Drip-Fed

 

The fist connected. Atlas’ speed was more than Apexus had anticipated. Even if he had seen the attack coming, he would have found it hard to dodge. Everyone around was treated to the absolutely absurd sight of a Warrior’s uppercut slamming straight into the underside of a man’s chin and that man standing.

95% of humanoid species would have had their brain rattled by the impact. The other 5% would have at least felt their optical nerves shaken. Apexus just felt the blunt pain of his head tilting back, then his Monk instincts kicked in and he tilted forward.

Swiping the arm aside, Apexus went for a subduing grip on the shoulder. The first move succeeded, but the second did not. Atlas gripped the fellow adventurer by the wrist and twisted into a shoulder throw.

Apexus surprisingly found that the smaller human was capable of throwing him. ‘The strength of an adventurer,’ the Monk thought while cutting through the air. He knew what his fellows should be capable of, but it was interesting to experience it first-hand.

Over 200 kilos of man, meat and muscle slammed into the thick stone tiles of the reinforced floor. Surrounding adventurers cheered and booed in equal measure, having created a wide ring around the event.

“What is-“ Aclysia raised her voice, only to have her shoulder be grabbed by Reysha. “Why are you stopping me?”

“Come on, bubble butt, this is part of the good tone around here.” The redhead grinned widely, revealing her sharp teeth. “Let’s see what happens.”

Atlas grabbed a mug of ale from a nearby onlooker, who just laughed while the Warrior downed it. “Sorry about that, your tone just pisshed me off,” the brown-haired man slurred, growing more intoxicated by the second. “’Let’s help everyone!’ – Yeah, shorry, shunshine, but it ain’t that easy and I haven’t rishked my life for the last 9 years to live like a fucking nun.”

“There is a gradient between starvation and greed,” Apexus said as he calmly stood up.

“It ain’t greedy! It’s fuckin’ supply and dema-“ Apexus had heard enough and raised his fists into a simple guard stance. That was enough to cause the drunken Warrior to drop the mug and mirror the pose. “Alright! That’sh the language men should speak!”

To the cheering of the crowd, the two adventurers stood across from each other, fists raised and eyes focused. “Go get him, Atlas!” Someone shouted. “Fuck him up, newcomer!” Someone else added. All was exclaimed in a joking tone. Bets were made all around.

‘Dammit, I have no money to bet with!’ Korith whined to herself. ‘Hoard forgive me for being so poor!’

Apexus was the first to break the staring match. Surging forwards, he went for a straight jab. It was a swift and shallow punch. It caught Atlas straight in the elbow and caused him to stumble back half a step. The humanoid chimera followed, delivering another left to the same spot. Atlas stumbled again, but kept his guard up.

The third punch was thrown with a little more force. The wind-up was Atlas’ signal to strike. He ducked under, wove into the opening in front of the much taller man’s chest and was about to lay into him when Apexus revealed his feint. The punch went straight into a downwards headbutt. The forehead of the Monk slammed into that of the Warrior.

Both of them reflexively activated Iron Skin. It was as if two slabs of solid plate smacked into each other. Excess magic made the shockwaves from the impact visible for a split second. Both of them reeled back.

Apexus recovered first.

Grabbing Atlas by the side of the head, the Monk took the Warrior for a spin. Notes on the blackboards rustled but remained securely pinned. At the end of the motion, Atlas was thrown like a curveball. The crowd acted as his buffer, three adventurers catching him before he could fly into anything, then backing away. The ring moved as they did. Up above, people were banging the bottom of their mugs against the railing.

Atlas recovered with a sway in his step. A sudden surge in speed caught Apexus off guard. The Warrior’s knuckles connected with the Monk’s face. In regular combat, their weight and reach difference would have guaranteed Apexus’ superiority. The Ki coursing through their fibres assured this wasn’t the case.

The attack caused the humanoid chimera to take two steps backwards. The eye on the struck side spun on its own, synced back only after a full second. Atlas charged in, landing three more blows. All of them were blocked by the tensed muscles under the sturdy membrane.

Apexus’ knee rose up sharply. The impact was hard and sudden. Atlas got half-folded over it before he managed to stumble back. Grabbing him by the shoulder, Apexus yanked the Warrior back.

The smack that followed turned Atlas’ face to the side. It had no similarity whatsoever with a scolding motion. Every intent was to deliver non-lethal harm and the already dazed man saw stars. In his drunken confusion, his instincts made him reach for his sword.

It only took an inch of enchanted metal to be revealed before the mood in the tavern changed. The surrounding crowd went from passive onlookers to intervening jury. Atlas’ weapon was forced back into the sheath, his hands forced off the grip, and a pair hastily pulled the man aside.

Apexus froze at the sight of the two of them. One was a dwarf in a tribalistic get-up. His blue eyes glowed softly with power. Long, black hair covered the entirety of his neck at the back. His beard did the same at the front. Beads and other decorations were woven into it. The dwarf was not the reason for the humanoid chimera’s surprise.

The other person was a woman consisting, almost entirely, of a gelatinous, blue liquid. White water lilies bloomed from her temples. Green eyes inspected Atlas with gentle admonishment. Her curves were covered by a highly revealing outfit, leaving little of her semi-translucent form to the imagination. Strands of liquid hair moved with a mind of their own.

The appearance of a slime person, caused several questions to cascade through Apexus’ mind. ‘Am I not alone?’ he wondered.

Before he could approach, the duo carried Atlas to the isolation of a table. In their absence stepped a green-skinned woman. She wore a brown witch’s hat and was covered in an esoterically tattered robe. The top of it barely managed to contain the fullness of her bosom. Reddish brown hair fell in a wild cascade. A pair of wooden, partly thorn-covered horns emerged from holes in her hat. Yellow eyes focused on Apexus.

“Sorry about that,” the dryad said. “Atlas gets a bit rowdy when he’s drunk. He’ll apologise to you when he’s sober.”

“I take no personal offence,” Apexus answered, swallowing his questions about the slime woman. They were regulars in this place. The chance to talk would arise on its own. “A disagreement in philosophy does not need to become a grudge, depending on execution.”

“We’re not extorting anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the dryad answered. “We’re taking what we consider to be our just reward. There is a price to sticking our necks out. That’s all there is to it.”

Apexus just stared. “Your path is your own. Whether you want to walk through uncleared thicket or the safe road is your choice.”

“All a matter of the time and place,” the dryad answered.

They shared a unified nod, then turned away from each other and walked towards their respective parties. “Didn’t think you’d have that much trouble, big guy,” Reysha remarked.

“The people here are around our level,” Apexus answered.

“Really weird to think about,” Korith squeaked. Even when they hung out at the Teacher’s Isle, only about a fifth of the students were around level 20, as they were. Not only was the average level in the tavern higher, there were also a lot more people in it than any individual school had housed. This really was an adventuring frontier.

The party returned to the blackboard. Aclysia was silent until Apexus asked her. “Did you find a good Quest?”

“Ah, yes, darling,” she answered hastily and presented him with a note that she had taken off the blackboard. Apexus took it, Reysha read it with him, and Korith got on her toes to try and do so as well. She failed. “A simple request to clear out an Incursion that opened up two days from here. The pay is decent. My primary objective is getting ourselves accustomed to these Incursions. Further, the Quest offers favours in addition to pure coin. I believe our objective for now should be to get to know some locals. We will be staying, after all.”

“Someone is looking forward to being sedentary,” Reysha remarked.

“I, uhm, do not blame her… we’ve been walking for a long, long time… it’ll be nice to stay someplace for a little while and… focus on home improvements? Maybe just a bit of community?”

Apexus just nodded. His personal urge for social interaction was considerably muted, courtesy of his nature. His interest was in his party members, because he was very tightly pair bonded, and he had a broader empathetic interest in good people thriving. Aclysia, despite or because she was an angel of the actor god, had a craving for the kind of social cohesion that life on the road did not usually allow.

Giving Aclysia time to engage in these preferences was long overdue. Korith also would appreciate it. Reysha was more like Apexus. It was a wonder that the solitary predator was part of a party at all.

Because it was a Quest from the self-posting board, they did not have to fill in at the reception for having accepted it. Just by courtesy of having removed the note from the board, they were the only ones on it. There was a risk that someone who wanted to go through that Quest had decided to leave the note up, but that was bad etiquette and therefore unlikely.

People who broke convention and either kept Quests misleadingly open or, worse, pulled them off the board to get to them on their own time, were dealt with similarly to those that did not pay the adventurers.

“Should we… head out immediately?” Korith slowly suggested. “No real reason to stay, right?”

“That depends on whether we manage to find the Atlas party tonight,” Aclysia answered.

“Fucking why are we bothering with that? Are you that needy for an apology?” Reysha asked. “I get it, he touched the great darling in places only we’re supposed to, but-“

“It is not about that, although the disrespect shown may justify a degree of payback,” Aclysia interrupted. “Did you not see the companions that picked him up?”

“No, I was busy staring at the big tits of that dryad.”

“I-I’m small, I did not stare at those big bouncy things!” Korith lied as naturally as she collected coins. “I just didn’t see.”

Aclysia shook her head. “You are incorrigible. There was a slime woman with Atlas.”

“Oh… oooooh!” Reysha scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, that’s something the big man would like to talk about, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Apexus confirmed. He was scanning the room for the scantily clad blue lady at that very moment. His height gave him an advantage on that one. He caught her at a nearby table, currently on her own. “Give me a moment,” he requested.

Making his way through the crowd was a mild inconvenience, but he managed to make it over in the end. “Oh,” the slime lady exclaimed once she noticed him standing by the table. “I-If you have further issues with Atlas, the rest is currently bringing him away so… please don’t drag me into it?”

“This little brawl is not a tree that I shall attach my vines to,” Apexus answered.

“I’m so glad to hear that!” The slime woman’s hair visibly elongated as tension left it. “Why waste energy on a hunt that only brings the reward of inedible emotions, right?”

Apexus nodded more eagerly than he had nodded in living memory. “Exactly. May I sit?”

“Sure! Name is Flora, by the way.”

“Apexus.” The humanoid chimera sat down.

In the background, the rest of his party watched the events unfold. “They seem to like each other. Ready to make this a… what’s a group of five called? Pentatet?”

“Quintet – and you should be very aware that our people met to party addition ratio is two to several hundred.”

“I’m special!” Korith squeaked.

“You sure are, squishy.”

“…Something about the way you said that makes it feel like an insult.”

“Uhm… I sense you are contemplating how to ask a question?” Flora addressed Apexus, who had been quiet since sitting down. “I assure you, you can be as direct and clear as the path of the sun.”

Apexus took the invitation. “How did you spawn?”

The slime lady blinked several times, then scratched her chin. “That… is a first,” she admitted. “Usually, people ask where I am from… but, uhm… I split from the great pool of mother slime about twenty-four years back, over at the world of Ruduradas.”

Apexus’ hope was diminishing already. “The great pool of mother slime, where did it come from? What is it?”

“A Cardinal of Ouros placed it there many, many years ago. It’s just this big bowl of alchemical stuff that keeps producing us slime people until it runs out… is something the matter?”

“It is not the answer I hoped for,” Apexus revealed readily. Her origin was that of the gods, just another species born in a different way. She had a creator and a point of origin, specifically traceable.  This opened the possibility that he was himself some kind of alchemical experiment, but who, why and how? All of them were the same questions he had been asking all along. ‘I am still alone,’ he thought. “That is all I wanted to know. I wish you a good evening.”

“Uhm, same to you,” she answered with an unsure smile.

Apexus returned to his party. They did not ask, his expression gave the answer away. ‘I’m still alone… but I am not on my own,’ he thought and put his hands around the redhead and metal fairy. ‘That matters most.’

“Now we can go,” Aclysia decided.