“Alice! Alice, do you recognize me?” Milo asked, scrambling to the creature’s side.

The thief monster turned glowing red eyes on Milo. It paused, silent.

Milo’s eyes widened with hope. He reached toward it. “Alice…”

The monster hissed and slapped his hand away. A red line opened up on his palm.

Flinching back, Milo gripped his hand. He looked at the blood, then closed his hand slowly. “Alice… I’m sorry.”

“So where are you going to keep her?” Aster prompted Stella.

“Daaaaad, please?” Stella said, blinking up at him.

“You created her. You’re the one who’s responsible for her!” Aster replied, shaking his head.

“But she’s so cute! You can’t just ignore her. Please? Where do I put her? I don’t know!”

“Stella, you’ve really got to think this out before you adopt new monsters,” Aster said.

Stella’s lower lip started to tremble. “But I couldn’t just leave her there! Dad! She was all cold and sad! How could I turn away? I had to bring her to my side!”

Aster rubbed his forehead. Are we talking about a newborn monster or an abandoned puppy? He sighed again, then looked at the thief. “You have stealth skills, right?”

The thief closed its eyes and put its hands together. Although it didn’t vanish, Aster struggled to focus on it, even though it stood plainly in front of him. After a moment, it opened its eyes and released its hands, and Aster could see it clearly once more.

Aster nodded. “Good! Go to the first room. The one with the slimes. Hide amidst the chaos and focus on thieving items from heroes. That way, Stella can harvest a lot of mana from humans without risking your life.”

“Huh? For real?” Stella asked, excited.

Aster nodded. “If a dungeon successfully tricks or traps a human, even if only for a short while, the dungeon gains a surge of mana. No one’s really sure why, but it’s been measured occurring in dungeons all over the country. Stealing items counts as tricking people, so it should gather extra mana for you.”

Stella clapped her hands, then ran over and gave Aster a hug. “You’re so smart, Dad!”

“Of course, it only works if you let humans into the dungeon,” Aster continued, crossing his arms.

Jumping away from him, Stella hissed. “No humans!”

Aster sighed deeply. “Stella…”

She shook her head. “I don’t want my monsters to die, but humans have feelings, too. I don’t want to hurt them if they don’t go out of their way to hurt me.”

Milo looked over at that. He flinched at the last part, but still approached. Half-crouched, he timidly raised a hand. “Er… I suppose it’s unprecedented, but… she can get mana without killing people?”

“Do you have an idea?” Aster asked, turning to Milo.

Milo licked his lips. “What if you seal off the deep dungeon with a stone wall the way you sealed off the boss room, and just allow people to wander around the early rooms? She’d get mana, and no one would have to get hurt.”

“But why would people come? Then it’s only a cave. Unless you want her to seal her low-level monsters with the adventurers?” Aster asked, quirking a brow. That works well for the humans, who get to spam-kill low level monsters, but think about Stella, too! You’re asking her to watch as her monsters repeatedly die, without sending any high-level monsters to join the fight!

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

“No… no, I guess it doesn’t work,” Milo muttered. He looked at Alice again, now a monster, and sighed.

Alice the monster edged closer to Milo, her glowing red eyes locked on his staff. When he glanced at her, she startled and fled, vanishing into the shadows.

“Alice! Come back,” Milo said, running after her. His bodyweight swung to the side, and he stumbled. Mid-step, he stopped and pressed a hand to his forehead. He wobbled in place.

Shit! Aster ran to Milo’s side and caught the priest as his knees went limp. Milo’s head lolled back, his eyes showing whites.

Stella gasped. “Is he dead? Did he die?”

Aster shook his head, carefully lowering Milo to the floor. “He just passed out from exhaustion. He’s been through a lot.”

Milo shook his head, coming back to life. He mumbled something and pushed at Aster, trying to sit up.

“Slowly,” Aster commanded, keeping a hand on Milo’s shoulder to ensure he didn’t stand. He reached behind his back, groping for his bag.

“What are you looking for?” Stella asked, little feet pattering over to his bag.

“There’s some cookies in the bottom of the bag. Can you pass them to me?” Aster requested.

“Cookies?” Stella asked.

“They’re like round biscuits, and they smell sweet,” Aster replied.

Loud sniffing sounded from behind him, then an exaggerated retch. There was another pause, and more sniffing. At last, Stella hurried over to his side, holding out a small bag of the sweets. “These?”

Aster nodded. He accepted the bag and gave one to Milo. “Here. Eat this and breathe. You’ve pushed yourself too far.”

Milo nodded and accepted it, leaning forward to sit up on his own. Aster backed away. He eyed Milo for a second to ensure the priest wouldn’t jump up without supervision, then turned to Stella, giving Milo some space.

As he turned, he nearly bumped into Stella. She crouched beside him, her eyes locked on the cookies. She licked her lips, eyes filled with hunger.

“Do you want one?” Aster asked, holding out the bag.

Stella pounced. She scurried away, holding a cookie in both hands, crouched over the cookie like a ravenous gremlin. In a few bites, she devoured it, then raced back over to Aster’s side and stared at the cookie bag again. “More?”

“No. I need to conserve my rations,” Aster replied, tucking the bag away. Clearly I can’t leave Stella’s side for long. I left her for a few hours, and adventurers invaded her dungeon! It’s not possible right now, not until we upgrade her dungeon. But… how to do that, without having humans come kill her monsters?

Stella pouted. “Cookies…”

“I know, I know, but it’s not the time, yet,” Aster said.

“The time? There’s a time when humans eat cookies?” Stella asked, suddenly interested.

Aster chuckled. He ruffled her hair. “Usually after dinner, or… if you’re the fancy sort, at tea.”

“Tea?” Stella tilted her head.

Aster nodded. “Fancy humans like to go into cities and dress up real nice and all gather together to eat cookies. Or sometimes they do it in their manors… that is, their really nice homes. Usually around mid-afternoon or so.”

“They do it in their home? Then we should have tea! The dungeon is my home,” Stella said, nodding.

“Well, you need tea, to have tea,” Aster explained patiently.

“What is tea, then? It isn’t just cookie-eating time?” Stella asked.

“It’s a drink. You put a certain type of leaves into boiling water… ah, leaves are the things that grow on plants,” Aster said.

“I know what leaves are. I have plant monsters,” Stella replied.

Aster nodded. Fair enough. “The leaves put a mild flavor into the water, and people drink it hot with some cookies as accompaniment.”

“Drink it as accompaniment to cookies!” Stella said, bouncing in place.

Aster spread his hands. “Either way, really.”

“So if I get some leaves for us to boil, we can have cookies?” Stella asked.

Aster shook his head. “They have to be a specific kind of leaves. And we would have tea, not cookies.”

“But tea comes with cookies,” Stella clarified.

“Yes,” Aster said.

Stella nodded. She threw forth her hand with great confidence and ordered, “Get me tea!”

Aster sighed. “I can’t leave you alone. We’ve already seen that.”

“But we beat them. They can’t come in the dungeon again,” Stella said.

“We beat half the party. The other half is still out there, and they’ll probably be motivated to enter the dungeon, now that Alice and Silas are missing,” Aster replied, crossing his arms.

Milo cleared his throat. “I won’t tell them what happened. I’ll keep them from coming into the dungeon.”

“Even if you try, can you stop them?” Aster asked. “If two members of the party go missing, can you realistically stop the remaining half of the party from investigating the dungeon? Even if you tell them Alice and Silas went somewhere else, they’ll still check the dungeon, won’t they?”

Licking his lips, Milo glanced at his feet. “That’s… that’s true.”

Until I help Stella strengthen her dungeon, I can’t really leave it. But to get her to strengthen her dungeon, I have to get her mana somehow, which means we have to let humans in. But how? Aster frowned at the floor, his brows furrowed.

“Mmm, this is a hard problem. Let’s have tea and think about it over cookies,” Stella suggested, nodding.

Aster sighed. A second later, his eyes opened wide. He sat up, dropping his hand. “Wait. Is that… possible?”