2.20 Body Writing

"Wow," Delta said. "You were so excited, I thought you had something good."

Across Delta's chest, in thick, bolded letters, 'SHAMELESS WHORE'.

Despite Delta's unimpressed words, Rosalie seemed highly satisfied with the insult she'd written. She admired it smugly, and, when Delta held her hand out, didn't seem particularly put-out that it was her turn to be drawn on.

Zoey, for her part, agreed with Delta. Rosalie had been so excited to write the words that Zoey thought she had something creative. Then again, Rosalie was clearly pretty sheltered … by the smugness of her satisfaction, she thought she'd had a stroke of genius. It was pretty cute.

Delta knelt down in front of Rosalie and dipped the quill in ink. Rosalie shivered as the cold pentip pressed into the space below her belly button. In the same way Rosalie had, Delta spelled her chosen tattoo out in massive letters, covering most of the space on her pelvis. She had to pull aside the writhing vines to get the pen to her skin.

'HUGE GIRL COCKS ONLY <3', the phrase read, with an arrow pointing down at her pussy.

Rosalie paled as she read the words upside-down and finally deciphered them. By the widening of her eyes, Delta was the winner.

"You—you can't be serious."

"It looks good on you," Delta grinned. "Let's hope it's not permanent." She licked her finger and rubbed at the ink, but it had dried instantly, and didn't smudge at Delta's efforts.

"If it is, it's your body." Rosalie's eyes flicked to the 'SHAMELESS WHORE' on her own body's chest. She grimaced.

"Then I'll wear it proudly, when we finally swap back," Delta laughed. She got back up and handed the ink and quill to Not-Zoey.

"Have something good?" Zoey asked her.

"It didn't say we had to be mean. Just degrading." Not-Zoey crouched in front of Zoey. Her cock stiffened instinctively at having a face so close, but Not-Zoey ignored it, rolling her eyes and flicking it. "And that content, size, and positioning mattered. So …"

She worked away at etching ink into Zoey's pelvis, the same as Delta had done to Rosalie's.

'DELTA & ROSIE'S FAVORITE TOY'.

Delta laughed, and Rosalie wrinkled her nose.

Zoey, on her part, grinned. "I'm not sure if I even mind it."

"Hmm. I have a feeling you're not going to be so nice to me."

"I'm definitely taking a cruder approach," Zoey agreed.

Not-Zoey huffed. She finished scribbling ink into the outline of the bolded letters, filling them out, then stood and handed the materials to Zoey.

"Turn around."

"On my butt?" Not-Zoey asked, rolling her eyes. "How did I know?"

Zoey dipped the pen in, then worked away at scrawling out the words 'FREE USE CUM DUMPSTER' across Not-Zoey's ass.

"Crude," Delta said amusedly. "You weren't kidding."

"What's it say?" Not-Zoey was trying to look over her shoulder, but obviously the angle wasn't right. She couldn't see.

"Don't worry about it," Zoey said, slapping her on the ass and vanishing the ink into her inventory.

Not-Zoey rubbed at where she'd been hit, scrunching her nose at Zoey. "You're not going to tell me? That's so mean."

"Nothing beats imagination, anyway."

Not-Zoey huffed, crossing her arms. "To think I was nice to you."

"Do any of you feel anything?" Zoey asked. She herself hadn't felt any magical effects settle in after the lewd phrase had been written, but she doubted the artifact was lying.

Rosalie clenched and unclenched her hands in front of her, as if testing if it felt different. "Maybe. Some stats boosts can be hard to notice. Which is why identifying the item is best, first." She eyed Delta to emphasize the point.

"Eh, doesn't hurt anyone," Delta said. "Even if the effect's small, it's helpful. Plus, Zoey's enjoying the sight."

Her eyes might have been caught on the 'HUGE GIRL COCKS ONLY <3' above Rosalie's pussy. Delta had outdone herself.

She cleared her throat. "There's still more, right?" She gestured at the chest.

Rosalie returned to it.

[Pink Fairy Dust]: A shimmering pink powder. Can be used to prepare potions that intensify, and link, dreams.

Zoey paused. "How much do you want to bet 'intensify' means …"

"Sex dreams?" Delta said sarcastically. "I think that's a given."

"And links," Zoey said. "So whoever takes it together, somehow shares the dream?" Or just one guess at what the reagent could create. There was some variance, typically, in what could be coaxed out of any given ingredient.

"Sounds fun," Delta said. "There's all kinds of freaky stuff I'd do in a dream, but not in real life."

Zoey paused.

"And no, I'm not specifying," Delta said.

The looting of an alchemy reagent sparked an idea.

"Hey. Sabina asked me to be on the look-out for reagents, and that there's plenty more to gather from a shard than what comes out of a chest."

"Okay?"

"You know that trap? The," she cleared her throat, "excessive fluid?"

"That filled me up?" Delta's eyebrows raised. "You think it'll make a potion ingredient?"

"Maybe it'll replicate the stretchiness?"

Delta paused. "Hell, worth bringing back just on the off chance." She frowned. "We don't have any containers, though."

"We can improvise. We'll probably get some useless potions." Most chests provided their fair share of junk. Or not junk, but generic items, health potions, stamina potions, and the like. Zoey suspected that for the average adventurer, they'd be useful. But seeing how she'd wandered into a party of two extremely competent partners … and less combat-focused shards … the 'typical items' were less useful than they should be.

They continued to empty out items. The 'regular' pieces of armor that came out were distinctly unenticing, now that the shards had proven themselves as having a habit of erasing 'normal' equipment and loot from their inventory. Before, Zoey had equipped some of it—the stuff that seemed useless to her class, like the spell-casting gloves. Now, though—seeing how items bound themselves to the user—she didn't, since it would be better to sell and buy items useful to their efforts in the future.

Only the lewd items held persistent value. The rest was either temporary use only, or money-making equipment. Or, in this particular case, glass vials to store portions of the buckets of fake-cum that had burst from the toy Delta had pleasured herself on. Zoey emptied out several vials of the green, yellow, and red liquids, then scooped up the sticky white substance from the thick pools that still sat on the ground, outside the loot room.

"It was so much," Zoey laughed, again, looking down at the mess that had been left behind. She'd almost forgotten the sheer quantity that had been inside Delta. If Zoey had thought she had an impressive output … the toy had set a new standard.

"Maybe that's the potion effect it'll make," Delta said. "Not stretchiness, but something that'll let you," she gestured around at the lake of cum.

Zoey paused, then shrugged. "Honestly, both sound fun."

"Pervert."

"Guilty as charged." Zoey felt less need to defend herself with every instance the insult was leveraged at her. Maybe that was a bad thing. Then again, she was coming to terms with the fact it was entirely true.

"Shall we continue?" Rosalie asked dryly. "Or do you need to gather more lewd potion ingredients?"

Zoey looked around at the room, then said, "Actually, I should take some chunks of the toy itself. You never know." The gel-like material was tickling at her alchemist's intuition—it might make some sort of potion, too.

###

Progression through the shard ambled on.

Rosalie had dispatched the first shard's monsters with ease. This second shard—still with ease, but the effort required was more visible, even to Zoey's untrained eyes.

Like before, she enjoyed the sight of the two naked—or mostly naked, considering Rosalie's new writhing armor set—women dip, weave, and strike with fluid violence. Delta especially was interesting; she moved even faster than Rosalie, with even greater harshness. She'd described herself as a striker, a purely DPS-focused role, and while Rosalie had slightly more composure—some hard-to-describe quality that showcased her unequaled aptitude—Delta's movements were still the more rapid, and violent.

Rosalie, as discussed, spent most of her attention focused on Zoey. The monsters no longer came in ones, as they had the first shard. Neither did they focus mindlessly on whoever engaged it first. Rosalie needed to allocate significant effort in ensuring Zoey went uncontested in their brief, brutal brawls with the shard's spawned enemies.

But they managed. More than managed. They progressed forward steadily and without problem. Delta did catch a few stray attacks—which she downed some of the health potions they'd collected to wipe away—and the sight of blood, especially on a friend, did remove some of the lackadaisical attitude Zoey had previously been feeling. But they never came close to real danger. Scrapes, bruises, minor injuries. Things easily wiped away by the health potions they'd earned—and continued to earn—as they cleared each room and hallway.

Almost before she knew it, they had arrived at an elegant stone arch doorway that had the distinct feeling of 'boss fight'. Several lewd trials had blocked their advancement, but none remotely as degenerate as the one Delta had undergone.

It was a smaller shard than typical, according to Rosalie, and about as long the one she and Rosalie had completed earlier. Zoey wasn't sure whether that was indicative of their future, or coincidence. Two was a small sample size. And while the fact both were lewd seemed safe to draw assumptions from, the other aspects, maybe not as much.

Either way, they'd arrived to the boss chamber.

"What do you think's in there?" Not-Zoey asked.

Unlike with Mel, there were no indicators; no signs warning 'beware the slime' and hinting at what the final encounter would be. The tall brown doors and arched stone weren't especially revealing either.

"Guess we're about to find out," Zoey replied. The theme of the dungeon did seem to be body-play of some sort; both Delta and Rosalie's swapped appearances and the presence of Not-Zoey suggested such. So the boss would likely be the same?

As a party, they stared at the doorway.

"It better not be too gross," Rosalie muttered. "Let's activate our items, then get going."

And I should drink one of those anti-virility potions. Zoey didn't have a clue what would be happening for this boss, but it didn't take a leap of deduction to assume … well. That the potion would be needed.