Drip-Fed

“Are we ready?” Aclysia asked the group. In response, Apexus checked all of its Growths one more time. Legs? Worked, all eight of them. Fangs? Wiggling and sharp. Nose? Perfectly acute. Ears? Picking up everything they needed to. Pheromone ducts? Deactivated to not give away its position in the fight. Wings? Sized up to use to fly short distances or as shields. Eyes? Staring ahead and blinking well. It would have killed for some arms, but this was what it had to work with.

“Let’s get in there and kill the boss,” Reysha’s answer was simpler. She didn’t have to check her equipment, given that the only thing she had was her spear and the bag that was hanging from her waist.

Together with Apexus, the tiger girl leaned against the stone door. Despite its heavy look, it moved quite easily and after the first few centimetres swung slowly all by its own. They were greeted by a second, circular chamber, much larger and with six giant pillars, a clean marble white only at the base and only on the side pointing inwards, the rest of them a decayed grey, supporting the dome ceiling. It seemed like an upscaled version of the healing fountain room they just stepped out of.

However, there were a few key differences. While the pond at the centre was overall bigger, it took less space in relation to the size of the room. Two walkways parted the tumultuous water, doubtlessly much deeper than the shallow fountain, on the left and right side. What had the water in such constant movement was an unnatural display of water falling upwards, a waterrise, so to say, into which the walkways led.

The endless torrent was surprisingly smooth, the movement being the only thing that obscured vision through the surface and the source of the fountain that they had seen before entering. A thundering rush accompanied its presence, blocking out most sounds and creating tremors in the floor that made it hard for Apexus to notice as much as usual.

Then the waves around the waterrise slowly smoothed over. They changed into very unwater-like smooth up and down curves, like those sine wave things that Gizmo had showed the slime during a math lesson.

Apexus looked behind it, to the view of the stone doors quickly closing. The prospect of being locked in here with whatever was about to awake was not to its liking. However, it couldn’t warn the other two in time and even if it could, running away after coming this far was strictly spineless. Well, the slime didn’t have a spine, but the spirit of the saying applied.

It was true that gods were merciful towards new adventurers, but even early dungeon bosses were supposed to be a life-threatening encounter. After all, the people that cleared up the mysteries and challenges of the worlds were rewarded with power, fame, a chance at immortality and an even smaller shot at divinity. It was an easy but harsh rule that stood above any other in the codex of adventuring: tackle only that which you are prepared for, or die.

Even through the constant rumbling in the floor, Apexus felt immense movements from within the water. Not that it couldn’t have noticed the on-goings with its eyes, as the smoothly curving waves escalated further and further by the second. Everyone in the group realized something bad was about to happen at the same moment and scrambled towards the pillars, hiding behind them. Apexus and Aclysia went left, Reysha right.

They made it behind the pillars, in the nick of time, an explosion of water to ripping outwards. Strong enough to rip Warriors off their feet or break a couple of a Priest’s bones by slamming them against the wall. However, these pillars were fashioned from solid marble and as such they withstood the force, the water breaking on them.

Reysha hissed as she was sprayed with excess water and her boots were soaked from the backwash. Liking her hot baths was entirely removed from this cold embrace that was stuck in her remaining clothes.

Following the unnatural movement of the water backwards into the pool, a straight flow towards a point on a level floor, Apexus witnessed the boss monster forming while peeking carefully out from behind its pillar.

It was a featureless mass of water, the smooth shape of a humanoid torso and about three metres tall. Thick arms grew out of its immensely broad shoulders, attached to a fitting chest. From there, it quickly narrowed, the thinnest point of its body being where the hips would be on a proper humanoid body, then growing wide again as its large base connected with the pool, its dark blue colour changing fluidly into the translucent fluid below. Fitting that the boss of the Clearwater Dungeon would be a water elemental.

Inside its faceless head swirled around bits of a dark grey fluid, slowly concentrating into a spot. “Fuck you!” Reysha screamed out, charging from behind the pillar with a couple of twists around her own axis. This time this wasn’t just a gesture of insanity, the tiger girl was building momentum and unloading it in a mighty chuck of the spear.

Rogues specialized in two things, stealth and precision. While their usual training went with smaller throwing projectiles, knives, darts or needles, that knowledge could be used to improvise. Even then, throwing the spear was a reckless manoeuvre, one whose resounding success was a miracle.

The spear went straight through the water elemental’s head, unloading small jolts of lightning as it passed through and clashed against an invisible barrier around the waterrise and then fellalling down into the pool. Laughing wildly as the body that had just formed scattered again, following the disassembly of the grey core matter. “That was so easy!” she cackled, turning to Apexus and Aclysia.

“Dodge!” Aclysia shouted in return. Without thinking, Reysha went straight into a somersault. She knew better than to question the metal fairy when she raised her voice. However, she must have used up all her luck in that throw. Five bolts of magic-infused water came for her, their surface strength increased, leaving trails of small drops behind them as they cut through the air.

Fired in a salvo, it would have been hard to dodge them in the first place. Reysha got away with only two of them hitting her, one grazing her ribcage while the other hit, in all its blunt might, her left knee. “SHIT!” she howled in pain when she landed on that leg first, immediately collapsing. “Really, again with this?!” complaining, she fell to the ground, her blue eyes glaring over to the pool.

Rather than one large, the water elemental had split into a quintet of smaller spirits. All of them were holding their deep blue palms together, slowly pulling them apart as new spheres of water formed, ready to be launched at the impaired tiger girl. Of course, her allies wouldn’t just let that happen.

Apexus skittered forwards, pulling the attention of the small enemies towards it. Each of them was about half a metre-tall. Even if their arms were still rather large for their size, the slime wasn’t afraid of their physical force. Their arms were thick, but the slime’s diameter of almost one and a quarter metres protected its only weak spot under a thick layer.

Their position about a metre into the water and ranged attacks were bad news though. A punch was one thing, a battering of five bolts another. They threw them in unison towards the slime, just as it had predicted, at which point the spider-legged creature leapt, spreading its wings. The attacks sailed through under it, hitting only pillars and wall.

“Let’s hope this is a shallow problem,” Aclysia prayed as she swooped in. The bruised ribs would have to wait, even if the impact had broken something. Given that Reysha was a Rogue that may have very well been the case. Levels increased an adventurer’s capabilities based on the feats performed, as such a class that was busy dodging and sneaking was not known for its endurance. However, even a shallowly broken rib wasn’t going to hinder her combat ability like the hurt leg was. The metal fairy inspected it and then began to cast, pushing herself to the edge to hasten the healing process as much as she could.

Apexus had reached the edge of the pool and jumped again, this time to descend on one of the water elementals. Although it hadn’t done exactly what she wanted to accomplish, killing the boss in one hit, Reysha had doubtlessly done some damage to the elemental by hitting the grey matter in its head. Although liquid, what was taking a rough spherical shape reminded the slime very much of its own core, the size of an orange and swimming in the centre of its body.

Apexus pressed the water elemental under the surface with its weight, fangs ramming through the surface. Despite being made from the same liquid, the elemental and the pool they were now inside of didn’t mix. The magical nature of its life had changed its colouration and surface tension and given it a will. While it may have had some advantages in the water compared to normal creatures, none of them mattered when its head was carved open and the grey liquid spilled out.

The dark blue body began to disintegrate, drifting apart as if somebody had dumped a glass of ink in the water, the second the core liquid had left it. Apexus thus went right onto the next one. Now in the water, however, it was severely limited in its movement. A water bolt hit the slime straight in the face, the blunt force turning an eye into a bloodless pulp.

While the slime’s main body did fairly well with absorbing force that didn’t penetrate the membrane, the Growths were not as immune and it hurt. It hurt a lot. Desperately, Apexus fluttered its wings to get out of the water, losing the spider legs just to get rid of the weight. In its successful ascension, it was battered by another attack on its underside. That one was largely ineffective, the reverberations only distantly reaching its nucleus.

Flying a large circle, always with the uninjured eye on its next target, the slime took aim. Depth was harder to perceive, but it managed and then went into a dive. It helped that the elementals were dull creatures, clearly made to execute only simple routines, and didn’t even attempt to dodge. As such, Apexus’ second and even third takedown went over quite well. It was hurt in the process, losing the rat snout as it was broken and the dull pain pulsating was distracting and a sense of smell was unnecessary in this fight.

The only Growths it had by the time it tried to assault the fourth were the natural ones it possessed along with the spider fangs, which were doing a tremendous job as far as it was concerned. However, that fourth plunge turned out to be the last as one of the water bolts hit its outstretched wing. The light bones snapped immediately upon impact, throwing the slime off balance.

It was still en-route to that fourth elemental and successfully crashed into it, but the perfect aim at its head had been compromised. Instead they entered a messy fight in the water. The boss shard moved in the liquid environment as if it wasn’t even there, throwing punches at Apexus. Again, the slime benefited greatly from the dullness of the creature it was fighting, the water elemental unable to realize that its attacks were useless.

The world whirled around Apexus, the nearby waterrise made it hard to sense the correct tremors and the pummelling it received, while harmless, didn’t help in finding the creatures head either. Wildly, Apexus bit with the fangs again and again, simply hoping it would find the weak spot eventually. After over a dozen bites, the slime hit the right spot and the smaller elemental began to fizzle away.

The fight had sent Apexus deep into the pool. An attempt to reshape its body into something that would somewhat allow it to swim, not a proper Growth but just straining itself to use its slime like a fin, was interrupted by a water bolt hitting it in the back. That one was way more threatening than the previous ones, as Apexus had relocated mass away from around its midnight blue core. In a defensive reflex, the slime stopped and went back to its normal, elliptic shape. If its core got damaged that would be like a stab into the heart and a cracked skull at the same time.

A large impact went through the water as something, or rather someone, else jumped in with full force. Fiercely clawing, a recovered Reysha ripped the head off the last splinter of the boss, releasing its grey matter into the water. The tiger girl swam down to Apexus with her usual, overly broad grin. This time, however, she kept her eyes on her surroundings.

A wise decision as the water elemental wasn’t quite done yet. The grey liquids gathered in a single point, forming a single smooth orb. Unlike that seemingly perfectly fine appearance, the body that formed in return seemed unsteady. The shapes of the thick arms were wavering, bloating as the other was shrinking, an unsteady display of damaged enragement.

Apexus hit the ground of the pool and Reysha dove after it as quickly as possible. She was not looking forwards to being the one to handle the punches of the unstable boss. That and she had spied the spear not far away from the slime.

Quickly following her, beating its lower body like the tail of a merman, the water elemental was in vengeful pursuit. It stretched out its hand, trying to grab the tiger girl and just hold her. Underwater as they were, just waiting for the air-breather to suffocate was the most basic of tactics.

The tiger girl passed over Apexus before that could happen, however, with the slime stretching its wings, broken or not, into the way and making it impossible to be ignored for a creature of such dull intellect. A smarter foe would have swam around, but the elemental just saw the bright green enemy in front of it. Like a silent roar, a prolonged wave of vibrations went out from the water elemental as it began to cover the slime in punches.

It was stronger, way stronger, and Apexus felt every punch in its whole body. It could take one, it could take two, but the punches came quicker than it could completely recover from the last one. Given time, the slime would be flattened and then…

Warning jolts of pain went through it with every impact, its instincts screaming, begging for Apexus to find a solution to get out of there. However, the bright green wings kept the tunnel vision of the monster all on the slime. Long enough for Reysha to jab the spear through the gap between them and right into the elementals head.

Yellow thunder crackled inside the boss’ head, which threw its arms around like it was cursing the sky. It shuddered, raised them both above its head as if it wanted to pray and then smash both of its enemies at once. However, at the height of the fists’ preparing movements, they began to dissolve. Sending them down only hastened that project, all that hit Apexus and Reysha was a wave of water in turbulent motion, all that was left behind was a spear and a sphere of dark grey.