No Need for a Core?

Moriko couldn't help but be a tiny bit disappointed when Kazue mastered transforming her wings; the show had been entertaining on more than one level. But amusement and lewding on her wife were going to have to wait. It was time to hit the road once more, this time with 'Ruby' in tow. She couldn't believe they were babysitting a princess who was getting over a breakup.

They were still traveling along the coast, which gave them some opportunities to practice their newest abilities with a reasonable amount of privacy. While any significant river or cove would have at least a small fishing village nearby, it wasn't a great area for farming and there was little to no reason to build a town separate from the existing settlements. This meant there were large areas where they could expect to only meet fellow travelers, and all they had to do was be far enough off the road to not be visible.

Although, not being visible was harder than one might think, given the nature of their new abilities. Kazue needed space to figure out how to fly with her wings, with enough room for Moriko to catch her when things went inevitably wrong.

The kitsune also found that the fey penchant for glamour worked well with her talent for magic that touched on the border of dreams and reality, and many fey had an innate ability to communicate with spirits. She could still only have two bonded with her, but she could 'hear' them a bit more clearly. Being able to understand them better made Kazue happy, and she was certain that she'd be able to speak with most spirits more easily now.

Princess Bridgette was already a sorceress, so from a certain point of view, this just gave her more magic to work with. But it did flavor her magic somewhat, especially her conjurations which now were always more fey variations of creatures she could already summon.

She'd also never had a knack for any plant-based spells before but now found herself able to quickly grow and manipulate them, though only in a general sense. She could give them a direction or cause them to be extra thick brambles or vines, but only within the limitations of how they might normally grow in the right environment. She couldn't sculpt them precisely.

She could, however, make flowering plants briefly bloom with phoenix fire, the flames blooming from the flower buds as they opened. The bursts weren't particularly powerful, but they could be surprising and in the right circumstance someone might be surrounded by several flowers. And if she directed it carefully, she could also heal with the flames. But both fire magic and fey magic could be tricky and temperamental, mixing the two was best done well away from others. Besides, it wasn't like there were many phoenix-powered sorceresses about; her identity would be fairly easy to guess for anyone with sufficient knowledge.

Moriko was pleased with her boon as well. Okay, it was a pain to have to spend effort to walk like a normal person, but being able to run on air with such ease was exhilarating. She couldn't truly fly, but she loved running anyway so this was fine by her. And really, all of her wind and air techniques came easier to her now, making her a fully aerial combatant.

Which was something that Kazue was a long ways away from. She was like a baby bird with all that flapping about, and there wasn't much Moriko could do to help her out, as her way of taking to the air was entirely different. This was Kazue's personal reason for wanting to practice in private.

She was pretty certain that Kazue could learn faster if she bonded with an air spirit for a few days, but the woman was rather reluctant to release either of her current spirits for fear that they might be a bit fragile, especially her liminal spirit.

With their travel days shortened in order to accommodate their training time, it took them over three weeks to make it to the next significant port. Kazue chose to not display her wings as a default to avoid drawing even more attention, at least for now. They weren't even hoping to avoid all notice, but there was no need to draw every eye while simply walking down the street either.

Moriko reserved a pair of rooms while the two redheads started off shopping, as they were both more enthusiastic about it than she was. Mind, Moriko enjoyed shopping plenty, but she did not have the level of enthusiasm that the other two had. She was also happy to see Kazue bonding with a new friend. Becoming a dungeon had been hard on the rather social kitsune, and having this relationship with a peer seemed to be doing her a lot of good.

The shopping highlighted a slight twist of irony; it was now easier for Moriko and Kazue to buy things than it was for 'Ruby'. Smaller items bought with coin were the same, but with their enchanted seals they were clearly well off and probably nobility, and one did not need to recognize the seal in order to understand that much. The symbology was fairly straightforward and easily associated with the Azeria Mountain Dungeon, so setting up an order to be paid for when merchandise reached the dungeon was easy. While Princess Bridgette had a personal seal, Ruby did not.

However, they avoided creating any immediate personal debts; turning over goods now to be paid later via an unverified seal was riskier than delivering goods to a known location to be purchased there, and they wanted to secure the reputation of their personal seals.

They spent three days to rest and restock before continuing on, and Moriko was happy to use those few days of privacy to enjoy Kazue's company more thoroughly. Camping out with Ruby did not leave quite enough privacy for intimate encounters. In a large group with tents enchanted to give more privacy, it would be a different matter, but neither she nor Kazue felt comfortable with the idea of having the princess isolated every night, so they were all sharing a larger tent where Ruby could have her own bedroll.

They hadn't even needed tents when they had started their journey, but it was autumn now and nearing the equinox, which left the evenings a little chill. But Moriko did have hope they would make it back home before the first light snows, the mountains were already in sight and they would be turning eastward soon.

She rather wished that they had a fourth traveling companion, someone to physically spar with. Moriko had practiced with her new abilities as much as she could, and she tested herself against the spells both of the other women could throw at her, but a more physical clash was what she needed to push herself and she could only get in a little bit of sparring while they were in the city.

Moriko was very much looking forward to being able to spar with Mordecai and Betty again, amongst other activities involving her husband. Really, as fun as it was to go on this tour of the country, most of the excitement seemed to be back home. Even the sewer was beginning to sound like an interesting area.

Mordecai and Kazue had spent the first week after opening up the earth zone on expanding the uppermost sewer zone and evolving new inhabitants. This included isolating part of the sewers to maintain a wild preserve. Most of the wild creatures here had an insufficient mind and sense of self to fall under the aegis of Kazue's boon, but there were some that had evolved far enough to need to be preserved by her boon. Unfortunately, not all such creatures were willing to accept the offer of becoming inhabitants and there was no safe way to release them, so they needed a habitat.

Unless, of course, they had already tripped her boon, which almost all of them had during the invasion. These were now in containment cells where they would be safe, a requirement of the boon given that they didn't have a way to release them safely or into safety. This wasn't sustainable in the long term, but it was a start while they worked on figuring out a better long-term solution.

The ones that did accept their offer became the basis for their new inhabitant types.

Once the sewers were tamed, they went to work on evolving their new inhabitants. The small slimes at the top of the sewers grew into nearly spherical shapes with a firm boundary, though still malleable. This outer skin could shift between textured, smooth, sticky, slippery, and crystal-hard. This combined with the ability to control their internal fluids and hydraulic pressure to make them into a very bouncy, mobile sort of slime. And floating in the center of each was a crystal core - their heart and brain.

In combat, they could fling themselves with concussive force at opponents, and their shape was malleable enough that they could form spikes or create a sharp edge around their center and make themselves spin.

These bouncing slimes were mostly translucent, and would not be very bright at first. They didn't really feel pain, and fighting was more akin to a game for them, which made them hard to predict. Their intellect and understanding would grow over time, but the smarter ones would also tend to migrate deeper into the dungeon as they grew stronger.

Kazue spent an inordinate amount of time and effort making sure that the slimes naturally made cute sounds with every squish and bounce, and tweaked them to make sure that they each had three dimples to make a natural 'face' when their surface was relaxed.

The next set of evolutions for the bouncers involved their internal chemistry and alchemy. When their surface was ruptured, their internal fluid would react with the air to create various effects, and the slimes were color-coded to match. Green for acid, red for fire, blue for cold, yellow for lightning, brown for toxic fumes, steel-gray for an explosion of crystal shards, black for a sleep-inducing gas, pink for an intoxicating gas, and purple for a hallucinogen.

Cracking the core to kill one of these slimes without rupturing the skin was difficult, but there were both martial techniques and spells that could do so. The reward was the ability to safely collect a large amount of the alchemical mixture inside of each slime. While the residue inside of a slime that had been ruptured certainly had alchemical uses, the original fluid was much more potent.

These slimes began showing up one at a time amongst the original bouncers but became more numerous as one went deeper. At about the same time, crystal crabs began to show themselves. They were based on Crios's design, but were much smaller, beginning at about the size of a house cat and eventually getting as big as a large dog. Though the shine of their crystal carapaces would give them away when they moved, they were very good at burrowing into the mud and launching an ambush from close range.

But getting distracted too much by the potential ambush from below could be dangerous. The bunbee boss Queen Beeatrix had a hive full of minions that she could send at delvers, and would present herself as a challenge before a team could pass on to the third sewer zone.

Unlike the normal combat route, the sewers did not have a differentiation in theme between zones, so the inhabitants that delvers would encounter simply increased in variety and power. For the third zone, the dungeon added mud slugs. Kazue was not initially thrilled by the idea, but Mordecai showed her an image of the mud-colored slugs with an adorable smiling face on the front. That made her giggle, even if there was a note of horror in her mental voice. She conceded after he added the idea of them making cute burbling sounds and occasional chirps of steam-like whistles.

Mud slugs could spit globs of mud with enough force to knock opponents back and possibly make them fall over. That same mud also made it harder to get up again, and if given the opportunity the mud slugs would focus on a fallen foe, battering them with a continual barrage of mud balls. In deeper zones, the mud balls could also contain a rocky center, be sticky, acidic, or any combination thereof. This was where the slimes also gained the ability to shoot crystal shards that converted into the corresponding alchemical reaction after they hit.

The boss for this zone could be either Umbrowl or Annur, their new crystal elemental boss, though a sufficient swarm of other creatures could suffice for a boss-tier encounter.

In the fourth sewer zone, they added magic to the bouncing slimes. Mordecai and Kazue worked out a list of minor spells that could be used repeatedly and a smaller selection of more powerful spells that the bouncers could only use a few times. After that, they would need to rest for a while to restore their mana pools before the more powerful spells could be used again.

Each slime had access to one random minor spell and two of the more powerful spells, both of which drew on the same pool of mana. There was also no theming between the slime's alchemical properties and which spells they had access to, making encounters with them more difficult to prepare for. The addition of magic for the bouncers was inspired by their spellslime, Aiden, who was the boss most likely to be encountered for this zone. Sarcomaag could also act as a boss here if he grew only one of his mushroom trees, and given that he was now a raid boss too he could form an appropriate number of mushroom trees to act as a boss for any deeper zones.

The fifth sewer zone was easy to develop. The sewer already had mushrooms and other fungi, now they just had to encourage the growth of mushrooms of the same sort that grew in the mushroom forest and have some of the giant trap door spiders from the mushroom forest immigrate too. Klastoria was quite comfortable here, and Sporewhisp, their pixie-druid, didn't mind the space either and was quite happy to charge about on the back of Glimmermold, her porcini boar mount and companion.

The sixth and seventh sewer zones saw the introduction of swamp drakes and crabbits while the slimes became faster and stronger, and their colors no longer reflected their alchemical aspects.

Jasi the naga, Kulle the kelpie, and Tohil the feathered serpent were willing to do their part as bosses of the sixth sewer zone as needed, though not eager. The same could be said for Nezha and Ysi, the masima dragon bosses of the wetlands.

Carmilla on the other hand... Kazue and Mordecai didn't even bother asking. She might be their swamp witch, but neither of them could imagine her fighting in a sewer for less than truly dire cause.

While they now had the inhabitants for the sewer route worked out, only the upper levels were as complex as they wanted. The original intent of the sewer zone was simply an emergency kill zone, but with the boon Mordecai had chosen, there was a need to make it a legitimate route. That did not mean it had to be easy.

In fact, the finishing touches Mordecai added were potentially lethal traps. This part of the construction Kazue left in his hands, it was still not something she was ready to deal with. The only reason he was willing to add traps that would kill if they were not dealt with properly was their ability to rescue a person just at the edge of death, on either side. Which was going to be part of the restrictions for this route, but the announcement of that was going to have to wait.

Their attention had been caught by the arrival of an airship in a clearing just outside of the trading post. The airship had markings for Trionea, and it wasn't hard to guess who this visitor was going to be.