The Long Way 8 – In the Ice

They spend another five days in the dungeon. Those were five more days to the three that they already wanted to spend elsewhere. After having his first experience with ice and snow, Apexus absolutely agreed with the decision of every other adventurer on the Leaf to avoid this dungeon. Why would anyone deal with an environment where not wearing clothes was more threatening than two-metre-tall bears that could themselves breathe ice?

In those five days, they only came about one additional healing fountain, leaving their rests to be rather unsatisfying as well. Apexus was annoyed with the environment, Reysha was underfucked and Aclysia was getting increasingly worried about the gradual deterioration of their equipment. The last of those was the most worthwhile out of the three, given that every scrape and tear lowered the heat-retaining efficiency of the clothes. Regardless of validity, they all just wanted to get out.

They were consequently relieved when they finally found the boss room. Rather than the usual door, they were looking at a hole at the bottom of a funnel-shaped room. According to the guide, the boss would be down there. For the first time, the boss room was not preceded by a healing fountain, which made their final tactics discussion and rest less pleasant than usual. A perfect summary, for all of them, of the dungeon in its entirety.

They were a couple of metres removed from the funnel, careful to not slide down the smooth surface before they were ready. Reysha was sitting on a stone, Aclysia on the ground and Apexus was leaning against a wall. The feathers of his wings were good enough of an insulator on their own that he didn’t mind.

“Have you encountered any useful Growths to replicate?” Aclysia asked, after they were done discussing their encounter strategy. It was a valid question, given they were about to face the monster whose defeat would enable the next permanent acquisition.

“Nothing of tremendous use,” Apexus shook his head. The dungeon supposedly had four monsters, bears, wraiths, some kind of caterpillar and butterflies. The last two were evidently rare, as they hadn’t encountered any of them. “Acquiring the bear fur may be a good idea in case of future cold areas.”

“If you copied the fur, we could skin ya in the future,” Reysha joked.

“Unlikely,” Apexus responded seriously and pulled at his skin a little bit. “My skin is a mixture of demon and my own membrane. Separated from me, it will dissolve into water. You’d just have a bunch of fur.”

“Would spreading your hair over your entire body not have the same result regardless?” Aclysia asked.

“My current hair is not particularly good as an insulator. It’s designed to be sensitive,” the slime denied. He had gotten it from the Verdany boss, who had used the hair as tripwire and as soft ‘walls’ by letting it hang from tentacles as curtains. “Not that the bear fur alone will do much to retain heat either. The fat would help more there.”

“Why isn’t Fatpexus on the menu then?” Reysha asked.

“Because depositing fat correctly is a complicated process and takes more energy than to grow out fur. Plus, it’s harder to get rid of afterwards” Apexus gestured at his crafted, muscular perfection of a male body. “I’d rather not mess with the balance unnecessarily.”

After letting out a long sigh, Reysha giggled. The reality was unlikely to occur, but she could still imagine the large humanoid slime turning a chubby giant with small wings. “What about the bear's claws though?” she asked, between chuckles. “Yours keep breaking.”

“Yeah, the crystals are too brittle to withstand force. I’d like something retractable though…” Demonstratively, the slime’s eyes wandered from his own hands to Reysha’s red nails. “…Can I eat you?”

“Ya can eat me out later,” Reysha purred, her tail flopping left to right on the stone she was sitting on.

“Won’t get the Growth out of that. It’s too late and the wrong kind of eating.”

“Psh, don’t be stupid,” the redhead waved off. “Ya can’t eat me, I’m cute.”

“Fair point,” Apexus surrendered the argument. “Anyway, another option is the stomach. Would allow me to mimic human breathing.”

“Uhh, wouldn’t ya need lungs for that?” Reysha asked.

Placing a hand flat on his chest, the slime explained, “The motion of breathing originates purely from a cavity in your chest filling up with air. I don’t need to process the air, I just need an organ that I can rhythmically inflate and deflate with surrounding muscle tissue.”

“I guess?” Reysha tilted her head. Having been to various environments, she was aware enough that there was something in the air that she needed to inhale to survive. The exact working of the lungs was beyond her expertise, however. “You’re the expert on what organs, I just know where they are so I can stab them.” Furrowing her eyebrows, Reysha noticed that she was now consciously breathing. Another thought sparked inside her head. “Won’t you have terribly stinky breath though?”

“Maybe? Depends on how the stomach works once it's part of me,” Apexus told her. “Worst case, I’ll seal it off when I don’t need it.”

“Would it not be more beneficial to go for lungs for authenticities sake?” Aclysia wondered.

“There should be no visible difference from the outside and any side benefits I would get from lungs, such as buoyancy, I would also get from the stomach. The specific use of lungs, to absorb desired parts of the air and add it to the bloodstream, is no use to me, as I don’t have blood. I do eat things though and I wouldn’t mind swallowing to be more efficient.”

“…Huh,” Reysha made an understanding sound. “Well, if ya put it like that, it does make more sense to get a stomach to mimic breathing…”

Satisfyingly informed about the thought process, Aclysia said, “I concur.”

Silence settled between them and they exchanged glances. With nothing left to say, they directed their eyes to the funnel. Apexus pushed himself off the wall, Reysha rose from the stone and rolled her shoulders, and Aclysia hovered upwards. All they had to wait for was for Apexus to do the usual and put his top away to protect it from battle damage. Then the slime led the way, sliding down the funnel.

It was a ten-metre drop from the hole, which was in and of itself unpleasant for the average (especially plated) adventurer. With the power increases up to this point, ten metres were non-threatening even without rolling correctly, but it would be far from pleasant. Apexus could feel the impact in his bones, but recovered fast. Nothing broke and there were no nerves or tissue that could take offense from the blunt trauma. Reysha was a bit more delicate, but the tiger girl knew how to land: by being caught by Apexus. Aclysia flew in right behind them.

“My hero,” the redhead laughed, as she was carefully let down to the ground.

The room’s floor was the inverse of the funnel above, a hill of ice that declined towards the edges of the boss arena. That slope was incredibly dangerous, as it led down to a ring of water, a dozen metres wide, that separated the ice in the middle from the ice of walls. Pale crystals jutted out of the black rock, an extreme colour difference to the otherwise omnipresent white ice that gave the dungeon its name. Those crystals illuminated the room. The water was milky and impossible to visually penetrate despite the light and shielded the boss inside even from Apexus’ tremor sense.

Reysha managed to get a proper foot courtesy of the adjustable soles of her red shoes. The ice was hard, but with sharp enough spikes anything could be done. Apexus had to rely on his winter boots as they were, which was still adequate but somewhat risky. He took a slow step down the slope. “Be careful, darling,” Aclysia said, following directly behind him in the air. Reysha took a slightly different route and kept her distance.

Their strategy was simple and all of the risk was frontloaded. Apexus had to watch his balance.

It took fifteen step until his feet were in the water. The shoes started to soak up the milky fluid and cold quickly. Unpleasant as it was, it was at least firmer ground to stand on than the ice. Raising one foot after the other, he splashed around.

Soon, he felt the mildest of vibrations. It was difficult to notice, given the effect water had on weight, but it was all Apexus concentrated on. Something very large was inside the water and the closer it got, the shallower its habitat became, the less room it had to swim. The form remained obscured, but Apexus could see the curling of the surface, caused by something moving underneath. There was a moment of calm. Everyone tensed up.

A massive pair of jaws burst out of the water at impressive speed. Thick, curved teeth set inside an elongated maw were spread out wide, enveloping Apexus horizontally, attached to a long, white-scaled body beset with blue crystals. The White Ice Crocodile exuded an air colder than the environment itself, but Apexus was more threatened by the impending bite.

Moving with all of the speed he had to offer, Apexus tried to dodge by throwing himself to the ground. The boss, however, was too fast. The jaws snapped shut, catching the upper half of Apexus’ torso. The teeth were blunt instruments, designed to aid in the crushing of bones, and they did a splendid job cracking the most solid parts of the humanoid slime’s body. Shoulders, ribcage, skull, wings and everything in between were crushed in a moment. Slime splattered outwards, squished out by the brutal force of the bite. The forearms fell off and the legs crawled to the side.

This was, strictly speaking, in the confines of their plan. Someone had to lure the boss out and Apexus was the obvious choice. By moving his core between the hips in advance, he took advantage of the described ambush style of the monster. Now it was out of the water, committed to a movement, and had a mouth full of pain acid. He would have preferred to not lose most of this torso though.

‘That’s a failure on my part,’ Apexus thought- he couldn’t talk. He couldn’t see either. He could still sense Reysha charging in with the war pick, though. Similarly, he could feel the healing energy of Aclysia’s spell coming his way. They accelerated his reconstruction tremendously and supplied some of the necessary energy. His usual form was too complicated to regenerate in a sensible time frame though, something preconstructed had to do.

Reysha, meanwhile, landed the one hit their plan fundamentally relied on. Swinging the war pick, only aiming to connect at all, the weapon punched through scale and hide, grievously wounding the White Ice Crocodile at the neck.

It wasn’t an immediate kill. In pain and panicked, the boss monster slammed its snout sideways into Reysha, sending her flying. The impact was accompanied by the sound of ribs cracking underneath the thick fur clothes. The wound was opened further in the process and that was all that mattered.

Landing in the shallow water a few metres away, Reysha was about to be chased by the angry crocodile when an even angrier, naked bear slammed into its side. Copying the body structure of the monster had been easier and faster, the structure of muscles and bones nothing Apexus had influence over and therefore constructed entirely on fast instinct. The simple, small components of his Growths, like ears and eyes, he used over what the bear would have naturally had. The end result was a chimera in every sense.

The slime and the boss monster made a large splash when they slammed into the water. Red mingled with milky white, as they struggled. Larger and in its element, the boss was the immediate favourite. Apexus knew this and had only one priority: to stay away from those jaws.

Once he heard a whistle, he disengaged. It wasn’t easy and a stroke of luck was that the crocodile’s thrashing tail hit him in the back, making him fall towards land. Reysha and Aclysia then dragged him further away before the boss could chase after its prey.

Calm set onto the battlefield, the crocodile sitting by the shore and hissing at them, while the trio of adventurers, Reysha recovered thanks to Aclysia’s healing, stared back. The wound continued to ooze red. Blood of a creature such as this didn’t freeze easily. Additionally, the wound was deep enough to connect to the windpipe and the boss’ thrashing had caused a vein to be scratched open.

Their strategy was simple and all of the risk was frontloaded. Bait the boss into a large attack and exploit the window of opportunity to land a single, devastating hit to the head. Now they simply had to wait. Either the boss would succumb to the wound or its stamina would be gradually drained by the blood loss.

If the crocodile had been smarter, it would have likely realized its impending death and gone on a rampage to fulfil its imperative to be a threat to adventurers. As it was, it just retreated back into the water and waited for them to give it another opportunity to ambush. It waited, bled and waited, until there was not enough left in its system to supply its organs with energy.

The group was contemplating a second attack when the ice in the room melted away.