, much like the slime had done himself with the Forester Dragon. That rock was now slowly tipping over and about squash their well-oiled group into a mess of ire and bitter comments.

And every time he had to play tiebreaker, Apexus felt part of that ire from both girls land on him. He wanted to cry out “Help me!” repeatedly in this situation, asking for whatever god to just tell him how to handle this. The one time he did dare to make the sound, however, he had gotten glances from Reysha and Aclysia that had made him wish he was suffering from snake poison again. Followed by some pretty clear comments that his voice was immensely annoying. Which almost caused a crack in his nucleus.

Women could be really vicious with their words, he learned. It wasn’t his fault that the wooden plate resonated different on his semi-liquid body than it did on the Archwood Maggots, causing an annoying high-pitch rather than a dumb, dull, deep voice. It was just his only way to raise some voice, so he kept it.

‘How do I deserve this?’ Apexus asked the darkness of his thoughts, feeling a lot more liquid than usual. This was stressing him out, causing his surface to lose much of its usual tautness. Due to their constantly bad mood, neither of the girls were willing to have sex either, which robbed the slime of that particular, very effective relief method.

At some point, the slime decided that the dungeon must have been at fault and simply hurried them all along to find the boss room and get out of here. Maybe that would magically fix it. Much to their luck, finding it was rather easy as well, at least for them.

The boss room was located at the very top of the tree, the narrowing top of the massive trunk. Something Apexus simply scouted ahead and found when they were walking on an outside part on the dungeon’s branches, giving him the opportunity to fly. He laid a thick layer of pheromones around it and then they only had to find the correct path upwards.

Only, being a bit of an understatement. Not because the monsters were particular threatening, Apexus even wondered sometimes that this area still qualified for that awakening tingle he felt where he could beat the challenge for a permanent Growth, but because…

“We could certainly skip this entire walking if you would just wait for us, Reysha,” because of comments like that.

“So, you want me to just sit on my ass, is that it?” the tiger girl hissed back and Apexus felt pulses of tired pain radiating from his nucleus, as if somebody was pressuring it just a little bit from all sides. It began again.

“It would certainly be more effective if we flew to the top without you,” Aclysia stated in a dismissive tone. “That’s all you are concerned about, isn’t it? Effectiveness.”

Apexus had to wonder where that line of argumentation even came from. The tiger girl had never said that and that seemed like an unfair oversimplification to the things that only went in that direction.

“No, but since all YOU seem to care about is hurting our chances of survival, why don’t you just fly down to the base and tell them exactly where we are so they can hunt us down easier?!” Reysha shot back with the exact same kind of rhetoric.

So far, they had encountered no search parties. Which made a large degree of sense, it had only been four days since that encounter had happened and between the two days it took to travel to and back to Haralry from where they were, the Guild would also need to decide if they wanted to organize parties in the first place and whether or not it was smart to send them into Birshia or just have them wait on the entrance.

All of which things Apexus normally would have given some thought to, but this really wasn’t the atmosphere to think more than one step ahead. “I only have my awakeners best interest in mind,” the metal fairy insisted.

“No, you have your best interest in mind and want everyone else to also make that their best interests,” Reysha retorted.

“Mass murder is not a viable interest,” Aclysia declared, crossing her arms and daring the redhead to challenge that position.

“Nobody ever talked about MASS, you worthless piece of shit,” Reysha growled and flipped the metal fairy off. After which the discussion only became even worse. Apexus could feel his membrane liquify further, his elliptic shape looking more like a half-melted candle at that point. They couldn’t get out of there quickly enough.