Apexus was in a very happy situation. Sitting in the bubbling pool, with Aclysia in his lap riding his erect shaft and Reysha next to him, getting fucked by a tentacle, the two of them kissing to the sound of the metal fairy’s moans. It was the morning of their fifth and final day in the retreat. They were safe and sated, having nothing to do but to keep themselves busy with indulging in each other’s bodies.

It was incredibly relaxing. It also started to become boring, especially to Apexus. Aclysia would have been happy to bask in the simplicity of a stationary life for a little longer, while Reysha was adequately distracted by the constant stream of sexual engagements. Both did still experience the same pull as Apexus to do something. As much as they liked each other’s company, it wasn’t enough to fill out sixteen hours a day completely.

They did their best to alleviate that fact. Besides sex, which was the best time waster they had, they engaged in telling each other stories and playing games. In the story department, Reysha had a lot more to offer than the slime or the angel, courtesy of their difference in life experience. Aclysia was technically the oldest of the bunch, but she had spent much of her life sealed. Apexus was pretty young when compared to either of them, approaching three years by his own estimation. While his nature meant that he had the maturity of an adult humanoid from the word go, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to gather up interesting stories. A further issue was that he shared so much of his story with Aclysia and Reysha. Telling them about things they were there for was somewhat redundant.

As for games, Aclysia came up with a couple simple ones that they could play with rocks laying around. When Apexus tried to come up with games, he often failed at making a ruleset that was engaging. Every game Reysha designed was a pretence to fuck and include some kind of theme in what came next. She was pretty creative in that regard.

The last way they entertained themselves was combat practice. Apexus and Reysha fighting each other was nothing new, but their playfights usually ended fairly quickly. When they were on the move, they were either too tired or too busy to have any prolonged engagements at the end of the day. Inside dungeons, their energy was better spent killing monsters. Prolonged engagements, like the ones they had in the past four days, had not been had before. Especially noteworthy was that they had never included Aclysia. Even if they all pulled their punches, it was still a good learning experience.

For the moment, Apexus’ encroaching boredom was thoroughly sealed. The delighted gasps and greedy kisses were the most definitive way to keep him happily occupied. ‘They’re so beautiful,’ he thought, gladly embracing his companions while the pleasure of their union made him shiver.

“WHOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!” a sudden shout caused all of them to freeze and direct their gaze on the slide that delivered fresh water to the pool. A couple seconds after their shout, four people came flying out of the tunnel. They had hooked their bodies together for maximum speed and the result could hardly be argued with.

They went all the way to the deep end of the pool and vanished under the surface for a solid two seconds. Apexus, Aclysia and Reysha spent that time just looking at the disturbed surface of the water in confusion. Then the new arrivals burst through the surface in a mixture of laughter and playful complaints. “Stop trying to drag me down, Ungi!”

“I am not trying to drag you down, it's just easier to get pulled out than to swim!”

“Stop being so heavy then.”

“Ever met a dwarf that’s not heavy? It’s in the bo-“

“Guys, we are not alone,” a third member of the party interrupted the banter of their group, having spotted the trio.

There was a moment of silence, both groups sizing each other up. The quartet that had just arrived consisted of a tanned dwarf with thick, black hair, a straight beard and almond shaped eyes. The one he had bantered with was a woman of unusual size and muscle, barely shorter and narrower than Apexus. Her hair was auburn and very short. The third, quiet so far, was a slender man with light-brown skin, pointy ears and greyish, silver hair – a wood elf. The last was the man who had first spotted the current occupier of the cave, an androgynous fellow of small stature and a bald head. All of them were naked, appeared to be around their thirties, and only held adventurer’s bags.

“Eeep,” an embarrassed sound broke the silence when Aclysia’s mind finally digested the situation they were currently in. Blushing, she hastily got off Apexus dick and did her best to hide her body, using the surface of the water and her wings.

“By all means, continue,” the giant of a woman joked carelessly, while she and the other adventurers swam to the edge of the pool.

While they were pretty relaxed about finding the cave already occupied, the trio was more careful and observed their new arrivals with suspicious eyes. Apexus quietly pulled back the tentacle that had been inside Reysha.

“Tough crowd,” the dwarf mumbled.

“Shy too,” the amazon remarked.

“Cut them some slack, we just slid into their private time,” the androgynous man stated and reached into his bag, distributing a couple of towels among his group.

The trio in the bubbling area exchanged a couple of glances and whispered among themselves. “What do we do?” Aclysia was the first to pose a, somewhat panicked, question.

“Relax,” was Apexus’ first answer. “They don’t act like predators.”

“Just some other adventurers,” Reysha backed the slime up. “They’ve no reason to harm us.”

“What if they do though?” the metal fairy wasn’t convinced.

“Then we eat them,” Reysha grinned.

“I don’t want that,” Apexus stated firmly and glanced at the newcomers. At this point, they had grown a little tense themselves. With no words exchanged and the conspiratorial whispers, the quartet started to wonder if they were going to have a problem on their hands.

Understanding that much, Reysha spoke up. “Sorry about that, not a lot of blood in the brain at the moment,” she said in the same joking tone the amazon had used. It worked well, especially with that giant woman.

“Again, feel free to finish up,” she said.

“Nah, mood is ruined,” the redhead stood up in the pool. Her body immediately drew the gaze of the three men in the group.

The dwarf opened his mouth, a shameless flirt on the tip of his tongue. It got stuck there, as the dwarf watched Apexus follow the example of his beloved tiger girl and stood up in the pool. While they had moved around, the quartet hadn’t fully realized just how impressive the humanoid slime’s stature was.

As adventurers grew more magically potent, looks became increasingly less important. At their current level, it still had some importance though. Only the greatest of stupid perverts would have picked a fight with a nearly two-metre-tall giant of muscle. “You wanted to say something?” Apexus asked, genuinely curious of what the dwarf may have been thinking about.

“You have a pretty lass by your side,” the dwarf responded with something inoffensive and looked over to Aclysia, who was peeking over the rim of the bubbling area. “Two pretty lasses.”

‘Lass?’ Apexus wondered, having never heard the word before. From context clues, he assumed, correctly, that it meant woman or something like that. “I do, yes,” he confirmed, not knowing what else to say.

The quartet chuckled at the odd seriousness of the answer and started to get dressed. “Really sorry we interrupted you,” the androgynous man apologized again. “We knew people could be down here, but since there was no way to really warn you of our arrival, we decided to just slide on down like we usually do.”

“Really bad luck for you lot that we came in here today,” the amazon joked.

“Eh, it’s whatever,” Reysha waved off.

“Could you do us a favour and leave though?” Apexus asked and then added. “For a couple of minutes. She’ll be too shy to dress if you stay,” he gestured at Aclysia.

“That’s fair,” the androgynous man stated. The quartet first finished dressing themselves, each of them putting on casual clothes from linen and other simple cloths. Then they moved into one of the side corridors, leaving the trio to their own devices.

While the request had been made in earnest, Apexus did have an ulterior motive for requesting this. “How do we proceed?” he asked, while putting on his own clothes. He didn’t mind the nudeness, but he wanted to keep up proper appearances. Reysha, after considering whether she valued her freedom from clothes more than that, decided to follow suit. All of them grabbed their casual clothes, but kept their weapons somewhere nearby.

“I see no reason to be anything but kind to these people,” Aclysia responded, able to think clearly again now that she was no longer embarrassed. “However, using fake names may be advisable.”

“Don’t think it’ll make a difference whether we do or not, but sure,” Reysha said. “I’ll be Meira.”

“Call me Hanna,” Aclysia stated.

“Bubble butt, got it,” Reysha joked.

“Chris,” Apexus said the name that came to mind first. All three of them had stated false names they had used in the past. Even if the only reason they still operated in such a careful fashion was paranoia, it didn’t mean nobody was out to get them.

They finished putting on their clothes and then Reysha shouted down the corridor. “Alright, the prude got her clothes on!”

“There is no need to be so insulting,” Aclysia pouted, while they heard the steps of the newcomers. They were tense again. If their sudden guests had waited for an ambush opportunity, this would be the last best chance they could get.

Nothing of the sort happened, instead the quartet just came back in. “I remember when I was still bothered by people seeing me naked,” the tall woman joked.

“You mean when you were fat?” the dwarf asked.

“I was never fat!”

“Chunky,” the elf said his first word since arriving.

“That’s better,” the massive female nodded strongly and smiled. It occurred to Apexus that her face was quite feminine for the unusual size of her body.

“How about we sit down?” Aclysia suggested and gestured towards the stone benches by the two fireplaces. Everyone agreed with that and soon they sat in their two groups. Apexus sat on the right, Reysha in the middle and Aclysia on the left, on their side. “Let us introduce ourselves properly. We are Chris, Meira and-“

“Bubble butt,” Reysha spoke up just as Aclysia said her own fake name.

“Accurate,” the dwarf mumbled.

“Ungi,” the elf let out an exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What? It’s a compliment.”

“Excuse our dwarf, he is a horn dog,” the androgynous man, and apparent leader of the group, said with a soft smile. “I am Tep. With me are Ungi,” he gestured at the dwarf, “the quiet fellow is Malik,” the elf raised one hand and quickly lowered it again, “and the giant woman is Leverel.”

“Just Rel works,” the same said.

“A pleasure,” Apexus said and bowed his head respectfully. He was taking the opportunity to practice his social skills.

“Likewise,” the smaller man mimicked the gesture. “Would you mind if we got a fire going? We haven’t had anything proper to eat in… how long were we in there?”

“6 days,” Malik gave the short and to the point answer.

“We wouldn’t mind,” Apexus answered slowly, careful to keep his lip movements synced up to his words. Ungi took that signal to move over to the open of the two fireplaces, while Malik used the stone plate on top of the second one as a table to pull out a number of dried ingredients and a pot. The tinder in the fireplace, provided by the same magic that kept the rest of the cave so comfortable, ignited quickly. While the dwarf and the elf threw everything they wanted into the pot, Tep pulled a large field bottle out of the adventurer’s bag.

“Want a sip? I brewed it myself,” he offered.

“I’ll try it,” Reysha eagerly drummed her hands on the table. The other two declined and so three glasses were soon on the table and filled with a puddle of clear liquid. Tep, Reysha and Rel toasted and downed the strong alcohol.

Reysha regretted the decision immediately. A rotten taste filled her mouth and she had to repress the instinct to throw the liquid back out the way it came. “That bad?” Tep asked, “I thought it was one of my better distillations…”

“Dunno, might be,” the tiger girl swallowed heavily and looked towards the exit. ‘Could I get a goat before the taste fades by itself?’ she wondered, while continuing the conversation. “I got a condition that makes regular food disgusting. I just hoped strong alcohol wouldn’t be included in that…”

Reysha didn’t care about saying that much, although she did skip out on mentioning Noir by name. If someone was looking for them, just describing what they looked like would be enough to get almost everyone on their trail. The trio was quite memorable, visually speaking. Telling people about Noir would also get them mentioned for the unusualness of the condition. Rumours were not a thing they wanted to spread unnecessarily.

“Guess we won’t offer you soup then,” Ungi chimed in from the side lines.

“We already ate,” Apexus just ended that topic.

“Fair enough,” Tep poured a second glass for himself and Rel, and a first for his other two companions. “Mind if I ask what brings you three all the way to White Ice? People normally don’t bother with this dungeon.”

“Just felt like facing the challenge,” Apexus lied. “What about you?”

“We come here once a year to collect resources,” Tep told them and raised his second glass. “Pelts, White Crystals, such things.”

“It's our way of getting rich,” Rel added, while the group’s leader down his second shot. “Nobody bothers coming to White Ice, so all of the stuff you can only get here is in high demand. We get several resource quests done in one go and then head back.”

“It’s quite lucrative… we wouldn’t like the competition,” Tep said after placing the glass back down. The tone made it clear that it was a plea, not a threat. They weren’t looking for a fight, just for clarification.

“We won’t be,” Apexus assured them. “Frankly, I never want to set foot in this freezing place ever again.”

“Good to hear,” the androgynous man smiled. “When did you kill the boss, by the way?”

“Four days ago.”

Tep clicked his tongue. “Would have been better to wait for the respawn then…”

“I told you,” Malik claimed his glass and downed it immediately. “You should remember the adage.”

“Yes, yes, always trust your Scout’s intuition,” Tep sighed. “Guess that means we are heading back in tomorrow. The haul isn’t complete without the teeth.” The man looked around. “What did you do with the boss corpse by the way? We didn’t see it upstairs.”

“The dungeon must have reabsorbed it already then,” Aclysia answered.

“I… suppose so,” the androgynous man said hesitatingly. It struck him as odd, having visited this dungeon ten times before and having found the boss’ corpse a couple of times. White Ice absorbed corpses by freezing them, so even the process in motion was observable. ‘Perhaps they’re afraid we’ll rob them?’ he made an educated guess as to why the three before him would lie. The truth, that they ate the dungeon monster, drenched in toxic magical energies, did not enter consideration. “Anyway, I hope you don’t mind if we stay here for the day. We’re not exactly keen on heading back into White Ice ourselves… the pay is just good enough.”

“It will be a minor obstacle to my enjoyment,” Aclysia admitted, “but that is no reason to deny you shelter.”

Reysha grinned and put her arms around her companions. “I ain’t moaning quieter because you’re around,” she warned.

They took it as a joke.