Early the next day, Kanae and Eliza set off into the vast wilderness with a group of four adventurers hired from the Ehmvier adventurers hall. While the two alone were more than capable of handling slime, capturing them was another matter. To that end, they gathered extra hands for the task.
"I can't believe I get to adventure alongside Queen Kanae! This is like a dream come true!" one of the adventurers said.
"Hey, show some respect. It's
Empress
Kanae," his companion corrected him.
"You don't have to add honorifics. Kanae is fine. Just think of me as another adventurer in your group." Kanae glanced back and smiled.
The three guys turned beet red and stiffened.
Their group was made up entirely of young greenhorns, who have only been adventuring for half a year. For Kanae, looking at them was like staring into a mirror. The excited one was Yosh, a Saviran dark elf, whose family had immigrated to the Commonwealth years ago to escape the crewing civil war. He was crowned a Bladedancer, just like Sofisa, and wielded two kukris. The one who reprimanded him and wanted to be respectful was Jouno, crowned a Swordsman. The clean-shaven human had his head buzzed of almost all hair. He donned simple studded leathers, and armed with a dented shortsword in need of sharpening and a wooden buckler. Following quietly alongside them was Avery, a common elf crowned Mage, who didn't say much and just looked glad to come along for the ride. A bowl cut of blonde hair surrounded his head, bangs covered his eyes, and he carried most of everyone's belongings in a large knapsack.
Finally, the fourth member was the only girl of their party, Merry. A human with brunette hair done up as side pigtails, she had a carpet of freckles across her cheeks and soft blue eyes. She was crowned a Deadeye, a unique Ranger class that boasted incredible precision and power in exchange for decreased mobility. Perfect for nailing slimes.
Kanae had the opportunity to bring along more seasoned adventurers, but elected to give the younger ones a chance to shine. They could also probably use the money, too, since her quest reward was a handsome payout.
"If you don't mind me asking…" Merry jogged up from behind her, eyeing the sorceress at the front. "Who did you bring along?"
"Just a friend of mine. Her name's Elizabeth Bedlam, but she prefers to be called Eliza. We're in need of a lot of slime, so I'll be counting on all of you for help," Kanae said.
"We won't let you down!" Yosh exclaimed.
The goal for today was to capture as many slimes as possible, and acquire the womb of an alraune or dryad. Eliza mentioned she had the spores covered. She must have teleported her tower to Toadstool Forest at some point. That might explain the rumbling outside the castle late last night…
"How much farther are we going anyway? It feels like we've been walking for hours…" Jouno said, dragging his feet along.
"Why, as far as it takes to discover the stench of rot. Slimes are opportunistic scavenger monsters. Even when ambushing prey, they have a low rate of success. So, in order to obtain sustenance, slimes consume animal carcasses left unfinished by other predators. Where there is the stench of rot and festering decay, there will also be slime," Eliza explained.
"Oooh!" The adventuring group lit up.
They traveled deeper into the forests for a little while longer until Eliza lifted her hand for them to stop. It took a second before the foul odor of decomposition wafted in, making the young adventurers pinch their noses shut. Lying dead between two overgrown surface roots was a large beast carcass. The ribcage had been chewed open by some predator, and its guts were spilled to the forest floor.
Countless slimes from the full spectrum of colors and sizes surrounded the beast, slowly consuming the rest. Flies, too, buzzed above in a swarm in an attempt to get in on the action. Some were unfortunate enough to be caught by a slime oozing over them, only to be disintegrated in seconds.
"I'm going to be sick…" Avery held a hand up to his mouth and gagged.
"Grit through it, wimp. It's time to earn our bread!" Yosh thumped him hard on the chest.
"Not so fast." Kanae grabbed the dark elf by the scruff of his back collar as he walked forward. "We only need blue and green slime. Alive, too. The other colors don't matter to us."
"And be careful. Green slime is corrosive. Its entire body is made out of acid. Blue slime isn't. You can touch them and be fine. Gather them into these sacks. There is a scoop inside them, too. They are specially-made to resist being eaten through by slimes. Also, mind your surroundings!" Eliza tossed everyone a large sack made of diamond silk.
The group fanned out around the corpse to start collecting.
They tiptoed around the other slimes. Some colors were more acidic than others. Luckily for them, slimes weren't explicitly aggressive monsters. Kanae walked up to a tree trunk, where a small blue slime was crawling down to join the feast with its fellows. She positioned her bag underneath and let the mindless thing stroll right in.
Wait a minute. If slimes were coming down from the trees…
Kanae looked up. There were slimes all over the verdant canopy, some outright falling to the ground.
"Don't just watch your feet. Keep an eye above—" Kanae warned the adventurers too late.
Slimes had fallen all over Yosh, Jouno, and Merry. The skittish Avery backed away and managed to avoid them.
"Eeek! What… What do we do?" Merry cried.
"Ugh. Get off me!" Yosh violently pushed at one on his head, but the slime slipped right past his fingers.
"The slime cores. Use sharp weapons to pierce the core to kill the slime," Eliza said.
Each of them drew their weapons, and Merry produced an arrow, to plunge into the slime body. When the metal tips struck the slime cores, the gelatinous bodies lost form and melted.
Kanae was about to fly over and carry the adventurers until a large shadow grew beneath her. She threw herself away just as a gigantic green slime crashed to the ground. It caught all three of them. Jouno and Merry were submerged up to their shoulders, and Yosh up to his waist.
"Well, this is a problem." Eliza sidled up to them and frowned.
"Argh! I can't… reach!" Jouno desperately tried to grab his shortsword, which was a few inches from his fingers within the slime body.
Kanae grabbed Yosh's hands and pulled.
"It won't… give!" Yosh panicked.
"Hmmm. We can neutralize the slime with a cold spell. Do we have any?" Eliza asked.
"I have Hailstorm, but that's going to bludgeon Yosh, Jouno, and Merry," Kanae said.
"Avery! Avery, you have a cold spell, don't you?" Jouno turned desperately to him.
"I-I do, but it's only an Ice Bolt. I don't have a stronger ice spell, and you guys know how weak it is…" Avery explained meekly.
The mage slinked over to the large slime. He brandished his common wooden staff and casted a spell that was barely the size of a snowball. It flung forward and exploded harmlessly against the slime.
"Damn it, Avery. You're useless!" Yosh complained.
"I'm sorry! That's all I can do!" Avery sulked.
"Quit yelling at him, Yosh. You're the problem, always bullying Avery like that!" Merry mustered her strength to kick Yosh, but it only amounted to a little nudge.
At this rate, the other three were going to be slime food. Hailstorm might be their only option, but as low level adventurers, the spell would hurt pretty badly. There was one other way.
"Avery." Kanae leaned her back against a tree and parted her pussy lips with two fingers. "Come over here and fuck me."
"EHH?!" The adventurers gasped.
"I know it sounds ridiculous, but by having sex with me, I can boost you with Bond. Your spellcasting should be magnified. I'll also get access to your Ice Bolt to help," she explained.
Nervously, Avery came over to Kanae and got as far as pulling his pants down. He was afraid and anxious. Eliza and his stuck companions were also watching. When he finally whipped his dick out, it was more flaccid than a dead fish.
"I'm a succubus giving you the chance to have sex with me, and you're soft?" Kanae sighed.
"It's my first time. I-I've never even had a girlfriend before," Avery stammered.
Kanae yanked the elf and pressed his face into her breasts. With her other hand, she stroked his soft dick and casted Turn Horny. He tensed up. She guided the modest rod into her ready pussy, and it slid in right away.
"Ahh!" Behind the bowlcut bangs, his moist eyes turned blank from the pleasure.
"Good~ There you go. Move your hips. Let your male instincts guide you," Kanae whispered coquettishly into one ear.
"It's hot, and sticky… and my dick feels like it's going to melt off…" Avery murmured.
"Not fair. I want to have sex with her, too! I'm coming back as a wraith if I die watching Avery and Kanae having sex!" Yosh groaned.
After a few irregular thrusts, Avery was finally getting the hang of it. He pistoned rhythmically, holding her waist for leverage. Kanae had to bend her knees a little for him to reach since she was taller than him. Waves of pleasure rippled through her body. Their gasping breaths grew hotter with every second.
Kanae cupped Avery's chin and pulled him in for a kiss. She pushed her tongue into his mouth, and his own tongue flailed helplessly against her more experienced touch. Soon, his eyes rolled back. A gush of warm cum poured into her pussy. He wrapped both arms around her, trembling from his first ever orgasm.
[Skill Drain has temporarily acquired the skill Ice Bolt.
Ice Bolt: Fires a shard of frost that freezes the first thing it hits upon impact.]
"How was that? Do you want to keep going?" Kanae asked, stroking the back of his head.
"Can… Can I do it from behind?" Avery looked like he was in a daze.
"CAN YOU HELP US FIRST!" the other three shouted and snapped him out of it.
"Ask me again later." She winked.
Avery pulled up his pants, and Kanae wiped the spunk dripping down her inner thighs. She casted Bond on him, feeling his ambition and eagerness of becoming an adventurer, as well as the gentle soul of someone wanting to help others. Together, they casted Ice Bolt into the large slime. Swathes of its body froze over. Jouno, Merry, and finally Yosh fell out as the slime shrunk in size like a penis in cold weather.
"Man… I think my sword is done for." Jouno mourned for the blade that was still inside the slime.
"Thanks, Avery! You were pretty cool back there. I didn't know you had it in you." Merry sidled up to him flirtatiously.
"He did what he was supposed to do in the first place." Yosh rolled his eyes.
"If you four are all done over here, please collect the large green slime before it recovers," a raven perched on Kanae's shoulder and said in Eliza's voice.
The sorceress had her flock of ravens doing all the work. They grabbed flew into slimes, knocking them into diamond silk bags that were held open by more ravens. Eliza had a particularly large bag ready in case a bigger slime had appeared. The group worked together to shove the partially-frozen monster in.
When they finished, everyone threw the bags of slime into a pile together.
"This should do it." Eliza activated a teleportation pellet and flung it at the mound.
They disappeared in a vacuum of wind. The adventurers were flabbergasted.
"What… What did you just do?" Jouno asked.
Eliza flared her hands out and said, "Magic! Next, to find an alraune or dryad and ask them to part with their womb."
"Kanae, your friend isn't normal, is she?" Merry whispered.
"More extraordinary than anything. Though, she is kind of a mystery," Kanae agreed.
Alraunes and dryads were trickier to deal with than slimes. Dryads weren't sentient or sapient, but mindless creatures of vegetation that lure unsuspecting travelers in for a snack. Alraunes were the truly living ones but were extremely rare to find, since many preferred the wilderness. The party spent the better part of an afternoon searching to no avail, until…
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Help!" A vine snatched and pulled Yosh up to a branch.
"I got you!" Merry loosed an arrow that plunged into the vine.
Something higher up in the canopy screeched and released Yosh. Kanae caught him as he fell.
"Thanks." Yosh breathed a sigh of relief.
"I think it found us," Eliza said, gazing up at the sun-pierced canopy.
The giant visage of a beautiful woman creeped down from the trees and branches. Her emerald skin was glossy and moist, and eyes were like deep black jewels. She wore nothing at all, except bark that somehow clung to her body the way sunspots marked the skin.
"Is that a hot alraune? Maybe I didn't want to be saved," Yosh said.
"That's not an alraune," Kanae warned.
It smiled, but the lips continued to part until an enormous unhinged jaw snapped open to reveal sharp rows of teeth. The rest of the abdomen followed suit, coming undone like a zipper pulling down a jacket. The mouth and body both turned into a three-pronged maw.
"Dryad! Don't be afraid to slay it. These things are no more a living thing than the grass beneath your feet!" Eliza yelled.
A dozen appendages fell around them. One snatched Avery and Jouno into the air. When Merry tried to shoot them down, other vines attacked her. Kanae came to her defense, using Lust to whip the dryad's grabbing arms back.
"Fuck. There's just so many!" Yosh sliced many tentacles and deftly evaded capture, but there were more to come. "H-Hey, Kanae! Can you make me stronger like you did Avery?"
"Does it look like we can have sex with all that's going on?" Kanae fired back.
Eliza dispersed into ravens when tendrils reached for her. She reformed atop her flying broom and headed for the dryad.
"Kanae, your ring!" Eliza yelled.
Kanae pointed the Ring of Scorching Ray at the dryad and shot a beam of concentrated fire. The spell incinerated falling leaves. It carved into the plant monstrosity's body. Every single vine, tendril, and appendage retreated to defend itself, letting the two adventurers go.
"You're up. Heightened Haste!" Kanae buffed the marksman of the group by raising her DEX attribute.
Merry shut one eye and aimed. She pulled the drawstring back, then loosed an arrow with enough blowback that blew away the dirt around them. It slipped past all the vines, through a hole in the dryad's humanoid body that Scorching Ray made, and plunged into something unseen beyond the canopy. All at once, the vegetative tentacles stiffened.
"I just got a ton of experience! I'm pretty sure we killed it!" Merry cheered.
"Help!" Jouno and Avery cried.
Kanae launched into the air and caught both of them. She gingerly let them back on the ground, and Jouno kneeled down to kiss the dirt.
"Oh, thank goodness…" Jouno sighed.
A flock of ravens descended seconds later carrying the giant egg-shaped ovary wrapped in thick leaves. It was about the size of a short adult human.
"Whew." Eliza reformed back to herself. "There we are. The fecund womb of a dryad. We should be able to use this."
"Great… I'm tired AND horny. Can we leave?" Yosh asked.
"Yes, we can. If everyone is ready, please gather around or be left behind." The sorceress prepared another teleportation pellet and dropped it at their feet.
In the next instant, the entire group popped back out on Eliza's laboratory floor of her tower. Yosh pressed a hand to his mouth and vomited.
"Thanks for your help, all of you. The adventurers hall should have your reward ready. I hope I can rely on you three again if I have more quests," Kanae said.
"It was fun, Kanae! I'm so much higher level than before. It was nice meeting you, Eliza!" Merry bowed.
They waved as the young adventurers departed.
"What a sweet little group, they are. Now then, I've already acquired mushroom spores. I just need the skeletons from Edina before we can begin," Eliza said.
The adventurers cried in fright downstairs. A moment later, Edina led several skeletons up to the laboratory.
"Haha! You guys shoulda seen it. I scared a bunch of adventurers just now!" Edina laughed.
"Are these the skeletons you're giving us for the simulacrum?" Kanae asked, noting that they were particularly short and about the height of goblins. "You didn't kill anyone to obtain these, did you?"
"No, of course not! Dug 'em up myself years ago though," she said.
"They are in fairly good shape. Some of them have been nibbled on by wild animals, but it should be fine. Are you
absolutely
sure these bones do not contain souls or traces of souls?" Eliza squinted at each one.
"Yep. At least, I think so?" The necromancer squinted in thought.
For once, Kanae couldn't really give Edina a vote of confidence.
"How exactly do you make sure a soul has completely vacated from a body?" Kanae asked.
"Time, normally. The second best thing you can do is have a cleric consecrate the bones. There's always the chance they continue to cling to it. Or shreds of the souls remain. I suppose we can begin. If anything goes wrong, we can blame Edina." The sorceress snickered.
"Hey!" Edina pouted.
"Right. Let us begin. Edina, Amethyst. I will need your help for this process. It's been a while since I've created a simulacrum." Eliza rubbed her hands together and grinned.