The next morning, Reysha was forcing herself to chow down on a bunny she had caught. After the rich meat she had recently enjoyed, going back to this sour, downright filthy taste was like crashing from the life of a noble down to eating mouldy bread out of a rainwater seeped trash heap in less than a day. At least the fact that it was cooked through made it mildly less egregious.

Still, she had to load at least something nourishing into her stomach to keep her strength up. Even if her taste buds revolted against it. “Dumbass fucking, disgusting bluargh,” the tiger girl let out numerous sounds between the bites. She chewed the meat as little as possible, and forced it down with plenty of water. At least that tasted like nothing,

Aclysia flew around the cursing redhead. “Do you judge the effects of withdrawal to have lessened?” she asked, looking with interest at the further mutated woman.

“No clue,” Reysha growled back. “It wasn’t that bad the first day, took like a week until everything started to blur to grey. We’ll see how it comes along… although I fucking hope I won’t have to deal with too much of that stuff…” she ripped another strain of muscles of the small prey’s cooked bones and then stared at it for a moment. “…You know what I find odd?” she raised her blue eyes and fixated them on Apexus instead, “Your cum tastes just fine. Maybe I should use it as seasoning.”

“Seasoning?” the slime was confused what the change of weather patterns had to do with wasting his seed by putting it over meat. Then again, he was currently shooting the equivalent of empty clam shells anyway, so it was a waste even if it went into the proper holes. “Get the feeling this word means a thing I don’t know about.”

“It means,” Aclysia hovered back over to her awakener and took her usual seat on his back, “to put herbs, spices and other heavily flavoured light objects onto a food item to adjust its taste.”

“…you make rat taste like bunny?” Apexus asked, then thought about it for a second longer. “No, you make a rat taste like mint? Why would you do that to meat?”

“Because humanoids have different taste buds that make spiced up meat more appealing,” Reysha explained, throwing a gnawed down bone over her shoulder. “Not that I share that idea anymore, but that’s how the normals look at it.” With a disgusted grimace, she went after the bunny’s second leg.

“Normals sure are odd,” Apexus hummed in genuine confusion. “Want to kill me because I have something they want. Honourless to steal someone else’s… Aclysia, would you be offended if I called you my prey?”

The metal fairy cleared her throat, blushing as she said, “I was most certainly your prey last night.”

Reysha broke out laughing, the hysteric sound carrying far over the lake. Throwing a small beam of sunlight at the striped girl, Aclysia made her shut-up. They were still between the shelter formation of rocks, there was no need to attract scouts by making such loud noises. Despite this somewhat rude way to keep her jaws clenched and good mood limited to body-shaking chuckles, the redhead had no curses for her travel companion, “Nice one, AC.”

“It is still interesting, however, that part of my awakener’s bodily fluids does not trigger your disgust,” the metal fairy hummed and thought back. “It didn’t fend off your withdrawal last time, however.” Aside from their first time above the Clearwater Dungeon, they had sex a number of times before Reysha’s symptoms had gotten so bad that it killed her libido entirely. “Perhaps we should experiment around this? It might just be that Apexus’ sperm didn’t contain concentrated enough magic.”

“You want to eat me?” the slime was definitely not happy to hear this announcement. “Reysha wouldn’t have a face after she tried… I like her face. She looks good… gorgeous, that’s the better word.”

“Awww, thank you!” the tiger girl said in a creepily innocent, high-pitched tone. “You’re cute or something… don’t ask me, I am just crazy!” Switching right back into a serious mode, she used this entire discussion as an excuse not to eat more. “Seriously though, if I could nibble at you to make the in-between dungeons easier, that’d work out for all of us.”

“Well, again, face will melt if you try to just bite me,” Apexus stated. “We can test cum again over the next few days. That won’t be a problem.” Wiggling one of his current legs, the slime was thinking. It wanted to avoid losing more mass, since it was already smaller than it used to be, while its nucleus remained at the same size. Apexus actually wondered what would happen if his core was separated from the mass. Would he just die or would he be like a functioning brain without a body?

That aside, it really would be for the best if they did the experiment. With a functioning food source for Reysha, one of their larger problems would be eradicated. In return, all he had to go through were momentary pain and some extra time spent dissolving wood. Therefore, he agreed and one of his legs was quickly chopped off.

In all aspects, it was the exact same as an adult Archwood Walker’s leg, something Reysha had feasted on numerous times the past days. As such, she slammed her canines into the soft meat that poked out of the point where the carapace had been cut with wild enthusiasm. Only to almost vomit at the first bit of taste, disregarding the thing as quickly as she could.

“This is even WORSE!” she complained, one thing raised up to her mouth and gulping repeatedly against the rising contents of her stomach. After a minute or so, she was finally calm enough for their talk to continue. “Holy fuck, that was like gargling piss or something, that is inedible!”

“Mhm, it might be because it’s not a permanent Growth,” Aclysia theorized and analysed Apexus for one of those that was temporarily removable. Although both her and the slime were not particularly happy with the pain that Apexus felt during this process, it was important to know whether or not this was an option.

Reysha spat a mouthful of water onto the ground after swirling it inside her mouth for a bit. “Why does it taste WORSE though?!” she complained. “What’s up with that?!”

“It might be because, whatever Noir exactly is, it still functions through the mana of dungeon born creatures, ultimately divine in origin,” the metal fairy presented the first idea she had. “As monsters are born from the dungeon and the dungeon was imagined by a god. This might be confirmation that Apexus wasn’t created after all… or he was created using a different method…. There is no way to verify this.” She shook her head, “Excuse me for getting side-tracked. The reconstruction of limbs may be missing the magic that your body now craves, be it completely lost or Apexus own is simply incompatible. If the latter is true, this will also taste rancid.”

Reysha carefully took the slice of Apexus’ ear and, after a few moments thinking if the potential of tasting something that disgusting again was really worth the potential knowledge, carefully took a bite. Seeing that she didn’t immediately was about to vomit again, it seemed to at least be okay.

“Tastes like leather,” she reported, surprised herself. “Neither disgusting nor delicious. Very odd.”

“Then we have no idea,” Aclysia sighed deeply, healing her awakener. “Deeply sorry to wound you like this, Apexus,” her voice betrayed earnest worry. “It didn’t hurt too much, I hope?”

“Went through worse,” the slime truthfully reported. In the first place, it wasn’t that bothered by most pain. “So, I can’t sustain Reysha?”

“Well, you aren’t disgusting, so that’s better than hunting meat that I want to throw into a chamber pot instead,” the tiger girl rubbed her hands with a manic giggle. “Not a lot of edible stuff on you though, best might be eyes.”

“You are not ripping my eyes out,” Apexus decided outright. “I do like you, but not to the point that I’ll let you rip me apart for every meal during the day. Not that immune to pain.”

Reysha nodded, “Yeah, I get that, it’s fine. Still, I am very confused as to WHAT you are. The parts you create are even more disgusting than normal animals and the permanent Growths you have taste like stuff I ate before I changed.”

“An enigma,” Aclysia agreed.

“Is it important to know where I came from?” Apexus tilted his front in confusion. He had sometimes thought about the question, but since it had never led anywhere had eventually dropped it.

“In these worlds of divine creations, a lifeform that doesn’t have the divine spark but isn’t a Parasyte is unheard of,” the lovable fair answered, clearly still wondering where he and Reysha were ready to move on. “Nevertheless, this riddle will not be solved today.”

“Yeah,” Reysha went back to her bunny. “Better question: what are we going to do now?”

Apexus already had an answer for that. “We want to get the remaining parts of Aclysia,” a certain tone reverberated from the wooden plates. “Once we have them, we sneak off this leaf. I want to see this omniverse and get away from here. People here are stupid.”

“You’ll find that they are stupid everywhere,” the tiger girl cackled.

“That aside,” Aclysia chimed back in. “This seems like a proper plan to me. Once my quest is completed, they will lose their reason to hunt you. At least, the biggest one, they will doubtlessly be the few who want to kill you just because you are just another monster in their eyes, if not a worse than usual one.”

“What worse than usual monster doesn’t kill?” Apexus asked. Not that he was asking for a reward or anything, but he felt like people would give him at least some credit for not being a murderer.

With a full mouth, Reysha reprimanded, “Don’t expect them to think that logically. Knowing Mehily, she’ll delude herself into thinking you are the problem with the stick in her ass or something.” The barely chewed meat slowly ran down her throat when she gulped. “Just another reason why the world wouldn’t have missed her.”

“The excesses of the worst people do not justify the fall of the best,” Aclysia held against that.

“Please,” Apexus pleaded with a single word when he saw the conflict looming again in the opened mouths of both women. Snapping shout, they chose to leave their disagreement where it was. They had made up, but the fundamental divide did and would always remain. Even people that were friends could disagree quite heavily.

With that avoided, it was time for Apexus to fill up on his body mass and then it was high time they headed out.