Kai probably should have felt worse about the guy dying in the trap. He hadn’t really put it together in his head that this kind of thing was going to happen, so this was a bit unexpected, a ‘duh’ moment of realization. Trouble was, he didn’t really feel conflicted. The guy had been a real jerk. The world was probably better off now.

  Hitting Level 2 caused the dungeon to expand. On the 3D model in the system, a blank plane opened up, showing that space for a new floor had been added. In the menu, new options appeared. There were two types of stairs: stone block and natural rock. He had the option to place two more rooms on the second level, and he could connect them with hallways, which could be as short or as long as he wanted. Or he could combine the two rooms into one big one.

  It was the first time he’d really had to start thinking about planning his dungeon layout. He played around with the designer for a few minutes. He settled on sticking with stone block style for now. He placed the stairs to the left of the main entrance, opposite the secret door to the Admin Area. He used a spiral style rather than straight stairs. The steps ended in the middle of the second-floor hallway. Well, not quite the middle. Kai made the right hallway a bit longer than the left. He thought the slight visual difference might throw people off when trying to choose which way to go. Unnerve them because something was wrong, but they couldn’t readily tell what. He was probably over-thinking it.

  He put one square room at the end of each hall. Then he thought about what traps to use and where to put them. Unfortunately, he still only had pit and bear traps. He put a pit trap in each hall but left the rooms empty. He wasn’t sure what to do with them yet. He looked at the bear traps on the screen and really wanted to use one somewhere. He slid one around the screen, but it seemed stupid to put a bear trap in the middle of a room or hallway; it was just too obvious.

  He decided to try putting one at the bottom of the stairs. Of course, it was very easy to see. He tapped a claw on the screen in thought. “How to hide it…?” The natural first thought was to put dead leaves over it. But they were underground, not in the forest. Screw it. Maybe he could set it up so that it looked like leaves had blown in through the door.

  The design system didn’t allow for him to make these kinds of changes with magic, so he’d have to do it by hand. Unfortunately, walking around the dungeon would put him at risk of activating his own traps. He didn’t want to die. Exploring the console menu, he found a switch that would tell the traps not to activate on him. There was another switch to prevent traps from targeting official minions and creatures. He clapped his hands, pleased. “Awesome. This will make things much easier.”

  Kai went out into the forest and started hauling armfuls of dirt and leaves, dead grass, and even a few twigs. He dumped most of it in the cave entrance, spreading it out and making it look like it had accumulated here over time. He dumped more in the first-floor room, mostly in the corners and edges. He dusted the chest to make it look like it hadn’t been opened in forever. He trickled dried leaves and grass down the stairs, but not too much. Then he piled a bunch of dirt and leaves around the bear trap that sat below the bottom step of the stairs. Artfully (in his mind), he tried to make it look authentic, like it had all piled up naturally.

  Tired, he decided to take a break. He went back outside the dungeon, climbed the hill the cave was in, and leaned his back against it where he could relax and enjoy the sunny day. Taking a moment to just sit and be with himself, things started to catch up to him.

  The last few days had happened kind of fast, at least on an emotional level. He’d been ripped from the life he’d known and cast into a new place, evidently, someplace with magic or some version of reality he’d only imagined until now. He’d spent two confused and scary days wandering around, increasingly hungry and thirsty, with no idea of what had happened or what he should do. Only random luck had led him to a modicum of shelter. Then, some stranger shows up out of nowhere and sells him a dungeon.

  He closed his eyes, unable to believe this was all seriously happening. With a bit of rare introspection, he wanted to figure out how he felt about it. So he just sat and…tried to make sense of his feelings. He did that for a few minutes. He lay with his back on the grassy hill, feeling the sun’s warmth on his skin and the strands of grass on his palms. The forest was quiet. There was a slight breeze. It was very peaceful. It got him wondering about when the last time was that he’d done something like this. Years ago, maybe? He darkly chuckled. How much had human life changed in the modern era that something as sitting on the grass in the sun was no longer a commonplace activity?

  No video games. No TV. No phone and no internet. Just fresh air and quiet. It was…really nice.

  While it was relaxing and restful, however, nothing about his feelings really became clear. Maybe he was still in shock? Or…was he really not all that upset to have left his life behind? Shouldn’t he be more sad? He was pissed about being brought here without his consent. And for not getting to enjoy that hamburger he’d been looking forward to for so long. But achieving shelter, food, and water had eroded most of his immediate panic about survival. More than anything, he was upset at being turned into a gremlin. It was kind of neat, but he really wanted to go back to being human. He wanted his old body back.

  That’s what he needed: a goal. Something more concrete than endlessly growing his dungeon and maybe meeting some gods someday. He needed tangible things he could work towards, like how he’d gotten food and water and felt a lot better.

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  He basically had to start his life all over here, so this time, he should try to build the life he wanted and find out what made him happy. Make some genuine, inner-circle friends. Find a partner, someone he could love without holding back, someone who actually liked him for who he was. He wasn’t entirely sure how to go about those things, but being aware of them as goals would probably be a start. He wondered what would happen if he came across a gremlin woman now that he was a gremlin too. Would he think she was hot?

  He shook himself and got out of his mental space. Too freakin’ weird to contemplate. Time to get back to work. Maybe if he explored the area more, he could find something to put in those two new rooms. Perhaps he could make his own traps.

  He once more went in a big circle around the dungeon, pushing the limits of what he’d already seen. The entire region seemed to be old deciduous forest. There were birds and insects but other than that owl bear who’d come by earlier, he saw little sign of large creatures. As he drew nearer the road, he instinctively gravitated toward it.

  He needed to find more people to enter the dungeon in order to grow it. The road seemed like the best place to do that. So he approached it with caution. One thing about being a gremlin, he had great big ears that were very good at hearing. It made up for the fact that his eyes weren’t as good out in the bright sun as compared to the dim light of the dungeon. That’s how he was fairly certain that nobody was nearby along the road.

  It was ironic, then, that it wasn’t his ears but his eyes that led him to his next discovery. While navigating his way along the edge of the road, his attention was drawn to a tiny movement in the grass in the shade of a nearby oak tree. At first, he assumed it was a bird. But when he stared at the spot, something shiny moved again. He stalked toward it, but nothing flew away. Drawing near, he squatted down for a better look.

  The creature was only the size of his fist. It was a shiny, clear blob, like a drop of water beaded on a glass. It leaned in one direction, sliding forward like a slug and at about the same very slow speed.

  Kai's mouth opened in happy amazement. “No way. A slime!” He watched, fascinated.

  The slime oozed over a dead leaf and paused. Very, very slowly, the leaf disintegrated as if eaten away by the world’s slowest acid.

  Excited, Kai quickly searched the forest floor in all directions until he discovered a small black beetle. Rushed back to the slime, he put the beetle helplessly on its back next to the slime. However, after the leaf had been completely eaten, the slime continued on, ignoring the flailing legs of the beetle only a hair away. Did it not consume living things? Kai crushed the beetle’s head with a swift pinch, feeling a pang of guilt, then offered the dead insect to the slime. It’s not like he was killing insects for fun, this was the cycle of life.

  This time, the slime seemed to turn at the offering. It oozed forward and touched the black body. Very slowly, the slime accepted the offering, and the tiny corpse was gradually drawn into the clear body. The slime rested there, digesting. Giggling madly, Kai watched in wonder.

  He sat there for minutes, then an hour. “This is going to take a while, huh?” He watched for another hour before finally noticing that the beetle was finally growing a little rough around the edges as it disintegrated. “This is so cool! I gotta take you back to the dungeon. What proper dungeon doesn’t have a slime?”

  Very, very gently, he scooped the slime up in one hand and held it against his body so he wouldn’t drop it. On the way back to the dungeon, with his other hand, he snatched up some dead leaves and grass that he hoped would feed the slime. Back in the dungeon, he went straight to the chest on the first floor. Opening up the empty box, he tossed in the dead vegetation. Then he lowered the slime and allowed it to rest on the bottom of the chest.

  “I have a pet! I shall name you…Slimy!” He watched the slime sit there and continue digesting the beetle for another hour. Very little changed. Evidently, slimes worked slowly. Or maybe it was because this was a baby slime. He was no expert on slimes…yet.

  He finally decided to close the chest to make sure the slime stayed. Then he returned to the Admin Area. At the console, he found the slime listed in the Creatures menu but with an Unaffiliated tag and grayed out. He was able to drag the slime’s name into the official creatures section. The icon coloured and gave him the option of changing the name, which he did. A status screen listed the slime as happy and healthy. Kai swore he’d do everything he could to keep things that way. This was the dungeon’s first resident, outside of himself. He would take that responsibility very seriously.

  For two days, Kai kept a close watch on the cute little slime. It did very little and took most of that time to finish off the beetle. Kai also made a second discovery: corpses stink. Down at the bottom of the first pit trap, the body was beginning to rot. Kai wrinkled his tiny nose in disgust. “Nasty. That’s no good. It totally gives away the pit’s location. The smell will probably scare people off.”

  There was an obvious solution: Slimy!

  Kai had no way of lowering Slimy into the pit. He couldn’t get down there on his own without falling, and then he would have no way out. He didn’t want to just drop the slime. Maybe it would be fine, but the tiny creature seemed very fragile. He didn’t want to risk it. Returning to the console, he excitedly discovered that he could move Slimy around from there. So he moved the slime from the chest to the bottom of the pit trap.

  Slimy immediately immersed itself in the puddle of gross fluids. Its status changed from happy to ecstatic. Kai felt pretty pleased with that. He now had an adorable little corpse eater.

  He also found out that he could now loot the corpse. He could take the shirt, pants, underwear, sandals, and flask (whisky). Having no use for any of it, he left it in inventory. Especially when he found out that putting things in inventory didn’t clean them, so the clothing remained drenched in blood and bodily fluids in the early phase of decomposition. Sick.

  He almost dismissed the items from his mind until he recalled that he was still naked. Obviously, human pants weren’t going to fit. Taking the pants out of inventory, he used his claws to cut off a clean section of one leg, just a rectangle. He tied it around his waist like a bath towel. Instant clothing! He threw the rest of the pants back into storage.

  The only thing better than having a slime in his dungeon would be having more slimes! Kai scoured the nearby forest, meticulously hunting through every bush and every patch of grass in search of more slimes. It wasn’t until he explored far enough from the dungeon and came across a tiny pond that he found another one.