Nobody in the group had ever seen a dungeon like Verdany before. Every last one they had entered before had been located inside some sort of building, structure or landmark. Verdany was separated from its surroundings only by a thick wall of brambles. There was no easy entrance, not even by air. Although the brambles stopped just above the canopies of the nearby trees, animated, giant ivy tentacles that sprouted somewhere inside the dungeon heavily disincentivized a flying approach. It was feasible to fly around the outer ring, perhaps, but towards the centre of the area claimed by the dungeon, there were so many of those tentacles that it would have been beyond risky to try.

That aside, Apexus had morphed out of the form that allowed him to carry Reysha when they had landed south of Verdany over a day ago. Now they stood in front of the bramble wall and looked for any way to get inside there. The branches were so dense that they couldn’t even see the other side. They would easily be able to get through if they could just break their way through, but the thorns made this an entirely unattractive prospect.

“We could really use someone who wears heavy armour,” Reysha pointed out while looking left and right. Between the wall of brambles and the remaining jungle was about a two-metre gap in which no tree grew. This created a natural corridor that they could follow around Verdany, but it still didn’t solve their entrance issues. They had been searching for a proper entrance point for about an hour now and were now certain that they just had to brute force their way through. “Some plate and guts and that lady can just stomp straight ahead; we just need to follow.”

“Why is she automatically a lady in your mind?” Aclysia wondered.

Apexus answered in Reysha’s stead, “One male is plenty for this group. Don’t want the sexual awkwardness of another person lusting after you two.”

The tiger girl pointed at the slime and nodded with a big grin. “Exactly! No need for another cock around these parts.”

“That is a logical through line, admittedly,” Aclysia stated.

Reysha took the topic back around. “Speaking of being a man, can’t you go ahead, Apexus? You shouldn’t be all too bothered by some thorns.”

“I would be less bothered than you are,” the slime answered, looking at the wall of brambles. “They would take tiny slices out of my membrane though. I would heal the gashes immediately, but lose a lot of biomass in the process.”

“Ah, so it’s a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ issue for you too.”

“Oooh, I like that idiom. It makes sense.” Apexus bowed down and looked for any path lower to the ground. Without success. “That aside, my membrane isn’t firm enough, I wouldn’t break the thorns that I pass.”

“Fuck that then, Aclysia, what about you? You’re made of metal, can’t ya get through this without issue?”

“Albeit they are metal, my outer layers don’t have any hardness to them. It is effectively skin in this regard. I would fare exactly as well as Apexus,” the metal fairy reminded Reysha.

“Right, no hard bootie,” the redhead said and slapped her own to emphasize.

“Crude, but apt,” Aclysia snickered a little bit, as she looked down on herself and the simple robe she was wearing. The blessed fabric kept its white colour more stubbornly than normal clothes, but lacked any of the intricacies or colour markings that Church garments usually had. In effect, she was an independent Priest (even if her origin and exact Class were far different from the norm), so she got to wear whatever robe she wanted. This basic shape was just the cheapest. “Apexus, do you have any Growths that could end this problem?”

“Am thinking,” Apexus answered as he checked all of the things he had eaten the past month. Anything with a hard outside would have sufficed, theoretically.

“Can’t he just eat his way through?” Reysha asked the obvious question. “I get that it would take a while, but we can make a corridor that way.”

“A corridor whose origin will be unmistakable,” the metal fairy returned.

“I don’t think that’ll be a big issue, these brambles will probably regrow in a few weeks tops.” The tiger girl grabbed a part that wasn’t completely covered with thorns and snapped it off out of boredom. The wood was hard, but also quite brittle. “Being something a god placed here and all that.”

“I dislike executing plans that hinge on a ‘probably’,” Aclysia’s risk aversion continued to drive her to dislike this plan. With a sigh, she had to concede, “It may turn out to be our best option, however. Any luck, darling?”

“No,” Apexus shook his head. “Only things I ate with exoskeletons recently are dungeon spiders. Because the Growth isn’t permanent, I’m bound to the natural shape and dimensions. It won’t really solve the issue.” He looked over his shoulders and the rest of the jungle behind them. “Could try covering myself in bark, but that’d be difficult. I can only copy plant life as I eat it, so I would have to rely on branches. I would get stuck everywhere.”

“In the time it takes you to eat one of these trees, you could have already chewed a hole into the wall anyway,” Reysha pointed out and then clapped her hands. “Are we done with this discussion? I really want to sink my teeth into something fresh!”

“…It appears there is no helping it,” Aclysia let out another sigh. They could have gambled on the air route, but she was even less willing to take the risk of getting smacked by one of those ivy tentacles. Any such hit would separate them and Reysha wasn’t favoured to survive the fall.

Apexus converted a bunch of the thickened membrane around his limb back into slime. By the time he was in proper eating shape, he looked like a skeleton swimming inside a giant batch of blue goo, rather than the humanoid form he had come to use most of the time. This was also the first time in a while that he had to rely on the horribly ineffective way of moving that was crawling. Given that he could only move as quickly as he could digest things, this wasn’t a big issue. The chimeric creature just fundamentally disliked this way of movement.

As Aclysia had predicted, hole he created was certainly unique. A person in armour stomping through would have created a path marked by snapped and bent branches. Apexus created a circular hole with smooth edges that looked like a large glob of acid had fallen sideways. Something that was entirely too close to the truth of the matter.

Regardless of the metal fairy’s discomfort, they eventually broke through on the side. While they looked around, Apexus condensed his form back down. A process that took almost five minutes and gave them ample time to scan their surroundings.

Verdany was not unlike the surrounding forest, but rather than trees, it seemed ivy was the dominant flora around. Although some tall trunks stood around, they were in a symbiotic relationship with a kind of yellowy-green ivy. The thick leaves covered the trees base to crown and replaced regular leaves. Branches of neighbouring trees were connected through intertwining ivy and created the feeling of a large spiderweb hanging above them. In between those trees were the metre-wide bases of the giant ivy tentacles. They appeared to be a part of a larger creature, reaching out of tunnels in the soil.

As for the rest of the ground, it looked rather strange. Ivy dominated every spot where enough sun reached to sustain its existence. It spread over the floor, climbed over boulders and hung like drapes from every kind of overhang. Unlike the ivy on the trees, the kind that covered the floor had a grassy green.

Where there wasn’t enough sunlight, there was simply dirt. If it was damp enough, there were also mushrooms, but otherwise any surface covered in shade was a giant gap in the ivy coverings. It was as if the web above had burned its shadow into the ground.

“You think those will be a problem?” Reysha asked and gestured towards one of the giant tentacles in the distance. Ever onwards, it swayed, never letting them forget that it was alive and flexible.

“The surroundings do not reflect any kind of damage that the slamming down of such a large tendril would cause,” Aclysia stated. “We would see displaced dirt or some broken trees. However, it might be the case that they are capable of precision strikes.” She held up the palm of her left hand and descended with the index finger of her right on it, pressing a specific point. “Until we have verified this, we should be wary.”

“At least it’s easy to dodge something like that,” Reysha rolled her shoulders, neck, wrists and other joints, warming up for the combat that was bound to ensue in the coming hours. Looking up, she blinked at the open sky. “Not gonna lie, pretty nice to explore a dungeon that’s not so claustrophobic.”

“Claustrophobic?” Apexus asked with a tilted head.

“It describes the irrational fear of tight spaces,” the metal fairy was ready with the explanation.

“You’re afraid of tight places, Reysha?” Apexus asked, tilting his head.

“Well, I don’t like them, but I don’t get a panic attack when inside them, no,” Reysha stated. “Would have made that one time we got pressed together into a smuggling space together rather difficult. No, you just say it that way for small spaces.”

“You have so many odd fears,” Apexus remarked, finally completely condensed again. “And odd words. Is there one for fear of poisons?”

“Common sense?” the redhead jokingly suggested and got a giggle out of her companions. “Anyway, what’s our strategy?” she asked and gestured at the sky again. Although seeing it was nice from a psychological perspective for the two firm-bodied members of the group, it also had the practical application that they could orient themselves by the sun. If they had a better understanding of the stars of the Leaf, they could have used those as well, but not even Aclysia had found any constellations yet that she could use to reliably point in any direction.

This would be quite useful, given that Verdany was several kilometres across. Like any dungeon, it would take days or even weeks to fully explore. Even though its terrain was open, it wasn’t universally easy to traverse and enemies could lurk anywhere. Which was exactly why Aclysia presented her initial plan.

“Given the unusual form of this dungeon, we should take advantage of what we can,” she stated. “I would recommend that we clear three initial conditions before starting our search for the boss, sorted by priority. First, we should search for a camping site. A safe place to rest between expeditions will make everything else easier. Second, we need to get accustomed to any quirks of the landscape. Third, we need to get accustomed to the local monsters.”

“As a hungry gal, I say the third point should be our highest priority,” Reysha stated and made a bit of a sour face. “Although I’ve had about enough of greens recently. Hopefully there is meaty stuff around. You ready for some seconds, Apexus?”

“Always can go for more,” the slime responded. He knew such a state as ‘sated’ but he couldn’t actually be full. Usually, he just stopped eating because the pleasure of taste alone wasn’t quite good enough a justification to keep hunting and killing things. If there was no energy to be restored or saved up, culling the local wildlife felt unethical. Such concerns flew right out of the window when inside a dungeon, where the monsters spawned into existence by the will of the gods.

“Man, I wish I didn’t have a stomach,” Reysha hummed. “Sucks to have to stop eating at some point.”

“You eat a lot more than should fit inside you.”

“It all goes straight into my eyes,” Reysha joked and pulled back her lids to reveal more of the dark grey colour her sclera had taken. Although a non-serious remark, it was also correct that her Noir condition absorbed all of the magical energy like a sponge. When it came to raw nutrition, she didn’t need more than the average person.

“As long as you don’t get chubby,” Apexus remarked, also joking but a tad more serious. He took the lead of their group and started marching in a random direction. Since they hadn’t explored anything yet and the drapes of ivy hanging from low branches interrupted sight in every direction, there was no specific path they knew to take first.

“Do you dislike it if women are fat?” Aclysia wanted to know.

“Females look better the more breedable they look,” the slime opened up his very simple view of what was attractive. “Being fit is good – so having an athletic body is better than a fat one. Having wide hips is good – which is why asses are really, really nice. Being healthy is good – human faces show a lot of whether or not a person is healthy. Not quite sure why I’m attracted to boobs though. Must be the resemblance to butts. Then again, I don’t have a size preference, I just like the squishy feeling.”

“Tummies can be squishy,” Reysha remarked.

Apexus thought about that. “Don’t want to sacrifice fit looks for extra squish.”

“How about really buff girls?” the tiger girl was now asking just to probe the edges of his sexual preferences. She was too happy with her own body to try and change things if he now answered anything unexpected. “Like, as buff as men.”

“Women that look like men look less breedable, therefore less attractive,” Apexus presented the obvious answer. “You two are good. You two are perfect… still kind of sad you don’t want to have children, to be honest. I do want to follow that procreation instinct.”

“How badly?” Aclysia asked in a tone that was more threatening than curious. “Badly enough to go to another woman?”

“Maybe?” the slime answered honestly, too busy scanning the environment to immediately notice the icy look on Aclysia’s face. As a slime that already had two partners, Apexus did not pay a lot of mind to the idea of being monogamous. “I wouldn’t try to win over women you don’t approve of, though,” he continued, still not having noticed the annoyance of his beloved angel. Although he lacked an understanding of monogamy, loyalty was instinctually understood.

Offspring had a higher chance of surviving if they were protected by both parents, that was the very basic reason that was part of many animals' coding. As a sapient creature, the chimeric blob also had a personal interest in seeing his children grow up. Ditching the partner went counter to both of those instincts. When it came to past incidents, Apexus also remembered when he had almost had his first time with Reysha. The sadness he had brought her wasn’t a thing he wanted to repeat. He had loved her then, he loved her now and he had long since developed the same emotional attachment to the crazy redhead as well. An arrangement both of them approved of.

All of that combined, the correct way around love, as Apexus was informed by his biology and past incidents that polygyny was the way to go. Current members of the harem needed to approve of future members of the harem. That way, he could maximize his procreation, the safety of his offspring and the happiness of his lovers. The perfect system, as far as he was concerned.

“I see, I see,” Aclysia hummed, immediately appeased. This did, indeed, work for her. Her darling going to some random harlot she didn’t know to plant his babies inside her, that would have majorly irked her. If he kept paying attention to her and respected her in these decisions, it shouldn’t be a large issue. Apexus was attentive enough for her even with Reysha around and Aclysia doubted a couple more women would greatly change that, especially if she got along with them as well. Although there was a little tingle at the back of her head that she would at the very least want to be the first woman to get impregnated by him. ‘What am I thinking? We’re in no situation to consider procreation,’ she scolded herself.

Reysha, having grown up in a society focused around the harems of the rare male specimen of her species, folded her hands behind her head and didn’t even think about any of this. What Apexus had just announced had been what she had understood their relationship to be like from the start. It was an improvement on Ragressian standards, where the male could just expand his harem with whoever he got around. A big part of the reason why she hadn’t wanted to be part of it. Being just one girl of a potentially uncaring patriarch just wasn’t her style. Getting with a loving, powerful and unique batch of evolving goo? That sounded more like the Reysha experience.

Before the conversation could continue, something shot out of a nearby ivy patch.