Chapter 176: The Long Way 3 – the value of extra layers

From the city, the group travelled south and east, along the coast. The southern areas of Azenia-Ra were colder. Not much so, the season would be adequately described as a cold spring, but enough to be noticeable. The frequency of rain in these parts was more outstanding than the depressed temperature, for most people.

The less pleasant climate and distance to the Stem were the two most pronounced reasons why the south of the Leaf was less populated than the north. That only the White Ice dungeon existed in that hemisphere did not help either, making adventurers in the area scarce. Less strong hands meant less people willing to contend with the dangerous wildlife. In turn, that limited the opportunity for the expansion of infrastructure. Poorer infrastructure meant people stuck to the north. As the years rolled by, the north kept expanding in its richness and the south continued to stagnate.

However, the people weren’t badly off. Predators in the area, although they possessed magical abilities, avoided humans for fear of retaliation. Even if it took an Adventurer to safely kill a bear that could shoot lightning, a mob of angry farmer folk could still slay the beast with their pitchforks. That safety in numbers gave them enough stability to till their fields. The soil was still fertile and losing a sheep every other week didn’t matter much when they could be bred all around the year.

Even the poor in Azenia-Ra had a stable existence. Criminality from the large cities was vastly more likely to kill a person than hunger was. Second were the animals in the wild.

Which was where the trio spotted the opportunity for some quick money. The villages they came through on their way were all happy to see a group of Adventurer’s visit their neck of the woods. Similarly, they were happy to make their surroundings a little bit safer.

It had started with the richest man in a town the three walked through approaching them with a simple offer: a gold coin for the head of a large stag. The beast had developed a taste for the rare crops the man grew and he wanted it gone before it could devastate him more economically or before someone ended skewered on its antlers.

At first, they wanted to refuse. They hadn’t been approached like this before. Largely due to the north being safer, but Apexus no longer appearing like a skeleton wearing a robe certainly helped as well. Regardless, it struck them as odd and they had never been a trio of particularly sociable individuals.

Aclysia did raise the argument that they could use additional money and Apexus did think that stag sounded tasty. Reysha was inclined to agree. They promised the man to try and he led them to the field where the stag often searched for food.

The same night, the stag appeared. He was an impressive specimen, with large, pointy antlers and a bulky body. Impressive, but no challenge for the three of them. Through exhaustion and a few well-placed bites and stabs, they subdued the beast. It was the first time Apexus really used his jaws in combat. The simplicity of the motion gave the bite a lot of persistent power, he discovered.

They presented the head of the stag to the man, who paid them as agreed. When asked what happened with the rest of the body, the group lied that they had buried it in the forest for religious reasons. While finding that odd, the man didn’t raise it to the trio.

The three moved on and decided that, maybe, they could take other such jobs while they were at it. Hunting was something they would do either way and if they had to invest an extra day or two to get some money out of it, that was a fair deal. In subsequent villages they came through, they spent a moment to ask if there was a bothersome animal that needed slaying. Whenever the answer was yes, they would track it down by whatever means available and make short work of it. Even the largest bear in the wilderness had less bite strength than a Myrm.

None of the following quests paid as handsomely as the first one, but the group still raked in a considerable amount of money. The time they needed to get to their destination went from three days to a whole week, but the size of their purse also swelled to more than three gold. There was a glut of easy missions for adventurers and they just so happened to be the first that had come by in a while.

They continued along the coast and eventually reached the largest town in the area. Most people went there because it was the best place to buy a crossing from this continent to the one in the southeast of the Leaf. The group was more interested in the thick fur clothes that could be bought there. All of the extra money they had made quickly vanished again into the fur-lined clothes. Nobody in the local area needed them, so their value was inflated immensely, but the group needed them a lot.

At the very least, Reysha did. What they bought for Apexus and Aclysia in addition was primarily to stay safe. They did not yet know exactly how their bodies would react to extreme cold and they were not willing to venture into that territory without any preparations.

All of the final preparations done, they set out to the small continent in the southeast. Not by ferry, as was usual in this locality, but by wing. For one, because the ferry wouldn’t have taken them directly to White Ice. Instead, it would deliver them to the northernmost tip of the continent, where the sister city of their current one was located. The ferryman did it for understandable economic reasons. The group had no reason to take that detour when they could fly.

With Apexus’ fully presentable humanoid form came two advantages. First off, he actually had the strength to carry Reysha without morphing into the four-legged shape. By extension, because he looked like a regular enough adventurer, they didn’t need to search for a point around the strait where they were safe from spying eyes. Once they were done with their business in the city, they simply walked to the pier and took off.

They did discover some issues with this way of doing things on the trip. Princess-carrying Reysha worked over short distances, they had tested that previously, but the day-long flight was a different beast altogether. Because the slime flew at a horizontal tilt, holding Reysha sideways under him added an extreme amount of drag. It wasn’t pleasant for Reysha either, to have her body rest on only two arms for over four hours. It would have been an additional six, had they not been lucky enough to spot a rock to land on, revealed by the ebb.

There, they experimented for about 10 minutes on how to make things more comfortable. Going for the full morph would have been a waste of energy. Instead, they found that Apexus broadening his back was all they really needed. As long as Reysha fit between his wings without obstructing their movement, she could hold onto his neck and stay pressed against him.

Travelling the rest of the way with Reysha laying on top of Apexus was smoother in terms of drag and when it came to her comfort. It didn’t look as romantic, but efficiency was more important than appearances.

“Solid fucking ground, I love you!” Reysha declared regardless, when they finally landed. She fell on her knees and smooched the grass repeatedly, before dropping down and rolling around in it like a feline would in catnip. Stopping only when the vertigo made her stomach churn, the redhead then exploded into laughter.

“You will stain your clothes,” Aclysia reprimanded.

“Fuck my clothes, I am ALIVE!” Reysha shouted. This was the second time they had been in the air for that amount of time and it left the tiger girl no less euphoric when it was over than the first. “I’m meant to CLIMB onto high places. Cats belong in the sky as much as pigs do.”

“Why mention pigs specifically?” Apexus asked, raising an eyebrow.

Reysha attempted to answer, but burst out into another series of laughter when seeing Apexus. The slime’s torso was disproportionately wide, with his arms, legs, and head all remaining the same size as before. It looked like someone had stuck tree branches into a wooden crate, in human form.

“I am pleased that my bodily exploits continue to amuse you,” Apexus spoke his true feelings, even as he ‘slimmed down’ to his regular width. “Aclysia, could you explain?”

“’When pigs fly’ is a hyperbolic figure of speech used to describe impossibilities, darling,” the metal fairy was quick to answer, hovering over to her beloved slime and hugging him. “Why pigs in particular, I sadly cannot offer a resolution.”

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Apexus took what he could get. “When pigs fly,” he slowly repeated, careful to move his lips in accordance to the sounds produced by the wooden plates on the roof of his mouth. At the same time, he picked up Aclysia and held her like a princess. “Weird turn of phrase.”

“The majority of them are,” the metal fairy conceded, wrapping her arms around the humanoid slime. As little as she liked to admit it, she was feeling envious that she had to go a whole ten hours without cuddles, while Reysha got to hug him the entire time. Keeping body contact like this served to recharge the mana she had expended to fly, but that was just an excuse. In reality, it was all about the hug itself.

Apexus indulged her further by pulling her in close and kissing her lips. Happily wiggling in his arms, Aclysia only lamented that her lover lacked a permanent tongue. The tentacle he used as a replacement was only present during sexual engagements and too thick to be used during making out anyway. The contact of their lips felt great, but she would have liked that little extra.

They were done by the time Reysha was done cackling. “Wide-pexus,” she snorted, as she got up.

“As predicted, you have gotten grass spots all over your clothes,” Aclysia berated, still being held by Apexus.

“And?” Reysha gestured down on the casual shirt and baggy pants combo she was wearing. “Just adds to my wild, rugged charm.”

“Tomboy,” Aclysia offered an alternative word.

“Whatever ya wanna call it, bubble butt, I am hotter than the Hellroots.” The tiger girl tossed her red mane back with a strong swing of her head and grinned madly. “Tell her, sexy slime.”

“Dunno,” Apexus flippantly shot back. “I have no measure for how hot the Hellroots are. Therefore, I cannot agree.”

“Don’t you go logical on me,” Reysha complained. “I thought we had an agreement to bully Aclysia until she does some adorable pouting.”

“I am already holding all the adorable that I need,” Apexus said and smiled at his angel.

Aclysia’s magical pulse skipped a beat, seeing that incredibly charming expression on his handsome face. She let out a number of girly squeals, while waving her legs. ‘It is possible to love him more,’ she thought to herself and obsessively gazed at the humanoid slime who was now, in personality and appearance, all she wanted in her partner. “I love you, darling!” she exclaimed and went in for a second serving of cuddles. She was falling so deeply for him; it would have been scary had it not been so delightful.

Apexus chuckled and carried her, while they made their way away from the shore. “You need to let go soon,” he softly told her. “We need to hunt something soon.”

Aclysia held on until the very last moment.

_______________________________________________________________________________

“Cold is vile,” Apexus declared, about a day later.

They had eaten, slept and made their way south. The mountains that dominated the south pole of the Leaf had soon come into view. As they approached them, they experienced the same phenomena as they had when walking into the volcanic landscape or the desert to the north. Just that, rather than rising, the temperature rapidly dropped.

That he wasn’t good at retaining heat, Apexus already knew. The outer membrane of his slime was effectively just human skin and the layer of thickened slime underneath was essentially the same as the minimal layers of fat his fellow humanoids had, in terms of temperature conduction. This meant that, all things being equal, Apexus experienced the cold in essentially the same way as a human would. If there was a tangible difference, then it was that he could regulate exactly how much energy he burned to stay warm.

It was a lot.

“Snow sucks,” he added, not liking the crunchy white under his feet at all. It reflected the sunlight with blinding radiance, made noises with every step he took, stuck to his boots, and was incredibly cold.

“Just put on your winter clothes already,” Reysha told him, herself covered in layers of additional clothes. They were primarily fashioned from furs. Apexus hated them. They covered up Reysha’s natural, sweet scent with leather and her sexy curves with fuzz.

“It would be advisable,” Aclysia reinforced. The metal fairy didn’t wear anything extra. The cold was taking a toll on her own magical heat regulation, but it affected her way less than Apexus. In the first place, her being warm existed primarily to mimic the humanoids in whose image she was created. Apexus warmth was his stamina and if he was cold, the speed of his motions suffered.

Grumbling, the slime conceded and they took a short break for him to put on the extra clothes. Brown and furry, he put several layers of cloth and tanned animal skin on himself.

“It is working,” he admitted by the end, but he wasn’t happy about it. Clothes were a sacrifice to his bodily freedom that he made hesitatingly to fit into public order. Wearing extra clothes to ward against environmental factors was a surrender of his dignity and to nature to Apexus. “I need to eat something with cold resistance capabilities,” he said. “I don’t like extra layers.”

“Tell me about it,” Reysha sighed, not quite as unhappy but far from content. “Somebody give me a bodysuit that insulates perfectly!”

They stomped on.

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