At Candy’s insistence, I ate both meat pies. I admittedly didn’t take much convincing. They were really good.
It was weird being in the Tavern Crew’s space all alone. It was even weirder that I couldn’t just text them to check in. They had only just left, really, but they were fully gone. To the degree that if they never returned, they would have practically vanished into thin air. I hoped they would be alright. Mercenary work couldn’t be safe. What would happen if one of them died?
I was spiralling again. But being in this world was going to take a very long time to adjust to.
I wondered how the goblins were doing. The first friendly faces I had come across. Yet another group I needed to properly thank, even if they had kicked me out, at least they had given me food and clothes first.
“Can you eat more of the bread now?” Candy asked sheepishly.
I groaned, sitting up in bed. “New rule, Candy. No eating after it is dark out. I am trying to sleep.”
“You’re not sleeping, you’re brooding,” she rightfully pointed out.
“Alright, fine,” I sighed, “I’ll eat one more piece, then I’m done. We need to save it.”
“I knowww, but the more we eat the faster we grow,” Candy whined as I walked over to the loaf and cut another piece. “More butter than that,” she insisted.
I rolled my eyes but obeyed. “How much more do you need to eat?”
“Don’t know,” she hummed. “But soon.”
“Very vague,” I sighed.
“We could try eating all the bread,” she suggested hopefully.
“No,” I groaned, stuffing my mouth with buttered bread. “This needs to last.”
“It’s bread, bread doesn’t last,” Candy pointed out.
“It will last a few days,” I rolled my eyes.
“It’s fresh now, which means it’s best now.”
“How do you even know anything about bread?” I asked.
“Because you know things, and I was looking at your memories because you’re not doing anything fun,” she huffed. “You ate a lot of things that looked yummy.”
I blew out an exasperated breath. No… I still wasn’t used to it.
For Candy’s sake, and for the sake of furthering this… whatever it was, I had a second piece of bread before going back to bed.
I tossed and turned for a whole, slightly paranoid as to what Candy was up to, but eventually I fell asleep.
You are not large enough to gain the class Brood Mother.
You have gained the class Dungeon Matriarch instead.
You have gained the evolution skill [Slime Gestation]
You have gained the class skill [Dungeon Core]
You have gained the path skill [Repurposed Body]
The moment I opened my eyes, I knew something was wrong.
“Pamela, we did it!!!” Candy sang in delight. “We didn’t get Brood Mother, but Dungeon Matriarch lets us focus on a dungeon. We don’t even need to build a stupid hive!”
What was going on? Why did I feel so… fuck, I must have gotten my period, it was the only explanation.
“I started with three lesser pink slimes just like what I was,” Candy chirped, interrupting my state of befuddlement. “There's not much space, even with [Repurposed Body], but it’s still way better than nothing, and we’ll have a whole army of slimes in no time!”
“What?” I croaked, sitting up in bed. I felt bloated and off. My muscles were aching and sore. Was I hungover? I felt hungover.
“This is so amazing! I’m so glad I didn’t eat you,” Candy continued exuberantly. “Now we can get right to dungeon building!”
“Okay, slow down,” I mumbled, fumbling for the water pitcher and drinking some water. “Can I at least read the skills first?” I grumbled, massaging my sore abdomen.
I reread the name [Slime Gestation], and I promptly snapped awake. No… no fucking way. That fucking Michelle! Take into account my “sexual proclivities,” surely that didn’t mean…
[Slime Gestation]
A lesser skill from the Brood Mother class.
Allows you to incubate slimes within your body.
Required mana increases based on the tier of slime.
Mana is first solidified into a core before the plortling is encased in slime and spawned.
Slimes will be vulnerable as gestating plorts; damage to you may destroy them.
Hybrid requirement: [Repurposed Body]
I let out a sigh of relief. Okay, that was fine, that was normal and unhorny. Thank fuck. For a second, I had feared my entire class progression had been perverted by that stupid list of boxes that had been checked in that haunting office.
I suddenly had a whole bundle of skills. It took me a moment to take even the first in. I could definitely work with it. It wasn’t exactly clear how it worked, but I always liked having minions in games, and Candy had talked about growing a hive from the start. Yeah, I could work with this.
And, we could now make slime cores! Depending on how fast we could create slimes, we might be able to make a good amount of money. Still, the skill was a bit vague, but Candy was an amorphous, wiggly ooze. We could figure it out and start making some money.
[Dungeon Core]
You may use a fragment of your core to establish a dungeon that absorbs ambient mana from the surrounding environment, slowly generating experience for its creator.
A direct passage is required for the mana to flow from the entrance to the core.
The core is a prime target due to its large stores of mana and experience.
It is very fragile and must be securely defended.
Whoa, that pretty much lined up with everything I had assumed for the name. Though it was odd that I wasn’t the dungeon core, that was usually how the dungeon core thing worked.
I already had a feeling that extracting a piece of our core to use as our dungeon core was really going to fucking hurt. But hey, we would be able to maintain mobility while essentially having an independent experience gathering machine. We would just need to make sure we kept it safe.
That was a whole other problem. The skill said nothing about traps or monster guards, but presumably, we had to level up with the class to unlock that kind of thing. I was just glad to have skills.
Though… was it even really a classic dungeon? We didn’t seem to gain anything by having adventurers enter the dungeon. Which, outside of the fun of dungeon exploration, actually made some sense. The whole point of a trap and monster-ridden maze was to keep people out, not have anyone explore for fun.
Huh, I guess I had kinda wrongly assumed about dungeons too. Honestly, I was much more inclined to work with this. We just needed to find somewhere to hide the core, and reap the rewards. Hell, if we put the damn thing in the city, it would be pretty well defended, though maybe the population would interfere with the mana absorption?
I still wasn’t clear on how mana even worked. Did we all absorb it from the ambient environment? Or more like a vitamin situation with the sun? Or did we produce it entirely? Regardless, I wasn’t complaining; I could definitely get behind making a dungeon now, especially since it seemed far less violent than I had feared.
Okay, last and least eye-catching skill.
[Repurposed Body]
Prolonged symbiosis with a slime has altered your appendix to better allow for the transfer of energy and mana.
Additional trait unlocked due to [Slime Gestation]:
Your fertility has been reduced to zero percent, and your reproductive system has been repurposed for slime gestation and birth.
Additionally, you may create an external ovipositor out of slime, allowing a gestating plort to be injected into another host for safe incubation. This increases the potential spawning numbers despite size restrictions.
Oh, you had to be fucking kidding me. I reread the skill again. Yup… those were the words.
“Candy, did you just make me pregnant with three slimes?” I muttered flatly, running my hand over my face. I was literally being kink shamed by the fucking universe. Heaven forbid a girl have a breeding kink, now it was a fundamental part of my class in this stupid fucking world!
“Umm, yes?” Candy replied.
“Okay,” I ground my teeth, reminding myself that I needed to be responsible here. “Generally, it’s best to check before you do anything to anyone’s body.”
“But it’s our body,” she frowned.
“Even more reason,” I added with a forced cheer. “Because I’m not sure there is enough therapy in this world for me to make sense of what has just happened.”
“But we have to spawn slimes, we need them for our dungeon,” Candy replied, mostly just sounding confused.
Ah shit. How was I supposed to explain any of this to an alien ooze? If I ever saw Michelle, I was going to kill her.
I was pregnant with slimes…
I had a skill to constantly be pregnant with slimes. And apparently, to put them inside other people?
I hated that it maybe made a tiny bit of sense and not just… given my “proclivities.” Where else was I going to gestate slimes but the gestating organ?
But that didn’t mean I was happy about it. There was a big, ginormous difference between fantasy and real life. The two now being blended together was… horrifying… and a little erotic.
Fuck.
Fuck this shit.
I went back to bed. It was the perfect coping mechanism.