Time was a little hard to judge as I stepped out of Sven’s home with Bubbles in tow. Without the sun, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d been down there for hours or days with Bubbles. Now the long trek through the cavern alongside the underground river seemed like a tedious eternity.

She had been stuck to my hip since we left. Literally, a second body had become a pair of oddly comfortable pants for me and there was a little tether connecting us. The rest of the second bodies had absorbed back into her. She explained that her mass was adjustable, but she had upper limits based on how much she fed off of me.

At least my pendant had survived the ordeal. I’d need that to get to the surface.

I’d lost track of time with Bubbles and was starting to wonder if it might not already be the next day.

“So you are on a quest for a jewel so you can propose to Cleo, the ruler of the city above? How romantic.” Bubbles leaned on me, her malleable body fitting snuggly against me.

“That’s what the dragon said. Something from her origin which was down here, apparently.”

“Even living down here for so long, I know the story of Cleo’s rebirth.” Bubbles danced around me, patting patches of glowing fungus like they were her best friends.

“Don’t keep me in suspense. If there’s something in it that can help with this quest, I’m all ears.”

Bubbles paused like she didn’t think I’d ask to hear it. “Uh. I forget it. Well, the story, that is. I know the main points.”

I nodded for her to continue.

“Back in the days of the incubus king, Cleo was something else. A mummy, I think? Anyway, she was entombed in crystal by Greed and only revived about a hundred years ago. The long entombment and some magicy stuff transformed her from a mummy to a pharaoh.”

It wasn’t exactly a precise explanation. Nor was ‘magicy stuff’ exactly helpful. But I understood the main points.

“So this crystal she was entombed in, where is it?” That sounded like the perfect gemstone for her ring.

Bubbles paused. “I don’t actually know. The river goes on for a long way and after a while you get into the creepy area.”

“Creepy area?” I asked.

“Yep. It’s full of people that are nothing but bones.”

“Skeletons. They are called skeletons.”

Bubbles shrugged. “All I know is if they are nothing but bones, they aren’t worth the effort to digest.”

For some reason, it excited me that this trip would have a little more adventure. “Do you think that’s where Cleo was once entombed?”

“Yep. You’ll get to win the gem for Cleo. Then go to the surface and propose to her.” Bubbles pressed her arms tight to her chest as she had a dreamy, faraway look. “Maybe one day Master will do something like that for me too.”

I wanted to make light of it, because it seemed a little ridiculous. Then again, maybe that was what Bubbles really wanted. Well, that and my seed. “Of course. We’ll have to figure out a quest so that I can earn your hand. Or I could give you a binding like I gave Sylvia.”

“Who’s Sylvia?”

That caused us to descend into a conversation about my history. I held nothing back from Bubbles. She just fit in such a way that I doubted I’d ever tire of her or leave her behind.

So I told her everything from being brought to this world and my adventures thus far.

***

“Nothing?” She asked for confirmation.

“Not a bit. All I’ve had to go off of were his journals. Thank god, or maybe goddess, that he kept them.” I was truly lucky that the previous owner of this body had kept the journals.

“What if you are missing something? Like a big secret he didn’t put even in his journals?” Bubbles pressed.

“Like a secret affair he was having? Come on, the guy was straight as an arrow. He had a major stick up his ass from what I can tell.” Though the thought caused some small amount of concern. What if I was missing something, something he was too careful about to even put in his journals?

Bubbles huffed. “Those that are so clean always have the biggest things to hide.” As if she knew much about humans. She’d been living in an underground cave for a very long time.

A rattling noise pulled me up short, and I put an arm out to stop Bubbles. “What was that?”

Hollow clinking sounded further ahead, but the fungus wasn’t producing enough light for me to see exactly what was making the noise.

“Bone people.” Bubbles confirmed my guess.

“Skeletons.” I reminded her. “They are called skeletons.”

As if karma lashing out at me for correcting her and arrow grazed my cheek, just missing a fatal shot.

I ducked and rolled to the ground and as I threw up a small mound of earth to protect us.

Bubbles, however, stood straight, watching me curiously. “What are you doing?” Even as she asked as arrows buried themselves into her. But each time they did, she sucked them into her body and the hole from the arrow filled itself in.

Right, slimes always were immune to physical damage in games.

“Arrows hurt a lot. I also don’t heal like that.”

Bubbles was so unconcerned with the arrows she turned to argue. “It isn’t healing. Water doesn’t heal when you make a splash it just recovers.”

“Okay, well my flesh doesn’t recover like that.”

“Good point.” Bubbles nodded even as an arrow blew right through her chest and came clean out the other side without even flinching. “Master, should we fight back?” Bubbles grimacing at the thought of digesting so many skeletons.

Further down the passage, a group of a dozen skeletons were pouring out of a broken section of the cavern wall. About half of them wielded bows, the other half held a mishmash of bladed weapons.

“Seems like a pretty standard setup. I bet they are even resistant to bladed attacks.” I murmured to myself, having flashbacks to RPGs in my prior life.

“Master, what are you talking about?”

“Nevermind, Bubbles, can you form a blunt weapon for yourself?” If arrows didn’t hurt her, I doubted those swords would do much and she just might be my secret weapon for what was shaping up to be a dungeon dive.

But before Bubbles could do anything else, I summoned a wall of earth before the skeletons blocking their path and then tipped it on the lot of them.

With a crash, the wall smashed the skeletons to the cavern floor, sending bones scattering everywhere. The bones hadn’t broken, but the skeletons had fallen apart under the weight of the wall. The bones danced across the floor, some making it as far as the river falling in with a plunk.

Bubbles stood ready with an oversized pink club. It was comically big as she tilted her head at me in confusion. “What was the point of me making a weapon if you were going to handle it?”

Chuckling, she had a point. But I wanted her to take the lead in the dungeon. Traps and surprise attacks wouldn’t do much to Bubbles as long as the threat was largely physical. “You’ll get a chance soon to test that out.”

I led the way as we walked to the broken section of the wall where the skeletons had appeared from. The wall was half rough stone of the cavern, half carved stone blocks. Past the opening, a large hand crafted chamber awaited us.

Attached to the underground river was what I guessed was a tomb. Everything was made of smoothly carved stone, from the walls to the pillars that held up the structure. Braziers and torches still burned, but with a ghostly blue light that cast everything in an eerie light as the shadows seemed to dance with the next danger.

The walls depicted reliefs of monster girls ruling over humans in egyptian finery.

But I was pulled from inspecting the wall as the same rattling clink came down one passage.

Taking quick stock, I had three options. Two other hallways or the one that skeletons echoed from.

The first group of skeletons hadn’t been that bad. Deciding to just clear the place, I turned down the hallway that announced the oncoming group of skeletons.

Their hollow eyed skulls shifted towards us as Bubbles as I approached.

I flicked my hand to summon another wall of earth, but nothing happened. The carved stone around me resisted my magic. Ducking to the side, I rolled behind a brazier as arrows plinked against it and a few passed through Bubbles.

Shit, if my magic was going to be hindered here, this was going to be harder than I thought.

“Bubbles, now you can play with your mace.”

She gave a big grin and charged into the skeletons. Her oversized mace clobbered into the first few skeletons before it blew apart in a sticky pink mess. Bubbles looked back at me. “Did I do good?”

Right, she was still a slime. It wasn’t like that mace was suddenly going to be as hard as steel.

“Can you draw back that slime and make another mace?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t just lost all that mass.

She nodded and the pink slime splattered all over the floor inched its way back to her slowly as the skeletons took to swinging their weapons through her. Bubbles didn’t seem to care as she waited for the mace to reform and swing again. This time destroying three skeletons with her swing, but the end result was the same.

I shook my head. It was an interesting scene, but a slow way to deal with these.

Seeing that Bubbles kept them distracted, I formed a blade of air and launched it at a skeleton. It landed and knocked the skeleton back, but it turned to me still whole.

Damn, need something more blunt. Air isn’t exactly known for brute force… but walls are.

I smirked, trying something different. Spinning up a small cyclone of air, I launched it out, capturing that same skeleton, spinning him round and round before shifting the cyclone into a pillar and smashing the skeleton on it.

It worked! The skeleton shattered into a pile of bones.

Whipping the cyclone around, I picked up and smashed the remaining skeletons against the pillars and walls by the time Bubbles formed another oversized mace.

“That was great.” Bubbles grinned from ear to ear. “We make a good team.”

I thought about it as I picked up a heavy-looking machete that one skeleton had dropped. If this was like an RPG, then she was the tank and I was the damage. That sort of thinking might make this easier. “You did your part, they barely even paid me any attention after you came swinging in with that big mace of yours.”

She smiled at the praise, but her smile drooped after a second. “But I didn’t destroy as many of them as you.”

“You played your own role by being a distraction. I couldn’t have focused on my magic without you taking their attention.” It wasn’t entirely true, but I felt like I needed to encourage Bubbles. And she did make a damn good tank.

Bubbles perked back up at that. “Then I’ll take the lead.” She swung the mace over her shoulder and marched deeper into the tomb.