Drip-Fed

A full month after they had finished the grinding training, the Inevitable Party found the boss room.

By what little available estimates the party had, they considered themselves to be somewhere below the spire of the Lanaan Hive. They could only go off the fact that they had gone down more than up, but they did not have certainty in this.

Three ways led into the chamber in front of the chitinous gate. The party came down the one left of that final door of the dungeon. As was often the case, a Healing Fountain was located in front of the chamber, allowing for them all to refresh themselves before they tackled the boss. Crystals jutting out from the ceiling activated in response to the movement, providing a dim, golden light.

“Fucking finally,” Reysha groaned, already starting to strip. “Light, a bath, and the end of this dungeon. I’m getting sick of bug meat.”

“You will eat it some more,” Apexus reminded her. They may have been about to leave the Lanaan Hive, but the rest of the gauntlet was still out east. “I’ll prepare everything, you enjoy the bath,” he then told Korith.

The kobold had waited by his side for the moment the Mobile Estate was opened up. With the assurance given, she let out a relieved sigh and began to take off her armour. She had not done so for any meaningful stretch of time in three days. That had been the stretch between their last safe spot and this one.

Apexus pulled the key out of his slime. The magical item gleamed. Being constantly enveloped in a corrosive that only affected organic matter kept it in mint condition. Apexus carefully pushed it into the air, letting it sink into the hole that formed by the gesture, then turned the key to create the door frame of light. By the time the door had fully formed, Apexus had deposited the key inside himself again.

He went inside, quickly filling a pot with the water the Mobile Estate provided, then igniting a flame under it. He hung the pot high, so it would not come to a boil too quickly. Once that was done, he checked what food they still had.

After Apexus had turned the initial storage room into his alchemy lab, they had moved the items within it to either the Living Room or the dead end in the corridor between bedroom and bath. The latter was where Apexus was headed.

No doubt existed that the Mobile Estate was a luxury. After its expansion, Apexus had even felt it to be quite roomy. That feeling had since faded, as they had filled the new space with new things. Huge as the humanoid chimera was, strutting through the corridor, only a metre wide and four deep, felt somewhat cramped.

They had screwed hooks into the wooden ceiling there and from those hooks, on sturdy threads, dangled a selection of ham. Below the meat were sacks filled with hard vegetables, the kind that would require months to spoil. A couple of pickle jars sat in the corner.

Most of the threads only had a bone dangling from them. The sacks were mostly empty, what remained only filling the bottom of the rough fabric. Of the pickle jars, only one had been opened so far. As they had the longest shelf life, they were to be opened last. Korith having a particular craving had been the only reason why they were one short.

Korith could eat a lot. In any given day, she burned the same or more energy than any other Warrior of regular size would have and her intake of sustenance matched that. Fortunately, the party only had one member that ate regular food and they could store a lot more food on a journey.

Apexus cut dried slices off the ham and put them in a clean basket alongside a couple of turnips. It was not a good meal, but it lasted. He carried the basket outside. “Replenishment for your bag,” he told Korith and put the basket down near the kobold’s clothes. Because getting cut off from the Mobile Estate was a regular occurrence, it only made sense that Korith kept enough food for a few days in her own Adventurer’s Bag.

“Thank youuuuu,” the blonde sighed. As was so often the case, the shortstack found herself the target of multiple sources of pampering. Aclysia had the kobold in front of her, combing through her golden hair with her fingers. Reysha was scrubbing the rest of the curvy shortie, from face cheeks to butt cheeks. Apexus joined the fun and soon the water was rippling with altogether more erratic motions.

Safety orgy gone through, they went into the mansion, healed and clean, ate together, slept, and then had a final strategy meeting.

Aclysia put the guide in front of her. The opened page was a double-spread, including drawings of the boss monster from several angles. It looked like a mixture of cockroach and hedgehog with its pronounced back covered in sharp crystals. Various texts described the recommended boss strategy.

“According to the manual, this is among the easier boss fights. The boss is described as slow and defensive in nature. However, taking damage in the fight is guaranteed, as striking its armoured crystals causes a reactive explosion. After such an explosion, the affected segment is exposed for a few moments to be struck, before a fresh crystal grows. The challenge, therefore, is to carefully measure resources as the boss is gradually whittled down. The sturdy party members will trigger and tank the explosions, while the nimble damage dealers will strike at the exposed flesh.”

“Sounds easy enough, what’s the catch?” Reysha asked.

Aclysia scanned over the two pages in front of her, then checked the adjacent ones for full certainty. “There does not appear to be one. It is that straightforward.”

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Apexus struck the plate of the monster.

The reaction to the attack was, from the chimera’s point of view, instantaneous. The black crystal turned grey with light, then shattered into a scattershot blast that dug into the carefully prepared Ironskin and almost broke the ribcage beneath. Apexus was thrown backwards, coming back to his senses only when he was flat on his back on the gently sloped ground.

Reysha rushed forwards from the edge of the flat bowl shape of the arena. The boss monster, three metres of spikes, sat in the middle of it, its belly protected by the shape of the space. Armed with her longest sword, the redhead stabbed at the revealed wound. She repressed the urge to use an Overplayed Edge. The guide had made it very clear that this fight was about preserving resources.

Purple blood oozed from the wound and Reysha snapped back before she could trigger the explosive revenge of the regrowing crystals. Apexus picked himself up, shaking his head, and directed the internal flow to push out the fragments of the crystals stuck in his epidermis. Sharp pieces clattered to the ground one after another.

The boss monster continued to sit there, while the rest of the party prowled around it. Occasionally it would shift its weight to present more of its spikes to the enemies. The guide had detailed that the creature would only really move if it was not attacked for a while, to interrupt any attempt of a party to rest in the middle of the boss room.

Out in wider nature, this creature would have been effectively harmless. In here, where they were forced to choose between killing it or starving inside the sealed chamber, its defensive strategy worked perfectly well. Still, for the Inevitable Party, it was a very manageable encounter.

Apexus was still regenerating when Korith attacked next. The shortstack struck a singular plate. She kept her head turned, shielding her eyes from the shrapnel that then cut hardened skin and scratched armour. Like Apexus, she was flung back. Reysha, who had waited outside the blast cone, then delivered a stab.

This repeated again and again and again, for thirty full minutes, until the accumulated wounds finally caused the creature to unceremoniously turn slack.

By that point, none of the party was in a good state either. Reysha had been caught twice when an impressive strike had triggered several plates simultaneously. The same was true for Aclysia. Apexus and Korith were damaged from taking the constant hits. Courtesy of healing, they themselves were fine, but their clothes were more shreds than anything else. The armour itself was fine, in Korith’s case, but any exposed buckles would need replacement.

“I hated that,” Reysha stated. “That was so boring and dangerous. That’s the worst combination of things!”

“Yeah…” Korith agreed.

Apexus ignored the two of them, too gleeful at the prospect of finally acquiring another Growth. It was in his instincts to crave evolution and it had been altogether too long, for his taste, since he had gotten a change to himself.@@novelbin@@

Eating the monster was a matter of minutes. Once it had been fully dissolved, Apexus found himself filled with that tingling sensation that came with his body readying itself to integrate another genetic sequence into its chimeric makeup.  He considered the reactive plating of the monster for a few moments, but decided against it. The covering would make him too cumbersome. The bristles of the worm remained his choice.

The Growth changed as it went from temporary to permanent. Already hard tubes hardened further, the material composition becoming similar to Apexus’ teeth. He integrated the organ that produced the bristles into the underside of the outermost segment of each of his fingers, then concentrated on his index finger.

The bristle pushed out from the tip of the finger. It was a grey-tinted white. It was as thin as any needle would have been, growing ever so slightly towards the base. The bristle had been hollow before Apexus had acquired it, but now that it was part of his biology it had evolved in keeping with his intention. Blue shimmered ever so softly beneath the opaque surface of the biological needle.

Apexus’ slime inside the needle was not there to be injected. Once separated from his body, the acidic nature of his internal fluids was nearly immediately lost, making it useless as a poison. No, the purpose was to have control over the hollow.

The humanoid chimera tested the concept on a puddle of purple blood. Placing the tip of the needle in the shallow pool, he pulled his slime back into the finger. The resulting vacuum had to be filled and thus the blood was sucked into the needle. Apexus then stabbed the needle into his own palm for testing. The impact at the front, through clever biological engineering, put a great amount of pressure onto the back, causing the space to contract and the liquid contents to be injected. The same process caused the bristle to snap off right below the skin of the finger.  The base of the old needle became the tip of the next one, already grown within the finger, waiting like the next tooth of a shark.

“What do you want to do with that, darling?” Aclysia asked.

“It will be versatile,” Apexus answered. “Relaxation therapy outside of combat. In combat, if I can acquire poisons, then I can inject them. I should also be able to inject mutagens and other concoctions.”

“How about healing potions?” Reysha asked. The utility of having a second healer, even one limited by potion supply, was obvious.

Apexus looked at the snapped needle. At best, it could hold a hundredth of the contents of a single vial. “It would need to be very concentrated. I will research. Where is Korith?”

“Probably putting her Favour Paper to the chests,” the redhead answered. “Let’s go check it out. Maybe the Scam God actually has something for us today.”