Zoey’s stomach clenched as she emptied herself onto Rosalie’s face. Rosalie pumped diligently away, reverting to her hands from the previous use of her tits and mouth, and expertly milked out Zoey’s sticky delivery.

Zoey really couldn’t understate how amazing Rosalie’s hands were. It didn't make sense how they were so soft, yet so powerful. Probably her upbringing, her extensive training in combat, which resulted in strength and dexterity in equal measure. And a helping of natural talent. But still, Zoey didn’t know how such an ostensibly inexperienced girl—Zoey didn’t know that for sure, but Rosalie’s behaviors suggested it—knew with such intuitiveness which way to twist her wrists, and the perfect pace to slide her hands up and down to easily persuade Zoey’s cock to empty itself. 

Afterward, Zoey enjoyed the sight of Rosalie’s chest and face so thoroughly covered in her warm girl spunk. Rosalie wiped her eyes clear, opened them, looked up at her, and leveled a scathing glare at Zoey’s self-satisfied smirk. “You really are disgusting, I hope you know that.”

Zoey would have teased back by alluding to Rosalie’s whining, perverted confessions, but she didn’t. Rosalie had been genuinely upset—something she’d worked past, Zoey thought, but it was best Zoey didn’t dig too hard into the weakness. 

Best saved for when Zoey had her fingers wriggling around inside Rosalie, anyway. Embarrassing admissions only stayed embarrassing when forced out sparingly.

They washed themselves off in the hotspring, Zoey’s well of supernatural power now topped-off, then continued along their adventure.

---

“This is it,” Rosalie said. “I’m almost certain.”

“The boss room?”

“Just so.”

It had only taken an hour more of pressing forward before they reached an ominous sign driven into the road, blackened at the edges and time-weary. ‘BEWARE THE SLIME,’ the decaying wood read, scrawled in black paint that hadn’t dried before it started to drip, and while Zoey might not be genre-savvy, she could recognize the imminent warning of a boss encounter when she saw one.

“It’s about time,” Zoey said. “This ought to be interesting.”

Rosalie frowned at Zoey, then hesitated, as if bracing herself for an unpleasant topic.

Zoey’s stomach sank, Rosalie’s next words obvious. “You don’t want me to come with,” Zoey preempted.

“It’s for the best,” Rosalie said slowly. “This won’t be like the earlier fights. Bosses are smarter. They employ strategy. If they identify a weak point—”

“They’ll dig into it.” Zoey sighed. “You don’t need to defend yourself. I get it.” Zoey’s time spent advancing through the shard had made the difference in their combat proficiency starkly apparent. And while it was a kick to her pride to be told joining in on the final fight would do nothing but cripple her partner, she’d much rather take a kick to the pride than end up dead. The brutal reality of the shard had been presented to Zoey, and while both she and Rosalie remained unharmed, that was on part of the second’s competence, and not a lack of trying from the shard. They could be hurt. Killed, if they sufficiently misstepped. This adventure Zoey had been thrust into, while interesting, and even half-whimsical from its similarity to videogames back home, was still dangerous. It needed to be treated as the threat it represented.

So Zoey shoved down her protests and did what was better for the both of them. “Okay. Well. Good luck. And don’t get hurt.”

Rosalie sniffed. “This is a first advancement shard. Even without my armor, I’d be mortified to be injured, much less defeated.”

Zoey believed her. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried, seeing her partner go off and tackle the most dangerous part of the shard herself. “Remember to expect something weird. This isn’t a normal shard. Be ready for anything.”

Rosalie paused, then grimaced. “Right. I can’t say I’m looking forward to what it’s put together. But some parts of the shard are normal … so perhaps the boss will be too.”

Rosalie didn’t sound like she believed it would. Zoey didn’t, either. But they could hope.

Rosalie gave a serious nod to Zoey, then turned and advanced forward.

Zoey posted up under the base of a tree, watching her figure disappear into the darkness, and tried not to worry too much.

---

It’d been about an hour, not that Zoey had a way to tell the time, but she knew something had gone wrong. Rosalie had departed too long ago. Why hadn’t Zoey asked when to expect her back? She’d assumed a handful of minutes, and when that had passed, she’d adjusted her estimate to ten or twenty. Then thirty. 

An hour later, Zoey sat, stomach wringing in fear and expecting the worst.

Perhaps something odd had occurred. Maybe she’d won, and been shunted out of the shard as soon as she had. Zoey didn’t know how these things worked. But just because Rosalie hadn’t returned didn’t mean she’d lost—(and thus been injured? Killed? Surely not the second?)—but simply that she couldn’t return, which several situations could account for. Trapped, to name a second. Perhaps she’d fallen down a pit and needed Zoe’s help. Which was absurd, but she was just spitballing, here. Or maybe she’d gotten lost.

Either way, it was time to go lend aid. Not that Zoey could provide much of that in the case Rosalie had lost. Because anything that could square up against Rosalie and come out the victor, Zoey would last, hm, a minute? To be enormously generous. Ten seconds, the more realistic estimate. One attack? Probably a single attack. 

Maybe someday she could hold her own, but she hadn’t had an opportunity to practice, and Zoe was hardly a talented fighter by her nature.

She stopped herself from pacing around in circles, then, deciding waiting only made things worse, and Rosalie wasn’t returning, continued down the trail, passing the hunched-over sign declaring ‘BEWARE THE SLIME’. Zoey gripped the light, spiked mace she’d raided from the armory earlier. Her spells were the more effective weapon, considering Zoey’s lack of proficiency with arms, but its reassuring weight helped steady her. And maces didn’t take much finesse to use at their simplest level, which was why Rosalie had suggested it.

The reason for the sign’s warning became apparent in short order. Thick green goo appeared in clumps as Zoey worked her way forward, coating rocks, trees, and grass in shiny globs that glinted in the permanent moonlight of the pocket dimension. Zoey wondered if it was poisonous. Not acidic, at least; the grass and trees seemed unharmed. But why ‘beware the slime’, then? She forced away her curiosity and didn’t attempt something as stupid as scooping up the green material. Bolded warnings scrawled on signs hammered into the floor were usually best heeded. Or so Zoey assumed.

Again, not an expert at this whole, dungeon-adventuring thing. 

The beaten trail lost itself to nature as she ventured forward, disappearing just as the treeline opened up into a clearing. Zoey blinked as she took in the—frankly magnificent—sight laid in front of her.

An enormous clearing splayed out, the circular treeline almost unnaturally sharp, like it’d been cultivated—or designed by some greater Maker—to be that way. The stars seemed brighter, now, and the crescent-moon burned in the sky. The inappropriate word Zoey wanted to use was ‘cinematic’, but while at some moments in the past few hours Zoey had been able to treat her new reality as—well, not the reality it was—now was not one of those moments. The sight was breath-taking, but also unnerving. Ominous. It heralded a final encounter. An ending of some sorts.

Hers?

At the center lay an enormous pool of that green goo, larger even than the hot springs she and Rosalie had visited. The slime was thick and viscous and only slightly translucent; in such quantities it appeared almost as a solid object. 

To the right of the pool, a blonde figure lay unconscious, supported by a boulder of the green slime. Her head and hair was visible, but the rest of her body was obscured by the slightly-opaque material; Zoey could only make out a shadow of it. Her stomach tightened in fear, because sure enough, Rosalie had lost.

How?

What did that say for Zoey?

And what had she lost to?

The only solace Zoey took was that it looked like she’d been captured, not killed. She seemed alive. Though from this distance, the extent of her injuries was difficult to make out. Zoey needed to get closer.

She walked hesitantly forward, rolling her grip on her weapon, feeling comically out of place, and unprepared. She wasn’t some warrior. Even keeping her feet moving forward toward the grim reality that awaited her was difficult. She swallowed, hard.

Zoey made it halfway to Rosalie before the pool of slime shivered. She froze in her tracks, a deer in headlights, and watched ripples of green shake the liquid.

Beware the slime. Guess I’m finding out why.

At the shore of the lake, a figure coalesced, roiling from the bubbling edge and taking shape. Zoey probably shouldn’t have been surprised at what emerged, but she was.

A curvaceous, translucent woman of green slime rose in height, forming from the liquid that poured out of the lake. She finished taking shape even as she advanced, confidently, hips swaying with sensual swagger as she strode forward. A sculpted, soft body fashioned from the see-through clay: navel, nipples, clavicle, the other enticing edges to a woman’s body, naked and on full display. Her shape was nothing like Rosalie’s: not hard muscles and deadly-looking, but gentle, round, with full breasts and skin (slime?) that looked painfully soft to the touch. A mane of thick slime simulated hair, swaying to beneath her butt, and bouncing with every confident step. Her breasts were generous, perfectly shaped, and she had perky, hard nipples a shade darker. Behind them, and down a bit, inside the slime-girl’s lower chest, was a perfect sphere, fist-sized, of forest-green material, standing out against the neon translucence that made up the rest of her body. Zoey wasn’t sure what it was; some part of her alien biology?

Her face was the most unnerving, upsetting for its dyssynchrony with the implied deadliness of the situation: it was warm, bubbly, smiling, exuberant, even, as if the slime-girl was delighted to have received a visitor. She looked at Zoey the way someone would for having their best friend unexpectedly show up after years overseas. Delighted. Like she was about to break into a run and scoop Zoey up in a hug.

Zoey shakily rose her mace up, then brought an ice spike to the forefront of her mind.

The slime-girl paused in her advance—she wasn’t far, now, less than twenty feet.

“Aw,” she pouted, putting her hands on her hips. “Don’t tell me you want to play like she did.”

Zoey reeled back.

She could talk?

The discovery changed everything. Or did it? Were talking bosses normal? She wasn’t prepared for this. Assuming this was a non-standard situation, then a talking, sapient creature could be reasoned with. Maybe they didn’t need to fight?

Or … Zoey’s brain catching up with the slime-girl’s words … maybe the way Rosalie had fought the creature had been all wrong.

“Like she did?” Zoey asked carefully.

“All that poking and slashing, it really hurts, you know! I don’t like hurting people, but she made me. Because she didn’t want to fight the fun way.”

Zoey was forming a picture in her head of what had gone down in this clearing—and what the ‘less fun’ and ‘more fun’ types of fighting were.

She glanced Rosalie’s way. Alive. Just hurt. 

Back to the slime-girl.

“Well,” Zoey said. “Any chance I can take her and go?”

“Without playing? That’s such a mean request! Do you know how long it is between visitors?”

There’d been people before her and Rosalie? She guessed that made sense? Or was it just part of the slime-girl’s … programming? That was a weird word to use. But how real were these ‘shards’, anyway? Did they persist outside of their adventure, or were they designed, the sapient creatures instated with default memories? Zoey didn’t have time to be puzzling over stuff like this.

She lowered her mace, and let the ice-spike spell fizzle. Going even further, she tossed her weapon to the side and let it impact the soft grass as a sign of good faith. Zoey’s way out of this predicament wasn’t a fight—not a physical one, in the way Rosalie had supplied. Again, if Rosalie had lost, Zoey stood less chance than a gnat.

She’d have to win another way. 

“Can I challenge you for her?” Zoey asked.

A smile split the slime-girl’s face. “Depends what you mean by challenge,” she sing-songed. She resumed her swaying forward, and Zoey didn’t retreat, though instinct screamed for her to. “I’ll have you know, I’m not an easy slime to satisfy.”

The slime-girl’s features resolved as she got closer, and Zoey could make out the finer details to her figure. The playful, gentle eyes, the soft, full lips, and the pouty curves between her legs, glistening with wetness—her chosen form was thorough, as expected for what ‘challenges’ she preferred to offer. 

Zoey’s length started to stiffen right as the slime-girl finished closing the gap between them. 

Without sparing a moment, the slime-girl reached up and took Zoey’s face in both her hands, then pressed her lips to Zoey’s. She pried Zoey’s mouth open and slipped her tongue in, causing Zoey to squeak in surprise. She closed her eyes and reciprocated, her hands going to the slime-girl’s slim waist.

The slime-girl tasted sweet, and a bit citrusy—like a lime, though that might be her neon green color influencing Zoey’s assumptions. Either way, it was far from unpleasant having her mouth explored by a probing, sticky tongue.

The slime-girl withdrew, their mouths separating in a pop. Zoey was breathing hard, and her lower-half was now fully at the ready, bent upward and pressing against a sticky body.

The slime-girl beamed up at her—Zoey was much taller—and her breathing had also picked up. “I knew you’d be more fun than her. And wow … you’ve got so much to offer. This is the best day ever.” Her hand went to Zoey’s member, stroking up and down, exploring its size. Her thumb rubbed into the base of where her head met the shaft, sliding over the bump and tracing the shape. Zoey’s breath caught. The slime-girl kept their eyes locked, not looking down at what her hand was doing.

“Do you have a name?” Zoey asked. She wasn’t sure why. Seeing how they were in for a presumably extended session of ‘fighting’, some basic conversation didn’t seem out of order. Especially because she was curious about the creature’s existence. Sure, they might be fighting over Zoey’s claim of Rosalie, perhaps even their lives, but still. 

Would this creature kill them if she failed? Zoey didn’t get the feeling she would … but she had no clue what was going on.

The slime-girl laughed. “Wow. Such a gentleman. I think you’re the first to ask. Mel. Short for Emerald-Melt.” She leaned forward, still stroking up and down Zoey’s length, and whispered, "But you can just call me your sticky, gooey plaything, because that's what I am.” A noise of delight. “Ooh. It liked that, didn’t it? It jumped in my hand.”

“Feels like you’re cheating,” Zoey said, doing her best to ignore the slime-girl’s caressing. “You’re starting early. I still don’t know how this’s working. How do I ‘win’?”

“Last one standing, dummy. Do I need to spell it out for you?”

“Not first to come?”

Mel paused, long up-and-down strokes stilling. Her expression was highly affronted. “You think I’m only getting one out of you?”

Ah. “So this could take a while.”

“It better take a while.” Her stroking resumed, faster than before. “And you’re wasting time not getting to it. But before you do, let me show you something.” She pushed Zoey, and, not having expected it, she stumbled backwards, falling on her ass. Not afraid to be a bit rough, then. It hadn’t hurt, with the soft grass eating the impact, but she’d still been pushed over.

Mel sat on top of her thighs, leaving Zoey’s cock erected into the air. She resumed stroking. “There’s some amazing benefits to this body. Want to see one?”

“I’m a captive audience, aren't I?” Zoey murmured. How could she say no?