None of them had proper digging equipment, so Apexus’ request turned out to be slightly difficult. The best they had was the slime growing a bunch cat paws and then using them to rip at the dirt while balancing on the Archwood Walker legs. It looked a bit goofy (or nightmarish to people not used to the chimeric slime’s sight) but it did the trick.

Bigger limbs would have been better, but there were only deer and the Forester Dragons that qualified for that around. One had the drawback of being hooves and lanky, while the other were strictly too big. In other words, the cat paws remained the best option.

“Can’t you grow just front paws?” Reysha asked, watching her slimefriend dig deeper. Although strong, the back legs of a cat were not the greatest for the quick motions used for this endeavour. The slime lowered himself into the earth bit by bit.

Still, as the dirt flew away from under it, it had ample time to answer. “No, some Growths come in sets.”

“But why though?” Reysha wondered.

“Why can’t you live off eating treebark?” Apexus asked in return. “Is just nature’s way, some things are as they are. Arms and legs in four-legged creatures come together. Skeletons always… are always one growth, external or internal. Teeth don’t count into that though.”

“And why’s THAT again?!” the tiger girl grew just more confused. Hooking her index fingers into each corner of her mouth she pulled her brown lips far open, revealing her maw. “Thish,” she spoke rather sloppily as the expected result, “ish clearly bone.”

The slime would have shook his face, if he hadn’t been preoccupied. “Incorrect,” he stated. “Teeth aren’t the same material as bone. They are something like hair... also bone-y”

“What the fuck are you on about?” Reysha laughed out loud, cleaning her fingers on some blades of grass. “Hair? Seriously? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while.”

“It’s true nonetheless,” Apexus insisted and then felt his paws scratch over something. Getting off his digging position, he checked what it was. Curious, the girls joined him.

Under a layer of healthy, brown dirt peeked out something black. It appeared to be stone, with a surface too smooth and too wide for being just a regular boulder underneath the ground. Additionally, as Apexus found out by carefully probing that thing, “It is hollow.”

“Alrighty,” Reysha laid down on the steep decline of this hole, holding down onto the edge as best she could, and then brought her heel down on the stone. It cracked, hard but brittle. A second kick, the lines caused jagged shards to protrude out of the smooth surface. The third time, she broke through, sounds like clam shells shattering echoing from within this cavity when the shards hit the floor.

“Interesting,” Aclysia noted, flying down to the hole. Underneath, it was pitch black, all they could see was some sort of pillar illuminated by the sunlight that peeked through. “I shall scout ahead,” the metal fairy offered, ready to squeeze herself through. Only for Apexus to step in and block the hole with one of the thin Walker legs.

“No,” the slime stated in the tone of absolute conviction.

Aclysia blinked at her awakener. “I can easily fly out again while shining through the dark with light spells, Apexus.”

“No.” This time Apexus put extra emphasis on making it clear that he wasn’t having a discussion about this. Her scouting ahead in dungeons where she knew the enemies and that she could get away was one thing. Sending her in first into something that she, the declared guide, didn’t know existed wasn’t happening. Not on the watch of a slime in love. “I’m not risking losing you again.”

Even if she wanted to continue arguing, Aclysia felt that it was futile. Reysha weighing in on Apexus’ side didn’t help. “Info would be pretty good, but I am also against sending our healer in first,” the tiger girl made a sound point. The topic was thusly decided.

Instead, they went on to widen the hole. It was a bit easier now, Apexus and Aclysia were holding onto Reysha as she kicked away the rim of the porcelain-esque material. More shards and earth fell down into a pile, one the trio eventually landed on. For Aclysia, the descent was no problem at all, Reysha had a bit of a rough landing, the drop was around three metres, but nothing a tiger girl Rogue wasn’t equipped to handle. Indeed, it was Apexus who came down last and somewhat awkwardly. The hole was nowhere big enough to fly, so he had to take advantage of his semi-liquidity, stretching a Growthless part in front of him and then, when most of his weight was extended that way, dropping down.

A ‘Splat’ sound accompanied the sight of all of Apexus’ organs squishing together in a tight clump, from ears to nucleus. It was a deeply uncomfortable but thankfully short moment, then everything began to flow back to where they belonged. As they would have gotten in the way, Apexus was now without additional Growths, except for the Walker legs.

Near absolute darkness kept a grip on the chamber around them. The noon sun was casting an equal cone of light around them. That got quickly lost between the pillars, odd-looking things, like connected drip-stone that had been smoothed down. How big this area was, none of them knew, a likely idea would have been the size of the flowered area above.

Magic gathered between Aclysia’s hands in an orb of golden flames that had an odd flow to them, as if the tongues were fluid rather than flickering heat. She threw the orb into a random direction and it travelled forwards, illuminating some sort of odd bump curving between two pillars. A smooth curve about as tall as Apexus or at the hips of Reysha. The light went as quickly as it had come when it hit a pillar and dispersed.

“Well, seems like we’re alone down here,” Reysha smirked, keeping a grip on her stiletto and her posture ready to move despite her own words.

“Do not relax until we get confirmation,” Aclysia warned. Moments later, she repeated the spell, throwing it past Apexus into the darkness right of herself. It didn’t make it past far beyond the cone of light. Rather, it collided with a massive, elongated head. Eyeless, covered in smooth black scales and sitting on a body that was entirely one long lean muscle, coiled around some sort of sphere.

Although it was just a flash, Apexus got a perfect view of the rows of teeth of the creature. The front set looked sharp, with oddly serrated edges, and the neighbouring canines were clearly curved to secure prey in position, while the back were as broad as the teeth of a herbivore. Ideal to rend flesh from bone and crush the latter once there was nothing more to gnaw off. As the slime quickly learned, trying to move away, just as great at ripping through wooden plating and slime.

The toothed, giant serpent had already been about to strike. The last second warning had barely allowed Apexus to get a foot off the ground before the jaws snapped closed around him. With one simple bite, the slime was robbed of a wing, its speech plating torn apart and experienced the pain of having a sharp tooth scratch over the surface of its nucleus, barely missing it. The frontal teeth cut, destroying the structural integrity of his plated back, then broader teeth at the back moved on to splinter and crush.

In return, the guardian snake had to suffer a mouthful of acid. Although it failed at protecting Apexus, the wooden plating still kept the snake from just penetrating straight through. Even better, at least from a raw damage perspective, the boss monster had a harder time pulling back.

Apexus physique made him the absolute nightmare of strike predators such as this. Although he lost a massive amount of slime in the process, the holes in his membrane filled the snake’s mouth with more acid as it pulled away. Immensely sharp teeth were reduced to stubs before the removal from the slime’s body caused the searing liquid to neutralize, becoming nothing but water as the magic inside petered out.

“Motherfucker!” Reysha was anything but amused about somebody striking at the slime this way. Before the snake could pull back into the darkness, she rammed her stiletto through the scales. The weapon was made for penetrating armour, oddly perfect for this fight. It vanished halfway down into the meat, then got stuck in the thick skull of the creature, before being wrestled from the tiger girl’s hand by the snake jerking backwards.

It vanished once more into the darkness, occasionally hissing angrily. “Awakener!” Aclysia’s worried voice reached Apexus as he dissolved his legs, two of them were broken and he didn’t have the energy to spare to worry about them while having so many punctures in his membrane. A puddle of water began to form underneath him. “Stay still!” the metal fairy began her soothing healing spell.

“Krrkrkktt…rrktt,” Apexus wanted to say something to the effect of ‘Thank you’, but those cracking sounds were all the broken plates produced. The healing spell that washed over him quickly aided the recovery of his membrane, keeping further slime loss from occurring. His bit-off wing was laying on the floor to his side.

“Motherfucker!” Reysha growled for a second time, desperately trying to spy the snake in the darkness. Her eyes were as little able to perceive the monster as Apexus’ tremor sense. Despite its enormous size, it was moving with scary efficiency. “What’s the plan?”

“Is… trkrarge… can… btrkeed” Apexus managed to get out as the continued healing stitched back together the plates. It was really a horrible idea to use it as both plating and the only means of communication. “I muskrkr… gekrkr krkrail.”

“You must get what?” Reysha asked nervously jumping from spot to spot.

Aclysia recognized the pattern in the mistake quick enough to provide the answer. “Tail, Apexus wants to get the tail!”

“…Okay, sure, whatever!” the tiger girl didn’t care for the part where they explained to her the why, this was definitely not the time. Toothless as the serpent may have been now, but it still had a strong jaw big enough to swallow her whole if she didn’t watch out. Once Apexus was in decent shape, healing the entire wing was far down the line of priority in this cave there, the trio separated. Aclysia and Reysha kept together, searching for the head of the beast to distract it. “OY YOU BIG BLIND ASSHOLE!” Reysha screamed, the area around her illuminated by Aclysia keep a sphere of sunlight hovering between her hands.

It worked like a charm, the head of the snake emerged from the darkness. A direct charge was nowhere near as quick as the strike earlier, not having the force of a curled up body suddenly bolting forwards, but still strong enough to break and swallow an entire human. The opened maw seared through the air and snapped closed. Rather than ripping flesh, the remaining stubs of teeth broke off when the snake bit into a pillar of stone.

Laughing insanely as she always did, Reysha was having way too much fun with the situation. In a move that was as bold as it was reckless, the tiger girl turned on her heels and delivered a perfectly aimed, straight kick to the hilt of her weapon. It didn’t do anything, the skull of the beast much thicker than she had bargained for and keeping the thorn-like blade from penetrating any further.

What it did succeed in though, was making the already furious creature focus in on her specifically. Thrashing its enormous neck around, it tried to swipe at Reysha, its blind nature becoming an immense disadvantage when the Rogue used her magically charged wrist and ankle joints to catch her bounce back without as much as a single sound.

“That’s right, you dumb, giant, long danger noodle,” Reysha whispered, depleting her internal mana by using the Aimed Whisper technique. For what it did, it sure was straining, as were most things that used the neck joint, but the effect was clear, as the words reverberated in the snakes ears not from Reysha’s position, but after bouncing back from a pillar. Attacking the stone in vain, the boss monster was utterly confused when it suddenly heard the redhead giggle from the opposite direction.

Fortunate for all of them that the fight had begun with the snake searing off its tongue and smelling capabilities with it. All because Apexus was the first target that had made a sound when he had landed the way he did.

The slime had, in the meanwhile, found his target. So long that its lower body moved only rarely, while its head tried desperately to track Reysha, the toothed serpent was fighting an opponent that was teleporting from its perception. Although it depleted her mana every time, Rogues had the advantage of quickly regenerating their internal reserves. Furthermore, she was supported by Aclysia, still illuminating the area and making her movements easier.

Under these circumstances, wrapping around the creature’s tail was pretty easy. The snake didn’t even notice, too enraged at the tiger girl, not until Apexus was past the disgusting scales, tasting bland and yet salty, and began tasting blood, a much more pleasant flavour of salt.

At that point, the snake began just thrashing in its entirety, but it was too late and the slime let himself be catapulted by the first, comparatively soft, movement. Apexus had no qualms about how this fight would go. They lacked the proper numbers or size of knife to create any mortal wounds, so it would be a fight for exhaustion. By creating a large wound, the slime aimed to simply bleed out the large creature as it kept desperately thrashing.

“Stay defensive!” he thus cried out, after making his way over the light in the darkness. The trio engaged in the rather honourless but deeply effective tactic of triggering the snakes aggressive reflexes over and over again. It didn’t take long for it to slow down, eventually to the point that Reysha handled it with cruel ridicule.

“Aww, your gums are looking pretty bad, you know?” she asked, poking the bloody, toothless maw. After having been tricked into biting stone several times, they were in absolutely terrible shape. The jaws snapped closed a second after she had pulled her hand out of reach. The creature’s neck was hanging down and it was clear that it was done when its thrashing became too weak to throw Apexus off its head.

It had lost too much blood and been fooled into too many wasted movements. Doing it the favour of finishing it off as quick as he could, Apexus dissolved the target’s head.