You wouldn’t give a half-crown to the Hollow the first time you see it. Nothing more than a miles-wide quarry, surrounding tall structures filled with holes and people coming and going, carrying all sort of stuff in an out. You wouldn’t think this is the largest underground structure in the world. It’s the home seat of wonders and horrors, it’s the final frontier of monster-hunting anf treasure-busting, and it’s the ultimate test for monster hunter like us.
“I thought it would be more impressive,” I remember saying, when I first lay eyes upon it. Maybe I was just cranky from the long travel. The Hollow sits in the westernmost part of Masnadia, the blasted country, and the currents of wild magic always turn the weather crazy. We have just passed through hail, storm and utter calm, and then for some reason it started raining frogs of all things… and now at the end it’s a brisk cool gaze rustling our clothes.
But Renard seems confident. He leans forward on his staff and elbows me.
“Come on. What matters is on the inside! You won’t be able to believe the wonders that rest inside! We’ll have to cavre our own niche though… everything until the third layer has been explored already…”
And as it turns out, he’s perfectly right. Even such a vast structure as the Hollow is prone to run out of monsters and treasure if you keep sacking it for a few decades.
But week after week we train ourselves, and after we bring in our first bounties, either from the hide of a chimera or from a hidden chest that has survived through the millennia, we start to understand that there’s just so much still hidden beneath the Hollow.
And little by little, we start to up our game.
Until Renard hears the first rumors about something going on in the fifth layer.
“People have been disappearing,” he says one day, as he casts another spell that turns his staff into a strangling serpent, launching itself at the band of kobolds attacking us (or trying to!) in the fourth layer. I cleave one in two with my sword, leaving a faint hint of smoke as my burning blade cuts through its skin like it’s paper. I turn to face another.
“Surely not us! What are you talking about?”
“Something about the layer right beneath this one.” He claps his hands. The serpent roars and its surface erupts in flames. The three kobolds wrapped in its spires shriek as fire consumes them. “I have heard a slime has taken residence there.”
“Pfft. That’s pathetic.” I thrust the sword right inside another kobold. It seems the others are starting to get the gist of the situation because they start to escape. Renard doesn’t allow them though. I stand up and start to clean up my weapon from all the blood as his staff-serpent makes short work of the few survivors. The stench of burned flesh reaches my nostrils and makes me wince. Does he have to go all out like that?
“Not this one. Rumor has it this is an Arch-slime, the kind of which have all been lost, save for a tiny desert kingdom in the far south, it seems.”
“And people have been losing to that?”
“More than one.”
“Seems like the perfect job for the two of us then! After the Hydra, nothing can stop us!”
“Yes, I think that too,” he nods, recalling the serpent that turns back into a staff. “It’s time to up our game and get all the rewards we can!
+++
When I wake up, the place has completely changed. We are not in a hall carved out inside the mountain, but a nice, wide room with a wide wooden throne, standards hanging from the walls and braziers that give out a pleasant golden light. It looks like a hotel suite, with a spacious balcony, even. Given this is the Hollow, it looks out into the dark emptiness of the caves below, but credit where credit is due.
I am still hanging from ropes of slime, affixed to the walls as Amuira the Arch-Slime sits on her throne, reading from a roll of parchment.
“Oh so you are finally awake. Took your sweet time. Then again, I am not really used working with fleshy bodies… takes a while to understand even the basics.” She lets go of the scroll - one of her tentacles picks it up and sets it on a nearby table. As it does so, her pale hands reach up to cover her rounded, soft breasts, making her flesh bulge. “But flesh is just so… sensitive compared to my old body.”
“Where did you hide Renard?”
She just grins.
“Don’t worry. She’ll join us soon enough.”
She?
Did she just mix up the pronoun because she’s not used to how they work? Or maybe…
But no, that would require a level of power and magic that slimes simply do not possess…
Just like they do not look like beautiful young women.
Or like they are not supposed to join the Morningstar.
I do not know why it bothers me so much. Maybe it’s because both Renard and I worked our asses off to reach the positions we are in, and this bitch just skipped ahead by selling herself out to, literally, the highest bidder there is.
And now… we are in her clutches. It’s just not right.
“I know what you are thinking,” she muses, biting her plump lip. “I see it in the faces of all the adventurers I bring here. They all wonder how I could make a deal with the Morningstar.” She shakes her head, making her beautiful hair wave like spilled ink. “I do not really care what you think, but I want you to know how it feels…”
“You disgust me,” I spit. “A traitor to Samash and all that’s beautiful in the world.”
She rolls her golden eyes.
“Save me the lecture. Besides, wasn’t I always a traitor and a monster? Your kind hunts my own. You kill and slice and starve us. Ever since our Goddess Siosi disappeared, us slimes have been driven to the point of extinction! Is it not my right to look for a better life? Plus, I think the Morningstar’s mark looks amazing… take a look.” She stands up and turns away, using her still-writhing tentacles to pull apart her mane of hair, displaying the rune of the Morningstar.
I have seen it only in books and during training, until that day. I knew some monsters, even some humans have decided to submit themselves to the dreaded lord of temptation, but seeing one so close…
The crimson lines stand out stark against her pale skin - it looks like a burn, but it’s too fine and precise to be. It depicts a circle with a five-lobed flower inside, the middle petal pointed down, and the others fanning in geometric precision.
May Samash protect me, it does look beautiful, especially with how smooth the skin of her back is, and how rounded and perky her buttocks, leading way to healthy thighs that gently rub together and her long pale legs.
“Hmmm… I see you approve. Good boy. I wonder what you think of my latest work.” She snaps her tentacles again and the drapes from the opposite side of the wall someone else walks in.
And that’s the moment I know we are in much, much deeper trouble than I thought.
It’s Renard, or at least… it used to be.
The person who walks in is almost naked, save for a string of black cloth around their midsection and chest. Their skin used to be just as pale as mine, but now it’s a delicious shade of peach, like they spent days tanning on a beach. Their hair is now a pale gold, and their eyes a warm hazelnut, they are the only thing that still reminds me of my poor friend. Because even though I can still find some hints of Renard’s face, the only things that still remind me of him are the shape of his cheeks and his nose. Everything else has changed: the girl who walks in has a glazed, dreamy look in her eyes, her long eyelashes batting slowly. She reaches up with her hands to brush her fingers against her rounded chest, showing two small but perky breasts, capped by hard nipples that tent the black fabric of her bra. Renard was never the bulkiest man, but the girl has little muscle to speak of: she’s just fit, like a dancer could be. She has a very thin waist and flaring rounded hips that give way to smooth and soft thighs and long legs. She puts one naked foot in front of her other, sashaying her hips in a carnal rhythm.
“Renard!” I cry out. “Is that… you? What did she do to you?”
“Worry not,” Amuira chuckles as I feel the tentacles start to lift me higher. “You will soon have a chance to find out by yourself.”
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