Stepping onto the Stem was odd. It was anchored at a 90-degree angle. It wasn’t an issue, there was just the moment of relative confusion when one foot was connected to the Stem and the other to the Branch, either being the relative floor. Once both feet were firmly planted on the semi-translucent pathway, however, perspective shifted and it all made relative sense.

Looking over his shoulder, Apexus saw a few black dots skitter about on the silver surface. “Will we find Parasytes on the Leaf?” he asked, concerned what the nearby Infestation could mean for them even before it evolved into a more threatening stage.

To his relief, Aclysia shook her head. “Parasytes cannot exist within the Omniverse. They can devour it, but they cannot be part of it,” she explained and shot a hateful glare at the siphoning garden of teeth-flowers in the distance. Now that they ascended the Stem, she could see the blight upon the great silver tree herself. “As unthreatening as it is right now, it will continuously create new, smaller Parasytes until it is dealt with.”

“Where do they come from?” Apexus asked and specified the question a moment later. “I know they are to… they are HERE to drag the Omniverse back into the nothing they come from, but how do they arrive here physically?”

“They ran,” Reysha said two words and already was too exhausted, socially, to continue in that explanation.

Regardless, the white-haired angel picked up from there, “You must understand that the Omniverse has existed for countless millennia already. At some point, the first Parasytes made it past the Roots. By our time, they have spread to every last Branch. Although it is rare that they manage to penetrate the bark and grow into an Infestation, the risk is always there. It takes only one surviving Parasyte to birth ten thousand new ones. It is a pest impossible to contain – we can only scrub it away where we see it.”

“Roots?” Apexus asked, blinking slowly as he remembered the term. “Isn’t that where the demons live?”

“Yes…” his beloved metal fairy seemed uncomfortable giving that answer. “Demons were the first creations of the Progenitor God, darling, made to ward off the Parasytes. An eternal battle that twisted them into something else aeons ago. Still, we have to rely on them to protect us from worse.”

Apexus shivered. The image of the auburn-haired beauty appeared in his mind. Even the memory of her seemed to beckon him. Under her seductive exterior, however, lay something primal and brutal. Something so bloodthirsty that even the memory of the Demonhounds paled next to her.

Next to him, Reysha let out a retching sound and reached for her left arm. Fingernail dug into the skin, but didn’t break through the light brown. Although it perfectly mimicked the rest of her on the outside, they all knew it wasn’t of the same origin. Whatever Apexus felt upon being reminded of the existence of demons, it was much worse for the tiger girl. Before her mental eyes, there was dark red and green fire – and death. Rampant, omnipresent death, consuming everyone.

The Infestation began to vanish behind a layer of blue, as their location shifted. The transdimensional pathway they tread on delivered them onto its destination. From the endlessly connected Branches of the Omniverse, they entered into a specific world.

The first thing Apexus noticed was the air. A gentle breeze rolled over them. It was warm, warmer than the Branch, but not as warm as Ctania had been. It carried with it intense, sweet smells. The second thing he noticed was the horizon. It was green, that was expected, a bit lighter green then he was used to, but he was already getting the idea that he was looking at the season of Spring. He had dipped into it before, for short moments, when they had restocked on other Leaves on the way to this one.

No, the truly odd thing was the firmament softly curved. It limited the distance he could view, as the far-off landscape vanished behind the descent. As someone who had grown up on a flat world, not to mention having spent most of his existence being able to fly, this view was pushing against his habits quite a bit. Luckily, he was an adaptive batch of evolutionary goo and would quickly assume a mental shape that was more fitting.

In immediate problems, much closer than the horizon, at the end of the Stem, lay a city. As far as entering the Leaf went, this was close to the worst-case scenario for the group. The only thing that could have made the situation even more complicated would have been if other people were on the silver-streaked path with them.

As proven on Ctania, given a robe and walking on the appropriate limbs only, Apexus could blend in enough to get through crowds. Currently, however, he had no clothes and was a blue-skinned, semi-translucent human-fox-eagle-chimera-slime-thingy. Even if he invested the energy to shift to a proper humanoid, that wouldn’t have fixed the clothes issue.

Aclysia’s and Reysha’s clothes were also in a rather torn state. Not enough to be indecent, although the tiger girl’s skin-tight leather clothes skirted that line even when fully functional, but definitely enough to garner them a lot of attention on the way through. Going through the city was, therefore, not an option.

Luckily, they didn’t have to.

Underneath the Stem was ground. A truly revolutionary prospect for Apexus, who was used to the dark nothing at the edge of a flat world. “This whole world is a sphere,” the slime said out loud, looking away from the city.

“We call that a planet,” Reysha mumbled. There was sarcasm meant to be there, but her voice just sounded like someone had stepped on dried bush.

“Pla-net,” Apexus repeated the odd word slowly, only to turn to Aclysia. “We should fly and land somewhere in the wild, yes?” he suggested and spread out his wings.

“Indeed,” the metal fairy confirmed her own fuzzy moth-wings spreading out. She let out a satisfied sigh, like someone that stretched after waking up and felt all their muscles shake off the nightly stiffness. Not having flown since Ctania, the divine creation hovered off the floor with a weak smile.

“Reysha?” the chimeric slime turned to the tiger girl, who looked at the floor with a displaced attention.

“Yes?” she looked up, then turned to Aclysia. Her brain suddenly realized what had been said in the last few moments. “Oh,” she let out a surprised sound then, without any further words, climbed on Apexus’ back.

If they were lucky, nobody in the city saw them, as they jumped off the Stem and fluttered off into the nearby forest. Even if they weren’t, that was a considerably less conspicuous sight than them getting into the city on foot. For most, they would just be birds or some other adventurers that could fly somehow.

The first thing they were on the lookout for was what else flew around in the air. If they had, by the twists of fate, landed on a Leaf that was created with much higher levelled adventurers in mind, they could have faced some sort of winged serpent or oversized seagull that picked them straight out of the sky.

Luckily the Branch they were on didn’t have such worlds. The entire segment of the Omniverse they had traversed had been made to follow up on the Safe Leaf they had left. All they spotted in the air were the usual birds, sparrows, pigeons and the like, along with some larger predators. Nothing more dangerous than what Apexus had already dealt with when he had emerged from his subterranean birthplace.

The ground didn’t seem any more dangerous. A vast, light green forest sprawled out under them, primarily made up of Birch and Ash. It wasn’t as dense as the one in Ctania, allowing Apexus to spy the game that moved over grass-covered clearings and through the gaps. A couple particularly large clearings held houses.

Although this Leaf was more populated than Ctania had been, it was also considerably larger. The stretches of land between the settlements they saw were quite extensive. More importantly, there were little to no fields. Nature was left to its own devices. A boon for the trio, who preferred the many hiding places that environment opened up.

They didn’t have to fly far to find a location in which they could settle. Hunger and thirst was driving Apexus to seek out the first lake they found anyway. Although ‘lake’ was overly enthusiastic in this case ‘watering hole’ was closer to the truth. It was little more of an oversized puddle, formed by recent rain, and would dry up within a few days. At least, until the next wet couple of days caused the water in the ground to rise up enough for that depression to fill up again.

Apexus made a clear landing on the green next to it. Running, he hit the floor. Widely opened wings slowed his momentum, while he passed between two young trees. After five steps, the speed of the flight had been taken out of his movement, allowing him to walk normally. Once at the water, he settled down for a moment, allowing Reysha to get off.

“I’ll keep watch,” Aclysia reported, while the two of them went down to the hole. Wary of things, Apexus stuck one hand into the water first. It was absorbed into him despite the membrane. Once he was certain it really was just water, he walked into it with his entire body.

Reysha bowed down to drink, but the surface of the water escaped from under her. With a tinge of amusement overpowering trauma and Noir enforced depression, she shot Apexus a short glance. The ever-evolving entity failed to notice this, too happy to replenish some of his water. He had started to feel more like jelly than slime. By the time he looked over to Reysha, the redhead had just bowed down further to get her few gulps of water into her awaiting stomach.

What had been a watering hole was now little more than a shallow puddle. If they wanted more water, they would need to get it elsewhere. Though what they had gotten was enough for immediate relief. Tomorrow would be a different issue.

With water out of the way, food was the next big question. Once they had both of those immediate needs covered, they could think about their next steps. “Do you smell anything good?” he asked Reysha, trying to hear anything moving in the forest. Since it had been so long, Apexus currently had no temporary Growths and was without nose himself.

“Senses are too dull,” Reysha responded, a little more life in her voice. “I can’t smell shit.”

A moment later, Aclysia returned to them. “Come with me,” she said in a quiet voice. Immediately, Apexus dropped lower. Although his body didn’t lend itself to remaining unseen in any capacity, he knew how to make himself smaller. Reysha followed suit, her Sneaking was rusty, but she still remembered the basics. “I found something,” Aclysia explained, while she lead the way around a few trees.

It was a small pond, a proper one that lasted even through dry periods, hidden under the canopies of six trees. Multiple animals sat around it, having come to fill up. Herbivores and carnivores existed nearby to each other. The former knew that the latter only appeared around here if they were already filled up from elsewhere.

As an advanced predator, Apexus didn’t see a magic scene in that gathering, he only saw an easy hunting ground with lots of easy prey. If there was one limiting factor, it was the fact that they were unknown in this ecosystem. The animals may have gotten too used to safety at the watering hole to be wary of the carnivores among them, but new things scared them. The trio was quickly noticed, despite the quiet approach.

“What is our target?” Reysha asked, narrowing her eyes. That was a question Apexus was also contending with.

Deer were fast and the distance between them was pretty large. They would dash into the forest and vanish down paths that the local animals were aware of and the three of them weren’t. They had a good chance of running one of those wombats down, but that wasn’t anything close to a proper meal. There were also cats, but those were even nimbler than the deer and they weren’t of the large variety. Some small lizards and other critters also failed to present a proper target.

Leaving only the bear that sat in the shallow rim of the pond and floppily tossed water onto its black, white-striped fur. An easy target, clearly sated, and distracted by the mixture of cleaning and playing it was doing. More importantly, it appeared to be at least somewhat magical, if the short, white horns were anything to go by. They looked something like very jagged antlers.

“That,” Apexus said and pointed at the bear. It would be the hardest and most rewarding game. Aside from his own hunger, the slime was motivated by the hope that this bear truly was magical in some sense. Reysha desperately needed an infusion of magic. Even if the fading of Noir was still months off, based on the limited information they had, seeing her in this emotion-deprived state was horrible.

“Alright,” Aclysia nodded, only agreeing to that plan because she had similar hopes as Apexus.

Reysha didn’t even give an answer, only dropped her stance even further and extended her claws.

All of them tensed up and waited for the bear to look away from them. The moment came and Apexus whispered, “go!”

Although he was the first to move, he fell behind on the other two. Reysha had taken two steps and all animals gathered around the pond immediately fled. All but the bear, who noticed the commotion and reared his head around. Used to being the apex predator around these parts, there was no way its first response was to run.

Instead it got on all four paws and faced the trio. Reysha charged directly at the bear, who opened his maw and spat out a bolt of lightning. Not a particularly strong one, given the weakness of its light, but magic was magic and it hit the tiger girl unprepared. As present as she tried to be, her body was unable to move with her proper nimbleness. The bolt hit her straight in the chest and sent spasms throughout her body.

Worse, the attack possessed no kinetic energy. Rather than being thrown back, she stumbled over her own feet and landed in front of the bear, who reacted fast and descended its jaws on her.

Not quick enough, however, to successfully bite Reysha before a real Bolt spell hit it in the face. Sunlight seared the fur around its eye, but left flesh unscarred. While the spell did very little damage, it confused the bear long enough for Apexus to finally arrive at the scene.

Face to face with the chimera slime, the bear made the same mistake as any other predator – it tried to bite Apexus. In this case, because he looked so much like an animal in structure, the fangs went directly for the neck. Apexus didn’t try to stop the bear.

The bite punctured through the membrane and Apexus’ acid filled the creature’s mouth. Before the black&white bear could recognize his mistake and pull back, Apexus wrapped his arms around it and held it tightly in a deadly hug.

Arcs of electricity bounced between the bears horns and then a cascade of the power rushed into Apexus. It wasn't the slime’s first encounter with being shocked and it was, albeit not as bad as it had been with the eagle, just as unpleasant as he remembered. Where it entered him, it was harmless. The threat was the fact that it spread everywhere – including his core. The immediate pain was bearable, but Apexus felt control over his own biomass dwindle. “H-orrrrrrrrnnnnsssss,” he managed to get out through the Speaking Plate in his mouth.

Reysha understood quickly, grabbed a stone from the floor and jumped to her feet. Although her body was still numb, the electricity did little to worsen her already degraded state. Immobilized by Apexus and further confused by another Bolt cast by Aclysia, the bear couldn’t dodge as Reysha savagely swung her arm. The rock she was clenching smacked against the left horn. Sparks darted into the air, as the protrusion broke off with a loud snap. Immediately, the lightning torrent dwindled into nothing.

Now in total control, Apexus pressed the bear down to the floor and lodged his head on its throat – the sharp teeth he had acquired were of great help in that. Secured in place, he then melted away the bear's neck.

Not a nice way to die, but, compared to many others Apexus had employed over the years, relatively quick.