They ate in silence for most of the meal.
Aria only realized then that she hadn't eaten anything since morning. She had taken a small breakfast, walked into a Dungeon, almost gotten raped, gotten trapped, met a sentient slime, escaped, learned her parents had abandoned her, and then faced debt collectors who wanted to do far worse than take money.
All of it had happened in a single day.
Her life had flipped upside down so violently she struggled to believe any of it was real. As if it all was just a dream.
She kept eating quietly. The food tasted incredible. Maybe because Calder cooked well, or maybe because hunger and exhaustion twisted everything into something warm and comforting.
Her body shook with fatigue, both mental and physical.
Tears slipped down her cheeks before she even noticed them.
She tried to keep chewing, but her breath hitched, and a broken, quiet sob escaped her.
Even then, she didn't stop eating. She kept bringing spoonfuls to her mouth as if the food were the only thing holding her together.
The slime watched her from the table, its body still and steady. It had only been sentient for a day, and it only knew so little about human emotions.
It tried to understand what it saw right now. Tears, from what it learned, meant sadness most of the time. There was only a moment when Aria let out tears of relief when they escaped the Dungeon.
Beyond that, its mind couldn't grasp the weight behind her trembling shoulders or the haunted sound of her sobs.
Daelan and Calder exchanged a glance. They sat a few meters away from her, giving her space, respecting the boundary she silently set.
They didn't speak. They didn't offer comfort she wasn't ready to accept.
They just ate quietly while her soft crying filled the underground room like a steady rain that felt fragile.
The slime finally left Aria alone because it didn't know what else to do. It understood hunger. It understood danger. But it didn't understand this.
So it moved away from her and slid toward Daelan and Calder.
Both men stiffened when the slime approached.
"You… hungry?" Calder asked.
"Yes. Always hungry," the slime replied, speaking again with Calder's voice. "But I think my hunger is not the same as the hunger you humans feel."
Daelan and Calder exchanged another confused look. Neither of them had any idea what that meant.
"Can you explain what happened to you?" Calder asked, the inventor in him rising to the surface again. His eyes bright with curiosity.
"I… also want to know," the slime said. "Like I told you, I woke up in the Dungeon and immediately wanted to eat something. Then… there was a voice inside my head."
"Voice?" Daelan and Calder asked at the same time.
"Yes," the slime said. "Have you ever heard a voice speaking to you inside your mind?"
"No," Calder answered quickly.
Daelan shook his head.
The slime grew quiet. It now realized the voice spoke only to it—purposefully, perhaps—and intended to keep it hidden from everyone else.
Calder studied the slime with growing fascination as he continued eating. Thoughts spun through his mind, one after another.
A sentient slime shouldn't exist. Slimes were the lowest of monsters, instinctive creatures with no real intelligence.
Yet this one talked, learned, understood, and questioned the world around it. That alone shattered hundreds of years of established monster knowledge.
Was it a mutation triggered by raw mana inside the Dungeon it was born in?
A reaction to the Dungeon Core collapsing?
A byproduct of some kind of energy from god lingering in that Dungeon?
Or something entirely different, like maybe… an evolutionary leap no one had ever recorded?
Calder's heartbeat quickened. If this slime represented a new kind of monster evolution, then it was the first living proof that Dungeons could create more than simple beasts.
It could rewrite everything scholars believed.
The slime fell silent again. Its mind churned restlessly while Aria's soft sobs echoed through the underground room as a background.
"What… am I, actually?" the slime finally asked.
Daelan and Calder exchanged another look. Both of them wore the same expression of wary confusion mixed with helplessness.
It was clever that neither of them had an answer.
—
Meanwhile, in a dim tavern that served as the headquarters of one of Greyside Hollow's biggest gangs, a thin man with scarred hands lounged lazily in a wooden chair.
His boots rested on the head of another man who lay on the floor.
The man beneath him still breathed, but barely. His face and body were battered, bleeding, and swollen.
"That's why you pay your debt on time," the thin man said with a grin, tapping his heel against the man's skull. "Listen, I'm not evil. It's not like I'm stealing from you. I just want the money you borrowed, plus a little tip for my generosity."
His lackeys burst into laughter, mocking the struggling man as he tried and failed to push the boot off his head.
Suddenly, the tavern door swung open with a bang. A large, burly man stepped inside, looking tense.
"Boss," he said, "we got reports from multiple men. There's a unique monster roaming around the town right now."
The boss's grin vanished. His brow creased as he leaned forward in his chair.
"What the hell do you mean, a unique monster?" he asked.
The burly man swallowed. "My men were chasing a woman earlier. She came out of the Dungeon with a slime."
"A slime?" the boss repeated slowly, disbelief dripping from every syllable.
"Yes, Boss," the man said. "But this one got out of the Dungeon. It has the ability to fight back too. And there are multiple witnesses who swear to it."
A wave of murmurs rolled through the tavern. Chairs scraped, boots shifted, and the gang members exchanged wide-eyed looks.
Everyone in Greyside Hollow knew that Dungeons never let monsters out.
The boss tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. He looked skeptical at first, but even he couldn't ignore that there were multiple witnesses. And behind his cold eyes, something sharp and greedy began to glimmer.
A slime that got out of the Dungeon and could fight…
That kind of creature could fetch a fortune.
"Bring all those witnesses to me," the thin man said at last, his voice edged with interest.
Then chairs scraped back as his men rushed to obey.
—