For the next few weeks Richard and his menagerie lingered in the caverns, hunting and sleeping. And they finally found where the saber tooth rats had been coming from. There were groups of them traveling around, save a few stragglers, and they seemed to have a nest inside a huge hole in the wall, and from what Richard could see, they were quite orderly for the most part. If he had to guess, the rats that kept coming to his forest were the few exploring stragglers, and the concrusher had likely followed them to the entrance of the cave, where they had encountered it.

Speaking of nests, Richard had ended up looking for one after they had tried resting in shifts. They found themselves easily attacked due to standing out like a sore thumb. Admittedly, sleeping out in the open like that was not one of his smartest moves. So Richard decided to use his skills to build a room for themselves.

Finding a wall where seemingly there was nothing, Richard thought it a good spot to start. So, firing up molten claws, and using lightning pulse to increase his speed and power overall, Richard began to create the new home.

The new home resembled the room Richard had lived all his life. Of course, there was no bed, nor any books or paper, but He had managed to make a desk and shelves. And while there was no bed, he still carved out a giant rock to act like a bed. Frankly, that may have been pointless, given that he would be sleeping in a rock hole either way, but the way he carved it reminded him of his old home, which he was determined to visit… once he was strong enough to not be worried about being caught as a dragon.

True shapeshifting may mask his true bloodline, but there’s no guarantee a high-level mage wouldn’t be able to see through what a monster acting on instinct couldn’t see through. And dragons are hunted down either due to fear, or because their whole bodies are treasure troves. They also make for a pet worth bragging for. Richard didn’t like any of those options.

Richard finished up the exterior. While there was no door (he couldn’t get that to work for the life of him) he was able to make the outside look like a wall in a temple. Carved as best as possible to look like bricks instead of a stone slab, the walls looked more decorated than the rest of the wall around it, and Richard made the hole in the wall look like an actual doorway. He even designed a door out of a stone slab. It wasn’t an actual door, just something to cover the doorway if need be.

Pandemonium liked it, claiming the shelves for himself to climb on(even using his erode ability to create tiny stairways to navigate) and Krackle just settled on the desk, actually taking the place of his lamp, turning on and off. Richard hadn’t intended that of course; the little fellow had just decided it for themself once Richard had explained the intention behind it. He left Krackle to it, they seemed to enjoy themselves enough with it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Panda started going out at night by himself. Richard guessed he was hunting by himself, but ultimately chose to let him be. The squirrel was a demigod, and unlike the others, knew how to take care of himself.

The caverns were rather huge. Extensively so. The caverns seemed to go on for miles and split into multiple tunnels, and there were so many that Richard even had to wonder once or twice whether or not he had stumbled into a dungeon. The system had stated that no, he had not wandered into a dungeon. That was a relief.

What was not a relief were the horrifying presences that seemed to exist at certain points in the cavern. He never ventured too deep into these parts of the cave, because he could sense them studying him as he passed by. None of them were too overtly terrifying, like the two gods he had sensed that day, but these presences still bothered him. Unlike those two who had no reason to bother him, these could easily eat him if they thought it beneficial. He was a dragon after all, even under this disguise.

The biomes and monsters were more diverse than he though it’d be. He found many glowing stones, as well as occasional pockets of moss, and underground rivers. The underground rivers were home to fish which seemed to be passing through the tunnels to Isis knows where. Richard traveled for a day, and the river kept going so he didn’t bother and turned around. Something to investigate for sure, but not yet.

He'd also discovered a way to the outside, and not back to the slime forest, by way of the system. It’d alerted him as he headed down one of the tunnels. Richard marked it down, but put it off for later. It wasn’t necessary to leave yet, and while Richard had a good measure of the tunnels, he had no measure of the outside. He’d went from killing slimes to killing rats to hunting snakes. Goodness knows what’s next. Tigers?

He’d also gained one more skill, hyper sense, by nearly frying his brain. While pushing electric through his body, he found that his body moved faster, as if his reactions were speeding up.

So, what if he applied it to his brain?

It worked very poorly. He ended up with a fried brain and his familiars woke to find a dragon upside down twitching like a dying cockroach. Even Krackle had to laugh. Atlas couldn’t laugh because Atlas had been fried too. He still got hyper sense for his troubles at the very least. Oops.

With his room resembling his old one to a certain extent, Richard had to wonder how his friends back at the temple were doing. He hoped they were dealing with his death well enough. Maybe when he got stronger, he could go see them. He looked forward to seeing how they were doing.