“This is the last thing the guide warned us about,” Aclysia said, the three of them standing in front of a hatch. It was a two-metre wide square, more than large enough for them to drop down. The ground wasn’t terribly far down, about three to four metres. If they helped each other, they could make it back up easily even after jumping down. That was under the condition that the hatch didn’t seal itself, which it most likely would.

“Three layers, an actively shifting layout and an enormous size,” Apexus listed the attributes of the Long Way’s structure. “Filled with monsters from all previous dungeons, including the bosses, traps and other environmental obstacles.”

“That succinctly summarizes it, darling,” Aclysia nodded and folded the guide together, permanently storing it in her bag. They had learned everything they could from it. From here on out, they were on their own. Taking a moment of tenderness, the metal fairy stepped up to the humanoid slime.

Wordless, Apexus turned towards her and placed a hand on her cheek. Leaning into it, Aclysia felt safe. His hand was large and strong, the touch soft and tender. He brushed a strand of her white hair behind her ear. The two looked at each other.

Reysha let them have their moment. ‘Aclysia needs the attention,’ she thought to herself, happy to concede it. What the tiger girl required in emotional support, she received plenty of in their post-coitus or pre-sleep cuddling sessions. ‘I’m more of a casual chatter kinda gal,’ she thought, twirling one of her throwing-knives around. Something about the air down there looked odd, ‘Casual chatter and violence!’

With swipe of her arm, she tossed the throwing knife down the hatch and hit the back of a previously invisible enemy. The invisibility fell off the monster as a stream of cold fog, revealing the white fox that had cast it. With two tails and blue-glowing eyes, the creature showed that its true capabilities lay in its magic rather than its body size, comparable to a farm goat.

Opening its mouth, the fox conjured a sphere of blue energy, which turned into a flying icicle once unleashed. The attack impotently sailed past Reysha. “Guess we finally met that last kind of monster we missed in White Ice,” she pointed out and drew her dagger and axe. Then she dropped down.

The fox had not predicted this sudden assault and was killed instantly, as Reysha buried her dagger in the monster’s spine. The tiger girl let go of the dagger to roll sideways, riding out the remainder of her momentum and dodging the path of icicles that suddenly travelled towards her.

Reysha half-rose into a crouch and raised her axe. Her eyes darted towards the origin point of the icicles, left of it she spotted a moving shimmer. A moment later, she threw her axe. It spun through the air, then slammed into its target. The fox let out a miserable cry, when its ribcage was cut open by the bearded blade.

Sprinting forwards, Reysha grabbed the hurt fox by the throat. The claws of her left hand thickened and pierced the skin. “I really don’t like that,” she said, before smashing the fox into the wall. The neck shattered, the skull cracked and Reysha felt the force of the impact all the way to her spine. She dropped the corpse, pulled out the axe, and looked at her left hand. ‘You’re useful, but I don’t like ya,’ she told her demon arm, as if it could answer, only to be distracted by yet another icicle.

She narrowly dodged the projectile, feeling it tickle her red hair as she drew her head back. Instinctively, she charged in the direction of the attack. A third fox had hidden in a side chamber. Reysha had stood at the angle that the monster could attack her while remaining inside, but that didn’t save it now. The tiger girl leapt over the path of ice that greeted her when she passed through the open entrance, grabbed the handle of her axe with both hands, and smashed it into the skull of the invisible monster, killing it instantly.

“Gods, I love this thing,” Reysha purred. Liquid crimson dripped from the solid crimson of the weapon as she pulled it out again. She looked around the small chamber she was in. Three of the walls were cobalt blue stone, cut into large bricks and covered in strange symbols. The last one was translucent, with a mild blue tinge, which was only reinforced by the endless light of the flickering, blue flames of the chandeliers above. The entrance was located in the gap between that translucent wall and the one to Reysha’s left.

Standing there, half-ready to be attacked again, she watched as Apexus and Aclysia dropped down. The two had not wanted to land on top of Reysha in the initial engagement and so waited until things had calmed down. Now they looked around in search of the tiger girl. “Reysha?” Aclysia shouted.

“Over here, ya blind dunce,” Reysha shouted, knocking against the glass.

Apexus looked over before Aclysia did and both tilted their heads. Because he could smell her, the slime was certain where she was now. All he could see was a solid, dark blue wall though. “Interesting,” he remarked and walked over. “Interesting,” he repeated when he peaked his head into the room and saw Reysha standing there. His voice was momentarily overshadowed by the sound of the hatch finally snapping shut.

“What’s interesting?” Reysha asked. Following Apexus, when he gestured her to, he showed her that the wall was translucent one way, but solid the other. “Neat,” the tiger girl declared, then looked around.

There were several other walls of this kind around, all of them dark blue. Reflective surfaces to them and windows to whoever or whatever was on the other side. They added an element of confusion to a layer that was already pretty odd. The room they had dropped down into was connected to three staircases, each of them went down into larger halls, filled with their own series of opponents.

“It happened again, by the way,” Reysha said and waved her left hand around. The claws were still visible, until she made them disappear the regular way. “Guess they just come about when I’m agitated or something.”

“We definitely need to get you looked at,” Aclysia stated.

Reysha laughed, “Ya make it sound like I’m your pet or something.”

Sighing and rubbing her forehead, the metal fairy mumbled, “I do feel like your owner sometimes.”

“Careful, bubble butt, talk like that gets your face used as my seat again,” the redhead said and winked. Aclysia blushed at the reminder what happened about nine hours earlier, shortly after the fight against the Myrms and before they slept. “Hellroots, one would think ya would learn to handle my flirting at some point.”

“Getting accustomed to you and your perversions is an impossibility!” Aclysia declared and looked to the humanoid slime for support. “Darling, what do you think?”

“I think it’s adorable to watch you get embarrassed,” the slime confessed, while pondering the structure of the Long Way dungeon. ‘The uppermost layer is a maze with limited space and filled with saltwater. Light is limited and there are Laghasts around. Fighting there would be difficult, so we should avoid that layer wherever we can. The middle layer is more of a traditional network of corridors, but the traps make it difficult to navigate. The crystals in the grey walls make it easy to spot enemies. Seems to be the easiest of the three. This layer seems to be built around confusion and we probably will encounter more of the status affecting enemies here, like the Frozen Wraiths.’

Aclysia and Reysha had continued their banter while he thought, and came to an end, as it was so often, with the guardian angel falling silent when the more nimble tongued tiger girl verbally overwhelmed her. “So, what’re we doing?” Reysha asked and looked up to the hatch. “We can’t go back. Not sure if that’s good or not.”

“It's probably a good thing,” Apexus told her. “Assuming it stays closed, it blocks us from accidentally backtracking. Annoying that we can’t retreat to the health fountain, but useful in order to let us progress.”

“Ya would think that they would have details like this in the guide,” Reysha complained.

“I assume that the list of details that was compiled was lost to time and the guide we have is the sorry remains.”

“Ya would think they’d do a better job at archiving.”

“That would be optimal,” Aclysia agreed. “It would surprise me, however, if they sold more than one of these guides per decade. The patchy state of information may be a consequence of commercial interest.”

“Stop with your logic, bubble butt, I’m complaining over here,” Reysha laughed. “Anyway, ya made a decision yet, big guy?”

“We’ll go this way,” the slime announced and pointed in at the path ahead of them. There was no particular reason for it, but they needed to take some path. Stepping down the stairs, the ceiling growing more distant with each step, the three eventually arrived in the ‘hall’. What Apexus had thought to be a wide open room from a distance was really a long corridor with both sides walled off with the one-way windows.

On their left, they saw multiple water monsters swimming around in a lake, on their right a bunch of Frozen Wraiths were hovering around. Without something to attack, the monsters appeared limp and almost lifeless. Although their physical shape was that of animals, their purpose was so drastically different that they were more like animated tools than sentient beings.

The group advanced down the corridor, until they heard the distinct call of a bear. Storming down the staircase at the end of the corridor, a White Ice Bear charged at them. The monster was larger than its kin found in the original dungeon and almost too broad for the corridor. That size was why Apexus was willing to meet it head on.

“Concentrate on its back,” the humanoid slime instructed, opening his arms. Reysha put her axe into its sleeve and drew a second dagger instead. Waiting for the inevitable clash, Aclysia concentrated magic in the tip of her staff. Although she still had to hold it with both hands, the metal rod no longer weighed her down to a cumbersome degree.

The bear was upon him, massive maw wide open. That was the attacked Apexus concentrated solely on. He made himself as small as possible, escaping the deadly bite, then rushed up and slung his arms around the white bear’s neck. His soles were ground down, forced over the bumpy texture of the black floor tiles by several hundred kilos of bear slamming into him. While he was forced several metres back, Reysha climbed over him. She landed on the monster’s back and wildly stabbed away at it, using her daggers both to hurt their enemy and to maintain her hold. As best as he tried, Apexus could only hinder, not contain, the thrashing of the large creature. The relative narrowness of the corridor did more to that end than his muscles.

Things got both harder and more difficult when Aclysia unleashed her spell from her hovering position. The corridor was illuminated by the golden sunlight of the spell. Seared hair and flesh, an unpleasant mixture of fragrances, filled the air after the spell hit the bear’s head. The thrashing got wilder, the bear expanding all energy it had, now half-blind. Each movement drained its stamina and caused it to lose more blood. Reysha kept stabbing and stabbing whenever she was given the opportunity.

Eventually, the endurance of the monster started to fade. The thrashing decreased in its violence, until the creature collapsed, quivering and breathing heavily. Reysha ended it with a deep twin-strike of her daggers.

“Phew,” she exhaled slowly and looked over her shoulder. Their path was clear. She looked at the bear with some regret. “Big mountain of meat and I’m still sated from the least meal.”

“You don’t have to eat every opportunity you get,” Aclysia berated. “You putting on weight would be a disadvantage to us.”

“Aww, you’re worried about my figure?”

“Certainly, additional body fat would decrease your flexibility and speed.”

“It would also make your midriff less appealing,” Apexus threw in there, while blobbing out to engulf the bear. Reysha was sated, but the slime could always go for more. With the continuous difficulty and frequency of events inside this dungeon, restoring his energy storage was always a wise decision.

There was a lot to explore.