Aster led the way, while Stella followed along, winding their way through a stone labyrinth in a huge, incredibly wide chamber. Its center contained a furious beast that occasionally screamed, its heart-rending voice echoing around the bare stone room. Flying beasts thickly populated the air above the labyrinth. Bats fluttered, and other strange things flew by, moving too quickly for Aster’s eyes to pick out. Slimes clung to the ceiling, waiting to drop.

“If we don’t climb onto the top of the labyrinth, the flying creatures won’t mob us,” Aster explained. He glanced left and right, surveying the walls and floor as they progressed. “It looks like the traps are all in the same place. I guess they haven’t reset yet.”

He stepped forward.

Stella grabbed his hand hard and pulled him back before his foot landed on the ground. Aster stumbled back, staggering. “What?”

Stella pointed. “A plant monster lives under that tile. She says she doesn’t like when people step on her.”

Aster knelt, taking a closer look at the tile. Green vines wound around the stone and spread out from it, twisting their way through the nooks between the other floor stones. Aster frowned. “It didn’t trigger the first time I came through.”

Stella leaned in, tilting her ear toward the vine-bound stone. “She says she was asleep and you woke her up, but if you step on her again, she’s going to make you regret it.”

“Oh? I’m curious,” Aster said, grinning.

“Mhm. Not just attack you, but she’ll call the beast, too,” Stella informed him.

Aster licked his lips. “Let’s go around, then, shall we?”

“See? I told you he’s a good human who’ll listen if you talk to him,” Stella told the floor tile.

It wiggled slightly, a noncommittal wobble to the motion.

“You can communicate with all the monsters?” Aster asked.

“Yeah. The little ones don’t have much to say or much time to listen,” Stella said, pointing up. “But I can hear everyone else’s voices. You can’t?”

“No. Though I’ve been wondering, what’s that guy saying?” Aster asked, turning toward the center of the labyrinth. Yet another pained scream sounded out, echoing through the hollow room.

Stella shook her head. “He’s not saying anything. He’s just screaming.”

Right. Let’s steer clear for now, then. Aster continued on, but walked slightly slower, keeping pace with Stella to allow her to point out any other hidden traps. Stella hummed to herself, happily wandering along beside Aster.

“I guess everyone isn’t after the core,” Aster muttered.

“No. That would be silly,” Stella said.

“Silly?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

Guess that’s all I’m going to get. There’s probably some other reason… putting aside personality or personal disinterest, they might lack the power to defend Stella against the rest of the dungeon, or the mental fortitude to handle controlling the dungeon. I can’t expect a kid like Stella to know everything.

At last, the exit to the labyrinth appeared. Overhead, a group of slimes clustered together, quietly dripping slime onto the floor. Aster glanced up, but they sat still, asleep, or whatever it was slimes did that passed for sleep. Just like on my first pass, if you don’t make a lot of noise or step over the top of the labyrinth, they don’t attack.

Aster put out his hand. “Here’s the first… er, last trap. Hold up, and don’t move. I need a second to remember—”

Stella jolted to a halt, but her feet slipped over the slime-slicked stone. She let out a screech as she fell to her butt, her feet smacking down on the tiles ahead of her.

A sharp click rang through the labyrinth. Holes opened in the labyrinth’s walls, flame flickering in their depths.

“Shit!” Aster snatched up Stella and charged ahead. The floor clicked repeatedly under him. With a whoosh, the holes spat fire one at a time, each triggered as he stepped on the tile in line with the hole. Each time, they licked where Aster had been seconds ago. Red-hot flames scorched his thighs and rear as he threw himself forward. Overhead, the slimes stirred uncomfortably as the flames licked at their drooping heads.

“Wheee!” Stella cried, clapping her hands in delight.

“Don’t you dare wake up,” Aster growled, glaring at the slimes. I’m running out of salt, dammit, and I have to deal with the King Slime again on the way out!

The slimes trembled again, then plopped down. The tiles clicked underneath them. Fire threatened from the wall to Aster’s side, even as fire burst out in front of him.

Time slowed. Fire sparked in the depths of the holes on the wall.

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

Aster tensed. He tucked Stella under his arm and yanked out his hammer. Whirling it, he scooped up a slime and pushed it against the holes in the wall. Flame slammed into the slime. The slime absorbed it, not letting any through.

“Yes!” Aster shouted. He ran at the other slimes, dragging his captured slime against the wall as he went. The slime burbled, heating up, but caught the fire and stifled it.

They burst out onto the other side of the trap. Gasping, Aster let Stella and the slime go. The slime wandered away from him, wobbling like a drunk.

“We made it!” Stella shouted happily, bounding around the landing space.

Aster wiped his face, exhausted, then narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Couldn’t you have turned invulnerable again?”

Stella nodded, suddenly pensive. “Oh! You’re right.”

Aster sighed.

In the distance, the creature in the labyrinth’s center let out a melancholy howl.

“Oh! That one means he’s hungry,” Stella said helpfully, lifting onto her tiptoes to hear it better.

“Great. He better not be coming out,” Aster grumbled.

“Mmm-mmm. He doesn’t like to leave the labyrinth,” Stella replied.

“I’m not complaining, but why is there a route to the final boss that doesn’t force you to fight the labyrinth beast?” Aster asked.

Stella paused for a few moments, thinking. After a moment, she nodded. “It used to be that way, but the beast came and complained to Momma.”

“Oh?” Monsters can talk to one another, even across species? Or is it a dragon in the labyrinth’s center? Doesn’t sound like one, though…

“Momma nearly died, and after that, she rerouted the labyrinth,” Stella finished.

“Oh. Wait—hold up. What?” Aster asked, startled. He came and complained, and then her mom almost died? I feel like we skipped something vital!

“Yeah. He complained.” Stella beat at Aster’s side with her fists, not seriously hitting him. “Complained.”

Aster shook his head at her. “We call that ‘attacking,’ not ‘complaining.’”

“Huh? But if he used his full strength, he would have killed Momma. Isn’t that complaining, then?” Stella asked.

Aster’s heart skipped a beat. Cold sweat ran down his back. He turned toward the labyrinth’s center. “He… can easily kill the dragon boss?” True, it’s only an A-rank team that took her down, but a dragon boss that took an entire A-rank team to defeat could be easily defeated by this labyrinth beast? Doesn’t that make him at least S-rank, if not higher?

Stella nodded. She hugged her arms to herself. “He’s scary. I don’t like him.” After a moment, she brightened up. “But he stays in his labyrinth, so I don’t have to see him.”

“Ah, well… I guess that’s good,” Aster said, uncertain. For the dungeon’s own spirit to know almost nothing about the most powerful monster in the dungeon, a creature that can only be called a hidden boss… at some point, I’ll have to scout out this labyrinth beast.

To the side, the slime he’d used to block the flames trembled. Aster jumped and grabbed up Stella, backing away. The slime trembled faster and faster, wobbling and wiggling like jelly, then abruptly burst into flames. Its translucent blue body slowly colored a deep red.

“Oh! It evolved. Now I have fire slimes!” Stella cheered, excited.

“Now… you have?” Aster clarified.

In reply, Stella squeezed her eyes shut and held her hands out in front of her. Mana flared around her body, the pale blue substance whirling around her. It condensed in front of her hands, slowly congealing into a shape. The rounded body of a slime appeared, then abruptly lit aflame. It plopped down to the ground before Stella and wandered off, burning gently. The other flame slime rushed over and nudged at the first, and the two thumped against one another, wobbling away into the dungeon.

Aster nodded. She can only spawn the monsters in the dungeon. If a monster evolves in the dungeon, then she can spawn the evolved form of the monster. Makes sense.

“Momma used to be able to do that,” Stella murmured, looking at her hands. She flexed them, then sighed. “I’ll bring you back soon, Momma.”

Aster glanced at her. “Can you control it?”

Stella blinked up at him. “Huh?”

“The slime. Can you control it?” Aster asked.

“Can you control a child once it’s born?” Stella replied, mystified.

Aster paused. “Oh.” So she doesn’t control the monsters, but she can create and place them. If any individual monster decides to leave its spawn, it can… but then again, the Dungeon Spirit should create a suitable environment for the monster around the monster, so it has no reason to leave.

There were always two schools of thought on Dungeon Spirits, whether they could control every movement of the monsters, in which they were mass-murdering geniuses, or if they could simply create monsters but not control them, in which case… they aren’t absolved, but does a man call a god ‘murderer’ for creating tigers? In other words, it becomes absurd to hold them to a human standard.

Besides, without a healthy dungeon to protect the magical resources, humans would strip them clean and destroy the mana-rich environment that spawned them. Actually, come to think of it, wasn’t that one of the theories for how dungeons appeared in the first place? That the so-called ‘land gods’ worshipped long ago were merely mana-rich environments that possessed a kind of sentience. At first, humans worshipped them, but as time passed and humans gained knowledge of magic and magical materials, humans came to eye them with greed instead. Humans turned on the land gods and slayed them, then tore apart their lands for the magical resources within. After several of the land gods perished and their lands became barren wastelands, the rest buried themselves underground to avoid destruction… and from there, it became an arms race between the humans, digging or questing for resources, and the beings once called land gods, which wanted to protect themselves and their resources.

According to that theory, the land gods, who once gained mana from worshippers, turned to gleaning it from the adventurers who entered their domain… that is, dungeon, instead. Hence the mechanism of dungeons running off of the mana generated from humans.

Well, nothing is sure. I’ll have to do more research.

Although if it is the case that dungeons are the lairs of what were once land gods, Stella seems new to the world… in a word, young, while the dungeon is a hundred plus years old, young for a dungeon, but much older than Stella seems. Is it that mana-rich areas spawn land gods, instead of land gods spawning mana-rich areas?

The chicken, or the egg?

Aster sighed deeply.

“Can you control human children?” Stella asked, honestly curious.

“No, no. I was sighing about… something else. Let’s continue,” Aster said.

“Mhm!” Stella agreed, nodding. She bounded ahead, skipping down the dark hallway.

“Hey, hey. It’s dangerous,” Aster called, hurrying to catch up with her.

The floor churned. Stone hands surged out of the surface, reaching blindly for Aster and Stella. Aster leaped backward to dodge as a thick hand clapped down at him, only to slam into a hand reaching for him from behind. The impact stopped him dead, head flying back and limbs flying out. He stumbled a step and caught himself, but the momentary distraction proved too much. Another stone hand grabbed Stella’s waist, drawing her away.

Stella screamed in terror.

“Stella!” Aster charged after her into the mess of stone hands, drawing his hammer.