DreadWolf

◈ Chapter 148:

Elves possessed naturally long and shapely legs, but even amongst elves Myra's were particularly long and shapely.

She stretched her legs out like a cat on the sun lounge, splaying her toes, before crossing one leg over the other, gracefully and in a very intentional manner. The elf was very clearly aware of what she was doing, although maybe that was obvious since she was entirely stark naked.

Brax raised an eyebrow at the naked elf.

"An elf with a tan? I don't think I've seen that before."

Myra hummed and wriggled her hips. "That's because city elves don't like nature. They never come out from behind their safe little walls to dance amongst the trees and to have really wild sex under the stars like elves are meant to. City elves go all in for that pale and gaunt look, kinda how Eliza looks when I say the word Rain."

"Sh-Shutup I don't! I'm just... wary, okay. You didn't see or experience what I did, thatthingRain has become is dangerous, I know that, that Inquisitor knew it. She shut down the dungeon for a reason, she knew."

"I think anybody would feel pretty pissed at the thing that chewed their arm off Eliza. That said, you, uh, were right to convince me to leave Lynthia..."

"I was?"

"Yes, now if you want to survive Rain then hit the target."

Eliza hesitantly lifted a hand and from a chunk of azurite set on her ring a pellet of water lanced out.

It shot across the ornamental garden and missed by a good foot the crude card cutout of a black wolf figure stuck on top of a bush.

Eliza gave the untouched thing an unhappy look.

"Is her aim getting worse? I feel like her aim is getting worse. Is there such a thing as leveling down from being too stupid? because I'm totally getting that vibe from you Eli."

Eliza lifted her fist and pointed it at the elf. Her fingers held at least two rings each, crowded with chunks of deep blue azurite.

"Want to say that again?!"

Myra's voice became as sweet and as insincere as sugar. "I'm just saying that maybe fatigue is affecting your performance, friend."

"I can put you two in a room and lock the door if you wish. Maybe you'll fight it out." Brax seemed to consider this. "Maybe you'll end up fucking again."

"That was one drunken mistake!" spat Eliza. "Will you stop bringing it up!"

"Didn't feel like a mistake at the time," purred Myra, squirming in her nakedness and fluttering her eyelashes at the water mage.

Eliza's eyes flashed and spheres of water started to bubble into the air from her rings, hovering around her shoulders and head.

"Let's see if you can keep up that smug look of yours while your lungs are filling with water."

"If you try to drown her Eliza I'll make you regret it," murmured Brax, his voice low. "You know your one Class can't compete with even one of my two."

The watermage's lip twisted into a snarl, but after a moment she let the water drop. It splashed as it hit the grass, flinging fine droplets up her legs.

Her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh.

"This isn't working Brax. None of this is! You two don't even believe me about how serious-! Rain - I've never seen something thatneedsto kill like that!"

"Like I said, I understand. I understand because Rain left the dungeon and followed us here Eliza, he was spotted in Silvering, a nearby satellite town to Florens. He has... grown... a lot, as you predicted he would... and there's more, it's like he has evolved, he has control over a black substance, like your control over water."

Eliza's face became very pale, fear outlined in her eyes.

"That's... really nearby. You know that that means he is coming straight for us Brax, h-he's coming to kill us!"

"Pale face!" giggled Myra.

"Quiet. Listen, Eliza, Lynthia is gone."

"Wh-what do you mean gone?"

"I'm not sure myself." Brax ran his hand through his long glossy black hair and sighed. "The refugees say they ran because a succubus had been summoned, but they say they left the town as it was, whole. Yet there's reports that the town is flattened, not a single structure left untouched, and most of the surrounding forest felled, but no bodies or even husks of bodies."

Myra scowled. "Hey, are you trying to imply it wasn't the succubus and that Rain is-"

"Adlen is dead. He never made it out of Lynthia."

There was a moment of silence.

"We should have taken him with us," murmured Eliza, face drawn.

Myra stirred her drink. "Nah, that moron was where he should have been, acting as a just in case heads up for us, the vanguard." She paused, "Just... didn't expect Rain to make such a mess that it didn't matter."

"Now you're concerned you idiot elf?" hissed Eliza "What, recalling how you set him on fire? How you slowly pushed a blade into his groin? How you knifed him in the kidney? No? He remembers all of it Myra!"

"Yeah, and like you didn't gut him like a fish. The smirk on your face, tut tut."

"I know I did! I fucking regret it okay! I never would have done it if I'd known he would come back stronger than me! And- and now he's coming to kill and e-eat m-me!"

"Personally, I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. In fact, If he wants to come I'll cut his dick off and make him eat it. I'll pull out his intestines and loop them round his neck like a funny necklace. I'll burn all his skin off until he's screaming and begging to die. Oh the sound of fat crackling while it cooks on a living body is, hnnff, just the best kind of sound."

Eliza stared at the tanned and very naked elf as she sipped from her ice and fruit filled beverage, re-crossing her long legs with a happy humm.

"Were you raised by freaking Harpies?!"

"She was my nursemaid actually. A slave."

Eliza boggled at the elf, mouth flapping open.

"That's--!!"

"Not productive to get into now," interjected Brax rolling his eyes. "Look Eliza, before you have a full blown panic attack, you need to understand there's a simple path out of this."

"What path? Run? Yes, we should run!"

"No. I'm not spending the rest of my life fleeing a monster that seems to be getting stronger the longer it is left alone. The answer is that we need to be of sufficient level and then work together to kill Rain, exactly the same as any other monster. We need to outpace him and then kill him before he grows out of our reach."

"Look at me Brax! I can't keep up- I can't keep up with either of you let alone Rain! I can't even shoot straight!"

"Can't even shoot diagonal," mumbled Myra from behind her glass.

Brax frowned. "I have something that may help, if you want it."

He clicked his fingers at the sole other person with them in the garden, a solemn looking drake maid with white scales.

She turned and dashed back into the mansion.

A moment later she was hauling out a scrawny woman who was blindfolded and wearing ragged clothing, her wrists and ankles done up in chains, skin chaffed red and raw under the lightly rusted steel.

The maid shoved her forward and she came to a stumbling stop by Brax.

He held out a hand and the maid dipped her claws into a small bag hanging off her hip, leaning down so that her arm entered it past the elbow. She came back up with a glass bottle, one that held a slowly swirling orange and white liquid flecked with metallic red.

Brax plucked it from her hand and held it up.

"This is a slime trapped in a bottle."

"That's nice Brax, did you catch that little thing all by yourself?" murmured Myra, shading her eyes as she sipped from her drink.

"No, because this was bottled centuries ago. It's-... slimes aren't like you think, honestly they might be some of the most powerful monsters in the world, that is if they ever evolve. This... came from a distant ancestor, a family of minotaurs we married into."

Myra eyed his body up and down. "That kinda explains some stuff, though why haven't you got horns or anything minotaury?"

"Species dilute out quickly with newer generations without the previous species adding back in. You should know that as an elf, your lot are so promiscuous there wouldn't be any normal looking elves left if it didn't. All that's left of my minotaur heritage is the horn in my family name, Fenhorn, and these slimes."

Myra shrugged uncaringly, "Okay, whatever, so it's a rare slime. Good job, maybe you will gain one millionth of a fraction of a level if you kill it."

Brax for once looked a little annoyed. "I might level, but if you or Eliza here were to take it you would gain multiple levels. This slime is special."

"That little thing?"

"Have you ever wondered how many monsters are killed by other monsters in the dungeon below our feet? It's a very large number. The problem is that no leveler benefits from a monster killed by another monster in isolation. This slime once modified will putter around a dungeon for years or decades, it will find dying monsters, and it will collect their flesh which it then preserves, alive."

Myra and Eliza stared at the orange white blob in the bottle. It was touching experimentally at the inside of the cap with a tendril, trying to open it.

"Their flesh...? That thing is full of monster flesh?"

Myra sat up. "So killing that is like killing a bunch of monsters all at once?" she grasped at the air with her hands, "Give, give, lemme smash."

"Doesn't work like that, the bits are too small. For this you have to drink the slime, and allow your own body to kill it."

"D-drink lots of little monster bits?"

"Yes, hundreds, maybe thousands of monsters all collected into this one slime, collected centuries ago and all perfectly preserved."

Eliza's face was fast shifting from pale to looking a little green, but she clenched her fists before reaching out. "If it saves me from Rain? Fine. I'll do it."

Brax moved the vial from her grasping hand. Then he turned to the blindfolded woman.

"Eliza, this woman is level two. She was taken from the slums. She is human garbage. Too cowardly to risk her life in the dungeon. With this I will make her jump immensely in level, I will make her powerful."

Brax unscrewed the cap and in one motion jammed the bottle down the shocked woman's throat.

"H-hey that was for me! I-..."

She paused as the woman began to groan, then claw at her belly like she was in extreme pain. Her groan rose into a panicked frantic scream as she bent over, her whole body trembling and shaking as blood poured from her lips, spilling over her chains.

A moment or so later she collapsed.

Eliza stared at the woman laid out flat on the grass. She was very still, that is until something moved at the back of her throat. A blood slick blob of orange and white crawled into the woman's mouth and began feeling around at her teeth until the drake maid leaned down and scooped it into a fresh bottle.

"See to it that thing is cleaned."

The maid nodded.

"I've gotten... close to you Eliza. I can't make you drink something like this when there is a real chance it will kill you at your level. To drink the slime your body needs to be strong, sturdy, meaning you need to be decently leveled. Unlike me or Myra you will be risking your life. Do you still Want it?"

Eliza stared down at the dead woman as a sound like distant wind rose from her still lips, an unsettling death rattle.

"Fuck no."

"Gawdyou are such a pussy." Myra swung her legs over the side of the sun lounge and stood, bouncing on her heels before skipping over to the patiently standing drake maid who was far shorter than her.

She looked down at her, practically pressing her bare breasts into the unblinking maid's face. Then she snorted and bent down, reaching a hand inside the bag on the maid's hip.

She came back up with a pair of bottles held between her fingers and flopped back onto the sun lounge.

"I'm still not drinking that."

"Never said you should bitch, these are both for me."

The elf flicked the two caps off and downed the slimes one after the other.

"Hrnff, kinda cold, ah, I can feel them m-moving."

Her hand stroked her toned midriff and she shivered, tensing up over and over before easing back against the sun lounge.

Myra's eyes became unfocused as she seemed to examine something unseen.

"Oh my... that is a lot of levels."

"This could be the difference between dying and surviving Eliza," said Brax as the maid handed him another of the orange and white potions.

"I'm not doing it! if you care so much why don't you drink one of those horrible things!"

"I have. Many of them. I haven't had a choice, I have two separate sets of levels I need to manage. My family gave every last one of these left in our possession to me because of that. The last few in existence because no one knows how to make them any more. Now I've used so many of the things I've hit diminishing returns, I could do the same with the rest for maybe a half level, but I feel I can put these to better use by helping those I care for..."

Eliza did not look happy. "I... I can't do it, I'm sorry Brax."

"I see, I'm sorry to hear that... Would it change your mind if I told you that Lord Wranvyre appears to have died."

"I have no idea who that is..."

"He's one of the most prestigious nobles of Florens, he has arguably the best defended estate in the city, he is surrounded by hundreds of powerful family members and guards, and he himself is known to be pretty much unkillable."

"What does that matter?"

"He was there Eliza. It washim. He came and killed a leveler far better defend-"

Eliza snatched the bottle from his grip and downed it in one swift motion.

She stood frozen, chest rising and falling, staring wide eyed down at her midriff, a growing creeping horror welling up within her as she realised what she had done in a moment of animal panic.

It didn't take long for the pain to hit.

Eliza started to groan, curling over herself in agony.

"No! NO!" she yelled as real fear entered her voice.

She curled her hand into a fist and belted herself in the stomach, then again, and again.

"D-Die! Please just die! DIE!"

The white drake handed her a healing potion and she downed it in one and then stared hopefully at her midriff. Her blouse seemed to move slightly as the slime thrashed within and she keened in pain.

"Why isn't it workiiiing!"

"Healing doesn't kill the slime Eliza, you need to fight," said Brax, watching her with concern.

In a moment of desperation she lifted her fist to her mouth and water abruptly roared from the azurite rings and drove down her throat, a good half gallon. With blood running down her chin and neck her hands curled claw like as she manipulated the water in her stomach making it crush and churn. She groaned as spasms of blinding agony ran through her.

But then... It was done. The slime was dead.

She flopped down on the sun lounge, falling atop Myra.

An elegant elvish hand caressed her cheek, brushing sweat slick hair away as Myra's naked legs embraced her, allowing Eliza to use her as a pillow.

Myra held her close as she wept into her bare breasts.

"There there, it's all over now," said Myra , her voice soft, "The pain is gone, you survived... and you leveled."

"I don't want to die," sobbed Eliza, "Don't let Rain kill me Myra!"

Myra smiled.