Apexus would have hurried over to his beloved angel, but moving around with a dying creature in his biomass wasn’t exactly easy. If it broke out, that may have complicated the situation more, so he had to push down his worry and just ask, “Are you alright, Aclysia?”

“I… will manage,” the white-haired woman responded, removing her foot from the dead beast’s teeth. While she wasn’t stuck between them, the bite had gone clean through, she did have to pull away sideways to not tear the front half of her foot off. At least the peculiar shape of the creature’s mouth allowed her to do that without first prying its maw open. Once she had successfully pulled away, she used the wall as support to slide down into a sitting position.

“Ya sure about that?” Reysha asked, looking at the foot. “I guess it’s not bleeding, so that’s a good start. I don’t like those fumes though.” With a worriedly raised eyebrow, she inspected the green and gold trails rising from the wound. “Is that normal?”

“I assume so,” Aclysia answered. Her getting hurt to a significant degree was so unusual, none of them knew all of the side effects. Once she was sitting, she placed her staff next to her and gave her foot a once over. It was attached only by a finger-wide strip where the sinew of the little toe ran along. Unsure what else to do, she tried to wiggle her toes. All five moved.

“Woooow, that’s freaky,” the blood and mucus covered tiger girl with the blackened scleras remarked. With the carelessness of the knowingly helpless, she inspected the wound closely. It allowed her to get a peek into what the metal fairy looked like under the skin.

The bite was clean, when it came to the quality of the cut, and made a cross section of her foot visible. The majority of the ‘flesh’ was white, with the ‘bones’ being black instead. Green spots and lines were present throughout, expanding and contracting mildly with each pulse of magic sent through Aclysia’s body. The mana, oddly coloured due to her status as a divine creation, exuded from those veins.

There were no sinews, only the appearance of them. As Aclysia wiggled her toes a couple more times, the skin shifted and lines rose on both sides of the cut, as if there was no issue whatsoever.

“REALLY freaky,” Reysha remarked, sitting on all fours before the foot. Her tail swayed slowly, occasionally stopping in the shape of a question mark. Fascinated, like a cat looking at a box, she could only stare.

“I do not.. appreciate… being an object of study,” Aclysia whined, feeling the steady pain from the wound.

“Oh… sorry, sorry,” Reysha hastily apologized and moved from looking to sitting next to the metal fairy, giving her cuddles.

Apexus, finally certain that his Myrm was dead, crawled over and hugged her as well. It was a bit awkward, with the slime’s shape bloated out of humanoid proportions, but a hug by a loved one was a hug by a loved one. “It’s fine right?” he asked.

“My body recovered from lesser wounds, so it should recover from this one,” Aclysia said quietly. There was a fair bit of uncertainty in her voice, since she didn’t see any healing process occur yet. Worse, when she raised her foot from the ground, the front half slouched down. It didn’t hurt more, but the visual wasn’t pretty. “I hope…”

“Maybe you should eat something to replenish material?” Apexus suggested, noticing the same problems.

“If you have any parts of me that you found on Ctania but hid so far, I would be open to test that hypothesis, darling,” Aclysia responded in a serious fashion. “Theoretically, lesser metals could be enriched inside my body…”

“How about ya, ya know, heal it?” Reysha asked, moving out of the cuddle pile to get to her would-be meal. “Could also put it back into position. If you’re waiting for your natural regeneration to kick in, ya should set the proverbial bone.”

“That is… true,” Aclysia relented, looking at the foot. A weak part of herself whispered that it was only hurting a little bit at the moment, so she shouldn’t mess with it. Taking a deep breath, she overcame that hesitation and grabbed the barely attached bit of her foot. A cry of pain escaped her when she pressed the halves of the cut back together. Reuniting synapses announced their return to the body's operating system with a unified firing of all signals.

Regardless of the displeasure of it all, Aclysia could feel the parts of her foot growing back together. By the time she was confident enough to let go, the wound had reduced from being a gap to being a cavity. It was still a visible line in her skin, but she was no longer losing mana. Once she applied healing magic, even that started to disappear.

Reysha looked over her shoulder and grinned. “Feeling any lighter, bubble butt?”

“I feel relieved, but that is unlikely to be the kind of lighter you’re talking about.”

“Right, I’m not,” Reysha said and raised a thin sheet of metal. “Just got a piece of you covered in monster saliva, is why I’m asking.” She tossed it over and Aclysia caught it, more out of reflex than by her own decision. “Just wondering if ya had to fix yourself up with material from the rest of your delicious body or not.”

“Aclysia is not for eating,” Apexus pointed out.

“I vehemently disagree,” Reysha stated and pulled the pickaxe out of the Myrm’s shattered skull.

“That thing is for eating,” the slime continued.

Reysha pointed the pickaxe at the corpse, “That’s for eating,” she then pointed at Aclysia, “she’s for eating out.”

“What do you mea-“ Apexus watched Reysha split index and middle finger in front of her dark lips and suggestively wiggle her tongue in the resulting V-shape. The realization came pretty much immediately. “Oh… oooooh… Right, you do eat with that hole, so I guess that turn of phrase makes enough sense.”

“Not everyone has a tentacle tongue that’s only there to make a woman’s day brighter,” Reysha hummed.

Aclysia looked unwillingly at the removed piece of herself. It was about as thick as three sheets of paper, merely what the incisor teeth had stuck between them. “I suppose I shouldn’t be too picky,” she sighed and put it into her mouth before she could decide otherwise. She had eaten live bugs and the like in the past, purely out of necessity, but this was somehow worse.

“These things are really disgusting,” Reysha remarked.

“Taste alright though,” Apexus remarked, mostly through his meal. “Skin aside. Loose and tasteless.”

“Just going to skin my way through that then,” Reysha pulled a knife out and started her work. “Ya ready to deal with me getting all horny from getting my fix?”

“You are not putting your tongue anywhere inside me after you ate that thing,” Aclysia declared.

“Whaaaa? But you like it when I mess with your pretty little pussy!” Reysha complained. “I would get your nice thighs around my head and just really dig in there. Maybe I’d even scratch ya a bit while the handso- OH MY GODDESS, WHAT IS THAT?!”

Her scream was in remark to Apexus, who had shrunk down to his regular form again, with one unmissable difference. From the middle of his face, where the lack of nose was usually pronounced by the prodding bit of bone that acted as the base of the smelling protrusion, extended an absolutely massive sniffer. Light pink, it doubled the depth of Apexus’ head, went so far upwards that the bridge parted his forehead, and was so wide the slime had to move his eyes wider apart to accomodate.

“Aha… ahahaha… AHAHAHAHAAHA!” Reysha toppled over, letting the knife fall to the floor to allow her to roll around without the risk of cutting herself.  “YOU LOOK LIKE A DRUNK BIRD CROSSED WITH A JESTER!” she roared, kicking the air before barely being able to get the remaining words out. “And… and… and, and, and… and I was about call you FUCKING HANDSOME! HAHAHAHAaaaaaaaaaa-“ she wheezed, running out of air but still shaking from amusement. “Air… need air…” she took half a breath in and looked over to Apexus.

The oversized nose sniffed with a sound like an old man snorting tobacco.

Aclysia couldn’t help but laugh.

Reysha died.

________________________________________________________________________

Somehow, the joke that was his face just didn’t stop being funny. Aclysia laughed quite a bit, while Reysha regularly struggled to breathe if he made even the slightest attempt at a humorous visage. There was a diminishing return on this, but it seemed to settle slowly. It was only really important that Reysha was able to walk while they continued.

Apexus was fine with being the laughingstock of their continued descent down the sandstone tunnels. The sniffer was the copied Growth of the Myrm. Thanks to the dungeon guide, they had been able to pick it out of the monster’s characteristics and choose it for his permanent acquisition in advance. Despite its rather absurd size in relation to the human head, the nose was, in shape, human-esque. Upon becoming a permanent Growth, melding it to his skull and the Skinwalker Hide would integrate it into the rest of his head and remove the largest remaining obstacle to making his face structure ‘normal’.

It was also quite the powerful nose, which was more important to Apexus than the appearance. Preferably, he would look similar to his girls but it was established that more animalistically designed humanoids existed. While it would have raised eyebrows if he had put something like a badger’s nose in the middle of his face, the Omniverse had thrown out odder species. He could have gotten away without the mask even with just the skin colouration hiding the slime underneath, most likely. It would have just been quite difficult to explain to anybody they met a second time how he had suddenly grown missing parts of his face.

Regardless of other people’s comments, the slime would have rather been able than aesthetically pleasing. A glass sword, no matter how beautiful, was a terrible weapon to protect loved ones with. Making himself a living work of art would bring similar drawbacks. At this particular juncture, aesthetics and practicality thankfully overlapped.

Because the current enormity of that nose was to be removed eventually, Apexus had no problems with being laughed at for it. The girls got to laugh for as long as it lasted and providing amusement for them was no issue for him. He was their male of choice, but that wasn’t a task solely of showing strength. It was about making their day better, because their laughter also made him happy. Exclusively being a target to be laughed at would have been an issue, but a short-lived indulgence was fine.

Especially since the dungeon was so dreadfully dull.

As the guild receptionist had said, no map was required for the Myrm Nest. The lightless tunnel spiralled down and down and on and on, with not a single unexpected fork, rise or pitfall. The holes of the Myrm were the only interruptions and they were themselves so regular that it hardly counted as anything of interest.

The structure was extremely dull to the three, as they had reliable sources of light, but was meant as a forgiving test to other new parties. Dangerous as dungeons may have been, they were still moving in the beginner range of things. If a dungeon with floors and chambers had been completely and utterly black, inexperienced parties would have wandered in them to their death. With the Myrm Nest, getting so disoriented that one wandered back and forth to their death was an accomplishment. Either one got to the end or they accidentally turned around and went back to the entrance.

This was easier than one may think, given the regular battles. Aclysia’s pattern recognition and the occasional pheromone marker prevented the three from suffering that fate. What other parties required a supporter for, they could fulfil with their unusual set of abilities.

While those abilities aided them well in overcoming the environment, the Myrm were consistently difficult enemies. Aclysia was mostly useless when it came to fighting them, Apexus could barely even defeat one at a time and so it was on a pickaxe-swinging Reysha to carry the group through the tunnel. This set of circumstances made Apexus consistently more dissatisfied with himself the further they advanced.

What had begun to show in Verdany had now manifested completely: he was, doubtlessly, the least powerful member of the group. Even if Aclysia’s attack spells were useless, her main utility, healing, worked just fine. Reysha may not have been familiar with the pickaxe, but she was getting better at it. Apexus couldn’t properly lift the thing, much less swing it. Because the opponents were so much faster than him, and slippery to boot, he couldn’t even function as a proper wall between opponents. At best, he could make himself big and be intimidating. He was all hot slime though, as he couldn’t catch his enemies unless they made a mistake.

The good news was that alleviation for this was on the horizon. Still, the slime hated it. He used to be the strongest of the three, but had fallen behind quite a bit. His main utility was light and enemy detection.

Apexus just didn’t like being a support.