Monster Breeder

“Tch, forcing me to use both of my swords—shameful,” the Elf says as he summons a second blade in his free hand which he uses to parry the Rain Pellets. As Chris turns to flee, obviously feeling too close to the guardsman for comfort, he delivers a boot to her back. At the last second, Tink’s Bubble Shield appears around the Snow Bunny to protect her from the worst of the impact, but she still tumbles away ass-over-teakettle from the force of the blow.

The Fairy’s continued interference further stokes the Elf’s anger. A yank of his bound wrist tugs Cottontail close enough that Gale eases up on the horizontal downpour. That gives him the breathing room to slice through the Showbunny’s scarf rope and free his other arm, leaving him twice as deadly as ever while brandishing two rapiers at our friends.

It doesn’t look good, but I know the tides are about to turn. The red tide, that is!

When the Elf cut open Olindia’s purse and all the marble-like Cores came spilling out, a few of them must have contacted Flou by accident, because the Swarm Slime has clearly had a revelation. She’s been scooping up all the fallen First-Tier Cores from our trek through the Misty Grove and eating them. Now her ruby red body is spitting out flying daggers and Fuzzy bunny Slimes left and right. Dozens of airborne projectiles and bouncing rabid maws with floppy ears now surround the Elf.

A second and third bead of sweat forms on the Elf’s forehead.

At the same time, Cottontail has been pulling an arsenal of carrot daggers from her hat and one extra-long and narrow taper-rooted carrot—an imperator! She stows the imperator at her waist through a hidden loop on her corset teddy and starts throwing carrot daggers to join the onslaught.

A fourth and fifth droplet of sweat appears on the Elf’s face.

“Lanyth!” the Elf shouts as both of his arms blur in a tornado of parries, daggers flying everywhere and Fuzzy Slimes leaping into the fray with abandon. “You’d better be sniffing Powder behind a bookcase in there, because I could use some help out here!”

“Shit,” Tink curses while biting her tiny Fairy nails. She knows we need to finish this before the alarm gets raised.

And that’s when the moon rises.

Olindia’s body surges with energy as Chris finishes that ass-over-teakettle tumble to land a plump bunny posterior on the Jellyfish girl’s face. Back in humanoid form, the Pink Slime grabs Chris’s buttocks, presses her face deep into that heavenly crevice, and takes a deep, restorative whiff of feminine sweat. I’ve never seen a stranger catalyst, but that’s what it must be, because the perverted Jellyfish begins to glow and grow.

Somewhere inside her body, there’s a reaction between the Large Slime Core, the Large Orange Sewer Core, and an Orange Stone Core with Olindia’s Large Pink Jellyfish Core. She floats into the air with Chris in her arms, the bell of her skirt and hat radiant with pale pink moonlight. Her tentacles grow longer to compensate, giving her impressive reach, but the main thing we notice is her bright luminescence.

Cold moonlight washes over our body and the forms of our fallen Harpy friends, and we can instantly feel a spark of life-energy kindling within us. A healing aura! The crack in our Core repairs itself as Monal’s pallid skin regains a healthy hue and Rosie stirs on the floor. There’s a tumult within us as our repaired Core resonates with the battlefield around us.

Everyone is working together! Everyone is helping one another! They’re protecting each other and fighting for one another! I need to get stronger for them, for you, Jonathon!

Inside our body, the Pyramidal Stone Core, the Red Bone Core, and the Green Pyramidal Mirror Core merge with our Green Stone Symbiont Core. Power surges through us, but it’s unclear for the moment how to use it.

“What the hell is all this racket?”

“Probably just a few Slimes fighting,” Jing says in a desperate tone, begging the Elf to turn back.

“All the more reason to return. And I swear I heard—Brysandoral! What’s going on!?!”

“Lanyth!” the Elven guardsman exclaims as Jing reluctantly follows the previously-duped Elf back into view. Jing puts his palms together in a pleading gesture that only we catch. “Intruders!”

“S-should I get help?”

“First, I want you to put an end to this treacherous Fae!” Brysandoral gestures with his stupid, handsome pointy chin at Tink, since both his arms are busy.

“Will do!” Lanyth says as he summons a bow to hand, nocks an arrow, and fires it at my Fairy Companion in the span of a second.

Tink gasps as the deadly projectile speeds toward her, none of us able to do a thing in so short a time, but a Bubble Shield appears around her that alters the arrow’s trajectory off-course. Both Elves glare at Jing, the origin of that interference as clear as day to their magical vision.

Before he can flit away, Lanyth grabs Jing and jams him into a glass bottle. The cork stopper quickly follows. Then Lanyth drops his bow and charges us with a rapier in each hand, his surprise-attack spoiled.

Cottontail breaks off her barrage of carrot daggers to doff her top hat and point the business-end at the advancing Elf. Scores upon scores of doves spew from the hat’s mouth in a storm of feathers that serve to both stall and blind Lanyth. He wastes precious seconds slicing apart bird bodies while guarding his eyes from beaks and talons as he struggles forward.

Letting up pressure on Brysandoral isn’t good, but Olindia and Chris make up for the loss with a fresh wave of tentacles and snowballs.

We stand tall and strong with our Core repaired and evolved, but we debate over what to do in our shared mind. Let’s bash that guy’s head in. Rushing in without an idea of how your Evolution changes things is going to get us stabbed again. There’s nothing to be gained from killing these Elves. We should flee. But Jing!—We’ve seen firsthand that Jing has other bodies. I have to assume they’ll be fine, or else there’s nothing we can do for them. …Alright.

““Let’s get out of here!”” we shout to the others, but it’s easier said than done.

““Mistress!”” Monal and Rosie call as they grasp the tiled floor with their crystal-blood talons and flap their wings in preparation. Gale gets the message, using Rainbird Aviation to begin strafing Brysandoral with Rain Pellets while closing in on her wingmaidens. Once the three of them are together, Gale ceases her rainstorm and switches to raising a gust just as Rosie and Monal start using their Air Magic in unison.

Severed Jellyfish arms, broken crystal-blood daggers, chopped carrots, slushed snowballs, and decaying Fuzzy Slime bodies litter the ground around Brysandoral, but the Elf is not equipped to deal with a squall on this level. The wind catches his cloak and starts tugging him backward even as he continues to defend himself from Flou, Olindia’s, and Chris’s attacks.

Meanwhile, Lanyth’s advances are measured in inches against Cottontail’s endless river of birds. Both Elves are finally on the back foot!

It seems like Brysandoral might be about to reach up and unclasp his cloak, thus changing the tempo of battle yet again, but Tink turns the tables in our favor instead. The little Fairy buzzes down to perch on Gale’s shoulder and thrusts her arms forward, adding to the Harpies’ combined stream of Air Magic with her own. That extra burst of wind pressure turns the Elf’s cape into a kite, forcing him away by yards a second as he strives to keep his balance.

There! My instincts are screaming! I know what to do.

Brenda drives our body forward to come up behind Gale and say, “Trust us,” as our chest cavity opens like a mouth.

“…Okay?”

We ‘swallow’ the Rainbird easily because she doesn’t resist.

““Mistress!””

A new sense springs into being within my mind. It takes a few seconds to map this feeling against my intuition, but I can figure out that what I’m sensing is moisture in the air. That’s Gale’s ability!

:What the heck is going on?: Gale’s voice asks in our mind a moment later. :Oh! Wait, I can see again!:

Fully integrated!

Enormous Green Slime wings erupt from our back that extend around both Rosie and Monal. Our three Focuses divide, Gale to the left wing and Brenda to the right. Both of them fire together as we shout, ““Combined Attack: Acid Rain!””

Twice the number of dangerous droplets fly toward Brysandoral and Lanyth as before. Cottontail cuts off the flow of doves when she notices they’re getting pulverized by the acidic slime projectiles and the rest of our party forms up at our sides to watch as the Elves try to parry our torrent.

At first, it seems like there’s no difference. If I was hoping the acid would eat through their steel blades, I’d be disappointed. Instead, I reach out with my senses to find I can manipulate the droplets remotely. Causing the individual green beads of acid to change vectors mid-flight causes the Elves to flinch and jump in shock. Rather than pressing forward toward us, both Brysandoral and Lanyth must retreat each time they need to purchase a few extra inches of distance to redirect their blades in self-defense.

“Should we finish them?” Flou asks, her swarm of minion Slimes flocking to rejoin her body.

Olindia nods viciously, “Yeah, one last push, and we’ll have their asses on a fucking silver platter.”

“They’ll retreat into the Library if we press the attack,” Tink says. “D-dad will be okay. We can’t rescue the rest of his bodies right now. We’ll have to come back later, right Hero?”

““That’s right, Gale—er, we’ll all return with Alex to rescue him.””

:Yeah, yeah! Mr. Jing helped us out a lot! We owe it to him to come back.:

I feel the same way, Gale. I owe my Evolution to Tink’s parents. Now that I can merge with multiple monsters, I can better protect Jonathan, and I’ll be even more useful during the war!

:That’s great and all, and I don’t mind fighting to protect big, sexy Jonathan one bit, but I need to stay close to my wife and Cottontail.:

She’s right, Brenda. We need to find someone else to be our third when the time comes tomorrow. Thanks again for the assist here, Gale.

:No problem!:

““Go ahead and leave; we’ll be right behind you,”” we say while continually peppering the elves with pellet projectiles. Even if nothing is getting through, we’re keeping them on the defensive.

“One sec,” Olindia says as she reaches down with a tendril to start picking up everything that spilled from her purse, “Lemme just grab up all the crap I dropped.”

“What’s going on?”

“Intruders!”

“How’d they get down here?”

“Lanyth, Brysandoral! Are you two having trouble with these interlopers?”

More Elves! They must’ve finally heard something with all this shouting and Jing not around to steer us clear of patrols. “Olindia, take what’s in reach and leave the rest. Escaping with our lives is the first priority!”

We spare a moment for the Moon Jelly Slime to scoop up the letter, a few pages of parchment, a book, and a couple of Cores that Flou missed (the blue core unfortunately has rolled too far away), and then we’re off. Olindia floats in a halo of lunar light with Chris in her arms, Rosie and Monal trailing behind. Cottontail hops onto our back, hooks an arm around our neck for balance, and empties her hat onto the ground behind us—caltrops, marbles, and banana peels galore spill across the floor.

:I can stall them!:

Gale takes control of our body to exhale a cloud of corrosive green fog that eats away at anything it touches. It’s a great crowd-control effect against the Elves and their rapiers! We still receive a volley of Elvish arrows, but at least those are fired blindly. Even better, any foolhardy enough to brave the acid mist is bound to trip on one of Cottontail’s hazards.

We’re actually able to put some distance between us and our pursuers this way, though we know not to let our guard down. The alarm has surely been raised, now, and we’re in no position to attempt stealth. Olindia’s moonglow turns the dark dungeon into day but attracts the attention of everything we come across.

A White Bone Slime lurches out of a storefront doorway to take potshots at us with ice-cold femurs, but we don’t slow down. Tink intercepts each bone thrown using her Bubble Shield spell as point defense.

A Black Lurker Ooze drops from the ceiling on our shared body, but Tink tells us to, ‘Watch out!’ and we evade it successfully thanks to the telegraphing of her magical prognostication ability.

Another Elf ambushes us at the top of the stairs to the first floor of the Dungeon while brandishing a rapier in either hand. I think he planned on gutting the first of us to pop up. Unluckily for him, that was Cottontail.

The Showbunny instantly parries the Elf with her imperator carrot sword and matches him blow for blow despite wielding one blade to his two. Maybe she's a Fast Learner? I give her a warning shout before belching green miasma at the two of them. She backflips over our head while the Elf is forced to retreat. We keep running.

A Large Blue Fuzzy Slime bum-rushes us from the flank. It’s a huge crackling fluffball that shocks everything it touches. Flou answers its advances with dozens of flying crystal-blood daggers that stab it over and over until it stops moving. We don’t even stop to loot the body.

We dodge around the enormous Slug Ooze, evading its tendrils or letting Olindia counter them with her own, and then we’ve got a straight shot to the staircase leading up and out. Once more, a contingent of Elves sprints into view behind us with elegantly quiet steps. I don’t even think these are the same guardsmen as before.

While they aim their bows at us, Cottontail pulls a bag of flour from her hat that she kicks into the air and nails with a carrot dagger. White powder plumes out from the torn bag to cover everything, making it impossible to see us for a few seconds. At the top of the stairs, I turn to vomit gallons of acid onto the narrow walkway behind us. That’ll make it a lot more difficult for them to follow us out of the dungeon.

“Which way is Field Town?” Cottontail asks as we emerge into the depths of the Misty Grove. Gale immediately begins working to clear the vicinity of fog.

I’m equally lost here, but Olindia has the solution for us. “Up.”

Flou leaps into the Moon Jelly’s embrace, squeezing in next to Chris, and the three of them rise into the thick canopy. A whirlwind of crystal-blood blades chops the branches above them into kindling, creating a path from nothing.

Cottontail digs into her hat after waving her wand over the rim to pull forth a bouquet of red balloons. Holding them aloft by the strings, she’s easily lifted into the air.

:Gale is ready to come out, now.:

We spit the Rainbird out of our chest cavity, and the three Harpies grab us by either arm and shoulders. Tink takes a seat on my head as we ascend, Gale covers our escape with an extra-thick blanket of mist, and the five of us rise into the sky behind the others as the sun sets.

We all let loose a big collective sigh of relief, and I idly register that it’ll be dark by the time we get home.