Dungeons and Dalliances

7.85 – Slime XIV

Natalie and Cheri's shared amusement at Vanetta's flustered state was, unfortunately, short-lived. A rather important development was beginning to take place, one that superseded even their joint desire to tease the messy-looking and red-faced girl.

Cheri's warnings about running out of time had finally manifested. Something had seemed slightly off since her last orgasm, but it was becoming obvious by this point: the shape of her body was losing rigidity, especially—since they were touching the floor—her legs and butt, which were melting to spread slowly outward in a puddle.

"Aw, seriously? I'm out of HP already?"

She pressed a hand into her chest and pulled it away—thick strands of green goo followed the movement. She pouted.

"But I wanted to get double teamed," she complained. "I was gonna make a slime harness and everything, so the virgin could see how much fun being the top is. No fair."

Both Natalie and Vanetta had straightened their postures out of concern, the messy aftermath of the last event forgotten as Cheri's time with them quickly came to an end.

"Is there anything we can do…?" Natalie asked.

She knew she didn't need to be concerned for Cheri. Monsters were immortal, reincarnating into new bodies depending on what their assignment was. Cheri had just told them that. But seeing her companion of the last hour literally melt in front of her was hard to watch without some instinctual worry creeping in.

"Unfortunately, no," Cheri said with a huge sigh. She was trying to scoop her goo back into shape, but it wasn't working. She gave up and thrashed her legs petulantly, like a child throwing a tantrum, and lamented, "Seriously, not fair. I wanted to be spitroasted! One more round, please?"

Conceding to the futility of trying to rebuild her melting body parts, she collapsed onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, letting out a long sigh.

Her voice turned serious.

"I'll give you a freebie, then," she said. "Was gonna save this for your last question, but that's not an option anymore. A parting gift, for how delightful this has been… even if I really should've been more selfish with my requests." For the last bit, her voice returned to a pout, but she was back to matter-of-factness right after. "No beating around the bush. There's a secret vault in the Palace Basements, and there's certain requirements for getting it open—which no one has met yet. Requirements you two are delightfully poised to meet." She sounded amused as she glanced over at Vanetta, though she didn't elaborate what she meant. "Look for secret passages, trap doors, all of that nonsense, and you might get lucky enough to find the vault door. The reward will be crazy good if you manage to pass the trials and get it open, so try your hardest."

She was rapidly losing shape, the process of reverting to her primordial form accelerating as seconds ticked by. Natalie wanted to interrupt and say something herself, but she let Cheri have the stage; she didn't have time for an interjection.

"Anyway—toodles, cutie, stud." Her tone of voice took one last change, affecting an abrupt air of gravity and longing, an obviously melodramatic one. "Tell my family I died for a valiant cause, okay?" She draped a hand against her forehead and closed her eyes, body shuddering one final time. "May we meet again, dear friends, in brighter circumstances. Remember my sacrifice!"

With one last sigh, Cheri spread out across the floor in a pile of goo and went silent.

A long several moments passed.

"She's really so dramatic," Vanetta sighed.

Natalie scooted over and poked at the remains of Cheri's body. Despite not being worried about her actual fate, she couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness. If she'd had an erotite arrow or a capture core, she would have tried to bring her along. "Hopefully we really do see her again, eventually," she murmured.

"She was a pervert, but she was fine enough, I guess," Vanetta said. She was also frowning slightly as she looked at the green goo spread across the floor.

Finally, the two of them looked at each other. The same thought passed through their heads, probably. With Cheri gone, they remembered what had last happened between them. How enthusiastically Natalie had been pounding into her ass just two minutes prior.

Vanetta's spine straightened. Clearly intending to avoid broaching that subject—and Natalie did feel slightly compelled to, admittedly—she stated loudly, "We need to talk."

"We do?"

"About what she said. That last bit. While we were … distracted. The vault too."

Ah, yes. 'Distracted'. That was a good word for it.

Vanetta was right. She wracked her brain to remember the content and phrasing of Cheri's last reveal, which neither she nor Vanetta had been able to pay much attention to.

"Something at the bottom of the dungeon," Natalie murmured. "You really think that's it?"

"You know more than me about what's going on. But that's a theory that's been around forever, isn't it? That there's something at the bottom?"

"It does seem like there should be a final floor," Natalie said. "And there would obviously be some incredible reward there, if true. But no one's ever been past the twenty-second. There's twenty-five?"

"No one's been past the twenty-second floor that we know of," Vanetta pointed out. "Huge difference. Plus, it sounds like you, and some others, have powerful patrons to rely on. Your skills are already way too strong, and you aren't even to level five, much less twenty."

True. If regular people had managed to get that deep, what would the god-sponsored be able to do by the end of their career? Assuming they didn't die first, which was a pretty huge possibility.

"Who would've thought the class pervert was involved in such big events?" Vanetta muttered, standing and turning to walk over to her discarded armor. "Put your gear back on, you're distracting like that," she said, waving vaguely at Natalie. She scooped up and tossed Natalie's bra to her.

Natalie nearly got hit in the face by the pieces of metal, since her eyes had instantly locked to Vanetta's ass as she walked away. It was a rather amazing sight, especially with all that green goo clinging to her thighs and the redness from how eagerly Natalie had been pounding into her.

She realized what Vanetta had said a second later, and, unfortunately, she had probably proved her point by getting so quickly distracted by the girl's body.

"Class pervert?" Natalie asked. "At least use 'womanizer'. Pervert's too harsh."

"It's also accurate." She began to tug on her underwear, but paused before she'd even slipped a foot through. She wrinkled her nose as she looked down her body at all the slime, sweat, and grime covering her. Grime, because they had been rolling around on the dungeon floor. Hardly the most pristine of surfaces. "Got any of that cleaning stuff left, by the way?"