Chapter 22
By the time they got the message about their completed quest, the party had successfully hunted down a good handful of slimes. Sabrina had seduced and consumed six, Jade had killed five, and Alice had fed thirteen to Bubba. Seeing that the map was found, though, they all turned back to regroup. Back where the aisles converged, the party found Sloan, gliding around on her new magic skates.
"Holy shit, those are so cool!" Jade complimented. "How'd you find the map so fast, anyway?"
While twirling around, Sloan answered, "Met some slime girl, and she was so overwhelmed by my big dick energy that she just jumped into my capture pod. She had the map, I guess." Everyone had follow-up questions, but they mostly amounted to disbelieving grunts.
With everybody as caught up to speed as they needed to be, Sloan pulled the map from her inventory. Except, doing so didn't conjure anything physical. Instead, a new tab was formed in her mental interface, along with everybody else's. Now, by thinking of the map, an image of it would appear.
It really hit everyone that this floor of the dungeon was staggeringly big. At any crossroads in the mall where paths might typically lead to an exit, there was only more mall. At the edges of the map, paths became fuzzy and glitched-looking.
"What's with the blurry parts?" Sabrina asked Red.
"Huh? Oh yeah, those are the boundaries of where the dungeon becomes... strictly theoretical?"
"Theoretical? Like whoever made the map hasn't observed them?"
"More like, observing them isn't technically possible. You could walk explore that area of the dungeon one day, and when you return the next day, it would be completely different. They go on infinitely like that."
Alice clicked her teeth, and said, "yikes. Procedurally generated content? Does it get super repetitive, like in Starfield, or what?"
"I don't know what that is," Red told her.
"--Yet you know who Albert Camus is?"
The banter died down as focus shifted back to the map. There were some vaguely labeled rooms, even more vaguely question-marked rooms, and the rooms that the party had explored, which were more clearly labeled. At the end of this hall and on the left, there was a room marked SAFE.
Sloan spotted it first, and then pointed it out to the others. With the destination picked out, the party headed straight there. There were some monsters along the way, but they kept their distance. As they turned to the path that all design language suggested was an exit, there was a blue door. On the sign that one would expect to be labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY, instead SAFE ROOM was scrawled.
They entered, as Alice and Jade geeked out together. Entering was a relief, because it was coded into the very nature of the room to be so. There was an array of aura effects filling the room, similar to the ones produced by the apartment's Base Totem.
One of the obvious effects was the fast recovery rate. Potions and milk were effective at topping off HP and MP, but there was a more vague and unspoken kind of battery underneath it all. No alchemy could heal that kind of exertion. True comfort was the only cure.
Thankfully, this room had comfort to spare. The walls were rounded, flowing in an organic way. This was suiting, as they were lined with plush moss, including the floor. The first section of the room was some kind of spring or hot tub, looking naturally included in the cave-like floor. Its sparkly water was already bubbling, suggesting jacuzzi-jets were turned on at full blast. From below, golden light was radiating.
The other source of lighting was an array of glowing crystals that were embedded throughout the walls and ceiling. The light they gave was warmly colored, and just dim enough to be relaxing without being dark. That on its own was serene.
Dividing the hot-spring-furnished foyer from the rest of the room was a stone countertop, complete with a sink on one end and two enigmatic hexagonal markings on the other. Then, the room came to a kind of choke point, before opening back up to a large circle. At the center of the circle, the moss sank in to form a conversation pit. Sabrina always loved the idea of those, even if they stopped making them because of too many drunken injuries.
On the far end, beyond the conversation pit, the moss was raised up to form a large bed. This raised layer didn't stop at the bed, however. Rather, that whole round room was lined with a sort of couch that came together to become part of the bed. At spread intervals along the makeshift couch were nooks where the wall opened up so that a person could tuck themselves away for some precious solitude.
Jade immediately touched the nearest mossy wall on entering, and tossed her head back in delight. She gushed, "oh my god!" Sabrina gave it a feel, herself. What looked like moss was an indescribably soft and comfortable material. It reminded her of the shag carpet in the tunnel entrance to the dungeon, but the effect was magnified. When Sabrina looked back, she found Jade lying splayed out on the floor naked. "It's like sleeping on a pile of kittens."
Red rushed to the hot tub, dipped a hand in, and licked it. "Sweet inferno! This is ambrosia water! This stuff is the best! It's magically cleansing, makes your skin super healthy, feels amazing, and just fucking rocks. It feels like an incredible massage and adds years to your life." Then, having talked herself into it, Red took a step back, then launched herself forward to cannonball into it.
That was a pretty compelling argument. Thus, the whole party was soon naked and in the tub. Even Alice removed Bubba, who formed into something like a Labrador-sized starfish, and joined as well. Sloan was apparently feeling generous, so she summoned Spoons the goblin to join the bath as well.
Jade was practically purring as she cuddled up to Sabrina in the water. "You really weren't exaggerating, Red. This stuff is liquid heaven. I'd cum, if it wasn't kinda gross to squirt in a tub with other people."
"Knock yourself out," Red offered. "Nothing taints this water. You could dumb sewage into this thing and it would just vanish and leave the water as clean as ever."
"I might take you up on that," Jade joked. "We've got a similar enchantment on our water at home, but nothing like this."
Red told her, "Just find a jet and sit on it. You can pump this stuff straight up any hole and be fine. It'll clean out whatever shouldn't be there, but won't jank up your PH or anything like that."
