If the plan worked, there wouldn't be a story

The iron golem was about three meters tall, bipedal and top heavy. It's legs were shorter than Athariel's and carried a torso that looked like a huge, upside down drop shape. It had no head, but long cylindrical arms, that reached down all the way to where the stunty legs bent at the “knees”.

Joylanda and Schlch, with you inside split away from Helga, Athariel and Ariadne and tried to keep up stealth, so you could land your first attack freely. Ariadne and Athariel took a stance about 20 meters from the golem and started attacking. Athariel's bow was not armor piercing. The arrows plinked off of the enemy without doing anything other than drawing its attention from Helga. Ariadne's Essence-charge however did do damage. Not that you'd be able to tell, if an enemy at full health didn't have a differently colored healthbar.

Next was the Frostbreath. Again, it was only scratch-damage, but the slow was noticeable. It might have been only one or two units of measurement, but the golem was already so cumbersome, that this amounted to almost halving its movement towards her.

And so Helga could smite it before it could even turn to face her. This attack did do damage. It would still take more than a hundred hits like that, before it'd go down, but at least it was progress.

Next was Joylanda and again the golem felt it. The advantage of her sneak attack to Helga's smiting was the superior damage. The multiplier and ignoring all armor and resistances meant that despite the much lower base damage Joylanda took off about one thirtieth of the golems remaining health.

And now it was your turn. Schlch had managed to avoid the guardians attention and you were camouflaged inside of the slime. This meant your Venemous bite was considered a sneak attack. Of course with no relevant skills from race, class or training you got the minimal possible bonus that entailed: 10% more base damage. On an attack, that only caused one point base damage. This meant all it did was making it 10% less likely for the attack to be completely negated by armor.

Sadly it wasn't armor, that was the obstacle to your attack.

Made of iron: All non-armor-piercing damage has a 66% chance to be reduced to zero, before armor and resistances are applied. All non-armor-piercing melee attacks have a 33% chance to be reflected to the attacker.

You took one point of damage. You were paralyzed. You took ten points of damage. Thankfully your Regrowth had already kicked in immediately. As long as you could last eleven seconds, it would out-heal your venom. Which you wouldn't have, if Ariadne had not noticed your situation and cast Minor Heal on you in second eight.

Schlch withdrew from the golem, Ariadne gave it another Frostbreath and Athariel charged in. The damage she did was comparable to that of the Essence-charge. And then the golem decided to screw with you even more:

It started glowing red increasing its movement speed significantly and it's right arm changed shape. It became even longer and also much thinner. It was now a blade. This was the iron-golems only active ability:

Metal-shape (Cost: 10 MP/min): Heat up the body, causing 5 points of burning damage on contact. Change attack damage type between bludgeoning, piercing and cutting depending on weapon shape. Receiving cold attacks drain MP in addition to causing damage.

This meant that Schlch was no longer immune to the iron-golem's attacks. Sure the slime could still take more hits than anybody else in the party, but it was very much not used to being **** at all.

For you it was even more serious. Whereas before there was the possibility, that you could survive at least one hit, thanks to bludgeoning resistance, now you were absolutely certainly dead if you so much as looked at the golem's right arm wrong.

“Shit, at which plan are we now? Plan Y?”, Athariel cried out as she ran out of the golem's reach.

Helga went past her, as she had blocked an attack with her shield. She had not received much damaged, but the knock-back was a real hindrance, as she would now have to approach an enemy with greater reach again. That didn't cause her to lose her head: “Ariadne spam Frostbreath as much as you can to drain it's MP, Schlch focus on dodging, Nimis you're on support now. Ink-cloud and Healing Touch. Athariel focus on dodging and use Matador on yourself, Joylanda and me. Make sure aggro is only on Joylanda, while her sneak skills are on cooldown and get it off her as soon as she gives the sign.”

As if on queue Joylanda landed her second attack and immediately rolled away underneath the blade swinging her way. Helga used the time to close the distance and just after another Frostbreath hit she gave the golem another smite. Thanks to your Ink-cloud Helga could narrowly avoid getting flung back again and she hit it again.

“I can't use Frostbreath, while you're this close, or I'll hit you, too!”

“Don't worry, Nimis can heal me!”

And so Ariadne launched Frostbreath again... just as Athariel charged at it. Helga could stomach both the damage and the slow. In the worst case she could tank a full, unblocked hit.

Athariel however needed to dodge.

And now she had received quite a lot of damage from Ariadne's AoE.

At your behest Schlch got close and you spammed Spit in the face and Ink-cloud at the golem.

You managed to reach out to Athariel just in time to fully restore her health, before she, Schlch and you were hit.

You were lucky again: Because of how you were positioned in Schlch the attack barely connected and you survived at 3 HP. Similarly the attack on Athariel was cushioned by Schlch's body and she too survived with 2 HP. You all were knocked back and you recovered enough MP to heal her again to full health. Your own health was fine thanks to Regrowth.

To your horror you noticed, that the golem to regenerated health if it wasn't attacked. Of course it wasn't anywhere near as fast as yours and it got interrupted as soon as Helga smashed her mace into it even with smite still on cool-down.

For her effort she was knocked back right when Joylanda landed a sneak attack on the golem's back. Athariel cast Matador on her the second she got away and Ariadne gave it another Frostbreath finally exhausting it's MP and cooling it down to it's normal slow form.

And so the grind started. While the golem was not using Metal-shape it was to slow to endanger any one of you so you could wail on it with impunity, however since all attacks that did actual damage had a cool-down this meant you were taking it down at a snail's pace. Once it was at about one third of its health it had recovered its MP and reapplied Metal-shape so Ariadne went back to spamming Frostbreath.

The problem was not the difficulty, but the sheer time and effort it took without much room for error, to bring the creature down.

Even though until a few days ago you hadn't even known that you could sleep at all you were now longing for it and you could barely imagine how much worse the others must've felt. Until finally:

DING

You were now level 8 and Schlch was level 10 with only a sliver of exp missing for level 11. Similarly the others were only a killed mouse away from level 15.

You all stood around the entrance of the house of dreams for a bit catching your breath, until Ariadne spoke up: “Are we still going in there?”

Helga reassured her: “Don't worry: That golem was the worst possible match-up for Nimis. For now all we have to worry about avoiding enemies for ten seconds, after Nimis bit them.”

And so you went over your abilities for slowing enemies: Schlch and you could grapple most normal sized enemies easily, though only one at a time each and for you to grapple a different one than Schlch you'd had to leave his inside. This would mean you'd leave the water, so you opted to only do so in rooms with bodies of water, where Schlch could pick you back up again.

Ariadne had Frostbreath to slow enemies down and Windblast, which could knock them back.

Athariel could ensnare an enemies with a successful melee attack, which would stop their movement but not their attacks and Joylanda had her paralyzing strike. Especially that last one would not come in handy. The one reason you might need any of these techniques was, that some enemies had resistance or immunity to paralyze. If your venom couldn't paralyze them, neither could Joylanda's strike.

The enemies in the house of dreams were level 22 the start goblins and ogres. Normally the goblins were faster and could inflict dangerous status effects with their poisoned weapons, while the ogres boasted very high health and melee damage for their level.

For Schlch and you it took eight seconds to incapacitate the first wave of four goblins and two ogres. Despite the higher level they gave less exp than the golem, since they were merely mob type enemies.

You made your way forward. The second way also had wolves, which were even faster than the goblins. Athariel had to use Matador, so they would attack Schlch, which made them actually dangerous to the party. Then you learned just how quickly the mobs in the house of dreams respawned, when you were attacked from the rear by the first wave, that you had killed only seconds ago. The new tactic was for the party to move in a tight formation, with you biting anything in front of you to clear the way. This way you made it through six waves to the first boss: The Goblin king. Normally he had twice the HP of an ogre and the same melee damage, good armor and called in reinforcements periodically.

Your venom killed him, before his first set of reinforcements showed up.

Helga quickly picked up the potions and the money and pressed on. The armor and weapons were to high level for now and once you'd reach an appropriate level you'd surely have access to better weapons.

Sure the boss did not respawn, but once it was dead the doors opened and the mobs patrolling the area would soon follow them in.

The next area was undead themed. The bad part was, that undead were highly resistant and sometimes outright immune to paralyzing. While they also had poison resistance, it was nowhere near high enough to save them from your attack.

The good part was that one: These enemies were slow. A player, that wanted to beat the dungeon as quickly as possible, could simply bypass them without fighting a single one. The second boss was a lich. With its magic attacks it was much harder to approach and it's poison resistance was so high, that it needed three bites to die.

And by now the enemies were level 23 on average.

Sure you and your party leveled up as well and the mobs were worth quite a lot of exp, because they were higher level, but you were also a group of six and so your level would not properly catch up to Mazoga, who was alone. Unless of course you'd stay for long enough to reach the level cap.

You had lost all feeling for time, when you reached the respawn point. Four bosses down. Twelve to go.

After beating a level 24 dragon you finally saw sings of release from the slog and called it out to your party: “The guys in front us just respawned!”

“Why are you saying it, like it's a good thing?”, Joylanda complained.

“Because this means they've been killed recently”, Helga explained, “Mazoga can't be much further ahead.”

With new vigor you made your way forward killing ichtions, bipedal fish-monsters. While the water on the floor slowed down the short party members it was very welcome for you personally, since you it allowed you to swim, increasing your mobility greatly.

Sadly you didn't catch sight of Mazoga, before she entered the boss room. To your frustration you rounded the corner just in time to see the door close. Now you were stuck in front of it playing an objective defense mission with your party as the objective, waiting for Mazoga to defeat the fish-king.

The door opened with impeccable timing just as you had paralyzed the last of the enemies in the current wave Athariel screamed at Mazoga: “Hold it right there!”

Then she fell over, because the arena was a pool with only a few pillars, where a player could stand on.

“What do you want? I don't mean to be rude, but I'm kind of busy?”, Mazoga asked. She was already swimming towards the exit.

“The power of Cupidite compels you!”, Helga shouted before jumping in to get closer, “joking aside, when was the last time you talked to your god? We're here on their orders.”

By now you could have easily caught up to the orc woman, but you stayed at the rear to prevent your friends from attacks by the aquatic enemies, that could now pursue them.

“I think we should talk right over there. It is one of the few points, where you won't aggro anything.”

“So... What do a cleric of Cupidite, a wizard, a ranger, a rogue, a slime and an octopus want from me, that can't wait till I've reached level cap?”, she asked. At the spot she had pointed out there was still plenty of water so you had remained outside of Schlch. As promised you didn't aggro any enemies, though you could already see an army of slimes.

Mazoga was an orc paladin. She was wielding a sword and a shield, though her gear was most likely whatever she had picked up in the house of dreams and would soon be replaced. Regardless stood nearly ten centimeters taller than Athariel and easily twice as wide. Though most of her body was obscured by armor you got the impression of an amazonian appearance.

“If you had bothered sleeping at any point in the last three days you might have gotten a message from god”

“Of course, I've skipped out on the benefits to grind levels”, Mazoga interrupted Helga.

“You might have gotten a message from god”, Helga continued, “telling you that we are assembling a team.”

She sent the invitation and Mazoga's eyes nearly bugged out of her helmet. She accepted and bowed down at the same time: “You're Helga Helspurger!”

“You know me?”

“You're the reason I became a paladin of Cupidite! I heard what you did and wanted to help.”

“I guess I should have asked before you accepted the invite, but you do know, that we are not just about killing assholes, right?”

“Of course I know. If I didn't like what the work was for, I wouldn't have put this much effort into it! I went here, so I could reach the level cap as quickly as possible and then I would be able to do the heavy lifting.”

“Just to be sure: What do you think we are about?”

“Well, … love, sex all the good reasons to talk to new people. That's why I was so surprised to see a slime and a... Manus Alacratis, never heard of those, in your party. I figured every follower of Cupidite would make sweet love to their friends on the reg.”

While the others continued talking you took the time to look at the pop-up, that appeared as soon as Mazoga had accepted the invitation.

New Growth options:

Amplexus Penetraque:

Gain “Sustained on Lust” Ability.

Gain “Growing Vigor” Ability.

Gain “Color of Love” Ability.

Hug'n'fuck, huh?

Amplexus Penetraque:

Level: 16;

HP: 160/160;

MP: 255/255;

---ATTACKS---

Melee Attack: 30

Melee Damage: 20

Ranged Attack: 6

Ranged Damage: 2

Weaknesses: all elemental damage; piercing; slashing;

Strength: Buffs; Healing;

Resistances: Bludgeoning; Magical Damage;

---Special Abilities---

Mucucutaneous Skin: All negative status effects and elemental damages are applied with an up to 3 + [lvl] second delay. If elemental damage is not applied consistently until end of delay no damage is applied and delay starts over. Scales logarithmically with Cupidite's Favor.

Regrowth: Regenerates HP at up to 10%/second. Crippled status effect has a chance to heal randomly with a chance of [(1+lvl.) * (max_limbs/curr_limbs) /200] % every second. Scales linear with Cupidite's Favor up to limit.

Grapple: Pass a d20 [victim.strength-strength] or a d6 [victim.mass - mass] to fully incapacitate a your victim. Pass a d50 [victim.strength-strength] or a d12 [victim.mass - mass] to disable a limb of the victim.

Poisonous: If attacked by a bite attack cause [attacker.max_HP*1.1] poison damage to the attacker. Inflict paralyzed on attacker.

Venemous bite: Takes 2 seconds to cast. Cast on contact. Cause [victim.max_HP*1.3] poison damage to the victim. Inflict paralyzed on victim.

Spit in the face: Use your ranged attack on an enemies face or weakspot to draw aggro. All your attacks on an aggroed enemy have a chance of [lvl/200] to cause stagger. Cast from Cupidite's Favor.

Healing Touch (Cost: 5 MP): Heal a person or creature you are in contact with for [lvl] + [Cupidite's Favor] HP.

Relaxing Touch (Cost 35 MP): Restore up to [lvl] + [Cupidite's Favor] MP for a person or creature you are in contact with. At the same time reduce the target's Melee Attack and Melee Damage by 75%. Chance of [lvl/100] chance to paralyze target for anywhere between 1 - [Cupidite's Favor] seconds.

Camouflage: Use your ability to change color to become invisible.

Mimicry: Use your ability to change color to disguise yourself as any creature of lower level as you.

Flesh-forming: Use your ability to put your body into virtually any shape to make your attempts to use Camouflage and Mimicry harder to see through by [2*lvl]. In combat you can harden a limb or part of a limb to reduce incoming kinetic damage by 40% when blocking or add 40% bludgeoning damage when attacking. Hardened muscles cannot be moved until relaxed.

Ink-cloud: Ranged attack with a range of [lvl -1] meters. Decreases Ranged Attack of victim by 95%. Decreases Melee Attack of victim 70%. Cast from Cupidite's Favor. Gains new effect depending on growth choices.

Color of Love: All Abilities which benefit from or are cast using Cupidite's Favor can be cast on a ranged target using Ink-cloud.

Sustained on Lust: As long as Cupidite's Favor is higher than [lvl] it will automatically supplement all secondary mechanics (Hunger, Thirst, Warmth, Bloodlust, Hydration, Dark Allegiance,...).

Growing Vigor: Gain Cupidite's Favor from everything that restores HP not automatically (Health Potions, Food, Level-Ups, active Abilities). All passive Abilities are 25% stronger for [lvl] minutes after gaining Cupidite's Favor from sources other than Growing Vigor (does not stack).

Hydration: All base stats as well as some Special Abilities scale with Hydration. Hydration increases while exposed to water and decreases while outside of water (decreasing Hydration is a status effect and is effected by everything that effects status effects; Heat and Fire damage can inflict Fast Dehydration, when already subjected to decreasing Hydration). When Hydration reaches 0 causes [1+lvl.] damage per second to self.

Cupidite's Favor: Some Special Abilities scale with Cupidite's Favor. Cupidite's Favor is earned through tasks that are to Cupidite's liking (small amounts for easily repeatable acts, large amounts for the completion of quests). Cupidite's Favor decreases over time. Decrease is doubled, when MP is 0. For [earnedFavor] seconds after earning Cupidite's Favor MP-regeneration is doubled (does not stack).

Holy shit, you were not disappointed. Color of Love finally allowed you to use Ink-cloud meaningfully and even to heal your friends. Growing Vigor made gaining favor stupid easy and even gave you a nice little bonus. Sure right now it would likely run out before you'd encounter an enemy, but still.

And lastly Sustained on Lust. As the changing tool-tips for the other abilities already indicated, it made the presence of water basically irrelevant for you, as long as you still got laid enough!

At least in theory.

You climbed up the wall, until you were no longer in contact with the water on the floor.

“What are you doing?”, Ariadne asked.

They were all staring at you.

“I think I can now remain outside of water!”

And you waited.

And waited.

Nineteen seconds had never felt this long, you were sure.

Now, if you had understood your new ability correctly, your Hydration should now decrease, but you should no longer take damage, when it reached zero, instead your favor should decrease.

In shock you let go of the wall and fell back in the water: Instead of Hydration going down, Cupidite's Favor ticked down. In the same absolute numbers. Since Hydration was a percentage, while favor was a stockpile with no upper limit, this was absolutely ridiculous. Admittedly right now your favor was running relatively low. You hadn't had access to it for very long and not many opportunities to gain any. If it hadn't been for the recent quest reward, you'd be almost dry by now.

Still. As long as you were with willing partners you could stay away from water pretty much indefinitely. The only problem was mobility.

Your body looked vaguely like that of an octopus. Your corpus, where a normal octopus would keep its organs was pretty much a perfect sphere by default. Your sixteen arms were sprouting from all over the “lower” half. The arms no longer looked like octopus arms with suckers on one side but instead had six lines of suckers spiraling along them until they reached the tip. You'd intuitively describe this new tip as a long sucker. Thanks to Flesh-forming you could use it as a dick that was about fifteen centimeters long, or you could open it up to engulf most of Athariel's tits to work them like a milk-machine.

Your arms were also bigger. Where before they had been conical they now were cylindrical and about as thick as Helga's wrists. You stretched one out straight. It was longer than Mazoga was tall.

The problem was, that you still didn't have any bones. While you could reach up with your arms, it was very hard, if there was nothing to slide along for support. Standing on them as if they were legs was impossible.

You'd have to slither along he ground. Climbing would require holding up your arms freely, until they reached the next hold, which would be extremely hard. At least for combat you could probably flail them pretty effectively.

“Why did your octopus just turn into a hentai monster?”

Oh, right.

Before your friends could get to defensive you answered for yourself: “Hi my name is Nimis Bracchia, or just Nimis for short. I'm an avatar of Cupidite and I'll happily fuck your brain out, if you give me the chance!”

“Speaking of!”, Helga said, clasping her hands together, “Let's get out of here!”

“Slight problem: I don't think Schlch can still pick me up.”

“Well, they can try... where is Schlch?”, Athariel threw in.

The slime hadn't actually gone far, but they did drop all their gear, which made them way harder to see in the water. You held the echo-scarf into the body, so the slime could talk.

“I leave.”

“What? Why?”, Ariadne asked in disbelief.

“Here nice. Damp. More slime.”

“But they are not like you, you know that? Not intelligent?”

“Magic wears of. Don't like smart.”

“Can I at least get a hug?”

The slime answered by splashing its body all over the gnome leaving her drenched in water.

She smiled sadly.

“I will miss you.”

“I won't. But thank you.”

And just like that the party was one member smaller.

“... I'd like to pretend, that I'm really sad right now, but one, we only knew him for a few days and two it didn't really come out of nowhere, if you had paid attention, so... Nimis I guess you better climb on my back!”

“What?”

“I thought I was clear. Schlch won't be carrying you any longer, so one of us has to do it. Judging by your size, you're probably pretty heavy so it's either me or Mazoga. Mazoga doesn't know you that well yet. So you get on my back. You can do your thing from my back just as well as you could from inside Schlch. Plus I bet marching won't get as boring when you're traveling with me” She said that last part with a wink.

While your other friends complained how that was unfair you climbed up the clerics body. You used four arms to hold onto her, which meant snaking two around her waist from her back and two around those lovely boobs the cosmetic armor was putting on full display. She slapped at one of them playfully: “Make sure your not too distracting. We still have some fighting to do.”

The fighting to do turned out to be ridiculously easy. The slimes were really susceptible to cold, heat and magic damage. While Mazoga on her own had been **** to mostly avoid them and smite the few she absolutely had to fight, Ariadne could use especially the Frostbreath to great effect. Her Fireball was nominally better, but because the floor was covered in water it gave the slimes a certain resistance.

And then you used Venomous bite on one and Mazoga stared in awe as the slime turned into a puddle with a rapidly draining HP bar.

“If you think that's impressive, you should see what he can do in a bathtub!”, Joylanda teased her and slapped the orc's butt, which required her to reach up. As soon as you were past the slimes Mazoga took point with Helga right next to her and you couldn't help but be impressed. For starters, even though paladins normally relied on armor and health to tank hits she was extremely nimble on her feet only taking hits, when her shield was raised to protect one of you. Than there was her damage output. Sure she was higher level, but so were her enemies and yet she hit like a tarrasque.

Like that you made your way through the dungeon, blowing past the remaining bosses until she stopped in front of a door.

“Where does this lead us?”, Helga asked.

“Right outside. The golem will be right behind us, when we land.”

“Land?”, you asked.

Instead of answering Mazoga touched the door knob and suddenly the floor was gone. You all fell and suddenly stood in front of another door. A door you had already walked through. And thundering footsteps came from behind.

Nimis Bracchia [Amplexus Penetraque] lvl 18

Ariadne Lightweaver [Wizard] [Gnome] lvl 20

Helga Helspurger [Cleric] [Dwarf] lvl 20

Athariel of the Hunting Woods [Beastmaster] [Wood Elf] lvl 20

Joylanda the happy [Rogue] [Halfling] lvl 20

Mazoga [Paladin] [Orc] lvl 25

It wasn't much of a challenge this time.