Drip-Fed

Being Noticed 5 – Growth and Relaxation

Apexus had never taken well to tools.Forks to eat had been shunned whenever he could. Abacuses were ignored during math lessons even if the head calculations took longer. Swords, spears, axes, armour, no armament had ever been utilized. Apexus only ever had made use of the environment for surprise factors. A dropped boulder or a crumbling ledge, that was the sort of utility he used. For everything else, he had always preferred the gracious arsenal of his body.

So why had he suddenly turned icicles into spears?

The humanoid chimera ripped the icicle out of the corpse’s chin. It felt as alien as tools usually did in his hand, making his usage of it minutes ago that much more puzzling.

“I don’t know,” was the answer he finally gave.

“Guess you picked up some stuff by seeing it?” Korith theorized.

Apexus could neither confirm nor deny and so he opted to say nothing. This was an annoying occurrence where immediate answers weren’t even obscure, they were simply not visible. All he could do was eat the drake.

It took quite a while to eat a beast of this size. Reysha helped, devouring a whole lot more than her feminine frame would indicate she should be able to eat. All the same, she devoured no more than 5% of the beast, leaving the rest for Apexus to devour.

About halfway through the process, he felt the familiar tingle of his instincts expanding. Having hunted and devoured the apex existence of this biome presented him with the chance to acquire another Growth permanently.

A Blizzard Drake had several organs worth acquisition. The scales and claws of the beast both would make for a splendid replacement for the sturdy but brittle crystals he currently used for those purposes. The back muscles of the creature could serve in allowing him to fly faster. However, he found a more interesting organ after some searching.

It was a secondary magical cortex. Connected to his own, already a copy of the draconic equivalent, it worked not specifically as a conduit of mana but as a magnet for it. It was this organ that had allowed the dragon to suck the atmospheric magic into its mouth and also this organ that had woven the spell for the breath attack.

Its function was impressive. Currently Apexus was capable of vomiting forth his stomach acid if he so needed – which was never. It was an undignified attack and practically never the best move to make. A proper breath attack added both area damage and range to his repertoire. An additional argument for it was its relative smallness, being just a ring of cartilage-esque material sitting between mouth and throat.

Giving it a test before choosing it was... difficult. Without permanent acquisition, the humanoid chimera was bound to the original dimensions. He had to grow an entire dragon head from his back. Reysha laughed when he walked around like a dragon-shelled tortoise. A couple of tries with the organ taught him that it was intuitive enough. It had its limitations, a recovery period, but it was still an extra weapon at minimum.

After the drake had been almost fully devoured and the organ acquired, its evolved capacities to be tested another day, Apexus and Reysha joined Aclysia and Korith in the Mobile Estate. They had not wanted to stay out in the cold, just watching their partners eat.

“I’ll boil this out in the garden,” Reysha said, carrying a few cuts of meat to the door. A new batch of the spice of magic was needed.

Apexus walked through the overly spacious living room. His eyes momentarily drifted over their books and keepsakes, stacked onto one of the now few shelves. Korith’s Hoardcoin, scraps of broken equipment, unsellable and thusly kept for memory, the half of the Sparkeater core, next to the even larger chunk of crystallized soul they had salvaged from the Greater Parasyte.

He reached the couch and the blushing duo on it. Their state of undress and lingering short breath betrayed what they had gotten up to in his absence. He sat down between them, his emerald wings shrunk down to ornamental decorations between his shoulders. Sitting with them was possible, but this was just easier.

Shrinking and resizing his Growths had become much easier in recent weeks. What once would have taken him minutes of reabsorption could now be done in seconds. Additionally, the amount of biomass he could now carry in a condensed state was astounding. Perhaps he would be able to fully absorb and recreate Growths soon, rather than just resize them.

“Once we get into the city, we should find a carpenter,” Aclysia greeted her darling, while nuzzling up to him.

“Agreed,” Apexus said. “We have too much space now.”

“Any ideas yet what we’ll do with the other two rooms?” Korith wondered. “Maybe we can have private rooms? Doesn’t really feel necessary, but with this much space, why not?”

“I would suggest a guest room first,” Aclysia opined. “As you say, privacy may be nice but is not necessary with our close-knit engagement. A second bedroom, however, may be necessary if we are ever to take on escort missions.”

“Do we plan to do that?” Korith asked.

“Could be good money.”

“We do plan to do that now!”

Apexus hummed in amusement at the ease at which Korith could be convinced. Through the wooden wall, they picked up the clanking of metal. Reysha was setting up the pots and fireplace needed for extraction of the Spice of Magic. The original instructions had said that Healing Fountain water was needed for the process. They had found out that generally magic-enriched water also did the trick, something Apexus had prepared in his alchemical lab with relative ease.

“A new bedroom for one of the chambers then. Any suggestions for the other?” Apexus asked.

“I would like a general use study,” Aclysia said.

“Oh, yeah, that’d be good,” Korith agreed. “Just a quiet room to read and do paperwork.”

“We will need more shelves and tables…”

They spent the next half hour making a list of new furniture they needed.