Their search for water took a while longer than the dehydrated Apexus would have liked. Part of this was due to the slime’s uncovered state and the extra precaution that they had to take thanks to it. Mostly, however, it was because a mountain that bled lava was an unlikely place for sizable water formations.

Rock basins by themselves luckily were, and eventually the group stumbled over a peculiarly deep pond that had water clear enough to drink. Reysha refilled her water skin, then drank quite a bit, before she and Aclysia  went in to clean themselves. After having his fill of hydration, Apexus prioritized fixing the gnawing feeling under his membrane and munched on some nearby plants. The girls remained in the lake purely for comfort’s sake.

Apexus eventually joined them, happy to get a bit more water into his fluids and be close to their naked bodies. A conveniently shaped ridge under the surface allowed Apexus to sit with his shoulders still above the surface and legs dangling. The moment he was comfortable, the two girls moved over to cuddle with him. Reysha was a bit faster and pressed her entire front against his chest, while Aclysia claimed his right side for herself.

“Hmmm, yeah, this is nice,” Reysha purred, straddling his leg. As far away as the pond was from the actual magma chambers, it was still part of the same biome and raised the temperature to one of a lukewarm bath. The slime she now snuggled with was quite hot. “Ya need to be a bit cooler to blend in,” she pointed out. “Don’t fix that now though…”

Sighing softly while sliding back and forth on Apexus’ thigh, the redhead closed her eyes. The heat he radiated revved up her own desires. Although not as much as she would have liked, a satisfying meal had been consumed and now, other base urges demanded to be satiated. Not that the tiger girl needed much of an excuse to be horny in the first place.

Apexus embraced her with his left arm, feeling her breasts and hard nipples against him. “You like me being warm?” he asked, groping her round butt. The grinding against his leg only grew more heated.

“I do,” Reysha gasped. The level of the slime’s heat reminded her of the cosiness under a thick blanket. Desert nights got cold, incredibly cold, and the heat stored in houses over the day only lasted for so long. Any hotter and Apexus may have been uncomfortable to remain in contact with, but this much was just right. “Fuck me,” she suddenly whined in a wanton tone, about to bring herself to orgasm on his thigh.

Quick to oblige, Apexus sprouted a tentacle and penetrated her ready folds. Reysha moaned into the silent night. Combing her wet, wild hair back with her hands, she felt the thick, long tendril split her. Its warmth had more of an effect than she had anticipated. As fantastic a partner he had always been, Apexus’ lack of natural warmth had made it feel a bit odd at times. Now he was inside her, searing hot and showing that he still hadn’t reached the height of his potential.

“Oh my… fuck…” Reysha gasped, her voice devolving into a series of high-pitched cries as she gyrated her hips. It only took the help of a few thrusts by the flexible limb to send her over the edge. Orgasming with a series of spasms, she slouched forwards. “Hmmm…hehehe,” she giggled when her climax died down.

“Ehem,” a heavily flushed Aclysia cleared her throat to gain attention. “I believe we still have things to discuss about our way forwards.”

“Don’t ya worry, bubble butt, I can ride this tentacle dick and talk at the same time,” Reysha grinned, scratching Apexus behind his blueish black fox ears. “Bit of lazy sex is nice.”

“Really nice,” the slime agreed. They both kept their movements minimal, barely even disturbing the surface of the water. Rising lust was definitely present, but it was far removed from the ecstasy of earnest lovemaking. This was the snack fruit equivalent to fully digesting a freshly hunted piece of game. “Want in?”

Aclysia hesitated. Curiosity about how his warmth would feel inside her warred with the wish to get the serious topics out of the way. ‘We have nothing of grave importance to discuss…’ she told herself and felt a surge of pleasure. When she realized she was already touching herself at the sight of Reysha riding her darling, she simply nodded.

Making her raise one leg, Apexus had an easy time sliding into her pussy as well. Aclysia reacted with a loud, lustful scream to the deep penetration. Not wanting to be interrupted by yet more people camping in the countryside, the slime shut her up by kissing her. At the same time, he increased her lust even further by rubbing her clit with his vibrating fingertips. Aclysia’s sealed cries turned muffled when Apexus’ tongue transformed into another tentacle and slid deep into her throat.

They didn’t discuss anything for several minutes. Not because of Reysha or Apexus, both of them were lucid enough to do as promised, but purely because of Aclysia. Her glassy eyes reflected a numb mind and only after the slime had cum inside her once did she slowly come back to reality. When the tongue-tentacle retreated from her mouth, she still had to bite the inside of her cheek to not moan too loudly.

“You depraved little angel you,” Reysha mocked.

“I’m nnnnooot depra-ah-veeed,” Aclysia’s heated breaths made her counterpoint moot. “Darling just… feels… too good… inside me.”

“Alright, doesn’t work.” The slime recognized the reality of the situation and pulled out of Aclysia entirely. He still gave her clit a bit of attention with his fingers and cuddled her. That was about as much as she could handle without losing the ability to speak coherently. “I have a minor update on the heating core.”

The tiger girl was still moving her hips in little circles. “Do tell?” she whispered into Apexus’ left ear, rolling the other one in her hand. The soft fur was satisfying to caress and the slime’s heat transferred into the other biological bits as well.

“I fused it with my nucleus. Wanted to see if it was possible and it very much is,” the slime reported. It had felt bothersome to have two spherical objects swimming around in his chest and the presence of his core had also messed with the slime flow somewhat. Now the heating core was a structure around his nucleus. Aside from saving space, Apexus also noticed two other advantages. “It’s not proper armour, but any barrier is good. It also made choosing the heat level more… subconscious? It's more like this now.” He raised a hand to illustrate. “It just works.”

“Extra safety is welcomed,” Aclysia supported this development entirely. “Any further experiments you concluded or hunches you have?”

“Can ya heat this bath up until it’s steaming hot?” Reysha wondered.

“With enough energy, I probably could. I would turn steaming hot in the process though.” Thrusting into her, the slime reminded the redhead why that would be a bad idea.

“Alright, not doing that then. I prefer getting fucked by dicks that are only metaphorically ‘searing hot’,” the tiger girl shuddered, only with horror. “Don’t even want to imagine what a burned twat feels like. Don’t get any hotter than you are right now, please.”

“I thought you wanted me to become more attractive?” the slime asked with teasing glee in his voice.

“Ooooohhh, Apexus does puns, I’m a proud kitty!” Reysha underlined her approval by increasing the speed of her movements for a bit. “Anything -mhm- else about the new Growth though?”

“Energy is exchanged for heat. Heat can be harnessed into physical prowess. That’s about it,” the slime reported. It was very simple to summarize, which just meant that it was a pretty elementary advantage. “I will need to eat more frequently to keep my body heat above surrounding temperature.”

Aclysia wrapped her arms around her darling’s neck and grinded against him. “Let us hope that it won’t be a drastically increased food intake.”

“I’ve been eating a lot for pleasure and learning more temporary Growths. Shouldn’t come down to any more hunts in our regular life.”

“That’s good… that’s good then,” Aclysia stumbled over her words, as a spasm travelled up her spine and exploded into a series of lights before her eyes. Once that minor climax had faded, she switched to the topic of actions in the immediate future. “We’ll need to visit a city and buy a replacement robe and mask for Apexus. Then we should make our way to the Myrm Nest.”

“Maybe we should head back to the Volk Dragon’s corpse tomorrow before we do that?” Reysha suggested. “I’d imagine there is more to that beast that sells well. Scales, claws, something like that.”

“You may be correct in that assessment, but I’d rather save time than money,” Aclysia responded.

“I agree with my melody,” Apexus nodded.

“Fair enough,” the redhead conceded and kissed the side of Apexus’s face.

_________________________________________________________________________

Aclysia kept watch that night, while Reysha and Apexus slept. The slime’s need for regular rest was still growing, continuing with the increasing complexity of his body. It was only a third of the sleep a normal human needed. While the slime was slightly wary of the possibility that he may eventually become such a layered organism that he would spend more time asleep than awake, that possibility seemed incredibly far off. The only drawback from sleeping he currently experienced was that all non-permanent Growths dissolved while he was unconscious. A tiny hindrance, given how little he relied on temporary acquisitions these days.

The group spent the next two days travelling south, finding the narrowest point between the peninsula they were currently on and the neighbouring island where they needed to go. By the time they found it, a thunderstorm had arrived and forced them to hold position for two days as it passed.  Once the skies were clear again, they flew across the strait.

It was the longest continuous flight yet, and by far the most dangerous when it came to the sheer distance. Without any islands between them and the target, they had no choice but to fully commit and continue flying for over ten hours. It was exhausting. Apexus had to carry both Reysha and Aclysia. While the metal fairy could fly, she couldn’t soar. Once she was out of magic, she would drop like a stone. To avoid that and to let Apexus go as quickly as possible, she stayed the entirety of that uninterrupted flight on his back.

Those were troubles Apexus’ was already used to however, and Reysha was quite a bit heavier than Aclysia to start with. Simultaneously difficult and monotonous as it may have been, they made their way across and landed in a small forest, where Apexus then stayed for three days on his own. The girls went north to a nearby city, bought two new robes and masks, and returned. Once more satisfyingly concealed, the slime then accompanied them on their travels north and then, following a curve in the road, east.

“I don’t like this,” Apexus spoke up during the fifth day of that journey.

“Well, fuck me sideways, because I do,” Reysha grinned. Both of them were reacting to the same phenomenon.

After spending almost two weeks in the regular Spring landscape of Azenia-Ra, they were once again faced with the slow heating that accompanied entering one of the inserted biomes of the Leaf. The heat of the approaching desert was quite different from that of the volcano, however. Whereas the mountain range had been heated from below, it now was the sun that cranked up the heat with merciless rays of ever-brighter light. At the same time, the air got continuously drier.

Both combined to make the chimera feel exceedingly uncomfortable. As a liquid being, evaporation and low humidity were his natural enemies. While his thick membrane and clothes somewhat protected him, the instinctual aversion remained.

Reysha, on the other hand, felt right at home. The exotic tint of her skin existed to shield her from the excessive sun and her heat tolerance was quite a bit higher than the average person. The third member of the party didn’t care either way, although the discomfort of Apexus made Aclysia somewhat unhappy with the general situation.

“A number of oases are scattered throughout the desert, darling, there is no necessity to worry,” she assured him. “Following the sun, we can find our target with certainty.”

“Also, we bought, ya know, a compass,” Reysha added.

During their trip to the city, they had stocked up on quite the number of additional things. A tent and a few blankets to make their nights less reliant on natural resting spots, a pickaxe and a sword to increase Reysha’s arsenal, and the aforementioned compass to be less reliant on Aclysia’s intuition. There were also a couple lesser items, rags and new throwing knives, for example, that had been bought.

They made their way over a little hill. Reysha stopped at the highest point, looked down on the landscape below, and just started laughing. “I swear, sometimes gods aren’t even trying,” she managed to get out between fits.

The reason for her amusement was the shape of the desert. Rather than a smooth transition from grass to sand, speckled with dunes and half-dead rocky landscapes, the group was looking at a clear line. It swerved along the horizon, but there was a clear divide between green and yellowish brown. A distance of less than a metre where the fertility ended and the desert began. It looked as if someone had taken a brush, dragged it over the world, and declared it good enough. The truth was that the god responsible had been inexperienced and simply didn’t yet have enough experience in making biomes. Even divine beings had to learn new things.

“That’s what ya pray to, Clysia,” Reysha couldn’t help but point out.

“Remind me to buy a hand mirror when we next enter a city,” Aclysia sighed. “Whenever you criticize the work of the divine, I shall simply hold it in front of you. That ought to remind your entitled self what it is worth to be thankful for.”

“Appealing to my egomaniac side will only get ya that far. How about ya show me your perfect ass instead?”

“In private, perhaps…”

Bantering, they advanced towards the Myrm Nest.