Raucous laughter echoed over the sleek walls. A deep voice crowed, “At last she dares to emerge from the boss room! Our dungeon core. Come with me! I’ll even keep you alive when I’m the boss.”

Stella shrieked. She vanished behind the churning stone hands, into the shadows.

“Stella, hold on! I’m coming!” He swung his hammer and smashed a stone hand to pieces seconds before it closed on his shoulder. Where was this monster on my way in? Did it choose not to attack?

The laughter sounded again. “I knew someone would kill that damn dragon eventually! Now there’s nothing in the dungeon stronger than me!”

A lonely howl emanated from the center of the labyrinth.

The hands flinched. Abruptly, the laughter cut off. Instead, a panicked voice asked, “Is he here? Quick, kill him!”

Nothing in the dungeon stronger than you, huh? Aster mocked. He raced ahead, leaping over the hands before they recovered from their hesitation.

Behind the stone hands, little stone spirits huddled. No two were the same, each one shaped from small rocks bound together by magic in vaguely bipedal shapes. The largest stone spirit reached Aster’s mid-calf, with many of them even smaller. Some sported three arms or legs, or bore eyes on their torsos instead of their heads. None had hands or feet, but instead had limbs that came to narrower tips. Hidden behind the hands, their stone bodies clattered in fear. Some even lifted their forelimbs off the ground, allowing the stone hands to collapse completely.

Those hands don’t belong to the monster, but to its subordinates. Filing the fact away, Aster pushed by, head on a swivel. “Stella!”

“Attack, damn it!” the voice demanded from a distance away. The hands jolted back to life and reached for Aster.

“Stella! Where are you?” Aster shouted back. A hand reached for him. He dodged it and smashed another with a heavy blow from the hammer.

Letting out a shrill shriek, the stone spirit behind it fled, racing for the wall. It pressed tiny hands against the stone and vanished into a passage that opened in the wall, then turned around, pressed its forelimbs to the floor, and sealed up the passage behind it.

Aster snorted under his breath, even as he dodged another two hands. “I don’t want to hurt you spirits.” I can’t afford to waste too much of Stella’s mana.

A few of the spirits peeked out from behind their hands. The hands’ grasping slowed.

“You fools! He’s only saying that to kill you more easily! Listen to me. Attack!” the distant voice shouted.

“Mmm, mmph—Hey! Let me go!” Stella shouted.

“Give me your core, already! I’m the final boss now!” the distant voice grumbled, frustrated.

Mana buzzed on the air, surging to life. Fiery light surged from a shadowy nook to the right. A shrill scream sounded from the nook.

Stella! Aster charged for the nook, smashing stone hands left and right. This time, however, the hands reached halfheartedly toward him, not seriously grabbing. He leaped a final grasp and reached the nook. It folded back in the wall, a narrow passage hidden behind a sharp cleft. Barely a man’s width, perhaps a woman’s, shadows hid the gap from casual passersby.

Aster sucked in his stomach and wiggled past the initial turn, hammer held tight. “Stella!”

“Stand back! It’ll burn you!” Stella shouted.

Aster turned the corner and came out in a cozy nook in the stone, carved into a roughly square room. Stone chairs and a stone table populated the space, complete with a stone vase. A stone window frame was carved emptily into the wall, only looking out at more stone.

In the corner, a flaming slime herded a stone monster back. Reaching Aster’s height, the monster bore shapeless limbs and a blocky torso, a roundish stone for a head. Compared to the stone spirits, this monster nearly passed for human. Where the stone spirits rarely had equal-length limbs or the right number thereof, the stone monster even had mitten-like hands and feet, with a thumb or big toe defined.

Stella backed away from the stone monster. Her back bumped into the table. Startled, she turned, saw Aster, and ran for him. Little hands grabbed his leg, and Stella threw herself behind it. “Daaaad! Save me!”

Aster pointed the hammer at the stone monster. “Surrender,” he demanded, somewhat uselessly. The monster backed away from the flaming slime. Its back scraped against the corner.

He glanced at Stella. “You didn’t turn immaterial?”

“Couldn’t,” Stella muttered. She glanced at the floor and kicked an imaginary spot of dust. “I can only do it for so long a day.”

Figures. Especially when she’s this low on mana, Aster thought.

“Dammit. I was going to be the next boss,” the stone monster grumbled. It reached out to swat the slime, but the slime dug into the ground and flared up. The stone monster flinched back, afraid.

“You don’t like flame?” Aster asked, surprised.

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The monster shook its rocky head. “It’s not the flames. Once slime gets in my joints, it never comes out. It’s disgusting. Flaming slimes are the worst for it. Heated slime is runny, so it’s worse than normal slime for getting in the joints, plus the stench…”

Aster nodded, thinking back to many long hours scrubbing scraps of blue gunk out of chainmail and tiny chinks in steel plate. “Slime in the armor… I understand.”

The stone monster turned toward Aster. Although it had no eyes or face, it somehow gave him a defeated expression. “So you’re the new boss? With the dungeon on your side, there’s no way I can defeat you.”

“I’m not the boss. I’m… I’m her dad!” Aster declared, putting his hands on his hips.

The stone monster tilted its head, confused. It leaned in, then gasped. A dark aura suddenly emanated from it. “Human? You’re human?”

Aster spun his hammer and slapped it into his hand. A meaty smack rang out in the stone room. “What of it?”

“A human. A real human!” The stone monster rushed forward. It reached for Aster’s arm. “Can I look at you? Your hands! Those things, what are they called? The wiggly ones?”

Aster flinched back, snatching his arm out of the monster’s reach. “Uh… fingers?”

“Fingers! I want fingers so badly,” the monster groaned, clenching its mitten hands. “Fingers… a face… I want to be human!”

You know, it is strange that the monster could speak the common language. I guess it was because… it was a human-fanboy! Aster frowned. He looked the monster up and down. “You’re a golem, right?”

Golems. Giant, horrifying stone constructs, birthed wild from the powerful magic that infused the very walls of dungeons, they ranked a step below pure elementals in terms of raw power and the danger they posed to adventurers. Physical weapons did little to their heavy stone limbs, and magic bounced off, unable to pierce the thick magic that propelled them. The presence of a single golem could raise the danger rating of an entire dungeon by a whole step. Some powerful mages could create artificial golems, and every single one of those mages qualified as at least an A-rank.

Aster eyed the golem before him. He’s a bit small, isn’t he? I thought proper golems were supposed to be twenty, thirty feet tall, not… human height. And golems are supposed to be unthinking forces of nature and magic, massive beings that can respond to a mage’s command but with little other mental faculty, shaped from raw earth into a rough human form. Yet here I am, speaking with him in the common language, without having Stella step in to translate for me!

He doesn’t feel like much of a threat, either. Stella handled him on her own, after all…

“Is that what humans call me? Golem,” the monster replied, interested. It nodded. “I’m a golem!”

“Why did you want to become the boss?” Aster asked, crossing his arms.

“Don’t you want to become king?” the golem returned.

Aster blinked. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. I’m not about to launch a revolution, but I suppose if the chance arose, and I could become the king by picking up something that fell on the ground… I’d do it.

“‘King’ is the right word, right? Or is it ‘vizier?’ Er, ‘governor?’” the golem tried. In a poor mimicry of human gestures, it rested its mitten-knuckles on the middle of its face, about where a human’s nose would be.

“No, no, it’s ‘king,’ ‘king’ was right,” Aster confirmed.

From behind his leg, Stella hissed. “I’m King! Back off!”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Aster said, patting Stella on the head placatingly. You aren’t yet, but I’ll make you a Dungeon Spirit that won’t pale before a king!

Ah, I’ll have to make sure she understands so much… not killing low level adventurers off the bat, level balancing each chamber, giving enough heads-up so weak adventurers don’t accidentally stumble to their doom too often, even just dragging the field bosses back to where they belong… I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Eh, come to think of it… Aster looked at Stella. “You sent the field bosses to the front of the dungeons, but you can’t control the slimes?”

Stella crossed her arms at him as though it was obvious. “Yeah. I can send them to areas but I can’t give them fine-grained control.”

“Like putting kids in time out. You can send them to their room, but you can’t make them not sneak under the bed,” Aster mused, extending her previous metaphor.

“What’s time-out?” Stella asked innocently.

“Do you want to try it?” Aster offered with a perfect smile.

Stella backed away from him. “I don’t like that smile. it’s creepy!”

Aster laughed and scruffed her hair. “I’m only joking.”

The golem clapped, a sharp noise that echoed in the stone room. “Ah, so. Sorry about earlier. I didn’t know you were a human. Uh, would you like some… tea?” It put a hand on the table, and a rough approximation of a teacup appeared. A dirty brown fluid filled the cup.

“I’ll… pass,” Aster said, eyeing the cup. That’s mud, isn’t it? It’s a hundred percent mud.

“Name’s Dieyoushit, by the by. I’m not too inventive, so I named myself after a passing adventurer. Really liked shouting his name, that one.” The golem lifted the teacup to about its chin and pretended to sip, slurping noises and all. Mud spilled down its chest.

That adventurer wasn’t shouting his name, he was shouting his war cry! Aster thought, barely repressing the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Dear past adventurer, could you at least pick a non-explicit war cry next time?

“Is there something wrong?” the golem asked, leaning toward Aster.

Aster cleared his throat. He waved his hand. “Er, mind if I call you… uh…” Is that name salvageable? There’s gotta be a way… Come on, Aster! “Daiyo?”

“Is that a, a, what are they called, nickname for Dieyoushit?” the golem asked earnestly.

“Very popular one, in fact,” Aster said, forcing his face to remain straight. His upper lip twitched, a laugh desperately fighting to escape.

The golem nodded. “Daiyo it is, then. And you?”

“I’m Aster, and this is Stella,” Aster said, gesturing toward his leg.

Stella peeked at Daiyo, then hid around Aster’s leg again.

Daiyo cleared his throat, despite having no throat or mouth. “Excellent. I’ve introduced myself like a human! Which means it’s time for chatting. So, I couldn’t help but notice that you aren’t killing me or holding Stella hostage. What’s a human like you doing around these parts, in that case?”

Aster nodded. “I’m a Dungeon Keeper. Or, well… I will be soon. Probably.” I don’t want to defraud them, but at the same time, I’ve put in so much work! I’ve climbed the adventurer’s guild’s ranks. I’ve fought my way through dungeon after dungeon as a solo adventurer. I’ve studied the minutia of dungeons! Isn’t it fair to say at least this much, in recognition of my effort?

Daiyo nodded. “Hmm, I see, I see. What’s a Dungeon Keeper?”

I don’t know what I expected. Aster took a deep breath, then shook his head. “Nothing, it’s nothing. Daiyo, this table, these chairs… where did you come up with the designs?”

After all, he just admitted he isn’t very inventive. If that’s the case, how did he create such normal-looking furniture? Aster put a hand on the table and felt its smooth surface. Hewed from the earth, it even had an approximation of wood grain in the form of exposed sediment layers swirling over its top. Dark and lighter sediment layers, deposited over centuries as the stone grew, had been layered against one another and gently manipulated so they merely distorted without mixing.

“It’s a lovely tale, and I’d love to tell it, but… could you… get that thing away from me, first?” Daiyo asked, turning its head toward the flaming slime. The slime wiggled at him threateningly, and he flinched back.