The door to the boss arena swung open and the trio walked inside with a more relaxed attitude than normal. A spherical room opened up before them, a room filled with a sickeningly sweet smell, so thick, Apexus could taste it on his membrane. That was only the third most disgusting thing inside it. Second was the liquid that filled most of the room. The same goo that enveloped the Myrm pooled about a metre deep all around. At that quantity, it proved to have an ever so slightly, dull green tint to it. Stone walkways and pillars with flat tops gave routes to avoid sinking into the disgusting mess.

Just like the smell was topped by the liquid it originated from, the liquid was topped by the creature that created it. A blob of pink meat sat in the middle of the room, ten metres across and possessing only tube-like protrusions that laid flat, hanging from its flabby shape. A long snorkel connected it to a feeding tube in the ceiling. The wet, squelching sounds it produced would have been even worse, had Apexus and Aclysia not illuminated much of the room.

Reysha retched. All ease she felt was extinguished by the sight of the boss monster. “The guide really undersold the disgusting part. I’m not eating that.”

“More for me then,” Apexus said.

“You want to devour that… I don’t even know how to describe it mockingly… bloated phlegm factory?”

“I’ve had worse. We covered that before,” Apexus said and tilted his head. “Doesn’t even look that bad to me.”

“It’s disgusting!” Reysha shouted and, as if to prove her exclamation, one of the floppy tubes erected and splurted out a new batch of slime. Most of it, it poured over itself. Several centimetres thick, the vicious fluids slowly ran down the bloated abomination. The rest flowed into the pool, where it lubricated the tunnels that the Myrm used to travel. “If ‘disgusting’ had a living concept, then that bloated mount of fuckery there would be it!” She averted her eyes and instead pointed at the much more pleasing metal fairy. “Aclysia agrees.”

Aclysia did indeed agree. Due to her lack of a stomach, she wasn’t retching, but she was a less pleasing variance of pale at the moment and her face was contorted into a grimace that reflected the utter disdain she felt for what she was seeing. Trying to distract herself with logic, she said, “Darling isn’t a visual predator, nor does he have to consider traditional diseases. It does make sense that he isn’t visually taken aback by the same things we are.”

“Well, go eat it then,” Reysha waved off, holding her nose with the other hand. Her voice becoming nasally, she added an extra posh accent to it. “Apexus, be a dear and remove your meal from my presence. Bathe yourself thoroughly after you’re done. Your slime pleases my royal quim, but this goo shall not touch any of my blessed skin.”

“What blessed your skin?” Apexus wondered.

“Cocoa beans, how else ya think I look this smooth and sexy?”

“Cocoa beans sound tasty.”

“They are.”

Aclysia cleared her throat, both to actually clear it and to get their attention. “May I remind you of the pre-agreed combat strategy. Chances that you can stay clear of the slime are dwindling, Reysha.”

“Urgh,” the tiger girl made an annoyed sound. “Eww,” she followed it up after looking at the basin filled with goo again. Her blue eyes wandered on to the boss and she resigned herself to her fate. “I’ll suffer what I must, I guess…”

As much as Apexus may have wanted to eat the boss, there was no way for him to start the devouring process while the entirety of the monster was covered in such a thick layer of mucus. Thanks to the dungeon guide, they were already aware of that circumstance. It was the challenge for everyone who got there after all. Killing something that size which was covered in liquid armour, was impossible with any weapons people of the appropriate level had access too. The boss monster was, in fact, not designed to be a combat encounter at all.

It was a puzzling and coordination exercise.

There were two ways to defeat the boss, a quick and messy one, and a slow and relatively clean one. Both hinged on several machinations found all across the room. Levers, valves, and buttons that adjusted the speed at which slime was drained into the tunnels, how nutrients pumped into the boss abomination and how warm it was..

The quick strategy was to increase the heat in the room, increase the speed at which the slime drained away, and seal the nutrient delivery. By doing all of that, the boss would dry up and die, like a slug sprinkled with salt. It was incredibly messy because the valves to increase the slime drainage were underneath the surface of the goo.

The slower strategy was to concentrate on raising the level of slime in the room and give the boss even more to eat. All of those levers were above the surface and high pillars scattered throughout the room could be climbed, keeping everyone involved clean. Once it was dead, the proverbial floodgates would open automatically, draining the room and leaving the loot accessible. It just took a lot more patience.

Given the existence of the guide, the puzzling part of the dungeon had been largely neutralized. Simply following instructions as to what lever or valve to interact with at what time streamlined what would have been a thought exercise. Regardless, the dungeon fulfilled its educational purpose for adventurers; to show them that not every dungeon is defeated through violence.

Aclysia had suggested they go with the quicker strategy, Apexus had been ambivalent, and Reysha had agreed to get this done as soon as possible. Something that the two women came to minorly regret, while Apexus was now fully in support of that decision. If they defeated the boss the slow way, they would have to wait for an additional time for all the slime to get off it. Before Apexus devoured his target, he could not permanently acquire his nose.

“…Should I strip…?” Reysha thought out loud. “It’d be like three times more disgusting to swim in that naked, but I don’t want that to seep into all of my armour.”

“It would probably be a wise idea,” Aclysia agreed and the redhead started to slip out of her leather armour. Each piece she handed over to the metal fairy, who stored it in the appropriate bag. As the designated instruction’s reader, Aclysia would not participate in the goo-diving and therefore held everything that couldn’t be put away. This also included Apexus’ robe.

“I became an adventurer to be rich, powerful, and free,” Reysha complained, while sliding out of her pants and panties. “Now I have to jump into some fucking snot.”

“It is doubtful anybody who acquired power gets handed them without often unpleasant effort,” Aclysia pointed out.

“Said the immortal angel with the round ass of a seductive demon,” Reysha cracked one last joke, before looking over to Apexus. “What are the chances you actually don’t need my help and I stripped without reason.” She looked down on herself and cupped her breasts, jiggling them around for the fun of it. “Not that I should need any reason to strip.”

“We’ll see in a moment.” The slime jumped into the viscous liquid without hesitation and slowly sank down. Now that he had made contact with it, Apexus felt a hint of the discomfort the girls were experiencing. It wasn’t disgust, in his case, but mere physical inconvenience, like being in a place where the air was too humid. The goo was difficult to swim or wade through and the way it clung to his feathers, hair, and the fur of his fox ears, was just awful.

Regardless, he reached the first of the valves. It was a circular, metal wheel. With both him and the valve under the surface, it wasn’t that difficult to grasp. “Left or right?” Apexus asked the metal fairy hovering above him.

“Twist it left,” Aclysia instructed and her beloved started working on it. Even with his grip secure, Apexus couldn’t get the thing to budge.

“No fucking choice then,” Reysha resigned herself to her fate and walked up to the edge of the clean stone path. With one hop, she got it over with, sinking down to her navel into the green-tinted slime. “Gods, this is so gross. Why would any use their divine powers to make this? Some sick fucking fetish?” she kept complaining while wading over to Apexus. “Let me try and let’s get this over with…”

Reysha put her hands on the valve and tried turning it, with as little success as Apexus had. They then both grabbed the wheel, Reysha pulling while Apexus tried to turn it. Gathering all the physical force they could muster, they got the valve to give. It was a sudden turn, causing the pulling tiger girl to slip and fall backwards into the goo.

After a moment of being fully submerged, Reysha broke back through the surface. “FUCKING GROSS!” she shouted, trying to wipe the thick goo off her face.

Apexus was at least inclined to agree. Usually, he loved seeing Reysha glisten, but that was also because of the sweat she worked up during more pleasurable activities. The viscous droops that fell from her hair were entirely unattractive. The snotty membrane that was created between her arms and the surface of the slime pool just made him want to scrub her down and make her smooth and clean like she usually was.

“We’ll cuddle in a bath after this,” he promised.

“Fuck cuddling, I’ll need you to put your tentacle dick so far up my cunt you’ll scrape all of me clean,” Reysha declared, wading towards their next target. “This is the kind of punishment I’d deserve in the afterlife if I don’t clean up the mess I helped make. I’ve been a good kitten recently, so can’t I get a break while I’m trying to redeem myself in life?!” Apexus snickered. “What’s so funny, Bignose?”

“From what I understand about religious teachings, I don’t think good kittens ask for tentacles to penetrate them deeper than the average humanoid can.”

“Good slimes would put a tentacle in all three of my holes. Anal is fun.”

“I don’t think that hole is made for that.”

“Well, this hole is made for eating and I still crack the best jokes with it,” Reysha said, pointing at her lips. “And, you know, deepthroat your dicks. Give a girl some triple penetration, would you? I've never experienced that.”

“Are you earnest in that claim?” Aclysia asked. “I do not wish to offend, but you are somewhat of a nymphomaniac Reysha…”

“Why would ya say ‘I do not wish to offend’ and then follow that up with a compliment, bubble butt?”

Aclysia sighed at the interruption. “Because I sometimes forget you are utterly depraved in every aspect. To the point, as I understand it, you liberally engaged in sexual conduct before you met darling. I thought you would have experienced all you wanted before. I cannot imagine you were lacking in suitors, given how attractive you are.”

“First off, I kinda was but I also wasn’t. Ya know, a surprising amount of people don’t want to stick their dick in kinda crazy. I mean, I get it, given what happens around me all the time. Anyway, second, I got action regularly, but not as often as ya may think and, third, it is almost impossible to get two guys naked together, let alone three. Never even got two guys to fuck me at the same time.”

“I can understand that,” Apexus chimed in. “I don’t even like hearing about you having been with other males. If you had sex with another man in front of me, I think I’d do something very unfun. Don’t quite know what though, depends on the situation.”

“I get that,” Reysha nodded in a serious fashion. “I only slept with them because it felt good though. I stick with ya because I really, really, like ya, so you got that on everyone else. Plus, you make me climax a lot, so that really helps this nympho kitty.” She giggled again in her usual, carefree, way.

They kept chatting about this and other topics to distract themselves from the environment. Going from one valve to the next was an exhausting and eww-inducing task, but it wasn’t difficult as long as they had light and the guide. It also got a bit easier with time as the slime came to be shallower the more progress they made.

While Apexus and Reysha were busy with the dirty work, Aclysia hovered around the room following the rest of the guide. With wings and magical flight, reaching the buttons and levers for temperature and food control was tremendously easy. Some of the buttons were at the top of climbing obstacles on the wall, others were at the end of a series of rising pillars that had to be jumped up on to reach.

Usually, someone risked dropping into the goo when failing such a trial, but Aclysia could just hover up to her destination. The buttons were easy, the levers she somewhat struggled with, but both were easier than the often stuck valves her teammates had to contend with.

Distressed sounds came from the abomination as it noticed the changes in its environment. The lower half of its body, previously submerged, was now laid bare. It tried to counteract this by splurting more mucus over itself, but that solution became untenable once it was disconnected from the steady stream of nutrients.

The temperature rose, to summerly degrees, after Aclysia flipped the final switch, and the group came together to sit and talk more. Waiting for the boss to die wasn’t pleasant. Much like with the Volcano Tearer, the group would have preferred to bring it to a swift end. Since that wasn’t really an option, they tried to ignore as best they could. The more overt discomfort they experienced while waiting was the slime drying on their bodies. It turned into a hardened layer that was both flacky and crystalline. Apexus got rid of it pretty reliably by expanding his body but Reysha had to keep scratching herself to get any of it off. Both of them suffered from the amount that had seeped into their hair (or feathers), however. Only a good bath would remove that.

“Absolutely disgusting boss,” Reysha put her final complaint out after a series of loud, metalic, clunks from within the cave walls announced the death of the abomination. “I’d rather risk my life again than do this.”

“You sure you don’t want to eat any of that?” Apexus asked, looking at the massive pile of meat ready for consumption. It was a pink mountain of fat, skin, and muscles. Visually it wasn’t all that appealing, but meat was meat.

“…fuck it, I’m hungry…” Reysha submitted to her bodily needs.