No Need For A Core? 373: Slime Time

Klastoria had begun gliding slowly forward as she talked, which was when Amrydor realize that she hadn't fully resud her bipedal form. Her dress ended in a puddle on the ground, and he was fairly certain she didn't have legs at the mont.

"Now," she said as she spread her arms apart, "ti is passing still. You shouldn't dawdle."

He eyed where her core had shifted to skeptically, and she smirked. "Though I should ntion, if rumors about my lapse spread, I assure you that I will talk about this part in a way that ensures you seem like a, mm, pervert? That is the right word, yes?"

That elicited a laugh from him. "Klastoria, earlier you said sothing about not being certain how you felt about thinking of yourself as a girl, or what it ant. Well, this is the absolutely most 'girl' thing I've seen you do. Up to you if that is a good thing or not."

Strangely enough, this made him feel more relaxed about the situation. He focused his spiritual energy in his right hand and reached for her core, plunging into the center of her chest, right between the swells of her form's breasts.

As he pushed his arm deeper into her body, reaching forward to bridge the gap between himself and the target, he also pulled on the folded space between, trying to draw the core into his hand.

After a few monts of focusing on this complicated task, he felt Klastoria's hands grip his shoulders. "Amrydor," she said softly, then raised her voice a little when he didn't imdiately respond. "Amrydor, don't stop, but look at your arm. This ti, this is all you."

Paying attention to anything else while he was trying to breach across the distance to her core was difficult, but that sounded like sothing important. With most of his will still pushed toward her core to maintain his progress, he glanced down to see what she was talking about.

Klastoria's substance was being drawn up along his arm, coating it at first but then trailing off into ever thinner threads as it was absorbed. Only Klastoria was slightly wrong about what was happening; sothing she seed to realize at about the sa ti he did. "No," she said, "not your body, your armor. You're eating by making part of your armor." She sounded amused. "Later, I want you to show . But if you fail, you first have to co to to retrieve your items. Alone."

She was crazy — Amrydor was certain of that. But she was correct; it was his armor that her mass was being absorbed by. He had never used its function to absorb and store other outfits to change into, and sohow her substance was being taken up by that capacity. He couldn't afford to think about it more, but it did give him one more tool to use.

When he focused back on drawing her core to him, he deliberately included pulling her flesh toward him as well, willfully feeding her into his armor.

"Oh, that's interesting. How are you doing that? You're not just pulling my body to you; I can feel my flesh responding to your will. It's like you are commanding part of my body."

That wasn't exactly what he'd been intending, but the feedback was useful. It only took a few more monts to bring her core into his hand, but the situation had changed. Klastoria wasn't standing on the ground any more; all of her lower body had been drawn up toward his hand, and her upper body was half collapsed against him. The rest of her had either been absorbed by his armor, or was currently spread thin across his body, accelerating how fast his armor could eat her.

"Don't you dare stop," Klastoria said, even as she was clearly struggling to keep a face ford. "Or I'll complete my part of the challenge by hunting you down and eating you after dawn. I am not accepting anything from you short of completing the task."

Which ant that he had to absorb the rest of her. Sohow, this felt worse than the idea of simply pulling her core out of her body. "Klastoria," Amrydor said as he focused on completing the challenge, "I agreed to this only because it seed like the only way out without embarrassing you, and you seed pained. But I didn't really want your core as a prize. I'll treat it well, as a treasure even, because anything less would be disrespectful to you. So, as far as I am concerned, you still owe for doing this. It is your reputation we are protecting."

Her body had collapsed too far to respond, but he knew she was still aware of what was going on. It only took a few more minutes until he finished the process, drawing the last of her sli into his armor, leaving her core bare.

Klastoria's life flickered in that orb, then slowly faded, the patterns deteriorating and collapsing. In her final monts, at the edge of death, he briefly saw her soul clearly, then it was gone, whisked off to the safety of the nexus's core. It had been a clearer view of a single soul than what he could see of the souls of the divine agents.

Maybe it was a bit morbid, but Amrydor decided that he thought souls were rather beautiful.

He was also very, very tired.

So much for that nap; any rest he had gotten was completely undone by that ordeal. He considered whether or not to just end the delve, but there was one more person he really wanted to talk to and examine. Maybe he could do that without actually traveling the river zone. He'd ask when he got there.

Amrydor carefully and gently stored Klastoria's core in his pack. He had ant it when he had said he would treat the core well. After that, he ate so more fruit and at, then pulled himself together to head down to the next zone. Thankfully, his boots were enchanted, so Klastoria had not eaten those when she'd engulfed him. He paused for just a mont to be amazed, and a bit appalled, at how much of him she had managed to coat while they had slept.

While he was walking, he contacted Fuyuko. "I'm sorry for the delay. It's all taken care of now, and I am fine. I was simply uncomfortable while the situation was being fixed." Which was true, though he was understating the level of uncomfortable he had been in.

There was a mont of silence before she replied, "When you are done with your delve, I want you to tell more about what happened. That was more than just uncomfortable. But, um, I hope you enjoy the rest of your delve."

She sounded uncertain during that last sentence, but it was sincere and it made him smile. Hopefully nothing too 'interesting' would happen for the rest of his trip.

It wasn't until after he had used his tokens to open the door at the end of the forest, and was partway down the tunnel leading to the river zone, that Amrydor was reminded of how close dawn had been.

"Hello, Klastoria," Amrydor said as he rounded a corner in the tunnel. She must have co here imdiately after she was restored to life by the dawn reset of the nexus. He'd sensed her there a little while before he got to the corner.

"Amrydor," she replied warmly. "I hope you don't think this too strange, but overall, I actually had fun with our little encounter. There's just one thing I insist on: I want to see it. What does your armor look like with as part of it?"

"I, um, well, don't know yet," he said with a sigh, then smiled and shrugged. "I guess we can find out together. But, you know that this is weird, right?"

She sounded amused when she said, "I think being upset just because my old body might be used for sothing interesting would be much weirder."

Well, he wasn't sure about that, but he supposed she might have a point. Though, dungeon inhabitants had really different viewpoints from outsiders, he noted. He briefly wondered if more of the inhabitants felt this way, but realized he didn’t want to put in the type of research necessary to find out.

It took a bit of experinting to figure out exactly what his armor could do now, but he was pleased with the results, though there was a cost. The enchantnt to copy new outfits and replace outfits when its storage limit was reached no longer functioned. It had been altered and subsud into the living armor's new abilities.

As far as he was concerned, that was a small price to pay.

Klastoria's liquid-crystal sli could now be exuded by his suit of living leather armor to form different layers of protection, ranging from a thin hard shell over key sections of the base armor, to a complete protective suit, with helt, that was better than steel plate armor, especially because of how well it could form a contiguous flexible layer over joints. He could also control color and transparency, though it was going to take a long while for him to be able to obtain the fine control that Klastoria had.

There were stronger materials for making armor out of, but this enhancent could be manifested quickly, making it great not only for dealing with surprises, but to replace damaged armor in the middle of combat. He might even be able to 'patch' armor with it, or coat existing armor with an extra layer, though he'd need to test that to be sure.

Additionally, the crystal-sli had enough material to simply make more crystal-sli armor if any of it was damaged, even when mimicking his full set of plate armor. The real limit to the thickness of the armor layers was his own ability to move in it.

The biggest thing he wasn't certain of was if that sli would regenerate or not if it was lost.

"Amrydor," Klastoria said, "I wouldn't worry about that. This armor does sothing very important for ; it makes sure nothing can eat you. So if you ever need more of my substance, just co to , and we can work sothing out. After all, I don't want anyone eating you but ."

He was certain that while she was teasing him, she also ant it. He also was suddenly reminded of those candies with the hard outer sugar coating, and hoped he was alone in that thought. Klastoria hadn't tried one of those, right?

"Although," she said thoughtfully, "I will concede that the princess has first claim, if she wants it."

He stared at her a mont before asking, "Fuyuko? What do you an?"

Klastoria smiled. "Princess Fuyuko Azeria is very sweet and nice, and a much more, mm, civilized? Dosticated? I'm not sure what's most accurate. Well, for society, a more polite person than I am. She's also of mixed lycan and oni bloodlines. Two carnivorous species not known for being very particular about where their at cos from. The oni even practice ritual cannibalism for funerals. So don't mistake her niceness for being safe."

Amrydor shook his head in confusion. "Wait, how do you know that much about oni?" He didn't recall Crizdirk saying anything about oni funerary rites.

"I borrow many books from the library; I have reason to do a lot of research about species with very strong urges to eat. Oh, that reminds , reading should be easier for now, thanks to you."

She pointed at her eyes, and Amrydor realized that they didn't look like the rest of her sculpted substance. They were a little darker, and had a different sort of reflectivity. "Thanks to observing them in action from the inside, I figured out how the whole layering and focusing lenses thing works. Oh, and did you know that you sort of cheat with how you see color? You only have three types of light-sensing spots; you just use how they are reacting simultaneously to work out what a color is. I now understand what people an by purple; it's what you see when blue and red are mixed, but it doesn't actually exist on its own. So, I owe you a little more for that."

"Ah, you're welco," he replied weakly in the face of her enthusiasm. This ant that she'd been inside of his eyeballs when her body had soaked into his. That was rather disturbing to think about.

"I do have a lot to thank you for, Amrydor," she said. "I'm not entirely sure why you said it, but telling that my little trick with where I placed my core was a very 'girl' thing to do, did make feel better. The entire reason for my experints was because I was thinking about what it ant to be a girl, and whether or not I could play the role of soone physically female safely. Now I'm not worried about it so much. At the sa ti, I owe you a separate apology from what I had said before."

"You do?" he asked, feeling overwheld at the mont.

"Yes. I didn't think about it until you had started my final challenge, so it was too late, but I should have realized, and suggested, that you simply end your delve. Declare it with enough intent, and your strange half-contractor status would have kicked in. I would have physically been incapable of willfully harming you. But, given your new armor, this worked out for the best, right?"

"Yeah, I guess it did..." Amrydor felt like an idiot now; that was sothing he should have thought of too.

"Mm, you look tired. Ah, your hybrid status ans that you don't fully benefit from the nexus's reset even as a contractor, do you? I won't keep you much longer then. Amry, if you co visit while not delving, I'll be happy to host you, and if you like, I can 'play pretend' a little. It doesn't matter for my physical pleasure, but if it makes you happy, then I'd be pleased."

Then her voice took on a more dangerous tone. "However, if you co to alone, as a delver, then I'm going to take that as permission to do as I please with you. That will end with trying to eat you. If you delve with a group for fighting, and it happens to be my turn as the boss, then I will do my best to take you out and stash you soplace to enjoy at my leisure, after the battle. It may cost a lot, and I might have to concede early, but it would very much be worth it. I like you, but that just makes want to draw out the process of devouring you even more. So, be careful how you approach ; I don't want you to make any mistakes. And don’t worry, I’ve been studying more than just how and who those other bloodlines eat. I’ve been learning all about pheromones and aphrodisiacs as part of my alchemy studies. I’ll continue to study hard and make sure you thoroughly enjoy yourself, for as long as possible. Goodbye Amrydor, I do hope you co visiting soon."

He sat down for a while after she left. Klastoria seed like she was, generally, a good person, but her naked desire to eat him was kind of terrifying. Taking her up on the offer to visit her alone was just not a real option. However, ignoring her felt rude, especially when she was trying to be nice in her own way. So, maybe he should visit her with other friends or sothing. Just, not alone.

While he rested, Amrydor also pondered what she had said about studying alchemy. Given the way she could change her colors and properties, including choosing to not eat him with either acid or enzys, and her statent about what she had been studying, he wondered if she could do alchemy internally and just shot globs with other properties than acid at people, or release gases into the air around her. Or even inject sothing, if she hit soone with a spike. Klastoria might be a lot more dangerous than her strength alone would indicate.

What would happen if Klastoria studied with soone like Shizoku?

Once he had gathered his thoughts and a little more energy, Amrydor finished making his way to the river zone, sat down at the shore of the starting lake, and waved over one of the buzzkin working on a boat nearby. "Excuse , could you ask Iara if she is willing to talk with for a while? You can let her know I am curious about her mix of elental and fey life aspects."

Thankfully, the undine boss of the river zone proved much more reasonable to deal with than Klastoria had. However, she was still a fey woman, and she teased and flirted with him for her own entertainnt. After all, he was asking to 'stare' at her unabashedly.

It was very interesting to see how her life force extended into the water around her body, making it a true extension and part of herself rather than simply controlling the elent.

When they were done, Amrydor called an end to his delve.

He really wanted to get so sleep, but there were two people he needed to talk to before he could do that. First, he wanted to talk to Mordecai about what he wanted for his delving rewards. Then Fuyuko wanted to see him.

Kazue or Moriko could have crafted what he was interested in just as well, he was sure, but he felt like they were much more likely to tease him about his choices and he'd already endured too much of that today.

PATREON:

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Early chapters, so excerpts and short stories, and more art!