Reysha bowed over an ivy patch and retched. What she had just put in her mouth fell out, the aftertaste leaving her close to vomiting. She would have preferred it if she could have replaced the taste currently on her tongue with bile and stomach acid. It was almost so bad that the rancid taste regular food left on her tongue was preferable. Thankfully, she turned to Apexus, who handed her half of a Thornspitter’s centre. Biting into that fruity freshness drove the awful taste out of her mouth and let her breathe in relief.

“I think I now know what a bowl of dirty fingernails tastes like,” Reysha said and shuddered, the aftertaste still haunting her. “How the shit do you eat that?!”

Apexus continued to dissolve the Rammer inside him, shrugging with the arms that stuck out the top of an otherwise bloated body. The outsides of the creature were layer after layer of hardened material that was quite similar to fingernails in make-up. Although she had no idea about it, the tiger girl had been spot-on about that. Because of its stone-like appearance, she had been surprised enough that she could even cut strips off of it.

“Had worse,” the chimeric slime declared. “I wouldn’t eat the next one, unless there is something really tasty at the centre, but at least it has nutrients.”

“I don’t think darling possesses a taste-based vomiting instinct,” Aclysia suggested, keeping watch over the area from a few metres up. As unlikely as it was, there could be other adventurers walking around. In such a case, Aclysia being sighted would share the trio’s location, but that was fine. What really mattered was that they had enough time for Apexus to hide himself. “Considering what else we know he ate in his early life and that he eats all internal organs at all times, it is likely that the level of disgust he experiences is much lower than ours. Disgust is fundamentally based on the body feeling that you are intaking something harmful, after all.”

“That makes sense,” Reysha agreed and Apexus nodded along. He had tried normal stomachs before. Terribly inefficient constructs, often specialized towards only a single category of food. It was no wonder they needed something like a vomiting instinct.

“I think the closest thing I have is when I eat something that has poison in it that works on me,” Apexus suggested. “Rare as that is. Otherwise the only ‘ejection’ response I have is when I eat something and it scratches my nucleus. I think that’s more like swallowing knives for you normal humanoids.”

“Speaking of normal humanoids,” Reysha looked at Aclysia. “Why do YOU have the disgust response, cute metal fairy?”

“The usual reason: I am designed to be an imitation of regular humanoids. Although it does not make sense for me to have certain responses, I maintain them in order to function as an empathic messenger between the divine and mortals. Of course, such programming is currently serving me otherwise, given that I am… I wouldn’t say exiled…”

“On your honeymoon?” Reysha suggested with a giggle.

“That would take the impact out of a proper honeymoon,” Aclysia denied, blushing a little bit as she glanced over at the slime. “Should we ever have one.”

Apexus already knew he was missing context before he asked the question. “Honeymoon? I assume you aren’t actually talking about a moon made out of sugary bee vomit?”

“It’s what we call a getaway after marriage,” Reysha responded. “No, I have no idea why we don’t just call it marriage vacation. Language is stupid.”

“As long as we agree on that,” Apexus hummed in a content fashion while dissolving his way through all of the outer layers of the Rammer. He finally arrived at the centre and, with the usual curiosity, replicated it.

Much like all of the Thornspitter, the Rammer also turned out to be made out of organs that were entirely useless for Apexus. The organ that produced the stone-looking fingernail-like layers did so in the same way a clam grew its shell. What this effectively meant was that Apexus would have needed to maintain the organ for several days if not weeks to get any meaningful protection out of it. Otherwise it was cumbersome and heavy. This was counteracted by some powerful leg structures, but because they were made of wood they didn’t mesh will with his human skeleton.

The permanent Growths he already had were quite limiting sometimes.

“We have to move,” Reysha told them, pointing at one of the nearby mega-tentacles. Bending backwards like a snake getting ready to strike, it telegraphed quite clearly that they were about to get struck by pin-point attack. What had triggered those massive tendrils to attack, The group had yet to find out, but tiger girl’s intuition had proved enough to keep them safe so far.

They ran for a little while, and then stopped again when the impact of the tentacle’s tip shook the ground. Previously, that had caused a whole host of Thornspitters to rise. Today, they didn’t need to worry about that.

Three days had passed since they had originally entered the dungeon and they had cleaned much of the area surrounding the healing fountain. Now that they knew how to handle the Thornspitters, Verdany was relatively harmless. As long as Apexus took the lead and baited all of the enemies into wasting their attacks on him, the trio had an easy time dispatching them. As for Rammers, because they were a lot rarer, were something the trio didn’t have any experience beating up to a few minutes ago. Without fire support, they were as much a one-trick pony as the Thornspitters were, just that their main threat was to armoured opponents, rather than nimble fighters with little protection.

The three were vaguely aware that, however easy it appeared at the moment, there was no guarantee that things would stay this way when they got further in. They were still on the outer fringes of the dungeon. If they wanted to, it would take them less than half an hour to hike their way to the outer wall.

“Would you say we have cleared your three conditions by the way?” Reysha asked. When they had first entered the dungeon, Aclysia had suggested they get a safe place, used to the monsters and used to the landscape before going for any larger expeditions and searching for the boss.

“Not quite,” Aclysia denied. “Our current camping site is insufficient; I do not trust that there are only two kinds of monsters and that we are still unaware what causes the tentacles to attack us. Not to mention that we have not explored the trees yet.”

“Nor will we,” Apexus stated, looking up to one of the ivy-covered plants. “Too thin to walk on. There might be small monsters using them to move around, but we can’t.”

“My general point remains valid,” the metal fairy said, hovering about a metre above them. “I do not yet feel confident enough that we should go on any larger expeditions. However, I also see that we should not continue from our current position. I suggest that we make the effort to find another healing fountain further towards the dungeon’s centre to make for a base with a better range of movement.”

“Not quite the breakneck process I would like, but it’s a start,” Reysha grinned and looked to Apexus, who just nodded.

They took the next path away from the bramble wall. Where they could, they continued on those ivy-free roads under the shadows of the trees. Where they couldn’t, they made their way through the ivy patches. They soon discovered that there was little difference to their safety no matter what way they went.

Stepping through the ivy bore the risk of getting grabbed by a lurking Thornspitter. Not a large drawback, considering Apexus was always in the lead. All a Thornspitter did by taking hold of the slime was to sign their own death warrant.

Following the dirt and mushroom paths, however, repeatedly triggered the sky tentacles. It took them several days to notice that they only ever got hit by those things when they were on the shadow-formed paths. Several days during which they made ever-more progress.

They were sometimes thrown back to the healing fountains, but it was never a huge set-back. Because it took Thornspitters several weeks to fully regrow, every time they cleared an area, it was safe to walk through on the next exploration attempt. After a week of this, their tenth day in that dungeon, the trio finally found another healing fountain.

It was visually the same as the first one they had found. A circle of stones with half a ceiling on top. The only difference was the distribution of the ivy around. Nothing exciting.

“Home, new home!” Reysha declared, stripping within a few moments and dropping into the pond. Because they had prioritized exploration the last few days, the best thing any of them had done was quickly scrubbing themselves down. None of them wanted to get stuck in Verdany for too long. As per Aclysia’s long-term plan, it was actually important for them to get through in a timely manner while defeating as few opponents as possible. The more levels Apexus gained, the fewer permanent Growths he could gain from this Leaf.

Not that Apexus even knew what he would want as a permanent Growth from this dungeon. So far, they hadn’t run into any other enemies and neither the Thornspitter nor the Rammer had anything he wanted. When he presented that conundrum to his girls, neither of them seemed to have any good idea.

“Perhaps you can acquire the ability of the Rammer to grow fingernails? It would at least serve to better your disguise,” Aclysia suggested.

Apexus thought about that for a bit. That would indeed be useful, but not overly so. “I would rather have nails like Reysha,” the slime said, while joining the redhead in the pool. He was thirsty and helping her wash herself was a good excuse to massage her boobs and scratch her behind the ears. “Normal nails aren’t that useful and growing them out to make them work as a weapon seems like a pain.”

“Claws for the win,” the tiger girl purred, extending her own just to show off. The Noir-induced red of her nails extended and sharpened in an unnatural fashion. There was some magic involved in that rapid growth and degeneration. Unlike regular cats, the claws of Reysha’s kin did not have the space to actually pull back. Of the many things that could be programmed into a species’ genome, it was one of the least. “Do you know that you keep getting better at that?” she asked, while Apexus kneaded her soft ears.

“It’s a very fun thing to do,” the slime hummed, enjoying seeing the redhead blush a little bit with an innocent, relaxed variety of excitement. That changed to the more depraved kind when he prioritized her soft breasts again. “Am I getting better at this as well?”

“Muuuuchhh better,” she sighed, when he rolled her nipples between his fingers. The water made a few gentle sounds, when the tiger girl extended her legs and broke through the surface. “Let’s hope we find something more useful for ya on the way to the boss then or that the boss has something usable going on at least.” Turning her eyes before her head, Reysha looked over to Aclysia who, now nude, joined them in the fountain. “No ‘we should continue to hurry along’ speech from you?”

“I believe it to be important that we take this opportunity to rest,” Aclysia responded earnestly. “The day is too advanced to attempt any further expeditions. Better to freshen ourselves up before we continue our exploration.”

“Is that a long way to say you’re in the mood too?” Reysha teased.

Aclysia blushed and averted her gaze, “No…”

Apexus took one arm off Reysha to pull his beloved angel a little bit closer. Soon, the white-haired woman was in front of him, with the tiger girl squished in between them. Reysha was happy with that position, appearing quite smug even, when she grinned at Aclysia and played with the fairy’s hair the same way Apexus played with her cat ears. The slime himself extended some of his lust-fuelled tentacles all the way to the sweet spot between Aclysia’s legs.

“Why are you wet then?” he asked in a teasing tone that came natural to him. The way his tentacle slid past her pink pussy lips was impossible to explain through water.

“I can be logical in my reasoning for us to stay here and still be aroused!” Aclysia defended herself. Although true, the duo she was with acted as if they didn’t believe her and proceeded to lightly bully her throughout the entirety of their sexual encounter that night. Much like doing only minor cleaning, the group hadn’t afforded themselves more than kisses and hugs in terms of physical affection.

Although it didn’t directly contribute to their goal, they needed moments like this. Reysha almost physically, being a nymphomaniac of the medium variety. Sex was like a meal she craved at least once a week. If she didn’t have it, it had some impact on her mood and performance. While she could still do her best without regular orgasms and wasn’t so deranged that she couldn’t be happy without them, she was much better off afterwards. Especially if it was some really great sex and not just some solo-finger action.

Apexus and Aclysia were happy to have sex themselves, but for them it wasn’t as urgent. Even so, moments of passion, physical love to supplement the avowed one, and the ecstasy of climax were all helpful in relieving stress and keeping spirits high.

It didn’t contribute directly to their goal but it was overall more of a positive impact than a time waster. Perhaps they would have done it anyway if it had been.

With the uncertainty of their situation at large, affirming that life was good was a value all its own.