On the way is easy-Meeting familiar faces is hard.

With new abilities in tow that had some clear use cases and some real ambiguities, a lot of my attention as we walked was eaten up by trying them out. Taking a stroll in my human shape is a lot more comfortable when I have a portion of my normal vitality enough that the environment doesn't bother me much is a lot more pleasant. Don't need to watch out for acorns and sticks when my sheer resilience crushes them without bothering me! In a good mood and with visions of the glorious future of playing with these two lovely ladies, I do some playing around with my new abilities instead of paying much attention to the travel, save taking the occasional turn when instructed to.

Alternative Deliveries seems to focus around odd organs that make the poison act some particular way-inhalation gives me gasbags that I need to form an orifice to release them (my natural instinct, of course, being to use this for a breath weapon), injuries fill up injector tendrils or other weaponized parts with a dose, contact causes me to start sweating some kind of oily paste with the stuff, and ingested simply started a tendril leaking the stuff. Experimenting in that direction was light as I instead tried to grind out Stabilize during the walk-forming and reforming things on the upper edge of what I could make. The volcano having robbed me of my clothing, I used the plant fibers in my memory to try and form a facsimile of them-the complexity of the object perfectly suited for Stabilizing once I'd managed to crudely grow something so I didn't have to occupy myself with it. Didn't have to, but did anyway, letting it merge back into my form to re-make it for the practice.

Which was a good thing too, because I'd only finally managed that second level shortly before coming to the dungeon's gate, so I could maintain it in addition to something else, thus not needing to go nude if weaponized myself-which soon became very pertinent. It looks like I wasn't the only one who was trying to give this dungeon a crack. A small group of three seemed to be camping at the edge of the place. I actually recognized two of them, which was to my surprise. Arete and the harpy that'd acted as the go between. Must have run off instead of serving his service, and formed a bond with her. The third person-a goblin, was actually new. Not one of the many I'd had-a quick look with my Eye told me it was an elf unfortunately transformed.

I motioned for my companions-both whom had been trailing me a little-to catch up while I took in the exact design of the apparently unsolvable door. In a quick word, it was like somebody a bit too into steampunk decided to design a bank vault door. The upper edge of the solid frame looked like a punch of brass pipes twisted at random angles, while much of the door itself was some assembly of a complicated mesh of gears. In both cases, they seemed mostly nonworking, contrasted by the few obviously functioning parts-some pipes of the network emitting a constant flow of steam, while some of the gears slowly spun.