“No,” Aclysia asserted.

“Absolutely not,” Aclysia insisted.

“This is not negotiable,” Aclysia stated.

“By the gods, impossible!” Aclysia cried out.

“Inconceivable,” Aclysia shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“No.”

“No.”

“No.”

“N-“

“We get it!” Reysha shouted and slammed her palm against the wall of the abandoned house. The force of her frustration was enough to shatter the weather-worn wood and cause it to cave several centimetres inwards. The tiger girl hastily pulled her hand back, inspecting it for splinters. “Is there anything that’s good enough for ya, bubble butt?”

“My standards in this instance are not unreasonable,” Aclysia returned instantly.

“It’s a free fucking house.”

“And none of the ones we have sighted so far have had a proper roof, solid walls, or enough space to accommodate us three,” Aclysia insisted. After crossing her arms, she continued. “You should be thankful for my worry, the nightly temperature here is not as forgiving as the last place we had a prolonged stay at. Additionally, it rains a lot and is frequently windy.”

Reysha’s lips stretched into a dismayed expression. “We could fix it up.”

“Analysing the condition of the houses we have seen so far, it would be easier to build a new one,” Aclysia tapped her feet several times. “I will not allow our accommodation to be anything less than comfortable. You and darling deserve better.”

“She’s right,” Apexus weighed in. He meant that in regard to almost every count. “You do deserve better and it does get cold.” He looked up at the sky. Even marching as quick as they did, it was gradually getting darker. Not exactly an issue for the three of them, two of them had fantastic night vision and the third could conjure her own light. They could continue looking for houses no matter the time.

The fourth person in the walking (not adventuring) party, had a different suggestion. “You could huddle in at my place,” Korith said, from her position on Apexus’ shoulders. They had found a place suitable for her hours ago. For the kobold, the only real options had been the free ones. Advantageously for her, she was small and on her own. What was a garden shed for others was a completely suitable dwelling place for her, keeping the competition low and the number of choices comparatively high.

“Appreciated, but inappropriate,” Aclysia denied the suggestion.

The glare that accompanied those firm words made Korith shudder. By now, all three of the trio had realized what the shortstack was doing. Still, Apexus had put her on his shoulders for practically no reason. Korith had needed to jog to keep up with them. As a Warrior, endurance was one of her strengths; it would have taken her quite a while to tire. Regardless, she now was where she was.

“Your proximity is already too much for our current relationship,” Aclysia pointed out, making the kobold blush and the slime avert his gaze. One felt guilt because she was being called out and the other because he knew he couldn’t engage in any lasting relationship with Korith. As much as he had heard from Reysha about the way some humanoids, especially young ones, engaged in casual sexual exchanges, Apexus still preferred his breeding centred mindset.

Any sexual attraction he felt was fundamentally based on the ability to procreate with someone. Even if he was currently infertile, as per his women’s request and smart decision making, that remained the ultimate goal. Instincts informed Apexus that the best way to ensure the success of his offspring (and to have more than one per woman) was to stay around and be there to care for his partners.

Those were feelings he had deciphered over several days of contemplation scattered over his lifetime. On top of them layered the love he felt for the two women he already had. Expanding his prospective procreation partners without their approval was a bad idea. It had made Aclysia cry once and that was all he ever needed as a deterrent.

Squishy as Korith’s fantastic thighs were around his neck, all he felt for the kobold was currently inappropriate. Instincts disagreed with casual hook-ups, love deterred further from such actions, and reason made that path inaccessible at the moment. Therefore, even carrying her around as he did was a mistake.

Aclysia thought all of this and above that, she was jealous. Not a feeling she liked to have and neither one she wanted to have control of her. Regardless, it was present. As much as she liked Korith, the kobold was clearly overstepping her boundaries. That last remark had crossed the line. “I think it would be wisest if you were to return to your house now,” the metal fairy said.

“I… uhm…” Korith tried to come up with an excuse to stay with them for the rest of the search (and beyond).

Reysha let out a long sigh, while Apexus bowed down and made the shortstack climb off him. “Bubble butt is right,” the redhead said.

“…Okay…” Korith said, her golden eyes focusing on the ground. In the fading autumn light, she was a picture of misery. A round, gorgeous face framed by brilliant blond hair, lips contorted into a pout, and a deflated tail whose tip laid limp on the leaf-covered ground.

The kobold didn’t intend to guilt-trip the trio. Intention was far from necessary when one was liked and naturally this adorable. “We can talk again some other time,” Apexus promised. “We’ll tell you where we end up, alright?”

“Alright,” Korith said with the hint of a smile on her lips. She was still disappointed, but she still wouldn’t stop in her efforts. All of them understood what she was doing. Nobody addressed it directly. “I’ll see you around,” the kobold said and took a step backwards. Then another. Then another. She did hope for them to stop her. That didn’t happen and so she eventually turned around and walked in the direction of her shack.

Aclysia let out the longest sigh. The elongated exhale exorcised her jealousy and her frustration. It ended too early, courtesy of Reysha saying, “You’re the big mean, Clysia.”

“I did not at all enjoy what I had to do there,” the metal fairy snapped back. “I act as is appropriate in our situation. Adorable and charismatic as I find her to be, giving her false hope is not helpful.”

“Yet not even you could tell her that there is no chance,” Apexus observed.

“I… no, I couldn’t, darling,” Aclysia admitted and fled into the slime’s arms when he offered her a hug. “It isn’t fair that we have to be burdened with this,” she muttered, clinging to his chest.

“No, it isn’t,” the slime just agreed. “We will deal with it.”

“Yes, we will,” Aclysia nodded.

_____________________________________________________________________________

It was well past midnight when they finally found shelter that met Aclysia’s minimum requirement.

The house was extremely dirty, filled with a great number of leaves, soil, and insects that had migrated in through a window that had been open for several years. That was the bad news, the good news was that this window was not made from glass, but a simple cut-out that could be sealed via a pane that was still lying in the dirt right under it.

The panel was damp and rotten around the edges, but it fit well enough to seal the window until they got a replacement. The same could be said about a quarter of the roof. Importantly, the reeds still kept the area around the fireplace dry. Of the possessions of the previous owners, nothing remained. It had all been plundered by relatives or other adventurers. Not even a stool remained. There were just four walls, a stone floor, and the chimney.

Those were, however, four sturdy walls of wood, reinforced with bricks. The stone slabs on the ground had been minorly displaced and many were cracked due to trees tunnelling under the house. The chimney was, dirt aside, intact. A small lean-to attached to the side of the building indicated where firewood had once been stacked. All of that had been taken too, of course.

The house had been unoccupied since its previous owner, the son of a local teacher, had finished his learning on the island and set out into the Omniverse. Initially, some relatives had taken residence and then a few adventurers had rented the place from the relatives. Both had moved out because the house was far away from anything interesting, aside from unoccupied woodland. The average local and adventurer wanted to be close to the places of commerce and teaching. Because of this, renting the property to all but the most eccentric or poor was difficult and the latter usually had an easier time camping in the unclaimed stretches anyway.

All it took was for one such break to last a year for the house to become uninteresting. Dirt accrued, equipment was taken away, and eventually the people who ‘owned’ the house deemed it too much of a hassle to clean it every other month. It was left vacant and turned from rentable property to abandoned house.

Far away from anything interesting was exactly as the group liked it. Apexus and Aclysia were mobile enough that distances didn’t bother them that much anyway. Reysha would have insisted on living closer to the inner city, had she arrived there before her current condition. Since alcohol now tasted to her like a slushie made from the vilest entrails of a diseased cow, living close to the action was no longer a great concern. The forest, with its huntable animals, however, was direly needed in their proximity.

Plus, they could scream their lungs out in there and nobody would care.

Step one of claiming the house was for Apexus to clean the layer of organic material covering the ground. Aclysia and Reysha stood guard outside, while Apexus started in one corner of the room and slowly munched his way all over, like an expanding carpet. Left behind was a remarkably clean floor and a disgusting ball of mud and other things Apexus could not dissolve.

The exact border was difficult to nail down, but there was a point at which objects that had once been biological were broken down so much, the slime’s magical acid no longer registered them as food. Something that was past rotting was universally inedible to him. Something that was in the process of rotting passed in part. Mould itself was always edible. Apexus hated it though, because it was always accompanied by things that swam uselessly in his biomass or stomach.

Step two of claiming the house was to prepare their beds in spots they knew were dry. ‘Helpfully’, the previous years of abandonment had marked the holes in the ceiling clearly. The area around the fireplace seemed to be the safest. The roof had been reinforced there when the house had been first built and it showed.

Step three was to gather a bunch of dry or semi-dry material and throw it into the fireplace, then have Aclysia focus it with magic until it finally caught flame. By that point, Reysha was practically passing out already. When the fire finally burned properly, they all huddled together under a blanket and slept the night away.

Step four was to scout out the surroundings for the food supply. Not only did they need prey, they needed preferably magical prey. They stumbled over some edible animals, deer, primarily, but nothing outright mana-ridden. In terms of prey, they were out of luck. They did, however, stumble over a kind of herb that had a good amount of mana in it.

For their first meal on this island, Reysha had no choice but to chew on that herb between bites of flesh. It was bitter and she hated it. She would have loved to experiment in some way with this, but they had no cooking equipment whatsoever. That was something they could now think about, since they would stay in that house for the foreseeable future.

Step five was to do some initial fixes. They took the stone slabs off the ground, ripped out whatever roots underneath caused them to lay about all crooked, and placed them back as level as they could. The final result was not that great, but it was better than before. They wanted to try and fix the roof too, but they had no replacement reeds, no idea how to thatch, and rotting reeds were better than no reeds when it came to cover. Therefore, that was a project for another day.

Step six was, finally, to go out and find their teachers.