Apexus couldn’t quite help himself but stare at Reysha’s ass. Crouching on all fours, her head lowered and her behind raised, her leather pants stretched over those magnificent twin spheres. Only the red, black-striped tail just above managed to slightly distract him, the dark tip waving around in slow and hypnotic fashions. Then the tiger girl shifted the position of her legs and his eyes instinctually went back to her bubble butt.

The slime was very happy to have two companions of this level of attractiveness.

“You were really stingy with applying your pheromones,” Reysha complained, as she continued to sniff around for any traces on the floor. “I can barely pick anything up!” Irritated, her ears flicked at a nearby firefly and she crawled a step towards the wall.

“It's supposed to be so little it fades after three weeks, if I don’t reapply it,” Apexus justified himself. “Makes it harder to track us.”

“Makes it harder for me to track it!” the redhead answered. Although her tone was aggressive, the slime knew she wasn’t seriously annoyed. Otherwise, the fur on her tail would have been fluffed up to an absurd degree. “It’s almost faded already. I wouldn’t even be able to find it if I didn’t know the smell already.”

“Precisely why I advised this course of action,” Aclysia chimed in. “It aids us in remaining not only untraceable by later search parties but also unremarkable in the eyes of current adventurers.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Reysha easily conceded the point and perked up. “Alright, caught the whiff of it!” she announced and got up. After dusting off her hands stroking her blood red hair back, she pointed towards the left path. “That way.”

Apexus took the lead position and the trio went through the tunnel. It had a slow descent, but the footing was quite stable and there were no monsters in sight. Any ambush that they had to deal with would first assault the slime and, with his healing speed, that wasn’t exactly an issue. “This wouldn’t be necessary if I just remembered the way,” he apologized.

Although Apexus’ memory was quite good, better than most humans at the very least, it wasn’t perfect. Even after hunting inside this dungeon for two months, he still didn’t know his way around all of it. Much of that had to do with the fact that he usually didn’t go this deep. Completely clearing a dungeon, even if they were too strong for its inhabitants and knew much of the way, was a heavy time investment.

Summer Rest was middling in the size, among the dungeons the group had visited so far. If they hadn’t been familiar with the layout already, they might have needed over a week to explore the entire thing. Even the one time they had pushed to kill the boss before had taken them four days and they had just stumbled over the boss room early by pure chance.

Because the dungeon was this vast, Apexus hadn’t gone too deep all that often. Unless it had been a good day for Reysha and all three of them were up for some delving, the slime had only dabbled in the early segments of the dungeons in an effort to find food or, out of pure boredom, items. The majority of days, he had only been in there for about eight to ten hours. Not nearly enough to get to the second half of the dungeon and, from there, back to home.

They were now in that second half. Having taken a previous rest at a healing fountain, Apexus was pleasantly surprised by how stable Reysha was at the moment. With something to focus her mind on, the tiger girl seemed more able to stave off the lingering effects of her trauma. It wasn’t a sudden fix, her still diminished ability to fight proved that much, but it helped.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Reysha told him and pat his shoulder from behind. “I was here before too, so I should remember something, but this entire place looks the fucking same!” That was another complication. Given the very monotone design of the wooden hallways and rooms, there were very few hallmarks to orient themselves by.

“Certainly, this is my failure,” Aclysia stated and got herself two questioning stares. “I have the best memory out of the three of us, recalling details should be my obligation.”

Apexus entirely disagreed with that view, “Memorizing things should be a group effort. We all have to work together and individually if we want to succeed.”

“What the liquid man said,” Reysha stated.

Their conversation was put on a sudden pause when Reysha and Apexus both spotted a spider on the ceiling. “Do you want to…?” the slime asked the tiger girl, who nodded and stepped forwards. With one slow and fluid movement, she drew one of the throwing knives from her belt, drew her arm back and sent it flying at her target. It did a half spin sideways, stabilized in its trajectory and then buried itself blade first in one of the spider’s squishy eyeballs.

Startled, the large arachnid fell to the floor, where Reysha immediately set out to attack it. Jumping on her target, Reysha tried to land an immediate, deadly blow against her target. As much as the spider thrashed around, however, all she hit was one of the creature’s eight legs. The continued movements ripped the dagger from her hands, just as the spider retaliated by ramming its fangs in Reysha’s own leg.

The tiger girl hissed in pain and quickly pulled her second dagger. Committed to the bite, the spider didn’t realize that it opened its entire back for repeated stabs, until it was already too late and Reysha turned part of it into mincemeat.

“Useless garbage,” she cussed at herself, when she pushed the dead spider off her. The, thankfully smooth, fangs slid out of her and revealed two puncture wounds that immediately started bleeding. Sitting against the wall, Reysha extended that leg to allow Aclysia to do her thing. “I would have died about five times today if you weren’t around.”

The wound by itself was, most likely, not lethal. Gruesome as it looked immediately, it was a lot less threatening than a stab by a proper knife and didn’t run that deep. If the common dungeon spider was venomous, that may have changed things, but as it was, it was just a pair of bothersome puncture wounds.

Inside of a dungeon, any wound that could classify as ‘bothersome’, however, was lethal. One small disadvantage would lead to further ones in following fights, leading to further wounds, until pain caused that one misstep that ended it all. Either that, or blood loss.

“Perhaps that will teach you to treat me more nicely,” the metal fairy remarked, while her magic first stopped the blood from flowing out and then began to seal the wound. The healing started further in, the core of the body mending first and then slowly building outwards until fresh skin, indistinguishable from the surrounding area, made it look like there had never been any issue in the first place.

As fascinating as that was to look at, Apexus instead went over to the corpse of the spider. Not to eat, they had done so not too long ago, but to take Reysha's weapons. After cleaning them through a bit of a slime-grooming and aftercare with a piece of cloth, he handed them back to the tiger girl. This way, they could move on immediately once her leg was back in order.

“I’ll need new pants after this,” she asserted. Where the brown leather armour on her torso was structurally intact, despite several scratches and other battle marks, her pants had sustained several holes and slits. It was to little wonder, many of the enemies in the dungeon had their primary attack tools below the humanoid waistline. Adding to that, her pants were more intended to be flexible then grant proper defences and their riddled state was a foregone conclusion.

“We won’t have money for new pants once we’re done here,” Apexus reminded her.

“Yeah… guess I’ll have to wear my ‘civilian’ pants for a little while,” she sighed and got up. “Anyway, let’s get going.”

It took them a couple more hours and several encounters to make their way further in. At a few points, they had to reorient themselves. Either because they were genuinely not sure where they were or because they had stepped off the correct path to engage with a treasure room. As a beginner dungeon, Summer Rest had a fundamentally static layout, but sometimes chests appeared in certain rooms or halls, guarded by numerous enemies. Since they were there for the purpose of getting money, they took those whenever they found one.

Regardless of such distractions, they eventually made their way to the boss room. “We’re in luck,” Apexus said, when they made their way into the large chamber that preceded a boss room in beginner dungeons like this. A humid warmth filled the room, coming from a circular healing fountain in the middle of the hall. Like usual for these things, it was fairly shallow. The fireflies didn’t seem to mind the heat at all and just sat on the walls like usual.

Apexus’ comment was in regard to the door to the boss room, however. Interlocking roots formed two halves of a gate, just waiting to be swung open. That state meant that the boss was currently present and nobody else was fighting it. In any other case, the door would have been locked by means they couldn’t overcome. Not that they had any reason to.

“Should we fight the boss now?” Reysha, while taking a sip from the water of the healing fountain, for pure thirst reasons. “Once we’re in there, we can’t get back out.” That was correct, in this case. Dungeons generally had one of two approaches to what happened after a boss was beaten. Either the door opened and the group was left to backtrack or the door stayed close and a shortcut back to the entrance revealed itself. Summer Rest was in the latter category. “Might be smarter to just search around here for a little while longer. What do the finances say?”

“We should already have all we require,” Aclysia responded. “Defeating the boss guarantees us another item. Even if I wildly overestimated the value of the things we acquired so far, I would be surprised if we needed further funds after gathering that final piece. Boss loot tends to be more valuable.”

“Sucks that it’ll only be a single item though,” Reysha bemoaned. First time beating a boss, the rewards were more gracious. “Not like we had any luck in this dungeon overall though.”

“We had good monetary success,” Aclysia shrugged, while they all walked towards the door. “Even if we gained nothing for personal usage. What can be extracted from this place wouldn’t last us long regardless.”

“Let’s hope that changes in the future,” Apexus said, while leaning against the gate of melded roots. It moved slowly at first, then slid open almost on its own. The trio stepped into the boss room without much worry.

It had the shape of a funnel, with the base describing the broadest point and the ceiling steadily growing more and more narrow, until ending in a one-metre wide hole. Like usual, the fireflies sitting on the walls provided the illumination necessary. The floor was similar to a sawed-off tree-trunk, with several rings giving a pleasing symmetry to the light wood.

The trio kept their eyes focused on the hole in the ceiling. Once they were about five metres into the room, a sort of maw peeked out of the hole. It was a beak surrounded by four serrated pincers. It was large enough to grab a person and bite their head clean off. “We will cover you where necessary,” Apexus promised.

“Alright… let’s see how well I do,” Reysha nodded and stepped into the middle of the room. She jumped back immediately, as the boss dropped down to devour her.

Hanging from its hiding hole on a thick bundle of roots, the head descended to ground level and uselessly snapped at the empty air. Black flower petals rose around its head as it hissed in annoyance and completely left its spawning pot. The roots peeled out of the unified rope, extending outwards like tentacles. Each of the dozen tendrils ended in a hardened hook, which the boss rammed into the walls of the room to secure itself above the ground.

To Reysha, the creature looked like a malformed mixture between a carnivorous plant, an octopus, and a spider. Although its large maw and pincers were extremely threatening, the creature suffered from the same drawback as its cousin (the Steproot), being poor senses for anything but its immediate vicinity. The Voraroot, as this monster was commonly called, swayed its head through the room like a large pendulum in search of its prey.

Aclysia and Apexus kept to the wall, while Reysha ran straight at the head. The moment it noticed her approach, the Voraroot aimed its maw in her direction. The anchoring tentacles stretched with creaking sound, as the boss lashed out.

Reysha, once more, dodged long before the attack arrived where she was. As intimidating as the boss looked, it was slow. Slow enough that Reysha could get behind its head and stab at the base of one of the tentacles. Not slow enough, however, that she could do that and not get body-slammed by the head of it and tossed to the floor.

The boss hissed triumphantly, spread out its pincers and moved in to add a number of unsightly trenches to her torso. Reysha shook her head to re-orient herself and only saw what was about to happen when it was too late to get out of the way.

A ball of heated light hit the boss’ head, causing it to flinch back and give Reysha the necessary room to roll off to the side. When she was back on her feet, she heard a shout coming her way.

“Keep to the safe tactics!” Aclysia reprimanded. “You’re not in a shape where you can just rely on your reflexes.”

Reysha wanted to shout back that she was well aware of that, but she wasn’t exactly fighting that way. Nodding, she fell back several metres. Once the Voraroot had recovered from the shock, it went back to scanning the room through pendulum movements. Just that the one tentacle Reysha had stabbed at didn’t properly move anymore, causing the circling of the head to be slightly off.

Dropping into a slight crouch, Reysha concentrated on Sneaking. While avoiding the searching and quietly hissing head of the boss, she stalked along the walls. Her target was a particularly low anchored root-tendril.

With one quick jump, she grabbed onto it. The boss noticed immediately and loosened the tentacle to grab the prey and move it towards its mouth. Reysha had other plans, only holding onto the tentacle for as long as it took to ram her dagger into it a few times and separate the hook from the rest of the limb.

The boss screamed in pain and then rage, as the tiger girl let go and left it unaware where she was now. Two of its twelve tendrils were now incapable of supporting the weight of the head, causing it to hang a little bit lower than before. Not enough to be of an advantage yet, but enough to make for the foundation of a strategy.

Whereas the tentacle she had damaged at the base was completely useless, the one she just crippled was still able to lash through the room. Slow as the movements were, it was still an extra thing to avoid, as she made her way towards the next tendril she could reach. After repeating that process four more times, the Voraroot head was hanging mere centimetres above the floor.

Reysha dropped down, positioning feet and hands for the start of a sprint. ‘Now comes the dangerous part,’ she thought and smiled a little bit. Then she started running. Gaining as much momentum as she could, she jumped the moment she hit the edge of the Voraroot’s awareness.

She held onto the side of the boss and just started stabbing at the back of its head. The flower petals and thrashing movements tried to shove her off, but she held on with all she had. One by one, she ruined the tendrils, until there was a snapping sound and she, the head, and the few still attached roots all fell to the floor. With panicked speed, the boss pulled all of those tentacles towards its mouth, forming a deadly cocoon.

Apexus was ready to intervene but, in a display of her old speed, Reysha jumped over the now lying head before she could be caught. In one seamless motion, she unsheathed her second dagger, whirled around and let herself fall onto the wolf-sized head. Both blades sunk to the hilt into the gnarled body of the Voraroot and reached something central. One last shiver went through the tendrils and the pincers, then everything about the body became limp.

“…That wasn’t too bad,” Reysha said, as a tunnel opened at the back of the room. Inside they found their reward chest and their way out. “Let’s hope it really is enough.”

“Yeah,” Apexus said, to both of those things.