Drip-Fed

 

Thirteen days had passed since they had left Drowse.

Eight days had passed since they left the civilized area and entered the Influence Zone of Chimerion.

Five days had passed since they had the major incident with the brood pit.

Their new and shiny equipment was covered in new cuts and scratches. Reysha’s new bodysuit had several claw marks on its surface, Aclysia’s robe was stained with mud and fluids that a casual wash could not get out, and Korith’s armour had a whole series of dents and grooves. All of them were signs of the items’ usefulness.

The claw marks on the bodysuit were remainders of when a swipe had cut Reysha’s back open. The leather had made it a shallow impact. The most prominent stains on Aclysia’s red robe originated from an acid spew that would have eaten through lesser fabrics. For Korith’s armour, every dent and scratch was testimony to the work it was doing. There was not a single hole in it either.

“Come on,” Reysha groaned.

The tiger woman sat in the middle of their Mobile Estate, wearing only a shirt that was three sizes too large for her.  It was so large that the head opening was wide enough that most of her left shoulder was bare. Ironically, it being that large and loose made the single article of clothing more of a ‘decent’ cover than her skin-tight bodysuit.

The top of said bodysuit was currently lying in front of the redhead. In her right hand, she held a rag. It had been the white-grey typical of cheaply woven fibres initially. Now most of it had taken on the deep brown colour of the oil it was soaked in. An oil that the redhead was rubbing all over the cut marks.

After a solid minute of her efforts, Reysha lifted the rag again to look at the unchanged cut marks. “I hate this!” Reysha grabbed the collar of the shirt and pulled it over the bridge of her nose. The sweet, masculine scent that hit her took the edge off the annoyance.

“You’re getting oil on my shirt.” Apexus pointed out, gesturing at Reysha’s fingers. Excess from the rag had made it onto her hands and now onto the collar of the shirt. A shirt getting dirty was no cause for concern for Apexus usually, but this was different. Not only was the oil a pain to wash out or off anything, but the shirt also had a clear purpose. Apexus only wore it so his women could take turns ‘stealing’ it.

Reysha hissed at her hands. “Sorry. This work just sucks. May the Parasytes eat us all if it means I am rid of-“

“Reysha!” Aclysia yelled across the room.

The air bristled with the passive discharge of mana caused by the angel’s emotions. Biting her tongue, Reysha lowered her head in surrender. “Sorry,” she mumbled again. “Why is it so complicated to fix this shit though?”

“It’s not that bad?” Korith threw in, eager to keep the conversation going away from Reysha’s curse. In the background, Aclysia shook her head but returned to her own task of checking on her robe without further reprimand.

“It’s fucking awful! How does it work?!” Reysha cursed and gave the marks a few more rubs. “I was told the leather will grow back together!”

“I mean, it did? Those used to go clean through?” Korith poured her own variety of oil onto a similar rag, then tenderly distributed the viscous fluid on the armour. The true silver particles suspended in the liquid attached to the armour. Improper application would make the armour abrasive, the new metal forming random bumps all over. Korith, using it properly, filled out the scratches and such. The dents she had taken care of earlier by heating the armour up in the fire and then just popping them out.

“…Let’s switch?” Reysha suggested.

“No.”

The redhead recoiled from the swiftness of the kobold’s certain answer. “Why nooooot?” she whined.

“Because I know what you are doing is easier and you’re still bad at it,” Korith answered.

“How the fuck do you know whether it’s easier to fix the leather or the metal?”

The kobold held up one of the many leather straps that were used to fix parts of the armour in place. It was the exact same material as Reysha’s bodysuit, just used in a different place.

Defeated by a gesture, Reysha’s ears and tail drooped down. “How does this work.”

“I told you before,” Korith groaned, her usually timid attitude diminished by three days’ worth of similar questions. “You have to keep a moderate pace and go against the direction of the cut.”

“But when I did that yesterday, it just tore open when I put the suit back on.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t let the oil do its work properly. You just sealed a thin layer on the surface. You have to slowly let the gash grow smaller.” Korith glanced over, then let out a long sigh. “That’s way too slow.”

“…” Reysha froze mid-motion, then went to do big eyes. “Apexus, help?”

The humanoid chimera had been following it all from his position on the bed. Not wearing any expensive equipment meant he did not have to do any of the bothersome upkeep either. That was the state of things before a pouty tiger woman was thrown into the mix.

Apexus was hesitant. He did not like the oil. It felt disgusting on his skin. An alchemical product like it couldn’t be eaten to clean himself off either. He had tried and paid for it by experiencing a short-lived, horrendous headache. The pain made no sense to a creature who only kept liquid in his skull so it didn’t ring hollow when he knocked against something.

“Please?” Reysha squeaked, putting every ounce of her misery into the word.

Sighing, the humanoid chimera got up and changed positions with the redhead. Rather than perk up, the tiger woman trotted over to the bed with her head hanging in shame. Was she happy that she did not have to do that anymore? Absolutely. That was buried under the guilt of not being able to pull her weight in this situation. “Guess I’m just good for stabbing things.”

“It’s a valuable skill in our line of work,” Aclysia assured her. “I shall not lie, as bothersome as your lack of capability in this is, I find it deeply satisfying to see you humbled.”

The tips of Reysha’s cat ears slumped a little bit further. “This useless kitty apologizes for her uselessness, oh useful one. If you would give this useless kitty a chance to work against her uselessness in any form, she would be much obliged.”

‘I still do not get the third person speech,’ Apexus thought to himself. ‘Apexus does not like rag, Apexus brushes over leather, he likes the motion… No, I’m not thinking like that again. It is weird.’

“I would suggest a task, would one come to mind.” Aclysia directed a gentle sunlight spell towards the stain she had managed to wash out. Once it had dried, she began applying a new coating to the silk, renewing its resilience against water and other fluids. “If we had more space, I would ask you to prepare ingredients for cooking. If it was safe to go around alone, I would ask you to search for herbs or scan the lay of the land. Alas, we have neither space nor security.” Aclysia smiled at the redhead. “We all have our weaknesses… just stop getting oil on darling’s shirt.”

“I can do that, I think,” Reysha sighed and went to wash the traces of the fluid still on her fingers.

“When is this place going to get bigger anyway?” Korith wondered. “We never asked, did we?”

“We did not,” Apexus confirmed. When Maltos had given them the Wandering Estate, he had not been in a state for a long conversation. Consequently, they had no idea if the item worked gradually or on thresholds. “We will discover the answer when the Change Mansion changes.”

“That’s still such a lame name…” Reysha complained in a little voice.

________________________________________________________________________________

Reysha drove her two daggers into the skulls of two crocodiles simultaneously. The true silver punched through the magically reinforced bones with less issue than the steel equivalent would have for regular skeletons. That she reinforced the stabs with the Edge Martial Art helped, but the main work was done by the keen edges.

Grinning, the redhead jumped for a nearby bundle of ferns, then suppressed her presence. Her job was to ensure that the rest of the party did not get flanked. ‘Cheap kills are the best kills,’ she thought, then laughed at the situation in the middle of the battlefield.

After leaving the safety of their Mobile Estate, the party had wandered for an hour, and then came across a mountain pass. The valley had been claimed by a shallow lake, occupied by almost normal crocodiles. The only chimeric aspects of them were the additional, bug-like plates covering their backs. Regular crocodiles already had sturdy back scales, making such an exoskeleton scarcely a factor in fighting them. That one of them was four metres long was more of a concern.

The party had elected to fight them anyhow. They required the additional practice and the alternative was taking a two-day detour around the mountain.

Reysha’s amusement had come about due to the way they were handling that main crocodile. By an amusing set of circumstances, Korith had managed to lodge her warhammer between the jaws of the creature. Lacking the tools and intelligence to knock it out of position or the strength to shatter it, all it could do was thrash around.

All the while, the Monk and Warrior were smashing through the lesser crocodiles with hands and feet. There were hundreds of them, but most were young or juvenile, scarcely getting bigger than half a metre. The adults were the real threat and were taken out by Reysha before they could get close.

The fight was a drawn-out engagement with a predictable outcome. In the end, only the massive crocodile remained.

Korith leapt across the stuck jaws, landing behind the monster. A slam of its tail drove Korith a foot back without actually hurting the plated kobold. Swiftly, she hugged the tail with both arms. The same explosive manifestation of Ki used to fuel her leap now aided her in pulling on the massive bug-reptile.

Once, twice, thrice, the kobold spun around her own axis, lifting the giant creature out of the shallow water and then launching it towards the side of the ravine. Chitin cracked against rock. Apexus charged in while the creature was still dazed.

In the mind of the humanoid chimera, the knowledge of meridian structures and the biological structure of creatures combined. ‘There!’ The flat palm of the Monk slammed into a spot just below the ribcage of the monster. A second clap followed the first near instantaneously, the mantis shrimp smasher in his wrist adding to the impact of the Rippling Palm.

It should have been a muscle-tearing attack. What it became was an organ-shredding vibration. The body of the monster remained intact on the surface, but underneath it roiled like no creature should have roiled. It lasted for two seconds, then the half-liquified contents of its chest were vomited out in a spew of gore from its maw.

“…Yo! What the fuck?” Reysha popped up out of Stealth and looked at Apexus. “What was that, tell me everything, that was gorgeous.”

“I do not agree with that choice of words,” Aclysia said.

“It is a wasteful outcome,” Apexus agreed with her and gestured towards the cone of blood and guts. “I will get it,” he told Korith, then waded through the water, merely knee height for him, to get her hammer. “I found the Calamity Point,” he explained after returning with the weapon.

“The what now?” Reysha asked.

“The Calamity Point is a major meridian, located somewhere around the rim of the ribcage,” Apexus explained. “Hammering it with a Ki-injection messes with the dispersion and expulsion of foreign mana inside the body. You can see the result.”

“And you don’t abuse the fuck of that because…?”

“It’s the size of an apple seed viewed from the top. It takes intense study to find it.” Apexus picked up one of the smaller corpses floating by. “I reflected on their Growths when I was meditating.”

“This is almost as great as the orgasm button,” Reysha stated. “Did you get that from your notes?”

Apexus nodded. “I will share more as I learn to use it. Boasting about what is still being learned is not how I like to share my lessons.”

“If ya need a guinea pig to test more of the sexual stuff, I’m always here,” Reysha offered with a grin.

“I will remember the offer,” Apexus pledged.

They washed off what blood and guts they could in a clean part of the lake, then continued on. Past the mountain pass, the landscape shifted suddenly. An expected factor to the party, who had gotten used to the area’s odd landscape. From their current, elevated position, they could see the various different colours of soil that peeked out underneath the wild mix of grasses. Swamps, woodlands, grasslands, terracotta wastes, and anything in between existed in an impossible density.

“Having found the mountain path, we should arrive in 5 days,” Aclysia told them all. “We can expect the next two days to be filled with stronger monsters. Our path takes us close to the dungeon entrance. Once we are past it, adventurers from Summerdawn should keep the area under surveillance.”

“Let’s go to the money,” Korith leapt down the mountain pass.

The rest of them followed.