Aclysia opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. It was quiet where they were, delightfully quiet, with only the early birds and the water dripping onto the floor providing any kind of sound. Used to sleeping in dungeons and caves, such minor sounds had no distracting property for any of them anymore. Them being the two biological entities of the group.

For Aclysia, sleep was a choice. A state of mind in which she could preserve mana and pass time during which she would otherwise be lonely. The latter was more important than the former most days. Apexus supplied her with all she needed of the magical resource. This was likely to change in the future. The slime had no use for his mana, since he had no knowledge on how to utilize it. Once this changed, Aclysia would need to rely on food to support the steady trickle of ambient mana.

Although gently nibbling away at what he could give during sleep did cover her entire needs for a day that saw no combat. Had she needed one, it would also have served as an excuse to cuddle up to his side. As a woman in love, the only reason she needed to lie with her man was that she wanted to. Happily, she rolled on her side, turning her gaze away from the dull ceiling and to the face of the humanoid slime on whose shoulder she was lying.

No matter how often she beheld that face, she always felt drawn to him. Each new day, each new improvement he made on himself, had her fall deeper in love. The animalistic slime he had once been had long since grown into a man she would have fallen for even if they had met randomly in the world. Had it not been for the year they spent together with Gizmo, she couldn’t have said the same for the mute chimera he had been. There was a level of aversion that she, like the vast majority of humanoids, had to engaging in a relationship with a ‘creature’.

Even after that aversion had been muted in the specific case of Apexus due to the length of their relationship, Aclysia most certainly appreciated the modern humanoid form. Incredible as tentacles were, it was much more pleasing to her to have a face and solid body attached to it. Reysha, lying on Apexus’ other shoulder, thought similarly, although her fundamental aversion was less pronounced. Craziness, the savagery Noir promoted, and the fact that she was closer to beast by species than Aclysia all played into that.

‘What an odd road that has taken us here,’ Aclysia hummed to herself, placing two fingers on her darling’s chest and wandering up towards his collarbone. The horridly cheap blanket that lay on top of them was slightly tugged by the gesture. A slight tug was enough to make the asleep Reysha retaliate with a firm pull. The linen was now completely on her side, leaving the naked body of the metal fairy exposed to the cold air of the autumn morning.

Aclysia suppressed a sigh. She couldn’t scold the tiger girl for this action, not even if she had been awake. To her, this level of cold was ultimately inconsequential. Her sensation for hot and cold, much like many of her other senses, was created to mimic that of the mortal races. Unlike them, most of these sensations were only inconveniences for her. Lying in snow was merely unpleasant, not a road to death by hypothermia. Lying in the damp room wasn’t even unpleasant. It was just unpreferable. Her body expended more mana now, attempting to maintain human body temperature, but that was just a luxury function. Unlike the slime, she didn’t require warmth to function.

While Reysha continued snoozing, nuzzled up to the slime whose body was essentially a furnace in humanoid shape, Aclysia moved on to her morning duties. First, she carefully moved out of Apexus’ embrace. Like every morning, this resulted in the humanoid slime waking up and immediately checking why one of his loves was no longer where she was supposed to be. Smiling warmly, the metal fairy leaned down and gave him a calming kiss.

Apexus reciprocated and put his head back down when she pulled away. He didn’t need as much sleep as Reysha and would not go back to the dreamworld, but he would gladly take extra time to lie under the blanket.

Meanwhile, Aclysia made her way over to the fireplace. After she had piled on a couple of new branches on what remained of the tinder extinguished over the course of the last night, she aimed a single finger at it and channelled a beam of focused sunlight at the heart of the pile. Soon, smoke started to rise. When proper flames followed, Aclysia stopped her expenditure of magic.

Sunlight Ray, the spell she had just used, had been originally something she had improvised herself. Since she had gotten proper guidance on its usage, accuracy, scope and cost were things she could gauge much better. Regardless, it remained a basic attack spell. Every Class that relied on magic as its main tool of aggression had a Bolt and a Ray spell at their disposal. A healer first, Aclysia wasn’t too bothered about learning additional attack spells.

Third on her list of daily requirements was to join her hands in prayer. To herself, she recited the names of the thirty-three original gods and their dual aspects. Upon reaching the name of her father, the last of the thirty-three, the Summer God Hashahin, deity of acts and actors, her prayer turned from silent to a whisper. She did not want to wake Reysha, but her father’s sermon also deserved to be heard.

“Let the great stories be told, let the great acts play out, in liberty for the actors, and with acts befitting of the virtuous. Forsake not being the hero and forget not becoming the sage. Let the critique of your role be an inspiration for its completion. For the tree, the branches, and the final stage in the trunk, exist for all of us.”

Having recited the end of the sermon, she unclasped her hands and stood up with the vigour required for the day. She had her role to play and the first step of doing so properly was to ensure that those who she loved were properly cared for. Quickly, she put on her casual dress and headed outside.

She stepped into pouring rain. The water was a tad more bothersome than the cold, seeping into her hair and clothes. It was also what she had gone out to fetch. A bucket they had been graciously gifted by Maltos stood on top of a stone slab they had moved onto the clearing in front of their door. Rainwater had filled the metal container to the brim. Aclysia carefully poured some of the water out, so she could haul the rest back inside. It was heavy, especially for her. Regardless, she got it inside and placed it in the dry half of the house.

‘It would be lovely if we could just get this inside,’ she thought, looking at the constant dripping from their patchy roof. Had the bucket just stood under there, she would have spared herself a bit of a walk every morning. Water filtered through mouldy reeds was not the kind of healthy refreshment she deemed worthy of her beloveds though.

Water acquired, she walked to the corner of the room where they had put together a construction that could be described as a table. On it lay several chunks of flesh, wrapped inside leaves of that magical plant they had found previously. It was called Sparklethistle, named after its usefulness in brews that let Shamans and Druids align themselves with thunder spirits. For the average person, it was useless. For Reysha, it had allowed the revelation that magically seasoning mundane materials was an option.

They lacked any sort of cooking equipment, but just letting meat rest in a dense wrapping of the leaves made some of the magic seep in overnight. That was as good a breakfast as Reysha could get around here. Further possibilities of cooking with magical ingredients had to be explored. Boiling healing fountain water was the traditional way of removing the majority of dangerous mana from it. Mana found in animals outside of dungeons was generally not harmful, so people ate them all the time. Few people ever needed to consider what exactly was happening in the process, so the trio would have to research this themselves.

Once Reysha had her breakfast prepared, Aclysia’s morning routine was finished and she sat down by the fire in silent contemplation. Her every morning the past two weeks had looked something like this. She liked it. The routine gave her something to hold onto. Had it not been for the remaining uncertainty of their situation, a smile would have adorned her beautiful face.

Soon, Apexus stirred and Reysha awoke soon after him. The tiger girl had a much harder time peeling herself out of sleep. “You’re the best,” she yawned, when Aclysia handed her a cup she had just filled with water from the bucket. “Hmm, tastes like rain,” she remarked, “seconds please!”

“As you request,” the metal fairy obliged and caringly refilled the awakening redhead’s cup. Once she transitioned from hydration to breakfast, Apexus placed his hand inside the bucket. Gradually, the water was absorbed into the slime, meeting his own, much higher, hydration needs. Enviously, the slime glanced over to Reysha.

“Ya want some?” the tiger girl asked, offering one of the bite-sized chunks to the humanoid slime.

“You know I can’t,” Apexus responded.

“I know you were told not to,” Reysha responded and carelessly threw the breakfast chunk in her mouth, “but ya totally could if ya wanted to.”

“He shouldn’t,” Aclysia said, placing the now empty bucket at the side, “and you ought to stop tempting him. Intermittent fasting is a high burden on our darling’s mind.”

“The habit is worth little if Reysha can tease me out of it,” Apexus spoke up in defence of the tiger girl.

“Yeah, I’m just testing his resolve. Totally,” Reysha grinned mischievously, her cheeks bulging with the several pieces of meat she was currently chewing. After she swallowed, she continued. “I mean, I don’t get it, but I also signed up for stabbing people, not inner peace.”

“It’s about control, not necessarily peace,” Apexus corrected.

“It’s about us no longer having morning sex, apparently,” Reysha remarked, now sounding just the slightest bit cranky. Maltos’ personal training so far followed basic steps that every new Monk had to go through. The first day of training had been physical tests, accompanied by the teacher asking about a few details about the background of the slime. Intent had been to confirm the truth of all that had been said and the old Monk had been satisfied with the answers.

From the third day onwards, Maltos had given Apexus the instruction to fast. It was intermittent fasting to start with, meaning that Apexus was not allowed to eat or drink anything besides water, for the first few hours of every day. It built self-discipline, to resist the urges of the body and to only follow them once one had followed their personal code. Sex had joined food two days ago.

What was harder to forego depended on the morning, certain was only that skipping on both for stretches of time that got longer with each passing day was immensely difficult. Survival and breeding instincts screamed with the urge to be obliged in Apexus’ core. It was unpleasant to resist them. It was also proof that this was working. Gradually, he built a resistance to those wants. How much further his training would go was a question for the next few weeks.

“Only having sex once a day makes Reysha an angry kitten,” the tiger girl continued her complaint.

“Of us three, it is you who requires self-discipline the most,” Aclysia pointed out.

The redhead shrugged at that. “I never vibed with the whole ‘suppress your desires’ shit. What am I multi-orgasmic for if I don’t have a giant hunk of manmeat with a vibrating tongue fuck the rest of my sanity out of me?” Reysha drummed on the inside of her naked thigh and hummed thoughtfully. “Would it be against the rules if ya ate me out, Apexus?”

“It would be against the spirit of the rules.”

“Sucks to be us then,” Reysha declared, her hands gliding towards her crotch and breasts. “What about ya, bubble butt, willing to help a girl out?”

Aclysia hesitated. On one hand she was certainly willing, on the other she wanted to support Apexus in this current exercise. She knew her darling wouldn’t have minded, just like he didn’t mind that Reysha was so brazenly masturbating. They knew each other better than to be annoyed by such behaviour. “I must decline,” the metal fairy ultimately responded.

“Shame,” Reysha sighed, curving a finger inside her. The tiger girl had attempted to go a day without orgasm, but that just left her distracted when she had to listen to her teacher all day. During dungeon crawling, there was ever-present danger to distract herself. The controlled environment removed that pressure and left the nymphomaniac of a tiger girl with too much headspace to ignore her urges all day. More logical to take care of this in the morning, than during studying hours.

She did understand that Aclysia had a point when she said that she lacked self-discipline. Giving into those urges was part of what made life so fun to her, however, and she felt like getting too much of a handle on this would transform a delightfully stretchy and flexible part of her into something rigid. It was enough for her if she had a handle on herself most of the time and allowed herself the potential to be really, really stupid sometimes.

This was also backed up by what her current teacher liked to say: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.”

“I like having someone wild around,” Apexus said and put a hand on Reysha’s cheek. In the middle of fingering herself, the tiger girl leaned into his palm and shuddered. His smell and touch were enough to send a small surge of pleasure down her spine. Their eyes were locked, when she brought herself to climax.

Had she continued with the show, the slime would have wavered. Head cleared, though, she stopped after the one. Slime and tiger girl got dressed and that concluded their morning in the small house.

From there, they went to their separate schools.